Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 20 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, September 26, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 3:15 p.m. to examine and report upon Canada's international obligations in regards to the rights and freedoms of children.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Welcome. Our first witnesses today are Professor Anne McGillivray, from the University of Manitoba, and Professor Joanna Harrington, from the University of Alberta. We hope that they will provide us with a framework on how children's rights developed and how children have been viewed in Canadian society so that we have a global understanding of where children are positioned in Canadian society today.
Professor McGillivray, please proceed.
Anne McGillivray, Professor, University of Manitoba: Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee today. I will try to be brief because the subject is so huge that brevity only makes sense.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child reflects two sources of rights: human rights norms and protection rights. However, the history of these rights is recent. The two doctrines associated with childhood are also associated with Roman law, which takes us back many centuries. These dominate legal ideas about childhood. The first is pater potestas, the power of the father, which in Roman law was of great importance, and that has been retranslated into common law as well as into policy. Under this doctrine, fathers are powerful people in the lives of children today. Absolute control of marriage, inheritance, work, education, religion, association — all of the rights we associate with a person — belong to the father of the child. The power of the father being great in English common law, in Canadian law, we still see remnants of the Roman doctrine of pater potestas in family privacy, in judicial deference to parental power and privilege, and in putting the child behind the parents in many legal and policy decisions having to do with children.
The second doctrine associated with Roman law is parens patriae, in which the state claims the right to be father of the people, that is, those who are said to be without legal capacity. This covers children, people with disabilities and so on. Under this doctrine, children are objects of law, not subjects of law. They are considered to be a res or thing, often infantia, another Roman doctrine that means ``without legal speech.'' That is from where we derive the word ``infant.'' Through this period, the child was viewed as the property of the father or of the state, focusing, even through parens patriae, only on children with large estates, that is, rich children.
Then we have children as property, as workers. The Poor Laws, which dominated anything to do with child protection, in loose words, since the time of Elizabeth I, permitted parishes to indenture children into work — into mines, onto ships and, frequently, into dreadful situations.
Charities began to enter the picture more fully in the 19th century, but even charity was punitive and moralistic. Apprehension of indigenous children for remaking in Canadian residential schools is a remnant of 19th century ideas about what was good for children. However, during the 19th century, modern ideas about child protection did emerge. Children's aid societies, child protection societies, were given the right to apprehend children from paternal custody. Professional social workers began to take over from amateurs in the early 20th century, and discoveries about physical and sexual abuse of children have resulted in more child-centred laws in the Criminal Code and in provincial child welfare acts.
However, none of this has to do with rights. This was all thought, and continues to be thought in many circles, to be good enough. Children do not need rights because we have this protection, but protection is about incapacity. It is about weakness, powerlessness, lack of status, whereas rights are about capacity, will, power and, of course, high status.
Protecting children is a strong rallying point for action, but children's rights and child protection are not the same thing. Up until recently, ``children's rights'' was an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms — children do not have rights because they are children.
Enlightenment philosophers of rights equated rights with capacity, and capacity was, if you look at these different philosophies, an amalgamation of will, power, high status — qualities that are not associated with children or with women, who did not have rights, or with indigenous peoples, who were thought of as barbarians and like children, or servants or slaves. The will theory of rights doomed children's rights and justified the use of assault against inferiors.
I will briefly give you a little flavour of what these people were saying. Hobbes, the author of Leviathan, thought the child was the property of the father. He wrote:
Over natural fools, children, or madmen there is no law, no more than over brute beasts; nor are they capable of the title of just or unjust, because they had never power to make any covenant...
John Locke, coming along not much later in 1689, thought that the child as a potentially self-owning human being could not be property but had no rights because the child was not rational. So rights are about rationality. In his famous 1869 essay on liberty, John Stuart Mill said:
...this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are not speaking of children.... Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions.
Again there is the substitution of protection for rights.
There was a rival theory developing, however, to this will theory, that is, my will is what commands you to do your duty to me and therefore respect my right. The interest theory says that, if you have an interest that is clear and legally demonstrable, you may be able to command a legal duty in another to respect that interest; so the interest becomes your right and the duty still is on others to respect that right.
A law creates a right if it is based on and expresses the view that someone has an interest, which is sufficient ground for holding another to be subject to a duty. This is much more promising for a theory of children's rights coming out of jurisprudence.
However, the most promising and I think the strongest source of rights in the Convention on the Rights of the Child is human rights' norms. These are norms that are thought to apply to all human beings, regardless of status or jurisdiction. They are based on the commonality of human characteristics. I like to say to my class, ``I have a body, you have a body, and there is not much difference in the pain our bodies feel and in the needs our bodies have.'' We share — this is important to these norms — a belief in justice. Even small children have strong beliefs in justice. They may not always be right but they have those beliefs.
These norms include freedom from torture, genocide and other pain to the body, self-determination, participation rights, education, and freedom of expression and movement. These are some of the norms that have made their way into the Convention on the Rights of the Child. They are political and legal norms of member states set out in human rights instruments, which my colleague will talk about. States must translate these universal norms into domestic law to make them operational.
With regard to children's rights on the international scene, I am sure this committee is familiar with the Geneva Declaration of 1924, which basically dealt with welfare rights; and the 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child, although it does not really cover rights. Neither had an enforcement mechanism. Although the convention does have an enforcement mechanism, it is a weak mechanism — the Committee on the Rights of the Child — but morally it is very powerful.
Children's rights movements, unlike other rights movements, are fought on constitutional grounds. The New York Times in 1976 stated that we do not have boycotts, we do not have marches, banners and flags; we have constitutions with which to work.
The convention is not perfect. It will take a lot more. Changes will probably have to be made to the convention. It does bear marks of compromise. It does not give children the core right of equality before the law. However, in Canada we are fortunate to have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that does give children equality before the law.
Sadly as well, the lead case on children's rights in Canada, which was heard by the Supreme Court, a decision rendered in 2004, did not find that the corporal punishment of the child offended any right of the child, common law, Charter or convention. To me, that was a deep blow for children's rights in Canada. I would suggest that children do need rights. Our history is clear that moral duty, charity, benevolence, do not substitute for rights.
Rights are also the language of international relations. They are the coinage of law. Calls for justice are universally calls for rights; and in this 21st century, to deny rights to any group, including children, is to deny them human status. Rights are now intimately part of the status of being a human being. It puts redress for harm at the whim of the powerful, making children dependent on the benevolent flavour of the day.
I will be happy to answer questions later.
Joanna Harrington, Professor, University of Alberta: Thank you members of this committee for inviting me to speak today. I come before you as both an international lawyer and a constitutional lawyer. That is where my focus lies.
In my written submission, I focus in particular on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty to which Canada has given its express consent to be bound. At this stage, I think the important issue is obviously what this committee is considering and that is the implementation of a treaty. It is all very well to sign an international treaty, but it is obviously the domestic implementation of that instrument that is crucial in terms of Canada achieving its aims in giving its consent.
My presentation focuses on post-ratification monitoring. Monitoring is the key to ensuring that an international treaty is domestically implemented. I start from the position that Canada does not enter into these agreements willy- nilly. Canada does in fact consider the current state of its law and practice, and that is why there is a delay in Canada between signing and ratification.
The Minister of Justice has appeared before you to explain that, during that process, they ensure that both federal and provincial law and practice is in compliance before ratifying a treaty in order to ensure that we are not in breach on the very day of ratification. The problem is that there is an ongoing obligation with a convention such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We must have some mechanism that ensures that we maintain our status of law and practice so that we continue to follow the treaty's obligations. That is where monitoring comes into force and why monitoring is so important.
Obviously, international monitoring is done through the Rights of the Child Committee. One problem respecting the Convention on the Rights of the Child is that it is too popular in that it has become an overwhelming burden for its committee to prepare the state reports and to effectively monitor. A statereport on the progress of, say, Canada, will have been based on out-of-date data that was submitted several years earlier. In fact, Canada's next report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is due in 2009. Clearly, domestic mechanisms need to be put in place.
My written presentation in particular looks at what I consider are practical means of domestically monitoring the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In particular, I focus on the Department of Justice. I find it quite shocking that Canada's international human rights treaties are found within the Department of Canadian Heritage. I think the ordinary person on the street does not think of heritage when they think of Canada's obligations under the torture convention, the rights of the child convention, or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. To me, these are not norms — and I apologize to my colleague — they are legal agreements. They are legal rights. They are matters of law, and the obvious place to put those matters is in the government's law firm, the Department of Justice.
I believe that would serve both to ensure the monitoring of these obligations from a legal perspective and to help in their symbolism and prevent marginalization in the Department of Canadian Heritage, which suggests culture and past. Justice would deal with its current, ongoing legal obligations to protect children. In addition to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, that would apply to all of our international human rights obligations.
As I have stated in my written submission, that is the approach taken in the U.K. The U.K. equivalent of the Department of Justice deals with these matters. That is also true of Australia. Treaty making is done in the Department of Foreign Affairs, but the implementation of these legal bargains is done in the equivalent of the Department of Justice. In Australia it is the Attorney General's department and in the U.K. it is the Department for Constitutional Affairs.
In addition to this role of monitoring for the Department of Justice, there is also the coordinating with the equivalent ministries in the provinces with respect to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The assessments of child's rights legislation can be done domestically by the Department of Justice. In fact, one of the recommendations made by the Committee on the Rights of the Child is that we continually review our current and proposed Canadian legislation to ensure that it respects children's rights.
I have included in my written submission the suggestion that we consider the U.K.'s use of ``compatibility statements'' made in relation to the European Convention on Human Rights. I think the same thing could be done in Canada. The same thing is done in New Zealand with respect to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Mainstreaming international human rights obligations as legal obligations and making it an obligation of the Justice Department to ensure that, in addition to being Charter compliant, legislation is compliant with international human rights treaties, would attract further attention to these obligations and ensure their ongoing scrutiny and implementation.
