Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 6 - Evidence - February 21, 2008 - Morning meeting
IQALUIT, Thursday, February 21, 2008
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 9:07 a.m. to examine and report upon rural poverty in Canada.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
[Some evidence was presented through an Inuktitut interpreter.]
The Chair: Good morning, to all of you who have come to join us in this wonderful weather. Good morning senators, we have been travelling for several days now.
We would like to begin this hearing with an opening prayer from one of the elders who has come here today, Enopik Sigeatuk.
[Opening prayer by Elder Enopik Sigeatuk.]
The Chair: Thank you very much, Enopik for helping us begin our hearings today. I know that all my colleagues would agree that this is a very fine way to start our meeting in this beautiful part of the country.
I would like to first say good morning to my colleagues and good morning to all who have come to listen and participate in the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry's hearings on rural poverty and rural decline. I want to give very special thanks to our colleague, Senator Willie Adams who has always helped us to understand this part of our country. Whenever we need him, he is there and has been a good, good friend for many years. Thank you, Willie, for all you have done.
In May 2006, the Senate authorized this committee to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada. Since that time, we have released an interim report. We have traveled to every province in Canada. We have listened to 19 rural communities and talked to over 270 individuals and organizations, including experts from other countries.
It was also very important to us that we come to the territories, both east and west. We are in the final stages of the report and we have to make sure that we get it right. That is why the committee has come to hear first-hand your stories and your concerns about your communities and the people who experience hardship within them.
We also want to listen carefully to those who work so hard to give citizens a fair chance to build a good life for themselves, for their families in this very beautiful part of our country. I would like to add that today marks the end of the committee's travels in the North. It has been a wonderful, wonderful trip that we have had. This is a very special way to conclude it. Rest assured that your stories and your unique circumstances will be represented in our final report which we hope to release sometime this spring.
To start us off this morning, we are honoured to have with us Cyrus Blanchet, Outreach Coordinator of the parishes of St. Simon and St. Jude, Iqaluit Soup Kitchen; and Lieutenant Carol-Anne Scott, Director of the Iqaluit, Nunavut Project for the Salvation Army and Director for the Homeless Shelter. As well, we have Paul Nettleton with us.
Cyrus Blanchet, Outreach Coordinator, Iqaluit Soup Kitchen, Parish of St. Simon and St. Jude: Good morning, everyone. It is an honour to be here. This is probably the closest I will ever be to senators.
I came here in the fall of 2006 to do this job with the Anglican Church outreach, which includes the soup kitchen, the jail. I go out there and do a service on Sunday. We have a bookstore and a gift store as well at the church. I also assist with the regular services of the church.
The soup kitchen provides a daily meal to anyone in need. Most of the users of the soup kitchen are homeless, nearly homeless or destitute. During the week, a lunch is served with sandwiches and a hearty soup. On the weekends, a heartier hot meal is prepared which could include stews, chicken/turkey dinners with potatoes and vegetables, lasagna or spaghetti. On any given day, we serve between 25 and 40 residents of Iqaluit. For many, it is probably the only meal they eat all day. It is a full sit-down meal. We serve children as well, children who are sometimes accompanied by adults.
We receive funding from Brighter Futures, Building Healthy Communities program to purchase food. Several volunteers are active in the food preparation during the week and on weekends. There is a fellow up there this morning making sandwiches.
The Qikiqtaaluk Corporation has been very generous in providing free space in the past at building 1041, which is just down behind us here, a block or so away. The corporation has also paid for utilities, repairs and maintenance on the building cost-shared with the Qikiqtani Inuit Corporation. The Uqsuq Corporation, a fuel company here, provided free fuel for the building. At present, we are building a new soup kitchen and it is on church grounds, donated by the Parish of St. Simon and St. Jude. It will also have a thrift store. Many other people have helped us out. We have mentioned a few here, including the North Mart.
Daily meals are prepared at the parish hall, which is over by the church. Volunteers pick the food up, deliver it to the building, serve the food and clean up afterward. When I first came here, I could not quite believe that I was doing this. It was outside on a windy cold day, putting soup in the back of a Suzuki and thought there must be a better way to do this.
The Qayuqtuvik Society is made up of volunteers who actively participate in all activities of the soup kitchen. As an outreach program of St. Simon and St. Jude, we provide other services. We sit and talk to the clientele and help when we can. The current location is really not conducive to other programs so they just come and go. In the new building, we will provide more counselling and training opportunities.
