Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 9 - Evidence - (December 4 meeting)
OTTAWA, Tuesday, December 4, 2001
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, met this day at 9:10 a.m., to examine access, provision and delivery of services, policy and jurisdictional issues, employment and education, access to economic opportunities, youth participation and empowerment, and other related matters.
Senator Thelma J. Chalifoux (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Statistics Canada is very important, especially as it relates to Aboriginal peoples. They are counted from birth to death and have been for many years.
Senator Johnson is our deputy chair.
Mr. Norris, would you please proceed.
Mr. Doug Norris, Director General, Census and Demographic Statistics, Statistics Canada: Before beginning, I would like to introduce my colleagues. This is Janet Hagey, Director of the Housing, Family and Social Statistics Division in Statistics Canada. That division is responsible for our Aboriginal statistics program. As you mentioned, it is an area where we are doing much work, and no doubt, we will have a chance to discuss it this morning. This is Andy Siggner, the senior adviser on Aboriginal issues. Mr. Siggner has been around Aboriginal statistics for many years. He served on the staff of a royal commission several years ago and has been invaluable to us as we try to shape our new and innovative program in the area of Aboriginal statistics.
I am happy to be here to provide the committee with an overview of some of the demographic and socio-economic conditions of Aboriginal youth. I will define youth for purposes of my presentation as the population aged 15 to 24 years of age, unless I otherwise indicate. In a few cases, I will make that exception. In the short time that I have available I would like to focus my attention on several dimensions of Aboriginal urban living conditions.
I will use data from our 1996 census of population. Unfortunately, the census we completed in May of this year is not yet ready, so I will not be able to report anything from that. That data will start to become available in a couple of months, but the data on the Aboriginal population that will be of most interest to this committee will not be available until the first half of 2003. At that time we will be able to update the information of today.
I will go through my presentation using a series of graphics and making a number of comments on each one. The set of graphics has been circulated to you.
The first page of the graphics is a series of data notes for your subsequent reference. I will refer to the concepts and definitions I use as I go through the presentation.
I would like to set a bit of a context. On the first chart I have shown distribution by different geographies for the Aboriginal population. I have divided it into four parts. The yellow and blue slices show the urban population. Together, they account for nearly half of the total Aboriginal population today. It is a large and important population.
About one-quarter of the total Aboriginal population lives in what we call "census metropolitan areas," CMAs. These are the big cities. There are about 25 big cities across the country. I will refer to some of these in my presentation.
Another 20 per cent of the Aboriginal population lives in smaller urban areas. One-third of the Aboriginal population lives on reserve. The final 20 per cent lives in rural areas, but off reserve. There is about a 50:50 split between urban and rural habitation.
The Chairman: Does this include the Métis?
Mr. Norris: The Aboriginal population, as we defined it here, includes North American Indians, the Métis and the Inuit populations. I have not broken out the populations for purposes of today, but they are included.
We identify the Aboriginal population by using our census question of whether a person considers himself or herself to be an Aboriginal person, that is, a Métis, North American Indian or Inuit. We depend on a self-reported definition in the census.
On the second graph, I show the proportion of youth population in our large cities that is made up by the Aboriginal population. In our western cities, Regina, Winnipeg and Saskatoon, up to about 10 per cent of the population is Aboriginal youth, based on 1996 data. That will probably be exceeded with the data of the most recent census.
There is a lower percentage in the other cities, although you have to remember that the size of the cities comes into play. For example, in Toronto, there may be a fair number of Aboriginal youth that show up as a small proportion of the total Toronto population. However, there is not an insignificant number of Aboriginal youth in all of our big cities.
[Translation]
The third chart shows the distribution of population by age and sex. As you probably know, as compared to the non-Aboriginal population, the Aboriginal population is very young.
In 1996, more than half of Aboriginal persons were less than 25 years of age, as compared to only one-third of non-Aboriginals. In fact, close to a fifth of Aboriginal persons reside in urban areas and fall into the 15 to 24 age group.
As you can see on the third chart, the largest groups among Aboriginal populations living in urban areas are children from 0 to 14 and youths from 20 to 24. Among non-Aboriginals, in 1996, baby-boomers made up the largest group, and were in their thirties and forties. Young women are more numerous than young men, particularly in the 20 to 35 age group. As you can see from these charts, the number of single-parent families living in cities translates this trend.
[English]
The young Aboriginal population is an important aspect. As we look toward the future, the Aboriginal children of today will become the Aboriginal youth of tomorrow and will enter the educational system and the labour market in relatively large numbers. They will make up an increasing proportion of youth and of school aged population and labour market entrants, particularly in the western cities of Saskatoon, Regina and Winnipeg.