Another avenue for domestic implementation and monitoring is Parliament, and I commend this body for following the trend of the U.K. and Australia. In 2003, the U.K. did a comprehensive study on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Australia did the same in 1998. The Australian study attracted 700 public submissions. Parliamentary scrutiny of the implementation of these treaties is important. I recommend that this committee, or a joint committee on human rights, consider undertaking that task as and when the concluding observations from the international bodies come down. When there is an interconnection between domestic and international law, that is when you will be able to attract the most attention. When we receive a report from the UN Human Rights Committee on Canada's record of performance, it will present an avenue for a domestic parliamentary committee to review the report, which will attract further publicity and extend the dialogue to a greater number of participants than those who are currently involved in the preparation of the state reports to Geneva. Not everyone can go to Geneva and this is a far more practical avenue for that further discussion.
My last suggestion is with regard to Canada's human rights commissions. Canada is justly proud of its human rights commissions, but they are not in fact ``human rights'' commissions in the international sense of a human rights institution. They are what we call in the U.K. quality commissions or anti-discrimination commissions. They focus on one human right in particular, the right to equality, which is an important right, but they do not have the mandate to focus on all international human rights treaties, including children's rights treaties.
A good model is to include a children's commissioner as part of a human rights commission. I know you have heard previous testimony on a children's commissioner. That was also done in the U.K. A benefit of having it as part of a broader mandate for a human rights commission is that, as we see in Australia, children's rights can work with Aboriginal rights as part of the broader mandated human rights commission. I recommend that to you. I have given some examples in my written submission.
One of the benefits of this domestic monitoring with respect to Aboriginal peoples has been that, in Australia, both the parliamentary scrutiny vehicle and the Human Rights Commission have been able to use their mechanisms to draw attention to the situation of Aboriginal children. There have been reports in Australia on mandatory juvenile detention, especially concerns about this in certain states in Australia, as well as on Aboriginal children and legal aid, the justice and the education system. That combination of a broader human rights commission and a specific portfolio for children's rights as well as Aboriginal rights has been successful in Australia, and I recommend that to you.
Senator Pearson: You have covered a lot in a short time. I understood and applaud what you said.
I am interested in a comment that Ms. McGillivray made with respect to the way in which the legal tradition has led to this focus on the state deferring to parental rights. That was one of the issues in the section 43 discussion. Would you elaborate on that?
You also spoke about the state with respect to Aboriginal children and residential schools. I know you have done a lot of work in this area. Are certain Aboriginal traditions or law based on the history of children?
Ms. McGillivray: On the topic of parental deference, I once sat through a lecture by a colleague, which is always fun to do. I had done a lot of reading in the area of children's medical consent, and a clear pattern emerged. When the parent and the child were against the state, they got their way. When the parent was against the child and the state was with the parent, the child always lost. The section 43 decision is filled with language about protecting children and has almost nothing about the rights of children, or the rights of children to enjoy security of the person.
It is a strange decision. It does not read like other judgments. It is repetitive and the themes are strong about keeping parents out of jail because that is what is good for children. In such cases the parent looms large. The parent is obviously an extremely important person in the child's life.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child leaves most of the burden of teaching the child his or her rights to the parent. The parent may be opposed, so it is not and effective education mechanism.
On the subject of residential schooling, Aboriginal traditions with respect to children are powerful and extremely moving. All the treaties were made relative to the lifetimes of children. The generations that the treaties were to protect were not the parents' generation but generations of born and unborn children.
Some anthropological reports of the Huron culture state that parents believed that, if they were harsh with their child, the child would die of grief, or the child would commit suicide by taking water hemlock and, if the parent ever wanted to see the child in the afterlife, the parent would have to kill himself or herself to follow the fast moving light spirit of the child.
Due to the basic existence enjoyed by First Nations and indigenous people, they do not throw away children lightly. It was in European societies, where people were having large numbers of children, that not a lot of attention was paid to the health or safety of specific ones. It is a very strong children's rights position.
Senator Oliver: I want to thank the witnesses for being succinct, clear and profound on a difficult subject.
Neither of you discussed what is probably one of the biggest legal problems we have in Canada on this issue, and that is the jurisdiction between the exclusive rights of provincial and federal governments in relation to the human rights of children and the protection of the rights of children.
When you touched on the post-ratification monitoring system, you came up with four points. None of the four addressed the problem of the intertwined jurisdiction of the federal and the provincial governments. Could you both comment on that and give us your explanation of what we as a committee should be looking at as a way of getting an enforcement mechanism from the federal government that can apply to the provinces in the conflicting jurisdictions?
Ms. Harrington: I think you have to accept, as a constitutional fact of life in Canada, that we have a division of powers and a fundamental support of federalism. There is nothing that the federal government can do to enforce with respect to a provincial government acting within its jurisdiction.
We currently work with the provinces, both pre-ratification and post-ratification. We work to ensure that the position of our law will be in favour of implementation before we ratify. We work with the provinces at that stage. In terms of post-ratification, currently Heritage works with the provincial governments to ensure their contributions to our reports. If we give that mandate to the Department of Justice, they could also provide advisory services to ensure continued compliance with the convention.
Senator Oliver: Your first main point was that this should not be in Heritage, but in the Department of Justice. Most departments have Justice lawyers in them, so if you have good Justice lawyers in Heritage that are doing there job, what would be your position?
Ms. Harrington: It is not a question of good or bad. I do not mean to convey that. An ordinary member of the public decides where to look for laws. The first place I would go is the Department of Justice. On the Department of Justice website, there is a little tab called ``laws'' providing ``e-law'' access. From educational, access and symbolic points of view, it is important to put it in Justice. A human rights unit within Justice does this work. You are quite right. There is duplication by also having it in Heritage.
However, I would also suggest that, at present, the Department of Justice is responsible for Charter compliance. Other department of government look to them for advice on legislation and to determine if there is compliance with the Charter. If Canada's position — publicly and internationally — is that for many of our human rights obligations, we are in compliance because we are compliant through the Charter, surely it is not then hard for the Department of Justice to say that we already have Charter compliance, and can we not extend that to international rights compliance? They already do it if they are following their public statement. Particularly at Geneva, this is the position Canada takes.
The issue of federal-provincial jurisdictions is a problem for the implementation of human rights, not just children's rights. I would suggest that if you had a revamped Human Rights Commission that was a broader, mandated Human Rights Commission, it could also serve as an advisory service to the provinces with respect to the implementation of children's rights.
Ms. McGillivray: I would agree with my colleague. It is a fact of life. I always thought it was unfair that children were cut into all those different slices. The federal government has done things to equalize the situation for children, health care is one situation. Many voluntary steps are taken in the provinces such as intervention standards and that sort of thing. It is about vigilance and also about recognizing children's rights. As much as we would recognize the constitutional rights of adults and constitutional issues involving adults, we must recognize that those belong to children equally, and that it is even more important to vigilantly enforce those rights.
In every province except Quebec there are advocates for children. Quebec has the children's commission, which is amalgamated with its human rights commission. The commissioners retain separate status. That is a good system. Where you have children's rights commissioners in each province, there could be some relationship with a national commission secretariat.
There is a problem with language. I have been told that it is anathema in government circles now to say ``children's rights.'' I must not use that phrase when I am with certain ministers. I have been involved in the Canadian Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, round two, and the chair was clear on that. He said that they do not use the phrase ``children's rights'' in connection with these things.'' A large part of the difficulty is perception as well as status.
Senator Poy: Ms. McGillivray, you were talking about the medical rights of children, could you expand on that? You said that, if the government and the parents agree, then the child has no rights. I am thinking of treatment and surgery. In Canada, at what age would a child be accepted as being responsible for his or her own body?
Ms. McGillivray: England has the Gillick decision and``Gillick-competence.'' Canada has always had a rule in tort law called the ``mature minor'' rule. If the court finds that the child is capable of understanding the issue and the consequences, the child is allowed a large portion of, and sometimes all, decision making in the matter.
The equation coming out of the cases also has to do with the seriousness of the situation. Birth control, which was the Gillick question, is not so serious. What is wrong with me having access to birth control knowledge; or to a blood transfusion when I would die without it? You have a kind of sliding scale being fed in. We see cases of Jehovah's Witness children of 14 being permitted the choice to die, and that is with the support of their parents. As long as you have your parents on board, you will be a winner. That could be clarified in the law. However, the rule is there.
Senator Poy: If a child makes a decision contrary to what the parents want and what the court wants, who decides that the child, of whatever age, is capable of making that decision? Would the court be the final judge of that?
Ms. McGillivray: In some cases, yes. In the extreme cases, the blood transfusion cases, often the child is apprehended. There was a dreadful case in Winnipeg some years ago where the lawyers were literally fighting over what ended up being the dead body of the child on a gurney in the hospital. These are not good situations. Very often the decision is that of the doctor. It is not so dramatic, and nobody takes the matter to court. There are many internal mechanisms where people can speak with the child and assess the child's understanding.
In the Canadian analysis of these things, it is helpful to use the structure of the Charter. We do not say, ``No,'' to all children, we start by saying, ``Yes, you have all these rights, now I have to think about how I can justify not letting you do this,'' which puts the onus where it belongs, on the adults. If you cannot think of a good reason to do it, then you probably do not have a good reason to deny it.
Senator Poy: Ms. Harrington, you mentioned treaty implementation being under the Department of Heritage. Can you explain how that happened?
Ms. Harrington: I do not know exactly how it happened. I checked the mandate in the statutes setting up the Department of Canadian Heritage and there seemed to be a collection of matters that did not necessarily fit into other departments. I cannot give you the reason, because I have not researched it further. Statutorily, it is within that department's mandate. I would suggest that, for the ordinary person on the street, that is not a logical flow.
The Chairman: Ms. McGillivray, on your point about the case in Manitoba, if it is the one I am thinking about, it was a question of jurisdictions or departments all presuming to have in mind the best interests of the child. Is that the case you were talking about?
Ms. McGillivray: It was before I arrived there. The scenario was described to me. My understanding — and I could be wrong — is that the parents had hired a lawyer to represent the child's best interests. The Child and Family Services Department had a lawyer. It was at an acute stage of the child's treatment and it left a very bad taste in everyone's mouth. Both sides believed that they had the best interests of the child in mind. I could be quite wrong.