The program began through consultation with elders and concerned citizens, as there was a growing need to provide food to the homeless in Iqaluit. Food preparation and an appropriate location were the first two challenges. Over the years, food has been prepared at different companies and hotels in town, Nunavut Catering, the Frobisher Inn and Canada Catering. This was cost prohibitive. For a while, the food was served from the back of a truck when there was no other facility available.
The new facility will provide a kitchen for food preparation and service. It will provide seating for 60 people. The thrift store will be a partner, helping people with clothing needs.
Local contractors and volunteers are assisting in the construction of the building. Arctic College is providing help through the BCC training program. That is the Baffin Correctional Centre. They have done a great job. The Kakivak Society has a job-training program for Inuit and has provided as well.
We provide a place not only a place not only for a meal, but also a place for people to gather, especially people who are sitting at the North Mart or the coffee shop and who have nowhere to go and who do not have a lot of money to spare. It is usually a very nice atmosphere. People say thank you and some help out a lot. The children get a good lunch to go back to school.
The feedback has been that there is less stealing in the stores and people are healthier, having a healthy meal at least once a day.
Lieutenant Carol-Anne Scott, Director of the Iqaluit, Nunavut Project for the Salvation Army and Director for the Homeless Shelter: Good morning. It is a privilege to be here to discuss the results of poverty with you in Nunavut.
My name is Carol-Anne Scott and I am an officer with the Salvation Army. I operate the Oqota Shelter for the Homeless. The shelter is a 20-bed unit that is presently running at full capacity. Those staying at the shelter have run out of options and depend on us for a safe, warm place to stay.
Some residents have casual, part- and full-time employment, which they would not be able to continue without somewhere to live. Others are unemployable due to mental illnesses and physical disabilities, or lack of work skills. Those who do work do not earn enough money to be able to sustain their own accommodations even if they could find them.
The Salvation Army also operates a family and community service in Iqaluit. We assist approximately 30 families in various capacities. A number of these families live with other people because they are unable to find or afford affordable housing.
Housing is a very urgent concern for the Iqaluit residents, even for Nunavut. We are often contacted by women looking for a place to stay. We have assisted by placing them in a hotel room for a few days and, just recently, have placed one woman with a room for a week.
The men, women and children, too, house and couch surf, looking for a roof over their heads for the night. Some women go as far as giving themselves to someone in exchange for a warm bed. For the people here, this learned behaviour for survival degrades them. Women should not have to lose their self-respect and dignity for warmth and safety because of lack of available and affordable housing. Often, when forced to share housing, they put themselves and their children at risk of further abuse.
It is time now for the federal government to step up to the plate by assisting the people in helping them to provide not only financial stability, but also more affordable housing. When will the federal government hear the cries of the people of this community before it is too late to stop the cycle of poverty for another generation? How many more need to be lost before it becomes too many? When will the aid and healing begin?
The cost of living is untenably high in Nunavut. If we move into speaking of class, the middle class in Nunavut have difficulty surviving here, so never mind those of the lower-income groups, those on unemployment or income support.
There are programs that need to be seriously considered for Nunavut. One is a shelter for the women, women with children as well as transitional housing for them. Also, the men need transitional housing. Transitional housing would provide support to the people who need it and provide some guidance in developing their self-supporting skills.
There are serious concerns regarding available funding from the federal government. The lack of financial support for existing programs could jeopardize the operation of the ongoing programs.
Biblically, Romans 13 talks about governing authorities and that everyone must submit to those authorities. Those in poverty pay their taxes and try to live by the law. The government is God's servant and is to do what is good for the people. God has chosen you to govern fairly and with justice. You were chosen to accomplish God's greater purposes, which are to be good always and to serve the people of the nation.
Poverty in Canada should be a priority in addressing solutions to ongoing problems. Many surveys have been done in the North discussing the issue of poverty. It is now time for action and placing the money where it is most needed and where it can do the most good.
In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a short true story. A couple of weeks ago, I was introduced to a woman. I was told she has cancer and that she refuses to go for treatment. When I asked her why she would not go for treatment, she said she does not have a place to stay and that she moves around between relatives and friends. She does not want to be a burden to them any longer so she felt it best to let the disease take over and end it. I choke up when I talk about this woman; my heart really ached for this lady.
To be homeless and a wanderer in search for place to lay your head nightly should not be happening to people of the North. To be ill and homeless is a grave, deep concern and needs to be addressed immediately. Please help us with the adequate funding to address the needs of the people of Nunavut and help the existing programs to continue operating.