The next several charts show the mobility of the Aboriginal population. We, as Canadians, are known to be a mobile population. About one in two of us moves around over a five-year period, either changing our dwelling, or our city or province. That has historically been the case.
However, the Aboriginal population is much more mobile than the total population. You can see on chart 4, on the left-hand side, for the census metropolitan areas - the big cities - that, in fact, one in two Aboriginal youth who lives in our big cities has actually changed where he or she lived in the course of one year. This is the reference before the census. In the period of a year, half of the Aboriginal youth had actually moved. Some of them had moved within the same city and some had moved perhaps from outside the city, possibly from a reserve or another city. That is about twice the level of mobility of the non-Aboriginal population.
In the small urban areas mobility is still much higher for the Aboriginal population, although a bit lower than in our big cities. This mobility is clearly an important factor for many reasons. For example, in the educational system, a move is often accompanied by a change in school. If one is providing various services or programs targeted at a population, it becomes increasingly difficult to provide that service if the population is moving around. Mobility is certainly an important aspect.
Chart 5 shows mobility for the various big cities across the country. You can see it is the western cities - Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina - where mobility is the highest. In Saskatoon, the rate of mobility gets up to 60 per cent. Again, this is 60 per cent in the course of one year. Here I have broken out the moves. The dark part of the bar represents moves within the same community. Those people in Saskatoon moved within the Saskatoon metropolitan area. The other part, 20 per cent - a significant part - came to Saskatoon from some other area, either in the province or perhaps from another province. You can see some variations across the country.
The next topic I will turn to is the family and living conditions of Aboriginal youth. To set some context, chart 6 shows the actual living conditions of children, here aged 0 to 14. I have graphed the proportion of children who are living with only one parent. This is generally their mother. You can see that in the cities, particularly the large cities, a very high proportion of Aboriginal children are in fact living with only one parent, generally the mother. Forty-four per cent of all Aboriginal kids live with a single parent, 37 per cent in the small urban areas. These statistics are much higher than the levels for non-Aboriginal children - around 17 or 18 per cent - and also much higher than Aboriginal children living either on reserve or in rural areas.
Chart 7 considers the same information for the youth of today; that is, for the Aboriginal population aged 15 to 24. As you can see, the same picture holds. In the urban areas, about 30 to 33 per cent of Aboriginal youth live with one of the parents, again, generally, the mother. This figure is about double that for the non-Aboriginal population and, again, is higher than the levels outside the urban areas. In fact, a substantial number of young Aboriginal people themselves have started families.
Chart 8 shows the percentage of Aboriginal youth who themselves are heading a lone-parent family. Again, it is in the urban areas, the CMAs and the small urban areas, where 7 to 8 per cent of Aboriginal youth are themselves the head of a lone-parent family. In fact, when I was looking at this graph earlier this morning, I realized we had done this graph on the total Aboriginal youth population and if we had focused on Aboriginal women, who are primarily lone parents, the numbers would be substantially higher. They would not be double, but much higher, likely in the range of 10 to 15 per cent. Much of the Aboriginal youth is either living with a lone parent or lone parents themselves.
Chart 9 shows the levels of youth who are lone parents across the big cities. Here you can see it is Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon that stand out above the rest in terms of the levels of lone parenthood. As we go through the rest of this information, you will find that those three cities stand out on a number of different measures. The cities Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon will come up again as we consider education and employment. I think there is a relationship between these factors.
[Translation]
The following charts concern school attendance. Graph 10 shows the percentage of young people attending school. The first noteworthy fact is the attendance gap between Aboriginal youths aged 15 to 19 and 20 to 24, as compared to their non-Aboriginal counterparts. However, another interesting observation is the higher proportion of older Aboriginal persons attending school, in the 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 age groups.
This raises the following question: Why are the young Aboriginal persons dropping out? In a few years, the results of the next survey of young Aboriginal persons may provide some answers. The gap between the percentage of young Aboriginals and the percentage of young non-Aboriginals attending school increases as you move from cities in the east to cities in the west, as Chart 11 shows.
[English]
Chart 12 continues the story on education, this time examining the highest level of schooling of our Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth. We can see, on the left-hand side, at one extreme is the proportion of youth, and this is the out-of-school youth. We have taken out those who are still in the education system and considered what the highest level of schooling is of those who have left school. You can see that nearly 60 per cent of the Aboriginal youth who have left school have not completed high school, compared to 37 per cent of non-Aboriginal youth. For the other levels of education, the difference is made up by Aboriginal youth showing lower levels of higher education than the non-Aboriginal youth.