The Chairman: You are quite right. It was an apprehension case, where the social services department, or its equivalent, took the child into custody because they believed the parents were not acting. It was a question of two competing guardians.
Ms. McGillivray: That is right.
Senator Dallaire: My background is mostly on the international side in dealing with children. My research is on child soldiers and children in conflict, so I am on a steep learning curve here. I am learning from my colleagues.
In your knowledge of the evolution of human rights, particularly in a society like ours and specifically in ours, knowing there are centres across the country in academe mostly involved in the study of human rights and in the pedagogy of teaching it, is there any formal process of doing research on the advancement of the Charter? Is there any formal process in advancing Canada's perception of human rights and how it inputs into the evolving nature of human rights? It is not a finite thing; it is ongoing. Is there such a structure or direction in existence?
Ms. McGillivray: There are a number of academic agencies, although I could not name them, and, of course, the academics themselves. I know many constitutional rights lawyers seem to have given up, which is depressing. They seem to have become complete sceptics with respect to rights and what the courts will do. It is not a pretty sight. If academics who believe in human justice are saying that these are not the right words, what are the right words? As for advancement, there are groups working in specific areas, such as child soldiers and war crimes against children, but nothing much more comes to mind.
Ms. Harrington: We may take a different view. There is a healthy debate among constitutional scholars in Canada, and that is how it should be. With respect to advancement of the Charter, to clarify, do you mean advancing the Charter abroad or within Canada?
Senator Dallaire: I think of this nation with its Charter. It was produced in 1982-83 after many years of study. That is fine, but where does it go from there? It has been nearly 25 years. How will it evolve? What sorts of mechanisms are there, of which children's rights is a subordinate component? In the same way, in our perception of humanitarian law and of how rights are evolving within humanity, which child rights are there? We are going around the world defending it, but is it a stagnant entity? Are we, specifically in Canada, building a capability for having that input? I am not talking just constitutionally; I am talking about the nature of humanitarian law.
Ms. Harrington: That is the very nature of being an academic in those fields. In terms of a specific structure for that advancement, there is no definite program, but, in the nature of being an academic focusing on the Charter, you are contributing to it. On the twentieth anniversary of the Charter, various conferences have been organized. Coming up now, we are seeing conferences organized with respect to equality rights in particular, because that came into effect after the main bulk of the Charter came into force. It is being done through academic conferences and academic writing, as well as through courses in the National Judicial Institute and the Canadian Bar Association. I would not say there is one structured program for advancement. Canadian judges go abroad and participate in bills of rights programs. Canada also learns from other countries that have had a Charter long before we did. Dialogue and exchange are going on.
Senator Dallaire: To make my point, the whole basis of what we are doing is human rights and the defence and propagation of them, and there seems to be no political entity mastering all this. Academe is crucial in the research, but where is the thrust of our nation in regards to the continuum of that and the advancement of human rights? There does not seem to be a lead. It seems to be defused and waiting for another anniversary to get something going.
The Chairman: At the risk of answering you, I think Parliament has a role in that. The Senate particularly has a role when we study the rights of minorities, regional representation and the national interest. I think that is why we have a Human Rights Committee. Some of us came to the conclusion that we have to play our part, and not just leave it to academics. There should be a political will brought to bear, and hopefully we will do that.
Senator Dallaire: That is a magnificent response, because it is there in the executive dimension that I feel we still do not have a dominant entity that is bringing all this together. There is work being done, of course.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: I would like to come back tosection 43 concerning corporal punishment, further to Senator Oliver's comment about federal and provincial authorities.
I spent 33 years as a teacher and the corporal punishment provision often applies in the classroom. The Canadian Teachers' Federation believes that section 43 of the Criminal Code must stand because it protects teacher.
Given that this is an existing Criminal Code provision, what additional steps could the federal government take to handle this question more effectively?
Should a children's ombudsman or commissioner be appointed? If such a commissioner were appointed, what authority would he or she have? If responsibility is transferred from Heritage Canada to Justice, will Justice have any authority at the provincial level?
I would like to hear your views on this subject. I agree with Ms. McGillivray's contention that this provision truly is a violation of children's rights.
[English]
Ms. McGillivray: Section 43 is a defence to assault. We have lots of defences to assault. That is one of them. The kind of assault to which it is a defence, is punitive assault. It is not me stopping a child from running into the street; it is me spanking the child, hitting the child, for running into the street. Without the defence, I would not legally be allowed to assault a child. I could still do all the protective and nurturing things. If the defence were not in the Criminal Code, the provinces would be enforcing breaches and would be developing protocols from province to province saying, ``Here we intervene; here we warn; and here we charge.'' There would not be wholesale prosecution. However, federal justice would not have a role in the enforcement of such a change.
The Supreme Court did rule that it was constitutional. However, it removed the power from teachers. Teachers can no longer assault. All they can do is what is called necessary restraint, which they could do anyway. They left it with parents, with much stricter rules for how it is to be applied. That does not foreclose Parliament from repealing that law, but it would not be federal justice.
The advocates, commissioners, and so on, would be promoting better ways of looking after children; that is, alternatives to the use of corporal punishment.
Senator Losier-Cool: That was the direction I wanted to take with my question. Would you like to elaborate, Ms. Harrington, on what kind of programs would be offered as an alternative discipline?
Ms. Harrington: I will follow up on Professor McGillivray's points with respect to the children's commissioners. I think there is a role for a body, independent of government, serving as a child's advocate or commissioner. I would prefer to see that person working within the structure of a national human rights institution. There is a role for a child's commissioner or a children's rights commissioner to serve an education function and to do certain specific investigations. I do not think this person should handle individual complaints. There are alternatives for that. However, a children's commissioner could have an education, advocacy and investigative function and conduct broader inquiries rather than deal with specific complaints.
The Chairman: The Supreme Court case is indeed a strange one, but it is also a difficult one. I have heard it argued and sometimes argued it myself that we have failed in continuing education respecting children's rights and children's independence.
Much has been said about the responsibility of parents. Unless we educate our parents, we will put at least some vulnerable parents into even more difficult situations. Was it not the court's way of encouraging an open debate, and of getting Canadian society to reflect on the use of punishment by corporal means? You cannot touch a child under two or a child over. They are moving towards it. Is it their way of saying that there should have been more public education on this issue? Would this be one way of including an educational factor before passing legislation?
Ms. McGillivray: That concern has always accompanied this issue, that is, which comes first, the education or the change? Of course, change brings with it education. Some people are working on a study to be conducted shortly in several different areas, jurisdictions, of what parents understand about that decision. My guess is that they understand very little. I think most people do not have a clue. When that decision was released and everyone ran for the reporters standing on the steps, religious groups who had opposed the change claimed it as a huge victory for their side. As far as the public is concerned, I think that children are in the same place they were before that decision. I wish I could be more generous about it, but I have not been able to find a reason to be more generous.
Senator Pearson: We have heard a great deal in our travels and in our hearings about the fact that too few people know anything about children's rights, that we failed from the educational point of view, and that we failed respecting article 42 of the convention by not making the principles and provisions widely known. Do you have some suggestions about how to go about educating your own colleagues about the issues? We would like to be able to phrase our recommendations in such a way that they would have some impact. You mentioned judges, and so on, but I am not convinced that the principles and provisions of the convention are widely known or understood in the legal community.
Ms. Harrington: I think that is accurate with respect to all of our international human rights obligations and treaties. I would refer to a book published in 1977 called The Law Nobody Knows. The premise of that book still applies. In other jurisdictions national human rights institutions are being used to train lawyers and others. That could include school teachers, judges and social workers. We could train our people on both our international and our domestic human rights obligations so that they see them as obligations. They can see them work together and learn that not one takes priority over the other. They work together. Each one is a part of the whole puzzle. Yes, there is a role for training. I would put that training responsibility in a national human rights institution. While we currently have problems with underfunding, resources, et cetera, I would see it as a practical recommendation, that is, to revamp them to take on that role.
Ms. McGillivray: My worst problem has been with defence lawyers. Most of my colleagues are pretty open to the idea that it is not a good idea to hit children these days and probably never was. I tell them, ``If you choose to assault a child, you should be prepared to defend it on the same grounds as anyone else.'' They have all said, ``I could live with that.'' There are many situations in which you can legally assault, and you do not have to resort to section 43.
The Supreme Court equated it with the ``nurture of children.'' They have said it was necessary for the nurture of children. It is completely the opposite of nurture. We have the common law defence of nurture. It is always understood that I can interfere with a baby's person and change his diapers and feed him. It is not a problem in the law. That has been my best line, though.
Senator Oliver: Professor McGillivray, I was interested in the historical remarks you made today to give this committee a background about rights. I was particularly interested in the quotes you had from Thomas Hobbes and Locke. In the Locke quote, you talked about the age of intellection and when adult rights came into place. What age did he suggest for the age of intellection and what age do you suggest it should be? In Canada today we have a lot of age-based criminal capacities built into our statutes. Should they be there? At what stage should we rely upon evidence or testimony given by a child?
Ms. McGillivray: There is a sliding scale and, because of the complexity of that sliding scale, we have chosen age 12 as the onset of criminal responsibility, but we have saved the full weight of the criminal law for those over18. That seems to be a general fit with what we think of as adolescence. Other countries have much kinder provisions, starting at age 14, for example. Cuba suspends some responsibility until the age of 24.
With regard to children's evidence, it is about the requirement of the court and not so much about the capacity of the child. If the court can believe that the child is giving information that is reliable, the court can hear the child. It will depend on the complexity of the case and the child. It is less age based. That would also apply to medical consent. It is the capacity of the person that is important.
We used to have the vote at age 21. I think it was Mr. Trudeau who lowered it to age 18 and appealed to those people who liked the rose in the lapel. Even so, 18 is fine. Why not 16? There is no real reason for this. In England, there were two different ages of onset of rationality. It was even more complicated than what we have.
In Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, in the late 1700s, he talked about ``the empire of reason.'' That is just another way of saying ``rational.'' He says ``at whatever age the state may fix.'' Locke also took that position.