Thank you for listening with an open heart and mind. God bless.
The Chair: Thank you, Carol-Anne. I can assure you and Cyrus that is precisely we are here in this part of Canada and every part of Canada because it is time to move.
Paul Nettleton, Poverty Law Counsel, Legal Services Board of Nunavut: I am pleased to appear today before the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry as you conduct your cross-Canada study into the causes, consequences and solutions to rural poverty in Canada.
As the poverty lawyer for Legal Services of Nunavut, I welcome the opportunity for a constructive exchange with you, the committee members, following our presentations. As a former member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia for nearly a decade, I was fortunate in that I was a member of various select standing committees including Parliamentary Reform, Aboriginal Affairs, Crown Corporations, Forestry and Mining. I think I understand something of the importance of your committee, your study, your final report and recommendations. I am hopeful that your study will translate into improved conditions for the residents of Nunavut, particularly for those residents of our great territory who are presently living in poverty.
I am a relative newcomer to Nunavut, having lived here in the capital city for roughly a year and a half. In that time, I have been privileged to be have been employed by the Legal Services Board of Nunavut as their sole poverty lawyer, serving the entire territory. This is a new position and a necessary position which includes, but is not limited to, assisting those with enquiries in the areas of housing-related issues; small claims court, which commenced late last year; WCB; wrongful dismissal claims; personal injury claims, which often times include snowmobiles; human rights tribunal claims; assisting people in the preparation and filing of notifications; generally all civil law enquiries outside of family and criminal law, with criminal law and family law constituting the greatest demand on the limited resources of Legal Services of Nunavut.
I would like to share a few observations from my limited experience where the resilience and character of the largely Inuit clients are evident, despite their desperate poverty. My perspective is as a former southern politician turned northern poverty lawyer. My clients are incredibly poor for the most part, materially by any standard. They are quick to respond with a smile. They are accepting, non-judgmental. Their assessment of you and I has little or nothing to do with our relative wealth. They are always ready to share what little they possess with those in need. They are grateful for any and all assistance that Legal Services is able to provide as they are confronted daily with a confusing array of bureaucracy, rules, regulations, forms, courts, police and various government agencies. They are warm and forgiving in contrast to the cold and unforgiving climate.
Their expectations are dramatically different from those of their southern counterparts. They are rarely demanding and difficult. Physical, emotional and spiritual renewal is tied to an ongoing reconnection with the land. You may hear the reference to getting out in the land and that is part of that.
Legal Services of Nunavut is dependent on both the territorial and federal governments for financial support to meet its mandate to provide legal representation to those who are unable to access such representation independently. This would include the majority of residents of Nunavut, often living outside of the wage economy and yet, being forced to deal with the high cost of living. The financial ability of Legal Services of Nunavut to provide counsel be it staff lawyers or members of the private bar has simply not kept pace with the growing demand.
Lawyers, Inuit court workers and staff within the legal aid system here in Nunavut are dedicated, caring people who are here for all the right reasons. It is their aim to assist the residents of this great and vast territory in the provision of competent and caring counsel in and outside of the courts. They strive to create a sense of hope for those who often have none, hope for their future, individually and collectively, a brighter, better future in which they receive the services they deserve from government and government agencies.
We would implore this committee, the great body of sober second thought, to carry forward the growing need for the necessary funding in order that Legal Services of Nunavut can properly and adequately meet the challenges of Canada's newest territory. The federal contribution to the funding of legal services has declined over the past few years as the demand for those same services has increased. Any assistance that you can provide by way of facilitating a renewed commitment by the federal government to an appropriate level of funding for our services would improve the conditions of the impoverished significantly.
We thank you for your time, your attention to the needs, hopes and aspirations of the residents of Nunavut as you complete your study on poverty in rural Canada.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Paul. These are very moving visions of this area and that is precisely why we are here.
[Interpretation]
Enopik Sigeatuk, Elder, as an individual: I am with a group of elders that gets together and I was invited to come to you. I also help supporting the church. I am also a counsellor when they need inmate counselling. That is outside of the police department.
Occasionally, there are elder needs and there is a demand for the elders to help. Whenever someone comes to me individually, I will go. Anytime I am asked to support others, I am always willing and attend.
There are so many more teenagers than elders here. As you may be aware, the Canadian government told us that when we got our own self-government we would be able to employ our own people, but in order to do so, they would need to go to school.