The next chart indicates some good news. It compares the education levels of Aboriginal youth over the period of 1981 to 1996. This is one of several graphics that does not restrict itself to the urban population, but the information was only available at this point for the total population. Here I have taken the measure of education to be the proportion of the population that has gone beyond secondary school to post-secondary education. These people may or may not have completed an added degree, but they have gone beyond secondary.
You can see the level for the Aboriginal population has increased substantially from 28 per cent to 43 per cent. However, the non-Aboriginal population has also increased during the same period. The down side of this is that unfortunately the gap between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations has not changed much. There certainly has been progress made, but that gap still remains.
I would like to now turn my attention to the employment and income situation of Aboriginal youth. Chart 14 shows the employment population ratio. This is simply the proportion or percentage of youth who are employed. Again, this was in 1996.
You can see that levels of employment are much lower for Aboriginal youth than for non-Aboriginal youth. In the big cities, 68 per cent of non-Aboriginal youth was employed versus 45 per cent of Aboriginal youth. The levels are the same in the small urban areas and are not too different in the rural areas. The reserves have even lower levels of employment. This data is for the population that is out of school. We have taken out the young people who are still in school.
The next chart shows that measure of employment to population across the big cities. Here again, if you focus on the middle of the graph, you can see three of the cities, Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon, have substantially lower levels of employment than the other large cities. All of the cities have substantially lower levels of employment than the non-Aboriginal population.
The next chart considers the flip side of employment, which is unemployment. This is the proportion of the labour force that was out of work but looking for work at the time this was measured in 1996. You can see the same pattern here. The levels of unemployment are much higher in the Aboriginal population than the non-Aboriginal population. It is about double in the big cities. If we look across the cities on chart 17, we again see those four cities as being higher than the others in terms of the unemployment rate. Thunder Bay stands out as being substantially higher.
The importance of education and employment certainly is not a novel idea. It is illustrated on chart 18. This chart shows the employment rates by level of education. At one extreme on the left-hand side of the chart, are those youth who have less than that high school certification and at the right-hand side are those who have a post-secondary diploma or degree, which might be a university degree or college diploma.
There are a couple of things you should notice. Clearly, employment levels are higher if one has more education, if one has a post-secondary diploma or degree. That holds true for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth.
Again, one sees the difference between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth at both levels of education although the differences are much lower at the higher levels of education. There is a catching up of sorts that happens with higher education. Some data on which we are working that is not included here indicates that if you focus on youth with a university degree, the gap has nearly closed in terms of employment levels between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. This chart shows the population aged between 25 to 44 years of age, since I was trying to get at the out-of-school population.
Chart 19 considers the income situation. Having seen the family situation, the education and employment, it is not surprising that we find again large differences in measures of low income. I have taken the proportion of the population below the Statistics Canada low-income cut-off. It is a measure of income that is often used. In the large urban areas, over half of all urban Aboriginal youth are below that low-income point, double the level of non-Aboriginal youth. Levels are somewhat lower in smaller urban areas, but the difference is about a 2:1 ratio.
Chart 20 shows the differences across our large urban areas. On the left-hand side, you see those three western cities - Regina, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg - standing out as having the highest levels of low income for our Aboriginal youth. In all cities the levels of low income are higher for Aboriginal youth than for non-Aboriginal youth.
My final chart, chart 21, examines data from our justice system on Aboriginal young people. These numbers reflect the total Aboriginal population. I was not able to get the urban population. Data was not available for two of the provinces, New Brunswick and Quebec.
This chart considers Aboriginal youth aged 12 to 17 years of age. The dark bars show the proportion of each province that is made up of Aboriginal youth. For example, in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, 15 per cent or 16 per cent of that age group is Aboriginal population. The white bar shows the proportion of all youth who have been sentenced to some kind custody arrangements that is made up of the Aboriginal population. There is a much higher level particularly, again, in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where three-quarters of all youth who have been sentenced is Aboriginal. That is much higher than their representation in the total population.
Madam Chair, that completes my formal presentation. I would be happy to entertain any questions that the committee might have.
The Chairman: I want to thank you very much. You have verified what we already know, which is very important.
Senator Johnson: I am wondering if you could help me with some statistics in the area of health. I come from Winnipeg. I have grown up with this problem. As you know, one in five Winnipeg residents is Aboriginal and half of that population is under the age of 25 years.