The Chairman: Would you agree that part of the problem of trying to educate on children's rights is that we have different laws at different times and they are not always consistent? The ages at which a person may vote, go to a liquor store or a bar, or whatever, are all different and they keep changing. There are differences from province to province. That probably confuses most people when they consider when a child should have full rights as opposed to progressive rights, which is what the convention talks about.
Ms. McGillivray: This is why it is handy having the CRC — it does say 18 — unless the age of majority is fixed before that age. There has to be some age where we say that a child is no longer a child for any specific purposes. There should be some dispensations. I do not think there could be one age go cover circumstances. That would be chaotic.
Part of it has to do with our own notions of maturing capacities, such that in one area there is a more mature capacity than at the same age in another area. For example, a 14-year-old might drive well but I tend to think not. We allow them to drive on private property, but perhaps the age for driving shouldbe 30 years. Some of it is convenience and some of it is history, like Mr. Trudeau deciding to change the age and being able to do it. We have that happening now in the area of sexual consent. Not all will ever be totally satisfied.
The Chairman: All of us mature at different rates. Some take a little longer. You have stimulated the debate today and, certainly, put it in a historic perspective, which we had not heard yet. You have brought a different dimension to the committee's deliberations, and I hope that some of your comments will be reflected in our report and that you will follow the work of the committee. Thank you for coming to our meeting.
I am pleased to welcome our next witness, the Honourable Ken Dryden, Minister of Social Development. Minister Dryden, please proceed with your opening statement, after which senators will have questions.
Hon. Ken Dryden, P.C., M.P., Minister of Social Development: Allow me to introduce my officials here today. With me are Ms. Sonia L'Heureux, Director General, Early Learning and Child Care; Mr. John Connolly, Acting Director, Community Development and Partnerships Directorate; and Ms. Deborah Tunis, Director General, Policy and Strategic Direction.
Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee today. The Senate of Canada and Senate committees have played a prominent role in studying and making recommendations on important social issues. I am pleased to be here as part of your review of Canada's international obligations with respect to the rights and freedoms of children, and I congratulate you for undertaking this work.
I would also like to mention the efforts of Senator Pearson. For many years, as we all know, Landon Pearson has been a tireless defender of children and a tireless advocate for children — Canadian children and children around the world. Senator Pearson loves children, believes in children and believes in the future. She wants something better for children. We are lucky to be the beneficiaries of her work and her joy.
Canadians have certain understandings about what it is to be Canadian, what we expect of ourselves and for ourselves and what we expect of and for others. Canadians expect a chance and a second chance. We expect the opportunity of a full, rich and rewarding life. For some, this does not happen easily because of illness, accident, disability, poverty, age, personal or family circumstance, or because of something that puts us behind when the race begins or somewhere along its way. At Social Development Canada it is our job to see the gaps between those Canadian understandings and, in conjunction with others, to do something about them.
What are we doing? In 1990, along with five other countries, Canada took the lead in organizing the World Summit for Children. Then, one year later, on December 13, 1991, Canada ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In so doing, we affirmed our understandings and expectations for children and our commitment to work with governments and civil society to promote the well-being and healthy development of children around the world.
As senators heard from previous witnesses, putting the convention into action is not the work of any one department or agency. Rather, it cuts across all Government of Canada departments, across governments at every level and across society. Other ministers and government officials have appeared before the committee to speak to how Canada's international commitments are delineated within the domestic context. I would like to tell you what Social Development Canada is doing to improve the well-being of children and families in Canada.
[Translation]
Social Development Canada was created in December 2003, inheriting from other departments a set of policies, programs and services, and the values and motivations that generated them, for seniors, persons with disabilities, caregivers, and for children and families. SDC's purpose is to take all that we have inherited and to build on it, to strengthen Canada's social foundations by ensuring income security and social well-being, always speaking to the expectations and understandings we have as Canadians.
[English]
In terms of children, the National Children's Agenda in the late 1990s was created to lay out the overarching vision, goals and areas for collaborative action to ensure that children have the best possible start in life and have the necessary opportunities to realize that potential. The NCA was the result of extensive consultation with stakeholders, Aboriginal organizations and Canadian citizens, and represented a new era of federal-provincial collaboration. Seven years later, in May 2004, consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Government of Canada reaffirmed its commitment to children and families with the release of A Canada Fit for Children, making these commitments more concrete and clear.
For healthy child development, the Government of Canada and Social Development Canada recognized that there needs to be adequate income, effective parenting and supportive communities. Our policies, programs and approach are based on this.
First, in terms of adequate income, in 2003-04, the Government of Canada through the Canada Child Tax Benefit and the National Child Benefit supplement for low-income families provided $8.2 billion to help 3.1 million families with the cost of raising their children. Exact cause and effect is hard to measure, but our most recent analysis, which looks at the year 2001 when the NCB was slightly lower, gives us a glimpse of what the NCB can do.
It indicates that the National Child Benefit reduced the number of children living in low-income families by 8.9 per cent, or by 94,800 children in 40,700 families. In addition, for those families with children who remained in low-income circumstances, the NCB reduced their low-income gap by 12.3 per cent and increased their average disposable income by about $900, or 5.5 per cent.
Further, for low- and modest-income families who have a child with a disability, the child disability benefit provides them up to $2,000 annually as a supplement of the Canada Child Tax Benefit. What all this means in real terms is that a family earning less than $30,000 a year, with two kids, receives $3,980 a year and an additional $2,000 a year if one of their children has a severe disability.
Second, in terms of effective parenting, to help parents in their crucial role, Social Development Canada also supports a range of programs and services through transfers to provincial and territorial governments. For example, under the 2000 early childhood development agreement, the Government of Canada transfers $500 million a year to support improvement and expansion of early childhood development programs and services. It is also transferring $350 million a year under the 2003 multilateral framework on early learning and child care to improve access to regulated early learning and child care programs for young children.
Last February's budget went further, confirming a commitment of $5 billion over five years to a system of early learning and child care across the country, to a system of higher quality that is more developmental, that is more accessible and inclusive.
The provinces and territories and the federal government have worked together to develop a shared vision for early learning and child care, and I have been working with the provinces and territories on bilateral agreements in principle that will move this vision to a reality. Six provinces have signed these agreements so far, and we expect the remainder to do so in the weeks and months ahead.
To put this latest initiative in perspective, the $5 billionover five years represents an increase on what all levels of government are currently spending on child care of 48 per cent. For the nine provinces exclusive of Quebec and three territories, it is an 82 per cent increase. These efforts will have a significant impact on children and their parents.
As part of this $5 billion over five years, $100 million will be spent to improve early learning and child care for First Nations children on reserve. Another $100 million will be used for a knowledge information and data strategy to track progress, guide the development and raise the standard of and deliver on the right ambitions for early learning and child care in Canada.
Third, in terms of support of communities, childhood experiences are influenced strongly by the communities in which children live, play and learn. Through the understanding the early years initiative, we are helping to provide communities with information on the readiness to learn of their children. This program began in 1999 as a pilot project in 12 communities, is expanding to 25 more communities this year and, over time, will be expanded to 100.
In addition, our social development partnership program funds projects that enhance the capacity of non-profit and voluntary sector organizations to engage in research projects, for example, on issues related to child development and early learning.
[Translation]
As well, under the Action Plan for Official Languages, Social Development Canada is investing in two initiatives to promote early childhood development in official language minority communities.
Social Development Canada works to support children in other ways. It is engaged internationally on children's issues as a member of international organizations and through our bilateral relationships with other countries. This engagement takes many forms and includes the sharing of experiences and research that supports ongoing policy and program development in Canada.
As well, work with international organizations assists the development and use of benchmarks and standards that help measure progress in Canada.
[English]
Social Development Canada also works with provinces and territories and other federal partners to ensure that the rights of children are protected during inter-country adoptions.
All this is what we do. How well our children do is, in some part, because of this, but in much greater part because of how our families do, because of how our economy does, because of how our society does. We measure all this through the national longitudinal survey of children and youth and the forthcoming Aboriginal children's survey.
The question for your committee, the question for Social Development Canada, is how we can do better. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, as Canadians we have certain understandings about what it is to be Canadian, what we expect of ourselves and for ourselves, what we expect of and for others. For our children, in their health and security, their living conditions and circumstances, in their education and learning, we expect a chance, a good chance and a second chance. How do we ensure that they get it?
For all of our history, we have been a country of immense space and distances, east and west, north and south. We were once and we are still a country of immense resources. Most importantly, we are a country of immense possibilities, a country still in the making, still in the becoming. We knew once, we know now that whatever we once were, whatever we are now, we will be much more tomorrow.
After more than half a century of great change, of the rise of Japan, China, India and the Far East, of the rebirth of Europe, of the fall of the Berlin Wall, of the advance of globalism, of rises and falls everywhere, this is still our story.
We are an optimistic place, a place fundamentally oriented to the future. We do not believe that today's adult represents the ultimate in human possibility. We do not believe that we live in the ultimate Canada, in the ultimate world. We are a place that understands that whatever may happen in the world — good, bad, whatever the trends — with our space, our natural resources, our human resources, with our institutions, our stability, our peace, with our get-along instincts, we can make any future work.
Fundamental to this optimism, to our belief in the future, to our confidence as a country, are our children. If our children are doing okay, we are doing okay and we will be okay.
I look forward very much to hearing the views of your committee on how our children can do better, and I look forward to working with you in the months and years ahead. I would be pleased to answer your questions.
Senator Poy: Thank you very much, Minister Dryden. In your presentation, you mentioned about early childhood development that you want to give children a chance and a second chance.
My question is what happens with children who are born with disabilities, such as autism? Is that the responsibility of your department? How do you deal with it?
Mr. Dryden: What we have set forward with respect to early learning and child care, and the agreements we have made with the provinces have to do with the joint understandings and joint expectations that we call the QUAD principles. The ``Q'' is for ``quality.'' The ``U'' was once ``universality,'' but, because of the potential confusion over the definition, it now stands for ``universally inclusive.'' Under that I will talk to you about what we do for people who have disabilities. The ``A'' is for ``affordable and accessible,'' and the ``D'' stands for ``developmental.''
It is our understanding and the understanding of the provinces that, in delivering this program, the money will be used in an inclusive way. It will be used in a way that recognizes that some kids have disabilities and that the money spent on early learning and child care is to reflect that and is to include those kids.