As my colleague mentioned, there is shelter here for the homeless. There are even poor little children. Even though they have parents, they are living in poverty. There are so many young unemployed people. They need to speak two languages. Some of them may be able to work, but because they may not show up or lack self-esteem, many are unemployed. Some of them might be successful to get jobs, but there are many more who do not have jobs.
There may be some young people who have parents, but are homeless because the parents might be mistreating them because they broke the law or they are doing things that parents do not agree with, doing wrong things.
I was born when loving care was still strong in the Inuit family lifestyle. I was forced to kick my two teenagers out of my place although they were old enough to go on their own. That was our system and I carry on in helping my children.
There are so many poor people here. Everything costs so much and yet, some of us mothers or grandmothers only receive allowances once a month and it is not enough to feed our children.
It was mentioned earlier that there are so many agencies that they can turn to. If you are a carver, for example, you cannot even get income support because you are supporting yourself. This is not enough and it happens everywhere. The population is growing very fast. If you go down to North Mart, you will find quite a few people who are unemployed, and they are begging for money. That is increasing, people looking for money.
Thank you for allowing me to speak. Some of the things that I was going to speak on have already been said by my colleagues.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much, Enopik. It is very important that you be here at this table to tell us from your point of view the needs of your part of this wonderful part of Canada. We thank you for coming.
I gather that you will stay here for questions as well.
Senator Adams: I was going to ask Enopik a question in Inuktitut.
[Interpretation]
I am very grateful for your presentation. We all know there are quite a lot of poor people even in the younger generations. You touched my heart while you were speaking about them. There are some problems with drug abuse, alcohol abuse. They also do not get along with their parents, their father or mother. Do many of the youth speak their native language?
Ms. Sigeatuk: That is a very good question. Some of them no longer speak in Inuktitut in their home. Some of the parents may even talk to their children in English. As in my case, we speak in our language of Inuktitut, but there are some people who are losing their language.
Senator Adams: At Rankin Inlet where I come from, the people who are not hunters usually get help, for example, to hunt for caribou. I wonder if they do here as well.
Ms. Sigeatuk: I am very lucky. I usually get someone to bring me some country food. I never run out of country food. I even got caribou meat from Rankin. That shows you how good people are to the elders.
Senator Adams: You have a hunters and trappers association. The Nunavut government might give some support, but I am wondering about local people who are not hunters or trappers, what help is given to them for country food?
Ms. Sigeatuk: Elders might receive from the hunters and trappers associations. I do not know why during the winter time they do not go out and support others for local food. That is what I know. During the summer time, they may go out as well and they help the elders, but they do not meet all our needs during the winter time.
[English]
Senator Adams: Mr. Nettleton, I am glad you are helping the people here in Nunavut. There are different cultures. We make laws in Ottawa and sometimes, it is very difficult for those different cultures. What are your thoughts on people living up here with the laws being made in Ottawa? For example, there is a study this week on Bill C-2, dealing with crime, gun control and so on. Maybe you have been here long enough to learn those things. Having lived in B.C. and moved up here, what do you think? Should it be done a little more differently here in terms of the law in Nunavut in the future?
Mr. Nettleton: One of the things, Senator Adams, that was very apparent to me, moving from British Columbia to this, your territory, was that people's incredible reliance on government, whether it was for housing, public housing, staff housing, their incredible reliance on government for a variety of things. Most of the jobs here are government jobs. Many of the people I see have difficulties in and around wrongful dismissal claims with various government agencies.
I do not know if I am answering your question. As you know, we are largely dependent on federal funding for a variety of government agencies. It is important that that governments, whether territorial or federal, take their responsibilities seriously with respect to the people who live in this great territory. We see the federal government, in particular, with concerns in and around sovereignty. This summer, right outside of our office, we had a tremendous military exercise in which the whole community was involved. With that increased commitment to the Arctic, it seems to me that it is incumbent upon the federal government to take care of its responsibility particularly with respect to the poor.
There are some major differences as you suggest and I think those are a few of the differences.
Senator Mercer: First of all, it is a pleasure and an honour to be here in Nunavut. Cyrus, you talked about serving 25 to 40 people per day and some of them are children. Give me more details. Who are these people? Why? They are obviously poor, but are they mostly women and if they are, are they mostly from single-parent families? How old are the children? Are they actively in school, et cetera? Give me a better profile of those 25 to 40 people.
Mr. Blanchet: They are mostly men, mostly younger men I would say, in their 20s, although there are some older ones. The children are primary-school aged children. Some pre-school children come with their mothers. Some come from the men's shelter, quite a few of them come for lunch. Some come from other housing. Some are working poor as I mentioned.