Health statistics are not readily available, but anecdotal evidence suggests that Aboriginal youth have higher incidence of preventable diseases, disabilities, mortality rate and suicide rates than that of other Canadian youth. Is there information comparing the health status of on reserve and off reserve Aboriginal youth?
Mr. Norris: We, at Statistics Canada, do not have any information that compares Aboriginal youth health status to that of non-Aboriginal youth. We have just completed a large health survey that will allow us to examine the off reserve Aboriginal population for the first time. That information should become available in the next six to nine months.
Senator Johnson: Do you have information regarding gender differences among urban Aboriginal youth with respect to health indicators, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, FAS, or the dramatic increase of AIDS of 91 per cent among the Aboriginal population between 1996-98?
Mr. Norris: I do not have current information on that. Some of it will be coming out of a number of our newer surveys.
Senator Johnson: You have nothing in the area of health. Where would I find some of that? I do not have it for my province. I guess that we are just starting to accumulate this.
Mr. Norris: That is right. There has been a gap.
Senator Johnson: How can there be a gap on FAS when it has been happening for such a long time? My sister was delivering FAS babies in 1980.
Mr. Norris: There is not enough information to indicate that it is an Aboriginal problem.
Senator Johnson: In my province, we know that 99 per cent of FAS babies are from Aboriginal backgrounds. However, you cannot provide me with any statistics on this. Winnipeg Health Sciences can give me that much information. The doctors on site can tell you that.
Why we have not got anything further on this? I notice the health of the kids on the streets and in the schools. Would I be more successful to search for such information from the province?
Mr. Norris: Provincial health people may have this kind of information on their medical records. We will be getting information out of the new surveys that will start to become available. Health Canada may have some information, although I think that its information would be probably more for the on reserve population.
Senator Johnson: There is good news in terms of education and of kids going to school. The statistics obviously bear that out. Again, do you have any statistics on drug and alcohol use among urban Aboriginal youth, compared to youth on reserves and non-Aboriginal urban youth?
Mr. Norris: No, I do not.
Senator Johnson: These are the issues affecting their functioning in an urban society. In your view, based on the statistics you do know, what would you say about Aboriginals being born and growing up in urban centres as opposed to those moving into urban centres? Do you not find a difference?
Mr. Norris: Are you asking whether there is a difference between Aboriginal youth who have lived in the cities versus those moving in?
Senator Johnson: Yes. Is there anything in your statistics about their upward mobility in terms of functioning in society after one generation, as opposed to those who have just moved in? You say they are all headed by lone-parent families.
Mr. Norris: They are not all headed by lone parents. There are high numbers who are living with a lone parent or who themselves are a lone parent.
Senator Johnson: Your statistics refer a lot to lone parents. There is nothing about non-lone parents.
Mr. Norris: I chose to focus on that area because the differences are fairly dramatic. However, by no means are all young Aboriginal people lone parents or living with lone parents. Some are in two-parent families.
Senator Johnson: Maybe you can provide us the numbers that are not lone-parent.
Mr. Norris: Yes, I will.
Senator Johnson: You say I should talk to the health people about the other issues?
Mr. Norris: On the health side, there is nothing that I can provide. We do not, at this point, have that information. It is information that we are working on, but I cannot give it to you today.
Senator Christensen: Your statistics are based on Statistics Canada's census?
Mr. Norris: That is right.
Senator Christensen: The information that you are getting is what people tell you on the forms?
Mr. Norris: That is right.
Senator Christensen: Alcohol, health and those things are not part of the form.
Mr. Norris: That is right.
Senator Christensen: Do you collect those from separate areas, such as medical centres?
Mr. Norris: We do not currently have any information from medical records. As I mentioned, the medical records of most provinces do not identify patients as Aboriginal. I believe that may be different in Manitoba. I think that is what you are suggesting. There may be one other province, perhaps British Columbia, where some work is going on.
In general, the problem, statistically, is that it is difficult to identify the Aboriginal population in order to tabulate statistical information. We are currently collecting information in a survey that will provide information on health. We have a question in it about HIV and other aspects of health, but that information is not yet available to us. There will be, over the course of the next several years, much more information coming out, not only from the census but also from health surveys or other specialized surveys of the Aboriginal population.
Senator Christensen: What sort of statistics do you gather, other than on the census? In what other areas do you compile statistics?
Mr. Norris: Are you asking generally, or on the Aboriginal population?
Senator Christensen: I am asking about the Aboriginal population.
Mr. Norris: We have very few sources for information on the Aboriginal population other than our census.
Senator Christensen: Have you done a comparison of rural and urban Aboriginals with regard to those with a university education? Where would the highest numbers be from? Would they be from the reserves or the urban settings?