One challenge is always how to offer the best opportunity for young people. How do you give persons who have a disability their best chance at the next stages of their lives? There is a clear understanding that, if we are to do better for children with disabilities at the elementary school level or in the high school setting, they need to do better at an earlier age. That is part of the understanding with which we approach what we are looking to provide with the $5 billion over five years. We know that the better we do for those kids with disabilities at that earlier age, the better chance they have at a later age. Therefore, it is something that we push not only with the QUAD principles, but also with the understanding of what impact it can have on those particular kids.
Senator Poy: Does your department monitor what the provinces do? Once you have given the money, do you have control over how they use it?
Mr. Dryden: It is the obligation of the provinces to make known publicly what they do according to agreed upon elements for them to report on, and we will use that information. Academics and the media will use it in certain ways. If this is going to be as ambitious an undertaking as it should be, we need to read into that information. What does it mean? How far are we going? What is it that we are not doing? What would a self-respecting system of early learning in Saskatchewan provide? Why are we not doing better in any particular area? This will be a dynamic environment and enterprise with dynamic ongoing debate and discussion.
Senator Poy: Are you saying that they are required to report back to your department?
Mr. Dryden: They are required to report to their public, according to agreements that we make with all the provinces on what they are required to measure.
The Chairman: For clarification, I understand from what you said that autism is now covered. Does money go from the federal government into provincial bases to cover the needs of autistic children before they reach the age of five?
Mr. Dryden: The provinces themselves have the right and authority to decide how they will spend their money. The agreements have to do with delivering in those areas of agreement on those QUAD principles, one of which is inclusivity, that covering, in part, children who have disabilities. The provinces must decide how best to spend that money. Therefore, I cannot say whether that money will go toward autism.
Senator Oliver: They may decide not to spend it that way.
Mr. Dryden: They may decide not to do that.
Senator Pearson: Thank you for your kind words, Mr. Dryden. I liked your comment that I do what I do because I like kids. That is true. I like them and, because I like them, I have learned to respect them. Part of what has driven me on the issues with respect to children's rights is my strong feeling that it is most important to create a culture of respect for children and children's rights, because it is in that kind of culture that some of the questions that Senator Poy just raised will be answered. There will be all rights for all children, as UNICEF says. The rights perspective is a holistic one. You do not make a decision to advance one aspect of a child without looking at how that will impact on the child's right to the family or the right to other aspects of life.
My question has to do with the work that I have done for many years in the voluntary sector, before I came to the Senate. Witnesses we have heard have been concerned about the problems of effective coordination, adequate funding and so on, particularly for capacity building in the voluntary sector related to children's rights. It is easier to build capacity in the voluntary sector when dealing with children in hospitals or a specific charity. However, we have noted the deep concern that has been brought to our attention with regard to the difficulty of having to compete among themselves for adequate funding to bring forward the voice of children.
In my view, social development is the development of social capital, and social capital is the development of relationships of trust and so on and so forth, and to some extent we see relations of distrust as one entity competes against another. What thinking is going on in your department about a more constructive relationship with the voluntary sector in the nature of the accord that was signed in 2001, I believe it was.
Mr. Dryden: I am not sure how to answer the part about a more constructive relationship with the voluntary sector. I am not quite sure what that means. We are talking about the rights of children. In moving toward the rights of children, there is often an assumption that the rights of any human being are not necessarily understood as being part of being a child, which makes no sense to me at all.
The first thing for me, in trying to understand an approach, is to acknowledge that children are people, too. As anyone else, children have rights. Disengagement from kids is part of the cause.
What stuns me is that, at any children's conference or a conference where children are represented, the children who are represented are, in almost every instance, adult versions of children. The voices that they speak with do not sound like children's voices at all. They sound like mini-adult voices. They sound like voices that adults understand easily and, therefore, adults are comfortable in the company of those voices. The speakers are children who realize the importance and responsibility of the occasion, and they attempt to sound like adults in representing themselves as children. It does not work well.
The way to get underneath this, so that we have a real drive and energy to do something for children, is to listen to children's voices, not mini-adult voices. Ask them to talk about their lives, each part of their lives. What does it feel like to do this? What are you most proud of? What bugs you?
From that, one starts to realize that we are not just talking about children's rights, we are talking about rights for any human being and that we want to ensure that all children have those rights. In addition to that, there may be certain other protections that children need. Most of the time we forget about the vast array of generally understood rights that any human being should have, and certainly children should have that.
As Canadians, we have certain expectations and understandings of ourselves and of others. As a department, our job, whether it is for kids or seniors, is to ask ourselves: How are we doing? We should be asking how our kids are doing in all kinds of different ways. How are our seniors doing? How are people with disabilities doing? We must not only consider those easy things to measure, but we should ask: What does life feel like? How do kids feel about their lives? How they are going about living their lives? How are they managing that stage of life as part of whole life, rather than focussing on a particular problem for which you have offered a particular solution? We must look at the overall situation covering health, education and everything else, and put the pieces together. Then we must ask: How are we doing?
Senator Pearson: We should ask them how we are doing. The government is better at listening to older people than we are at listening to children.
The Chairman: We are studying the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We have heard earlier today and from other witnesses, that the best way to listen to children is to give them their enforceable rights. That is what the convention is about: their actual rights.
There has been testimony before this committee to indicate that we care about children, all in our own way, although we may define it differently. We want to protect children. However, we have not made the rights set out in the convention legally binding. How does your department or how do you personally feel about the remark that the best way to listen to children is to give them the rights that that we signed off and said were theirs in the convention, and make those enforceable as opposed to simply setting them out as a guideline? I am drawing on your legal background.
Mr. Dryden: Do not draw on that. There is not much to draw on.
I am not sure of the answer to that question. With respect to the department, our authority regarding children is very limited. Essentially, we deal with early learning and child care and matters related to it. That is not to say that a department of social development should not be one whose task it is to ask how kids doing in all of these areas and to respond. As you were saying, children force us to respond in ways in which we do not otherwise respond.
This is an interesting debate, and I look forward to the opportunity to continuing it.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: It will come as no surprise to you that I was delighted to hear you say in your opening statement that initiatives are in the works for Canadians and children living in minority language communities.
I have two questions for you, one theoretical one and one about the current state of affairs.
Several witnesses have suggested to us that Canada should consider setting up an agency or appointing a children's ombudsman or commissioner. Would such a move benefit Canada? Has your department ever considered doing this? I would like to hear your views on this matter.
You also made a reference to the six provinces and territories that have already signed agreements respecting early childhood services and education. Will the first provinces that signed the agreements be the first ones to receive some funding?
In other words, if a province has yet to sign the agreement, when can it expect to see the $5 billion?
[English]
Mr. Dryden: To answer the last part of the question first, the way the first year funding works, up until March 31, 2006, is that all of the provinces and territories get their per capita share of the money, whether or not an agreement has been signed. Those four other provinces that do not currently have agreements, and the three territories, receive their money as if an agreement had been signed. Only if we do not have an agreement by March 31, 2006, circumstances may be different. While we are negotiating agreements, no one on the ground is being put out, because of the time that it takes to complete these agreements.
As to the first part of your question, it is an interesting subject and one that I have been thinking about for a long time. Senator Pearson and I first met each other when I was — as Senator Pearson was in her way and I was in my way — trying to persuade the federal government to create a national youth commissioner. I went through that process for about two years.
The approach that I took, or what I felt most strongly about in terms of a national youth commissioner, was that there would be one principal function and activity, out of which many other things might flow, and it was absolutely central in my mind that that would have an impact. That was an annual report on the state of youth, or an annual report on the state of children.
What parents or any citizen or any politician wants to know is: How are our kids doing? We want to know in terms of their health, their education, and in terms of all the other aspects of their lives: How are they doing? How are they doing compared to last year, compared to five years ago or compared to 20 years ago? How are they doing compared to kids in other countries? We also want to know how they are doing according to the standards we have in our heads. As Canadians, we have certain understandings and expectations of what it is to be Canadian. How are we doing relative to those understandings?
When I was pushing for a national youth commissioner, I wanted to see those questions being asked. I wanted to see then national youth commissioner then take that information and assess it. What does it mean relative to the individual, specific lives of kids; and what are the implications of all the information and what are the implications of each part of that information? What does it mean that a certain percentage of kids are born prematurely? What implications does that have on the course of their lives? I wanted to see that happen, but I could not persuade people to do it.
I still believe that that is the central piece that is missing in all of this, that and the desire, the willingness and the ability to go out and to tell the story. I wanted the commissioner to be able to say, ``Here is what we learned this year about kids and how they are doing. I want to talk about it, and I want to push ourselves and others to do better.'' I believe that scenario would have the greatest impact on where we are and where we would like to go in terms of doing better for kids.
Personally, at this particular stage, and it is easy to say this because, at one time, I was outside of government. Now I am inside. I think that, done right, it can be done better inside a department than outside of a department. We can gather that collective story a whole lot easier and a whole lot better. The key is the collective story. It is not just individual pieces and individual measures, but what they all add up to in terms of how well we are doing.
Senator Oliver: Now that you are a minister of the Crown and have the power to do it, we will be watching with great interest. You are the Minister of Social Development, and you are the minister responsible for early learning and child care. You told us that your powers are quite limited for the types and scopes of things that you can do in relation to children, but new legislation is coming forward from other departments that touches upon children. Do you have the power and authority to review that legislation and to do a needs assessment of that legislation to make sure that it fits within the UN covenant we are studying?
Mr. Dryden: Not specifically our department.
Senator Oliver: Do you not have the implicit authority to do that, given your early learning and child care role and authority?
Mr. Dryden: In terms of delivering on that part, yes, but one of the real questions for your committee regarding a commissioner or ombudsman is to ask whether it would be valuable to have some entity within government that has a perspective on the totality of a life. As we know, lives disrespect jurisdiction. They disrespect mandates and portfolios. Lives are lived wherever, and one of the challenges that any organization has, and it is certainly a challenge for government, is not to fragment our approaches. Usually that happens for good, well-intentioned reasons in circumstances where we see a problem we want to address. Then we see another problem that we want to address. What cuts across all of that is a life.