Senator Mercer: Carol-Anne, everybody has talked about housing and the lack thereof. I have a couple of questions on housing. If a rental unit were available, obviously, do you have an idea of what the cost would be of a small rental unit in Iqaluit? Do you have any idea of the number of public housing units there are in the community? If you do, what is the breakdown between units designed for seniors and those designed for families?
Ms. Scott: The answer to the last question, no I do not know. I hope you invited someone from federal housing.
Senator Mercer: These are questions I may be repeating throughout the day until I get an answer.
Ms. Scott: I just know that I have 20 fellows whom I was told, because of the federal funding I receive, that I was to put a restriction on the length of time that they are to stay with us. They leave at the end of four months and, of course, it is a cycle because there is no place to go, or else, they are getting into trouble trying to survive out in the community with no place to go. Yes, I take them back. What am I supposed to do? I cannot see them out there. It is a serious problem. This is all created by putting a time limit on their stay.
Senator Mercer: This is the first community that we have been to that we have not heard the words child care in the early presentations. We have discovered that child care is a significant problem. We knew it was there, it was proven across the country. Is it the same problem here in this territory?
Ms. Scott: I believe it is. I personally do not have a lot to do with child care. I just work in the social aspect of assisting people. I may give them resources to go to, but personally, I do not work in child care, no.
Senator Mercer: Paul, we left Yellowknife yesterday. It took us all day to get here by plane which underscored for me the vastness of the North. I am sitting here looking at a map of Nunavut. You are located in Iqaluit and you are the only poverty law counsel for the territory. That is a big place.
It amazes me. How do you provide your services to people in Cambridge Bay and Alert as well as the people in Iqaluit from your location?
Mr. Nettleton: That is a good point and a good question, Senator. In fact, there are challenges associated with servicing the entire territory, not just in my position, but also for all of us involved in legal services. For instance, Inuit court workers; less than half of the communities in this territory with court workers because we simply do not have the funds for those court workers. There are three family lawyers servicing the entire territory, with hundreds of applications on the desk of our head office, which is located in Gjoa Haven and many more coming in on a daily basis representing clients who have huge issues around housing, custody access, and support. We really are in a state of crisis with respect to the funding in our ability to serve this vast territory.
Senator Mercer: I would suspect that some of those people who deal with the three family lawyers and perhaps some dealing with you may be at risk and if they are a threat risk, it is being compounded by your inability because of the limitations in numbers to service them. Is that an accurate description?
Mr. Nettleton: That is an accurate description. You know, senator, I think anywhere else in this great country, were we to have those kinds of limitations with respect to our ability to serve those people and service their needs, there would be a huge outcry, there would be media attention and I am sure the federal government would be embarrassed into some kind of action, but that is not the case here.
Senator Mercer: Perhaps our report might provide some assistance.
Mr. Nettleton: That would be terrific.
Senator Peterson: Thank you very much for helping us getting the perspective of the tragic issues of poverty particularly in this area.
Cyrus, you indicated that you serve food to about 25 to 40 people per day. Some of them are children. Carol-Anne, you indicated that you have a 20-bed capacity, but what is the level of homelessness? Is that it or are there many others?
Ms. Scott: There are far more. There is unseen homelessness that I do not even get to see, but hear about from people who are looking for places. They couch surf, floor surf from friends to friends, family to family. Some people sleep in back hallways of apartment buildings to have a place that is warm and out of the elements.
Senator Peterson: I would think in weather like this, they would have to be somewhere.
Ms. Scott: They do. I have 20 beds, but I have people coming in and sleeping on the floor.
Senator Peterson: You also mentioned mental disabilities. Are there any facilities here to look after the mentally challenged?
Ms. Scott: There are. We have a group home for children and adults. We have a mental health group home, but that facility can only house up to maybe 15 people. It is not enough. I have some people at the shelter. All you can do is love and care for them.
Senator Peterson: What about people subject to violence, is there a facility for them here or is it just all accommodated in the same manner?
Ms. Scott: For violence itself, I have a zero tolerance for violence. Everyone has the right to safety and a warm place to stay. If it is really out of control where there is physical fighting or whatever, then we call the RCMP for assistance.
Senator Peterson: I was not thinking of your facility, but of people who are subject to physical violence. Do those people have a place where they can go?
Ms. Scott: There is a women's shelter for abused women in relationships, spousal abuse, but there is not a place for women or women with children to go to who are not coming from that.