Mr. Norris: The levels of education would be higher in the urban areas than on the reserves.
A senator previously asked me a question that I did not respond to, as to whether we know anything about second generation Aboriginal people in the cities. The answer is no. Again, our problem is to identify that. In the census, there is no way for us to identify someone who has grown up in the city who may be a second-generation urban dweller. We have no information on that. We could consider comparing university-educated people across the cities. We could examine how well they are doing and where they are doing more. We could compare urban and rural. There is a little bit of that in my presentation. We could examine more of that.
Senator Christensen: On the reserves and in the smaller communities, one would think there would be more of a support group, such as an extended family, that would be able to give the children more encouragement, as opposed to being in the urban setting where, often, they are isolated, in one-parent families and without extended support groups. Are there any statistics to point us in some direction?
Mr. Norris: We could examine it. The issue is that many of the Aboriginal people who go on to higher education move into cities to take certain jobs. One considers that.
I think what you say may be true. Some of the information we examined on the family situation shows that the level of lone parents on the reserves is lower, which reflects that community support to which you refer.
Senator Christensen: Is there any way that you can identify why there is so much mobility? Is there any information that would lead us to understand better the reasons for this mobility? Usually if people own land and homes, they are not as likely to move.
Mr. Norris: There is nothing in the data I presented. This is a topic on which we have asked some questions in the survey we are doing on Aboriginal people. We will be able to get some insight into that. One could speculate that it is related to a variety of reasons. The low-income situation may result in difficulty in finding adequate housing, resulting in moving around. I cannot provide specific information about the reasons. That is something we are probing currently.
Senator Johnson: Are you fashioning a new survey?
Mr. Norris: It is an Aboriginal people's survey. It is currently going on.
Senator Johnson: I was going to ask whether you had come around to realizing you had to do a different kind of survey to accommodate this population.
Mr. Norris: Yes. We actually did an Aboriginal people survey in 1991 that yielded some useful information.
Senator Johnson: Sending forms to homes at the best of times in any population yields a scattered result. With Aboriginal people, who are migrating and moving around a tremendous amount, I do not think you will get any results, at least in my city. I know my city well. I know the good news and bad news. I know there is a lot of moving around. Aboriginal people in my province are not staying on reserves, Senator Christensen, because there is nothing for them on the majority of the reserves.
Senator Léger: Do I understand that the role of Statistics Canada is the numbers, not the causes or the whys? That information must come from someplace else. It seems that today the "whys" are more important.
Mr. Norris: I agree with you that it is the "whys" that are important. We collect information to try to illuminate that, but we, as an agency, are primarily concerned with trying to get those information bases to many other people, to other levels of government, and to Aboriginal people themselves to be considered and analyzed. Our focus is on collecting information that is accurate and as complete as possible.
As is clear from some of my earlier comments, we realize that we have shortfalls and we have a long way to go in terms of continuing to build an adequate database. I would not quarrel with that statement.
In the process of that, we do some analysis ourselves, but many other players using the information generally do the detailed interpretation of the information. You are quite right.
Senator Léger: We used the term "scattered" a minute ago in that area. This is not scattered. It is very clear, but it is cold and it is needed.
Is there the follow-up on that, or is it scattered? I believe that you are saying that it may not be from your department.
Mr. Norris: We have a long way to go, as a society and certainly as a social science research community, in trying to understand the dynamics of our society, not only for the Aboriginal population, but also of all of us. We are doing a lot of work regarding what matters for children's success. We, as an agency, are trying to collect more information to assist in that. We are trying to do is same thing on the Aboriginal front.
I agree that these are the cold, hard numbers. People tell me when I go to parties, "You are a statistician. You are cold and boring." That is the way I earn a living.
However, there are some insights that can be gleaned. There are others outside of our agency doing more of that. There are researchers who have tried to use the information to drill into that. Our focus is to collect a reliable base of information for everyone to use.
Senator Pearson: I am interested in the methodologies because we are concerned that getting data about Aboriginal peoples is challenging. The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth does not capture the Aboriginal population, yet we know that the Aboriginal population demographics reflect the greatest difficulties and problems that children are going to present.
In the Aboriginal people's survey, what is the methodology that you are using?
Mr. Norris: The Aboriginal people's survey, which is currently our main survey outside of the census, is a cross-sectional survey. It is a snapshot survey, not a longitudinal survey such as the survey on children to which you referred. It is a broad-based survey that is targeted at a variety of topics, health being an important one. It is not totally a health survey. It has questions regarding culture, education and mobility. It is fairly broad based.