Senator Oliver: Minister, you are responsible for early learning and child care. If legislation is introduced by other departments of the government that affects children, when you sit around the cabinet table, surely you have the implicit authority to assess that proposed legislation.
Mr. Dryden: I have a voice at the cabinet table, but there is no specific voice within government for children and youth. We each have our roles, our responsibilities and our specific programs. In delivering those programs, we try to understand the life of a child in all of its dimensions. Early learning and child care is a great field in which to work because it cuts across a number of areas. It is easy to imagine how child care centres become more involved over time in things like health habits and in the way one lives. Many things are routine. They are just habits. The earlier they become a part of someone's life, the more likely that person will be able to sustain them. You can imagine how all of that might be part of what is delivered through early learning and child care. However, with respect to the overall vision for children and youth and how we want our children to grow up, except at the cabinet table, there is not someone with that specific responsibility.
Senator Oliver: I was interested in the architect tonic, and you say it does not exist in Canada now?
Mr. Dryden: That is right.
The Chairman: I am mindful of the time. You mentioned the cabinet table. One of your colleagues is waiting, so I will ask Senator Dallaire to put a succinct question, and I am sure that you will reply in like kind so we do not hold up the next minister.
Senator Dallaire: This will be my first opportunity to be succinct. The briefing paper made note of street kids, poverty, single parents and the like. I am left with the impression that your department is continuously dealing with federal-provincial responsibilities, overlapping and coordinating who is responsible for what. In dealing with the street kids scenario or the high school dropout scenario and the fact that we do not encourage our youth to go into trades training — and we have a dearth of trades training versus manual labour outright or university — do you have an ability to influence in regard to social development and the potential drain or loss of capabilities that the country will experience because of the lack of interest in these arenas, or is that out of your realm and diffused amongst others, including the provinces?
Mr. Dryden: Some of that is done through HRSD. However, I think those things would happen at a federal level through all that would eventuate out of a more global view of children and the life of a child and the implications of things that happen along the way.
I was Youth Commissioner in Ontario for several years. You talked about the dearth in trades, and so on. In my final report, I spent more time writing about education than I did about employment and training programs. What was so clearly the case then, and what is no less clear the case now, was that what we have in our education system is an academic stream and something that is not an academic stream. It is not a stream. There are not two streams. There is one stream and one ``not,'' and a ``not'' does not constitute a stream.
If there is anything in that direction that will be more ambitious, more constructive, and generate a different kind of result, then it must be approached with the coherence of a stream, that is, something that teachers, guidance councillors and parents will know about, and something that all of them will talk about in an excited way. Where is the excitement now in our education system, our high school system, which is away from the academic stream? There is no excitement. Kids are not stupid; nor are their parents. Kids will not say, ``Gee, I cannot wait to be in this ``not'' stream.'' If we want to do better, we must approach it differently.
Having said that, in terms of what our role is here specifically, all of that is in the provincial jurisdiction. If you tell an annual story of children and youth, then you can start to deal with matters like that, because a story has no jurisdiction. It has no boundary. The story is like the life. The story holds great disrespect for boundaries, mandates and portfolios. The influence will lie with whoever carries the story. That is what I think, to the biggest extent, we are missing now. Our department intends to do something about that.
Senator Dallaire: We just do not seem to have a grand strategic vision of how youth will move forward this country. Youth are either in academics or they lose out. Germany is proud of its trades skills. We cannot find people with trade skills. We have to import them.
The Chairman: Minister, thank you for coming here today and for giving us an update on your department and what you are doing for children. You have identified the fact that there are many actors. We would invite you to go back and consider how we account to children, namely, through the framework of the convention. We are looking for ways and means to give life to the convention. You were talking about the importance of a life. We may have some ability to get at that issue if we embraced the convention. We are looking for ways and means to do that.
Thank you for sharing your information. I hope that you will look forward eagerly to our recommendations regarding what you can do.
Mr. Dryden: I will.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we are now pleased to have before us officials from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, along with Minister Andy Scott. We are presently examining and reporting upon Canada's international obligations in regard to the rights and freedoms of children. We would welcome the minister to our committee. I trust you have a short opening statement so that senators have time to ask you questions.
Hon. Andy Scott, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development: I should like to introduce Havelin Anand and Daniel Hughes.
As I have said before, it is a pleasure to address members of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. I spent a little time in the other place chairing the same committee. I could not help but notice the reference to my predecessors' pronouncements on these subjects before he accepted his current position. Some squaring of circles or circling of squares has to be done. Anyone who wants to look, will find some interesting references to what I said when I sat on the kids' caucus with Senator Landon Pearson, but I will not direct you there.
The work of the committee is particularly important in highlighting the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history. First approved in 1989,it was ratified by Canada in 1991 and has since been ratifiedby 191 countries, which accounts for all but two of the UN member states. The convention is a universally agreed upon set of non-negotiable standards and obligations. It spells out the rights to which every child is entitled and incorporates the full range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural human rights.
In September 2003, Canada appeared before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which oversees adherents to this instrument. Led by Senator Pearson, the Canadian delegation presented information to the committee and responded to questions and criticisms. Many of these criticisms centred on the socio-economic disparities faced by Aboriginal children.
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights has shown great leadership not only in ensuring Canadians are made aware of the rights of the child and the findings of the UN committee but also in highlighting the areas in which we can do a better job. In particular, I would recognize the leadership and efforts of Senator Pearson in ensuring the promotion and protection of the rights of the child across the Government of Canada.
As Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and federal interlocutor for Metis and non-status Indians, I am committed to making Canada a better place for First Nations, Inuit, Metis and Northerners. Such work must begin with the focus on children. The First Nation, Inuit and Metis population is young and growing rapidly. These demographics create pressures for additional services, schools, housing and public infrastructure, and for increases in social services to support the high rate of new family formations.
Given such pressures, as well as the fact that socio-economic indicators for Aboriginal Canadians remain far behind those of non-Aboriginal Canadians, it is clear that we have a great deal to accomplish in the coming years in ensuring that all Aboriginal children in Canada fully enjoy the rights articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
More and more, we recognize that only those programs and policies undertaken in consultation and cooperation with Aboriginal peoples have a chance of being truly successful; that our approach to Aboriginal children's issues must be inclusive, comprehensive and coordinated; and that Aboriginal Canadians need to be partners with government in terms of developing solutions. The need for such collaboration and cooperation was highlighted in April 2004 at the Canada-Aboriginal Peoples Roundtable. This event marked the beginning of a renewed dialogue between the federal government and Aboriginal peoples. At this historic meeting, more than 80 Aboriginal leaders from across Canada met with Prime Minister Martin and federal cabinet ministers, some 40 parliamentarians in all, and agreed to work together to improve the lives of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. At the round table, Prime Minister Martin said that, if young Aboriginal people do not succeed, then all of us fail.
The Government of Canada is now engaged inpost-round-table follow-up on a wide range of issues with Aboriginal Canadians, including a number of issues with real impact on the rights of Aboriginal children: health, lifelong learning and housing, to name three. This process led to the May 31, 2005, joint policy retreat between the Prime Minister, members of the Cabinet Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and the leaders of the five national Aboriginal organizations. Agreements were reached on directions for change in health, education and lifelong learning, housing, economic opportunities, negotiations and relationships, and accountability for results.
In addition, the leaders of the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Metis National Council, the Congress of Aboriginal peoples and the Native Women's Association of Canada signed joint accords with the Government of Canada that will ensure their direct involvement in Aboriginal policy development and form the basis of a new era of cooperation.
I want to speak to developments in the areas of strengthening relationships in negotiations, health, housing and education, in particular. Investments and policy development in these areas will strengthen Aboriginal communities and, in turn, benefit Aboriginal children and youth.
The governance powers, land and resource access, capital transfers and other economic opportunities that come through treaties, land claims and self-government are key to empowering First Nations, Inuit and Metis to be full partners with federal, provincial and territorial governments in addressing the socio-economic conditions and needs of their communities. Based on the negotiation sectoral session of the round table process, the Government of Canada acknowledges the need for a fundamental shift in policy direction for addressing Aboriginal and treaty rights — a direction based on the recognition and coexistence of rights, rather than extinguishment of rights, and premised on the reconciliation of rights in the context of ongoing and evolving relationships with First Nations, Inuit, and Metis Canadians.
Education is one of the central, driving forces in Canada's Aboriginal agenda. As senators are aware, young peopleand children are the most vulnerable members of any community, but they are also the greatest source of hope, change and promise for the future. The next 10 to 15 years will see more than 300,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children go through the K-12 school system. The future of Canada's Aboriginal communities will largely rest on the shoulders of these students.
The last 20 years have seen a steady increase in the number of Aboriginal Canadians holding post-secondary degrees, from about 200 in the late 1970s to over 30,000 today. In fact, the educational attainment of First Nations constitutes the biggest single stride forward in reducing the gap in socio-economic conditions between First Nations and the rest of Canada.
That said, there remain significant challenges facing us in Canada: far too many Aboriginal children do not come to school ready to learn; far too many do not complete high school;many of those Aboriginal students who do complete secondary education are not prepared to make a successful transition to institutions of post-secondary education; and those who do make the transition face multiple challenges in successfullycompleting post-secondary studies. More must be done to close the unacceptable gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. We are making positive progress and at theMay 31 policy retreat I announced a comprehensive proposal for a staged transformation of education, both on- andoff-reserve, to ensure that First Nation, Inuit and Metis have access to the same level of education services and programs that other Canadians enjoy.
I should like to diverge from the text for one minute to speak to the community well-being index. The department has established a measurement tool that would be a variation on the human development index. It showed that, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s there was a closing of the gap. It was not nearly significant enough, but it was in the right direction. That flattened out between 1996-97 and, if I did not tell you this the national chief would, that corresponded with coming out of program review, flattening of budgets and so on. As a result of that exercise, that has happened. I would argue that departmental indications speak to the need for a significant investment in education in particular, but not exclusively.