Senator Peterson: Paul, you indicated that the support for legal services has been declining. What would be an appropriate level of funding? To have a perspective, what would we be talking about, if it was adequate for you to do the job you have to do?
Mr. Nettleton: I am not sure I have the answer to that question. I think one of the things that need to be addressed is the current backlog, particularly in the area of family law. It is just unacceptable that hundreds of applications for assistance should be sitting on a desk in Gjoa Haven. We simply do not have the resources to even assign those files.
Last year, I think the shortfall with the limited budget that we had was somewhere in the range of $700,000. Again, we have taken on more commitments. I expect there will be further shortfalls with respect to next year's budget. There needs to be a real recognition, first of all, that our budgetary issues need to be addressed by the federal government primarily and, secondly, sitting down and working through us, what would be adequate, what would be appropriate with respect to legal services funding here in this territory.
I do not have a precise figure for you senator, but certainly that is something that I think we need to work on together with the federal government.
Senator Peterson: A question to the elder. What is happening here with the traditional way of life? Is the traditional way of life disappearing and if it is, what can we do to preserve the language and culture?
[Interpretation]
Ms. Sigeatuk: Culture and traditions are not practised as much as when I was a child. The language itself is being lost. As you can see, the population is growing so much and we have so many people who do not even know. When you are in smaller groups, you can get to know each other. When you are many coming from remote places, you do not get to know each other. You are not even aware of what is going on sometimes. That is why we are losing our own traditions and culture because we do not practise them with our neighbours even as the population is growing rapidly here and it is a central place.
We did not use the writing system like you do. We do not use all those papers. We use our brain to teach our younger generations. That is how we were taught from my parents because they kept everything in their minds. It was easier to collaborate with each other and it was easier for us to communicate and talk the language, but now, it is eventually disappearing.
We were taught to help others when we were children even before we began so that we can live longer.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: I would like to direct my first question to the elder.
My first trip up to Frobisher Bay was about 30 years ago. I came up for one day. There was a charter out of Toronto. I witnessed a raw seal being eaten. Is that tradition still continuing?
[Interpretation]
Ms. Sigeatuk: Yes, it is our tradition. You will be obliged to share with us. That is what we were brought up to do with the country food. As a child, I grew up on traditional food.
I always find it a shame because the American people came here. They had stations and they used to feed us and we got used to their eating system. In my childhood, we did not have any frozen foods in the stores because there were no freezers in the stores. There used to be cans and daily food that we used to buy, not like today. We had traditional country food.
Sharing is also very, very important among fellow Inuit. For example, if any one of you caught a seal, a lot of our neighbours would be invited to join with us in sharing it.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Yes, but the traditions I find up north here are changing. Did you ever think that it might be a good idea to have an Aboriginal school for the young because more and more, it seems that the elders do not have time to educate the youth?
[Interpretation]
Ms. Sigeatuk: It is very important not to lose our traditions and we are aware that we are beginning to lose them. I also have the same question. Sometimes, if government could take some action to establish some schools because we cannot do it ourselves, it would support us. The other governments would support us; we know that.
We were all taught without any schools and we maintained our traditions. For myself, what I am telling you is I kept it to myself and passed it on to the others. I have a question. Who fed you the seal meat?
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: A young girl sitting who was carving the meat gave me some to eat. It might have been you!
[Interpretation]
Ms. Sigeatuk: It was not me for sure because I am older than that.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Cyrus, are the men that you take in to help and feed well-educated men? Have they had education or do they just live off the land?
Mr. Blanchet: No, they are not very well educated at all. Most of the men who come to the soup kitchen would probably have Grade 10 maximum and probably most of them would not even have that.
They might do a little bit of hunting, but most of them would not have skidoos. Some of them do and they all do some hunting. There is one man I am thinking of right now, he comes to the shelter regularly and I am sure he would not have access to a skidoo. He probably would not even have warm enough clothes to go hunting. I do not think he is mentally ill. I do not think he speaks very much English. He is around 30 years old. I do not know what his situation is really. He lives at the shelter. He visits family and friends. I do not think he has a job.
As the elder mentioned, he probably grew up in a home where they do not speak much English so he never really learned the language. Maybe he lived in an outpost camp, several men I have talked to have grown up in outpost camps. They know hunting and fishing.
Senator Mahovlich: They can survive.
Mr. Blanchet: They do not live there now, they live in towns, and they have difficulty coping with modern life.