We worked hard with the Aboriginal community to develop the Aboriginal survey. We have a lot to learn about how to collect information from Aboriginal people. Some of the concepts we use in our general surveys are not applicable. They must be modified. We worked hard with an implementation committee with representatives from the Métis and Inuit community and Friendship Centres trying to shape and design these surveys in a way that gave us both comparability to some of our non-aboriginal surveys and a collection of information that was relevant to the various groups themselves.
We have a survey that has a core of questions common to all groups and an optional set of questions. The Métis people were interested in a number of topics. We were able to focus some modules, which we call Métis modules, to those topics. With the Inuit in the North, we were able to tie into an international survey that is being done by the circumpolar countries, Greenland, Russia, Alaska and others, and tie into that.
We have a flexible survey. It has core content and it also has some flexibility. It is a cross-sectional survey. It covers adults and there is a children's component to it, as well. It will provide us with good information, much better than we ever had about the urban situation, certainly.
Senator Pearson: Approximately when will results be available?
Mr. Norris: They will be available in mid-2003.
Senator Pearson: I understand that there was some work being done to develop an Aboriginal component to the national longitudinal survey.
Mr. Norris: Yes. We are in discussions with our colleagues at Human Resources Development about the possibility of considering an Aboriginal longitudinal children's survey. That is in the early discussion phases, and like most of these things, depends on availability of funds. It is certainly high on the priority list.
Senator Pearson: We will encourage the development of this. I have just come from the States where I saw the different attitudes to some of the issues that we are examining. I was attending a consultation on the sexual exploitation of children. We had quite a number of Aboriginal people in our delegation who were prepared to speak to this issue. We are talking about high numbers of Aboriginal kids caught in the sex trade. My impression, in talking with the Americans, is that this matter is almost a non-issue in the political sphere in the United States. Have you any comparable American data, or can you direct us to any comparable data for this problem?
Mr. Norris: The Americans do identify the Aboriginal population in their 2000 national census. One could do some comparable work. It is actually a good suggestion for us to examine the American census.
The circumpolar survey for the Inuit will provide a very interesting international comparison for the first time. We have been in contact with our Australian colleagues about methodology for surveying and collecting information. There may be opportunities there for international comparison, but to my knowledge, there has not been much work on international comparisons to this point.
Senator Pearson: We are moving toward an international definition of indigenous people. The collection of data across many nations is too differential sometimes to identify the commonalities.
Mr. Norris: Certainly, the international aspect of data collection is more often considered. I am thinking of the immigration side. I came back last week from a meeting with our American and Mexican colleagues. We will try to examine North American immigration. The collection of information is going beyond national boundaries to get comparables. People are interested in having comparables and learning from one another. We do find ourselves doing more of that.
Senator Pearson: My meeting was trilateral. We were considering the flows of people, for whatever reason.
Senator Christensen: On what is the Aboriginal study that you are doing based? Are you doing it yourselves? Are others collecting for you? Do you have a sheet that has all the questions?
Mr. Norris: We have a questionnaire. We can make a copy of that available to you. We are doing it ourselves. It is a sample that was drawn from our census. One of the challenges in collecting survey information from the Aboriginal population, particularly the urban Aboriginal population, is how to find the people in order to ask them questions.
Senator Christensen: Do you use other agencies?
Mr. Norris: We have not come up with good ways to use existing information. We have decided to use our census. It goes to everyone and provides us with an identification of the people to whom we can return to ask more specific questions. That is what we do with the Aboriginal peoples survey.
Senator Christensen: There are the Friendship Centres, et cetera.
Mr. Norris: We spoke to that. The problem is they vary in terms of coverage. We are not quite sure who is covered. We have done preliminary work on trying to determine that, but we do not feel confident in terms of trying to get good coverage of the total population. We feel that our census provides the best coverage, although that has problems as well. However, it is our best approach. It worked fairly well in 1991 and we feel it is working well now. We are particularly happy with the urban side where we made some gains because of the cooperation we had with our Inuit and Métis colleagues. Everyone is looking forward to that data and, particularly, the cooperation on trying to analyze it and put it out. We have a number of plans on that side of things.
Senator Christensen: On chart 21, does this include children that have been taken into wardship and social services, or does it just take into account children who have been sentenced through the court system?
Mr. Norris: I believe it is the latter only.
Senator Hubley: I will try to compare two graphs. In the work that we are doing, we are seeking positive models, and we are also considering models that are not working well.