Our well-being index also showed us that when the gap was closing between Aboriginal Canadians and non- Aboriginal Canadians, inside the community the gap was actually widening. Thus, we have macro-statistics showing the gap closing and micro-statistics showing the gap widening inside the community. That has to do with rural and remote versus those communities closer to urban centres. This is easily imagined. We are alert to this and we intend to deal with it head-on.
At the retreat, it was also announced that the federal government will merge and enhance four existing Aboriginal early childhood development programs to create a new, consolidated early learning and child care program for First Nations and Inuit children. The early learning and child care program, which will have one point of access under one federal department — a single window, if you will — will reduce the administrative burden on communities, enhance the quality and accessibility of regulated child care for First Nations and Inuit children, and provide support for parents to explore educational and employment opportunities.
This initiative, which is linked to the national early learning and child care system that the Government of Canada has committed to build, would provide a natural progression from early learning and child care to K-12 education. Currently, we are in the process of gaining input from First Nation and Inuit organizations that will guide the design and transition of the new early learning and child care program. We will be working with our federal and Aboriginal partners in the coming months to implement it.
We also need to reframe how we think about Aboriginal education, and move toward the concept of lifelong learning as a way of addressing both the core issues of quality education and the directly related questions of early childhood development, child and family services, adequate housing, parental involvement in education, youth development and, ultimately, transition from education to the workforce.
We also believe that more focus should be brought to the concepts of cultural appropriateness and learner-centred approaches to Aboriginal education. Aboriginal language is obviously a large part of this equation.
Canadian Heritage is leading efforts with a task force composed of representatives of national Aboriginal organizations on recommendations that will lead to the development of a national, comprehensive strategy on Aboriginal languages and culture for the benefit of Aboriginal Canadians, but also for all citizens of Canada.
Turning to health, it is clear that health issues for First Nations, Inuit and Metis are more than just medical issues. The Government of Canada recognizes the impact of factors such as economic and social development, education and housing on the health of Aboriginal children. We are working together with provincial and territorial governments and Aboriginal organizations on health issues through the blueprint on Aboriginal health, which will give us an opportunity to ensure that the unique needs of First Nations, Inuit and Metis, including urban, off-reserve and non- status Indians, are addressed, as well as the specific health needs of Aboriginal women and children.
A first draft of the blueprint is expected this month and it will lay out a 10-year cooperative agenda to improve the health status of Aboriginal peoples and health services in Canada. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada supports this work and recognizes that addressing First Nation, Inuit and Metis health issues will require dedicated and continuous effort on the part of all partners both within and beyond the health sector.
Building on this new spirit of partnership, the opportunity now exists to create a viable and sustainable Aboriginal housing industry, an industry that will create a stable investment climate, that will address the existing backlog for housing for Aboriginal peoples both on and off-reserve, and that will help move First Nations communities toward market-based housing. The transformation in Aboriginal housing will take place on the ground as more and more First Nation, Inuit and Metis communities develop innovative approaches to housing and in fact deliver their own housing. These are key drivers of sustainable community development.
In conclusion, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, in partnership with First Nations, Inuit and Metis across the country, is taking an increasingly active role in improving the quality of life for Aboriginal children. I have outlined a number of new initiatives. I am truly excited about our agenda for change. Never before in our shared history has the Government of Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Metis been so engaged in a sustained joint dialogue focusing on pragmatic solutions.
While this work has just begun, the respectful relationship we are building together gives me a sense of optimism that this relationship will continue to grow and mature as we work together to achieve our shared objectives and vision of closing the socio-economic gap so that Aboriginal people can fully share in the benefits that most Canadians take for granted, and that Aboriginal children can fully enjoy the rights guaranteed to them by the convention.
Senator Pearson: Thank you very much, minister, for your presentation. I am most encouraged by the direction in which everything is moving but, having recently been back to some of the reserves north of Sioux Lookout, I know the major challenges that remain.
The issues of protecting all rights for all children remain issues that are on the ground. One can make a generic framework but somewhere within that framework there must be some action. You are going in the right direction in consultation and so on, but my sense from my experience is that there is a need for community development, that is, focusing the efforts that one works on community by community. I am not referring to a community location, I am referring to, say, the community of women, for example, or the community of caregivers of one sort or another.
What has been clear is that as we have moved, and correctly, to try to give to Aboriginal communities more responsibility, although we have not been very good at ensuring that the funding that goes with the moves is adequate to the challenges of that particular population. It has been done in accordance with other criteria. It is important to retain the children in the community, particularly when remote communities offset any regulation.
I think an Aboriginal child's right — wherever he or she lives — to the same services as another child is something that we must reinforce.
Mr. Scott: I will try to be as optimistic about this as I can. The formulas that have been driving a lot of the resource allocation for the department to this point have had the effect of taking kids into care. To be fair, even outside of the community, if you go back far enough, not nearly as much emphasis was placed on early intervention and the kinds of things that have now become commonplace in the rest of Canada. We are just catching up to that, frankly. The formulas tend toward driving us to take kids into care rather than providing the early intervention that would be more appropriate. I do not think too many people argue the effectiveness and efficiencies of early intervention; and we would require less demand on resources.
We are just slow. There is no other way to put it. We are getting to where the rest of the country is, but we are getting there aggressively. Resources will be committed as part of the process in which we are engaged now with the first ministers meeting in November. I think we will see significant resources dedicated to this task.
My predecessor in this chair, Mr. Dryden, framed my challenge or the challenge of our department. In most other departments, where there is a will, there is a way; but in this one, where there is a way, there is a will. Our problem has been that, in the past, we have been unable to articulate the strategy that would have generated the kind of confidence needed for a significant increase in expenditure or resources, so that we would get the kind of return that everyone wished to see.
We have taken advantage of a great deal of attention since the round table in April of 2004. The fact that we are having the first first ministers' meeting on this issue in the history of the country says something in and of itself. We are taking advantage of that to inform Canadians and my colleagues about what it is we are setting out to do. It is ambitious and quite exciting. I think the community would speak favourably about what we are doing.
The fundamental underpinning of everything is that we will not solve this problem for the community. The community will solve the problem; we need to support them, encourage it and resource it, but at the end of the day these solutions will be found on the ground, as you say. I believe in that. That is where we are going, and the community is responding.
Senator Poy: In talking about education, you said that the micro statistics indicate a widening gap within the First Nations communities. Can you expand on that, please?
Mr. Scott: Yes. I will start with the good news. The good news is that the gap is shrinking. The bad news is that, within the First Nations community, the gap is widening. That is probably related to demographics. It is related to the fact that some of the communities that are fly-in communities, rural and remote, have difficulty on the human resource side, the cost side.
A large number of issues come into play. If you tested the educational outcomes generally in Canada, you would find some of the same challenges when you deal with rural and remote communities, whether they are First Nations or not.
The community well-being index demonstrated that the indicator that drove the other indicators was, generally, education. The demographics of the population we are dealing with takes you back to education again, because the community is so young relative to the rest of Canada. You look at the educational system and wonder what distinguishes it from the rest of Canada that would give us the outcomes or the lack of outcomes that distinguish the system.
First, there is less of a system in these communities than exists in the rest of the country. In pre-equal opportunity New Brunswick in the mid-1960s, I lived in a little village. My father was the chairman of the school board. They province gave each of the communities a base, which was not very much, and the community had to find the rest of the money to support its school. There were no aggregated services. It was a stand-alone, individual school in the village where I grew up.
That is what we see generally speaking in Canada's First Nations communities. They have schools, but not with the same aggregated supports that exist within the regular school system. They do not have the economies of scale that go with aggregation. They do not have nearly enough professional development or human resource strategies, all the things that we take for granted as part of a modern education system.
The government and the community have supported the proposition of building a national network, although I do not want to make it too bureaucratic. The school systems will exist within provinces because that is the natural connection. We will have a national network so that there is confidence of numbers and shared experiences across the country. It will be good for cohesion, confidence, pride of place and pride of identity. At the same time, from a practical point of view, the direct day-to-day relationship has to be with the provincial departments of education.
In New Brunswick, there are 15 schools. Currently, their relationship is one school to a school district. In Fredericton, it is District 18. Each school deals with a school board. They can have no impact on the system in the way that they could have if we could aggregate the 15 schools in New Brunswick and have the 15 schools deal with the department of education on questions of HR strategies, cultural sensitivity and such issues that are critically important. I think that, generally, provincial departments of education would like to be inclusive and accommodating, but I do not think that the way they are organized now lends itself to that. We are going to do that, but and there must be a significant increase in resources.
It is hard to compare our educational system, or what serves as a system, with what happens outside of First Nations communities because, the rest of Canada is 80 per cent urban and 20 per cent rural-remote. Our communities are 80 per cent rural-remote and 20 per cent urban. We would all recognize that there is a cost to rural-remote, although I do not know what the factor would be. In order to break even we would have to invest in the range of 130 or 140 per cent of the national average invested in the regular system just to deal with the difference in the demographics. There are all kinds of other cost drivers that are, sadly, over-represented within the community, such as special education.
If we build the system, make the investment and have the patience required to deal with a problem that has been created over a long period of time and that will not be solved by next June, we can give this community a fighting chance, and we are committed to doing that. We are supporting this, but the community has come to this place themselves. They have decided. The community did not choose treaties, health or economic development, the community said that the most important thing coming out of the round tables was education, and we happen to agree.
Senator Poy: You mentioned cultural appropriateness in education. You talk about one community, but there are many cultures within one community. How many languages are there within what you call your community? You have said that Aboriginal languages will be taught.
Mr. Scott: There are at least 10 fewer than there were 100 years ago.
Senator Poy: How many are there?
Mr. Scott: If you apply the notion that was expounded inthe Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, there were 55 to65 nations. I do not know if that is the number of languages. We will get back to you with that number.