Senator Mahovlich: We have that same problem in Toronto. You will find them sleeping right on the streets, over the sewers. It is quite a problem now in the city. Sometimes they will go down to the Don Valley and you will see tents all night long and there are groups of them. We have a similar problem right in the large cities. It is very difficult to re- educate them when they have that mindset. You cannot get them into a house. It is quite a problem.
Mr. Blanchet: There are probably quite a few similarities between what is happening there and here, but there are major differences as well.
Senator Mahovlich: I know that both the area and the population have grown. I am sure extra housing has been developed. Are we keeping up with the times? Is there enough housing here?
Ms. Scott: No, there is not enough housing. I have been to the housing authority to pick up applications for the fellows at the shelter and the agent said there is a two- or three-year waiting list.
Senator Mahovlich: Is the government able to help in housing?
Ms. Scott: You are going to have to speak to the government about that senator.
Mr. Nettleton: I do not claim to be an expert on housing, but I can tell you that quite a number of the files that I have are housing files. As Carol-Anne indicated, in many of the communities, there is a waiting list for public housing, in some cases, five years.
One little something that tends to happen is people who lose their homes to foreclosure, have a harder time to get public housing. They cannot even get on the waiting list for years. The people in the housing authority have a policy that people who have lost their homes should not get public housing. So imagine that, if you will, and here in the Arctic, given the winter that we have had this year. I know across Canada, it has been a tough winter.
Senator Mahovlich: Across the United States, there has been a big problem and they are trying to fix it.
Mr. Nettleton: Housing is in crisis. I do know this, senator. The present administration in Ottawa has committed no new monies to housing in this territory. The only monies that have been forthcoming, and I have spoken with the CEO of the Nunavut Housing Corporation, are monies that were committed under a former administration and this administration was pretty much forced to deliver those funds. There has been no new commitment, no new monies while there is a growing, desperate need in and around housing in this territory.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I want you to know, Senator Mahovlich; I have had raw seal meat on the shore around Rankin. It is really good.
Senator Mahovlich: We will have to try that on our next trip.
The Chair: Thank you so much for coming and for all you do.
We apologize for the lack of simultaneous translation in the beginning, but it is hooked up now.
We are very pleased to have with us today an old friend of mine, the Minister of Education for Nunavut, Ed Picco. We also have with us Bill Riddell.
Hon. Ed Picco, M.L.A., Minister of Education, Minister Responsible for Nunavut Arctic College, Minister Responsible for Homelessness and Immigration, and Government House Leader, Government of Nunavut: First of all, thank you very much for coming and welcome to Iqaluit and Nunavut.
I want to begin by saying that I am very pleased that the Senate committee was able to come home to the North. When I say, ``come home to the North,'' I mean that when we heard that some of the Conservative members of the committee were not able to come because they thought it was too expensive, it saddened us. Nunavut makes up one- third of the geographic land mass of Canada. We need to be heard. If we are going to talk about Canada, we have to talk about Canada from coast to coast to coast. Welcome home, senators.
It gives me great pleasure to see Senator Fairbairn who is an old colleague of mine. We have known each other for many, many years. I know Senator Mahovlich and of course, Senator Adams. I know that we have some real experience on the committee with the other senators.
My name is Edward Picco and I have been an elected member of the Assembly not only of the Northwest Territories, but also of Nunavut since 1995. I have lived in Nunavut for 25 years. I have raised a family here. My wife is from here. I have son who is now in college in the south and I have two children who are presently still in school here in Nunavut. I was not born in Nunavut, but Nunavut is my home. I am very proud and pleased to be able to give a presentation to the standing committee this morning.
Nunavut, as you know, faces many unique challenges and struggles that are different from the rest of Canada. We have no roads to connect our communities. We are, however, increasingly connected by telephone, satellite technology and the Internet. Over half of our communities have a population of 1,000 or less. Only one community, Iqaluit, has a population nearing 7,000.
In terms of economics, Nunavut's per capita income is almost 27 per cent lower than the rest of Canada. Many of our communities fall under those unique no-job-available criteria. Therefore, unemployment is the highest in some of our smallest communities. The only economic opportunity that happens every year for our communities is the seasonal construction of houses and construction projects in those communities.