In the school attendance - chart 10 - I assume the graph would be higher for younger ages. Therefore, for school aged children, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, 10 to 14, it would be much higher, so we would start the decline from 15 to 19.
Do we have any idea whether some regions are more successful in keeping their young Aboriginal people in school than other areas or regions? Is there any way of breaking that down into statistics?
Mr. Norris: Chart 11 shows some numbers across the cities. Although there is some difference, it is not dramatic. It seems in Montreal, Thunder Bay and Victoria, around 80 per cent of the Aboriginal youth aged 15 to 19 is in school versus 70 per cent in Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton. There is a bit of a gradient but it is not huge. It seems to be consistent. Again, it is those Western cities, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, et cetera, which stand out at the low end.
Senator Hubley: They do. Does this include community colleges? When we are looking at chart 18 - those with less than high school, those with a diploma or a degree - would that diploma or degree number include young people from community colleges as well?
Mr. Norris: Yes, it could be community colleges as well as university. We could break that out, but for purposes here they are included.
Senator Hubley: You also indicated, for those with a university degree, that difference becomes less.
Mr. Norris: That is right. There is another chart, and we could probably provide those to the committee, where we can break out less than high school, high school, diploma, community college and university, and we can see the employment gap closing as one goes up the education ladder, as one would hope and expect. For universities, it got very close, which sort of says that a large part of that employment gap can be traced to education levels.
Senator Hubley: On your Aboriginal peoples survey, will there be a medical component to that? Will you be considering medical problems that young Aboriginals have and how that impacts on the success that they can expect in life, or medical treatment that will be ongoing for the rest of their lives?
Mr. Norris: Since it is a survey, it is self-reported. There are a number of questions about medical conditions that could be examined and correlated with other measures. Diabetes is one, and HIV is another. We have the questionnaire and we can certainly examine that. We will provide the committee with copies of that. There are a number of those.
Senator Pearson: I am following up on the differential data from different parts of the country, but not so much on education. Do the issues that concern urban Aboriginal youth, those that are most salient in different cities, highlight regional similarities and differences?
It is interesting to consider Toronto because of the percentage of the population and the total population. When you get a larger population of young people, you get an expansion of certain kinds of issues, whether that population is the general population or - when you consider this data where you have the laying-over of the demographics in the overall population with the demographics of the Aboriginal population in chart 3 - aboriginal. That does not give us regional differences. I am trying to compare a city like Toronto to Winnipeg, where you have, numerically, quite a lot of Aboriginal peoples but proportionately much less. Does that make a difference in some of the others?
Mr. Norris: Certainly, the correlation, just considering the data, does support the fact that the higher the percentage of Aboriginal youth, the more there seems to be issues around families, mobility, employment, education, et cetera. I am not sure that that is due, necessarily, to the concentrations. There may be other things at work.
For example, in the Prairies some Aboriginal youth in the cities may be coming in from remote reserves, as opposed to the Aboriginal population going into Toronto who were likely not far away from Toronto to start with and hence, may have different exposures to education systems and other parts of society and therefore they are different in a way. I would tend to suspect that to be probably more of a factor than simply the level of concentration, but I am going out on a limb.
Senator Pearson: One of the issues that we are trying to deal with is that in cities like Winnipeg and Saskatoon, the larger population of urban Aboriginal youth who are younger are more visible. This may provoke a whole set of circumstances that you will not find in Toronto, which has many other different visible minorities, so that the urban Aboriginals may not be more disadvantaged than some immigrant populations in that area. That is just my opinion, but I think it is something we must consider in terms of these differences.
Senator Johnson: I would imagine that would have a dramatic impact in terms of statistics, simply because there are 60,000 Aboriginals in Toronto and there are almost 100,000 in Winnipeg in a population of 600,000 people.
On the education chart you have statistics on the number of kids in school in the urban areas. I would be curious to know what the rural statistics are in different provinces.
In Toronto, Senator Wilson and I met with those young people. Half of them were doing masters degrees. They had moved into the city and they were second generation. Many choose not to live in Toronto. There are some fine opportunities for them outside the centres. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan it is totally different.
I do not know how you coordinate those kinds of statistics. How do these surveys get done? In more concentrated areas like Winnipeg and Saskatoon there is a different methodology. For our study we have a range, then we go to B.C. and the area is totally different again.
It would be helpful if we had Senator Watt or Senator Sibbeston here for this discussion.
Senator Pearson: This is very helpful. It is not surprising that Canada's statistical bureau has a huge reputation.
Senator Johnson: When will your Aboriginal people's survey be completed?