As the first Maritimer to be Minister of Indian Affairs, I have quickly recognized how big an issue this is and how many different communities there are. There is not a single cultural presentation, if you like. However, there are interesting shared ceremonies. I talked about the national network, sharing best practices and so on. There is a certain magic to diversity. We celebrate diversity in Canada generally, and we should celebrate diversity as it exists within the indigenous population as well. Language is a struggle. We have lost 10 languages completely in the last 100 years and 10 are seriously threatened. The government will struggle to figure out what to do about that. In some cases, some of the language groups are stronger and larger in number than others. As a former commissioner of languages, the value and the importance of language to a culture is not lost on me.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: Welcome, Minister. First of all, as you know, I am delighted to be welcoming our new Senate colleague from New Brunswick, Ms. Sandra Lovelace Nicholas, who has already made a name for herself in the field of human rights. I am pleased to be her sponsor.
I will be asking you the same question that I put earlier to Mr. Dryden. Specifically, how would you feel about Canada appointing a children's ombudsman or representative to coordinate services in the area of children's rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
[English]
Mr. Scott: I listened to Minister Dryden speak to this. I have struggled with this as a machinery question. I think we would all wish to hold the government to account for performance and have some centre of responsibility or energy around these issues within the system. Frankly, I have not concluded what is the best answer. I remember chairing a committee that produced a report on disability in the mid-1990s calling for a minister of state for disability. We then decided that we wanted a commissioner for disability and that we wanted an annual report. Minister Dryden was talking about this as well.
The truth is that I do not know.
I know that we need machinery responses to the extent to which some of the issues get lost, even within the department. For everyone's best intentions, the reality is that it is a large department with a significant amount of activity and complexity. As a result, we sometimes lose focus. I do not mean to suggest that that is anyone's fault. My answer is, ``I do not know.''
Certainly, I know that the AFN, specifically, has advocated for an internal ombudsman, not for children, just generally, so that the community would have access to an appeal process internally as part of their own accountability efforts. I believe there is a need for something beyond what we have. I am not certain I know what that is.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: Changing the subject, Her Excellency Adrienne Clarkson stated that if money was no object, she would like all Canadian children between the ages of 12 and 15 to spend time with First Nation children. Do any student exchange programs like this exist?
[English]
Mr. Scott: I am not certain, senator, of specific programs. I believe there is one this fall. This is in junior high school or high school. We will simulate the first minister's meeting. Aboriginal kids — First Nation, Inuit and Metis — will come to Ottawa and simulate the first ministers' meeting. They will probably do it better than us, unrestrained by some of the practical problems with which we have to deal.
My inability or my lack of knowledge has to do with whether there are exchange programs within the community to outside the community; or whether there are exchange programs within the communities themselves.
The Chairman: You have pointed out some of the dilemmas and a process that you think will be helpful. We are studying the Convention on the Rights of the Child which is rights-based rights for children. As you know, we filed a report about having the Charter of Rights and Freedoms apply on reserve to Aboriginal women. We are still awaiting action on that. It concerns me that we are still setting aside a Charter application for negotiations. Where does that leave children with respect to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in instances where we found that there is less application than we would like across the board? It appears that there would be even less application in the Aboriginal community because it is not buttressed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Are those children not more disadvantaged because of the Charter in many cases not being available and the convention not being applied? Is that not one way to give them their rights?
Mr. Scott: We are looking at a vehicle to advance the situation now, and we are doing that collaboratively with both the political leadership and advocacy organizations within the communities.
Senator Losier-Cool mentioned the appointment of the newest senator. That gives you some indication of my own views, given the background of Senator Lovelace Nicholas.
As part of what the next year brings us, I would like to see a much broader application of the values contained in the Charter as they relate to citizenship review. That has to be done, and I think it will be done. Part of that package will be an investigation of all those fundamental issues that need to be raised in public.
I do not want to speak about what happened before, because I do not know what the reasons were, who the people were, or why they felt the way they did, but I think the leadership is now much more open to this than was the case in the past. I sense, happily, that we will take this issue to a new place.
The Chairman: The Aboriginal community, sometimes through its leadership and sometimes through its own communities, has reached toward international human rights instruments and mechanisms. Would it not make sense, therefore, if we are concerned about bringing Aboriginal children up to a standard, that it should be the international standard? That is where the Aboriginal community has turned. It has gone beyond what goes on in Canada. Aboriginal peoples see themselves as indigenous peoples. They have taken that initiative. Would not a signal from the federal government be that you are taking the rights of children, as they are under the convention, seriously for Aboriginal children as well as for other children?
Mr. Scott: We have to do this collaboratively. You are right; the community is, more and more, seeking international standards. Again, I do not think it should be lost on anyone that the reason that the rights were extended in Bill C-31 relates to the legacy of Senator Lovelace Nicholas. That was done in New York. I was a student at UNB when she and Mr. Hatfield visited. The government was compelled at that point — there are other words used to describe the reaction — generally, and more and more that is the case. More and more, interventions from the community contain those kinds of arguments. We will be doing this together, but it is part of a broader re-examination. I do not mean a re-examination over a long period of time, either; I mean an immediate re-examination. That is what the community wants. We need to support it.
This might sound somewhat like it has been argued before, but I think the situation is different now. I have no evidence of that. I probably do not even have much credibility, having not been around before, but the community now wants to do this for themselves. I think we should be there for that. We should support it, encourage it and resource it. It is a different time and place. I do not know why it was not this way before, but I know it is this way now.
I had this conversation with the leadership, men and women, political leadership and advocates. They are wide open to opening up these issues. That has not been the case for a long time, if ever.
Senator Dallaire: Mr. Minister, I wish to return to the subject of cultural appropriateness. Internationally, when we have frictions between cultures, groups and so on and we try to build reconciliation, some of us have argued that reconciliation in many cases is achieved by the women, the mothers and the youth. The instrument for the youth is education. I represented the minister of CIDA at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, where the youth expressed without doubt that education was a critical instrument. My experiences have been with junior rangers and organizations such as that, as well as the northern section of Commanding Quebec. I have gone through this with that perspective in mind.
One of the great fears of any culture is assimilation, and how it sees itself evolving. We are often attacked for not necessarily having reconciled with our First Nations the fact that we are both first nations, considering the historical European base, and how we marry together or have formed a communion to make Canada, Canada. We have two official languages here, andmulti-ethnicity is ever evolving.
Are the youth of the First nations initiating, articulating or supporting a vision that looks to the future, and not simply trying to defend themselves against an attrition battle that ongoing against their culture? Modernization and so on can erode cultures. They can sometimes be difficult to maintain. Can there be a value-added element to this? Do the youth of this country have a vision of this country that is human-rights-based, reconciliation-based and respectful? I am not talking about tolerance, because I think tolerance is the most pejorative term that was invented, I am talking about respect for our diversity. Is there any vision articulating movement that the youth are capturing within the different communities, or is that not in the cards yet?
Mr. Scott: Not having a point of reference but just a general view of the country from my previous various perches, I would say that there is a renewed sense of identity. This is emerging following government policy which was designed to assimilate. I spent a year and a half as the Solicitor General and I know that, unfortunately, the community is over- represented in the correctional system. We had our greatest success in dealing with that issue when we introduced culturally appropriate responses. When I left, the most successful facility we had in Canada was in Hobbema, Alberta, a Cree correctional facility. Not long before that, a correctional facility was not allowed to have a sweat lodge. I suspect there is now probably one in all facilities. I only mention that to say that there is a real renaissance in terms of communities embracing what is essentially them.
I think the rest of the country is also coming around. This is not just a matter of the community reconciling itself to us, but it is ourselves reconciling to the community. The whole notion of two official languages, founding cultures and all of that flies in the face of the nature of the history of the country. That is something with which we all, and even I, have to come to terms. My language was wrong in many ways, but it was not malicious. We, as a country, have to come to terms with that.
I do not know that the policy changes that took place in May are completely embraced or understood throughout the government at this point, but they are real and significant. The basis of a negotiation on a land claim or self- government or a treaty would have been: If you are going to pursue this negotiation and we are going to settle in the end, the first thing you must do is extinguish whatever claim you might have. That fundamental shift has taken place. Now, as a matter of general policy, and it probably predated May 31, but as a matter of stated policy, in accord with various organizations, that is quite a significant shift.
We are recognizing as a government and as a country that this is about coexistence in perpetuity. It is not something that will be somehow organized out of existence but, rather, it is a celebration of the value added that is diversity. I agree that ``tolerance'' is the wrong word.
Senator Pearson: My question is about the single window. My sense from this recent visit is that these programs, individually, are good, but they do not at all respond to the size of the need. A Head Start program that takes a child only one-half day a week will not do much good. You need to invest more. What we need, as the women were telling me, is something seamless that starts from the prenatal nutrition program and goes on from there. Diabetes is a huge issue in the North. It should all work together. The communities should be able to say, ``This is what we need for our kids.'' They can talk to one another and say, ``My kid is doing well, but what can I do to help yours.'' That is more of a comment than a question. This single window concept is new, and I am not quite sure whether you or your department have had the time to put it all together.
Mr. Scott: It is part of the exercise that we are going through now. As I said, there are four different programs, and ultimately the intention is to have more consistency on values. First, we do not want to move away from being nimble enough on the ground to ensure that the differences that exist currently should continue to exist, but as part of a single purpose. The second part has to do with making it part of a lifelong exercise, going from prenatal to adult education. We are talking about a system that relates to kids, getting kids ready for birth, ready for early development, ready for entering the educational system and, to some extent, ready for going from that community, in many cases, into a broader community for purposes of advanced education and so on. I would suggest that we have challenges. If there is a series of exercises here, we have challenges in each one of them, and mostly that has to do with resources. As you say, the programs work, but we are not scratching the surface in terms of need. There will probably be some value in bringing the programs together, but I would be very reluctant if we were to lose our flexibility on the ground. They have evolved as they have to respond to different needs.
The Chairman: Minister, thank you for coming and sharing your new perspectives. We will certainly be monitoring this issue because we will be introducing an interim report. We will continue our emphasis on Aboriginal children. We will be watching to see if these words tonight are turned into action. We are looking for accountability for children. We are all accountable to children, and that is the focus that we will take. We hope that, in due course, you will have an opportunity to come back to update us on Aboriginal children.
Mr. Scott: I invite everyone to be part of the youth model first ministers' meeting that will take place in October.
The Chairman: Perhaps your staff could pass the information on to our clerk, and we will circulate it to the members.
This committee adjourned.