Mr. Norris: It should be ready mid-2003, which is some time away, unfortunately. We have not finished the collection. We are involved in the collection right now, and that will continue for a while longer.
Senator Johnson: I am sure it will be fascinating to develop techniques for this.
Mr. Norris: We will come back to the committee with the new data as soon as we have it, if you like.
The Chairman: I have a comment. I think your statistics are very well done.
As a Métis, I have been working with Statistics Canada since about 1988 or so, trying to get assistance on statistics, especially for the Métis. Sadly, we found that the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development pays Statistics Canada to do its statistics and it does not have any money. That was the problem.
On chart 14, the first one on reserve employment, can we assume that there are no non-Aboriginal people working on reserves?
Mr. Norris: No. We have not put in the population of non-Aboriginal people on reserve because it is so small and select that we felt it was not really comparable to the others. We do have the information. It is a very small group, as you know. We could report it, but one has to be careful in making comparisons because it is a select population, such as nurses. We felt in the general comparison we would leave it off because it was so small, but it is there.
The Chairman: I am from Alberta. You were talking about different situations, different statistics that are needed for differentiation. As you know, since the late 1960s, we have experienced an industrial revolution, especially in the northern parts of our province. Our people have been forced into a transition. It took the English about 300 years to go through their industrial revolution. The Aboriginal people in Northern Alberta had to go through it in 30 years or less with no social support services.
With regard to employment, do you have any statistics for that part of the country that are relevant to employment opportunities for Aboriginal people? What I have seen is that we still have 80 to 90 per cent unemployment in communities there, while the industrial revolution is all around. Do you take into consideration areas such as northern Alberta and the territories where you will find the diamond mines, the pipelines and those sorts of things? Have you considered that when you are planning for your census and your surveys?
Mr. Norris: Certainly, the one real strength of the census is that we can go into all communities in the country, including northern Alberta and the territories, and examine the employment situation at the time of the census. The limitation is that it is a snapshot. In this case, we could consider what it was like in 1996 in those northern Alberta communities. We have measures of proportions where this type of information could be analysed, by community, in Northern Alberta. We will have the updated information for 2001 next year.
We do not have that trend information, so one has to interpret that considering the time and what is happening with the economy at the time. However, we do have "point in time" information for various communities and could examine that.
The Chairman: I have a suggestion concerning your Aboriginal survey. When we visited Vancouver, we observed that Vancouver has a large Aboriginal inter-agency group. I would suggest that you get in contact with it to do your survey, as that would be the best place to assist you.
Some interesting things are being done in the Vancouver area, especially at the Friendship Centre in Hastings. The Aboriginal head start program is another agency you might consider. There you will find some really interesting trends with single-parent families and teenage mothers. That is such a large issue. A large segment of the Aboriginal society is teenage mothers. I think that might be an idea.
Another source for assistance is the Aboriginal housing organizations, both Métis and off reserve housing programs.
Talking about housing - and maybe Ms Hagey can answer this question - CMHC transferred the social housing programs to the provinces. Since that happened, there have been no social housing programs. In your work, have you seen or have you found any differences in exactly what is happening? When we organized Métis urban housing in Alberta and completed the first ten houses, there was one single mother with six children who came to us and said, "Thelma, for the first time I can afford to buy my children oranges." We also found in the trends there that migration is almost non-existent once people get into decent housing.
In your surveys, have you considered the differences in migration when there is good housing?
Ms N. Janet Hagey, Director, Housing, Family and Social Statistics, Statistics Canada: We have not done that analysis, but we could certainly consider who is migrating and whether dwellings are in need of repair as we analyze the 2001 census.
We also have housing questions on the Aboriginal people's survey. It is interesting to relate the migration rates with dwelling crowding.
The Chairman: Also, we found that over 50 per cent of people's net income was going for rent. That also could be a big factor in the migration.
What we all must realize is that, although everyone talks about people migrating from other countries, we have never considered the migration of people within our own country. A survey, such as what you are doing, is vitally important concerning how our people move around.
Ms Hagey: In the Aboriginal people's surveys, we ask why people move around. We will be able to consider whether it is housing, jobs, or proximity to family. That is a helpful suggestion.
The Chairman: Let us hope that the First Nations political organizations really consider that.
Senator Johnson: It would certainly help the statistics.
The Chairman: Are there any other questions or comments from the committee?
Senator Johnson: We look forward to seeing you soon.
The Chairman: I would like to thank you very much. It has been an interesting session. The information is vital to us. This is not a study that we are doing. It is an action plan for change.
Mr. Norris: Thank you.
The committee adjourned.