The Government of Nunavut has put an aggressive program in place to post-secondary training and apprenticeship programs. We offer degree programs in teaching. We have offered degree programs for the first time ever anywhere in Canada in Inuit-specific nursing. When our people graduate from these degree-granting programs, they are recognized across the country. When we graduate an Inuk nurse here in Iqaluit, that nurse can be a nurse in Edmonton, Yellowknife or Iqaluit. The same thing with our teachers, when they receive their Bachelor of Education degree, it qualifies them to teach anywhere. That is what we want in Nunavut. When we finish Grade 12, we want to be able to say that our students would be able to go to Arctic College and stay in Iqaluit or go to Edmonton and be successful. We are seeing that happen more and more often.
Because there are no roads connecting our communities, the basic infrastructure that we have in Nunavut consists of our airports. In the south, senators, taking a plane and flying somewhere is a luxury. In the North, it is a necessity. Everything has to be flown in.
For example, a pregnant woman living 500 miles north of here in Hall Beach or Clive River has to leave her community one month before her delivery. She has to go to Iqaluit or to some other community in the south if she has any complications in her pregnancy. Can you imagine your 17-, 18-, 20-year old daughter or wife, or sister or mother, being sent out of your community for a month to have a baby? In the south, yes, you just drive a couple of hours to a hospital and over a couple of days, and then you are back home. In the case of the woman from up north, she would be away for a month. Can you imagine that mother flying 500 miles away and sometimes leaving her other children? The infrastructure requirements in Nunavut are very serious.
When Nunavut was set up in 1999, no one did a study on the cost of such a set up. The federal government at the time, and I know because I was there during the discussions between 1995 and 1999, said that two territories would not cost more than one. So basically, the budget in the Northwest Territories at that time was split in half and the Government of Nunavut received about $100 million extra for incremental infrastructure programs. When you are trying to deliver services as we just explained, it is a very expensive place. One of the reasons for our friends, the senators not to appear today was because they said it is just too expensive. Well, that is a fact of life for us in Nunavut. We have to look at those costs.
Let me give you some examples. In Iqaluit, the cost of a kilowatt per hour of electricity is thirty-seven cents a kilowatt hour. I know many of the senators here today probably do not know what it costs for electricity in his or her area. For Senator Mahovlich, for example in Toronto, the average cost of electricity in Toronto is seven cents a kilowatt hour. That means in Nunavut, we are five times more expensive than your electricity costs. Think about that for a second, five times more than your electricity costs.
We heard today on CBC Newsworld, CTV, and all the radio programs how shocked our Canadian friends were because their oil and gas prices went to $1.10 a litre. In Nunavut, we have to subsidize that cost and we are still looking at an average of over $1.20 a litre. That is a subsidized cost. We need to be able to pay those costs at the pumps so the Government of Nunavut has to subsidize.
Now, let us just think about that for one second when we are talking about poverty and so on in the North. One of your previous speakers said we were short of houses. The Government of Nunavut, in conjunction with the federal government, will build 700 new social housing units across the territory in the next 18-24 months, but we are short 3,000 units. Although it is a good start and we thank the federal government for helping us with that, you can see how dramatic those needs are.
I am the Minister of Education, but I am also the minister responsible for the issue of homelessness. When we talk about homelessness in the South, there are two definitions of homelessness. You have the absolute homeless. Those are the people we see in Toronto on Yonge Street who are homeless and sleeping on the streets. You also have the relative homeless and that is what we have in Nunavut. When you have 15 people living in a three-bedroom house, when you have children sleeping in shifts and sleeping in porches, when you have people sleeping in closets, that is homelessness. In our case, you will not see homelessness on the streets because if people were on the streets, the start reality is they would freeze to death.
The Government of Nunavut is the only jurisdiction in Canada, other than the federal government, to have a minister or a secretariat designated for the issue of homelessness.
When you look at the fundamental reason for poverty and look at the definition of poverty in a dictionary, it talks about not being at the medium line of income where you would be able to sustain a good existence or life. In Nunavut, when you compound the cost of gas, electricity and the lack of roads, the costs multiply and magnify. The big root of poverty in Nunavut is our socio-economic conditions.
Today, you have a good opportunity because Mr. Bill Riddell is here, a man who has lived in Nunavut for over 30 years who has dealt with so many different avenues, including the homeless file and has been a social activist. I am sure Bill will be able to give you some overviews of some of those real contingencies.
On my immediate right is Kathy Okpik. Kathy was born and raised here in Nunavut, is an Inuk and is the Deputy Minister of the Department of Education and Kathy can give you some insights.
I want to conclude as I know we are a bit late. I have gone away from my prepared notes to be able to speak from the heart to say that we need our federal government to step up to the plate.
In the South, we have different regional economic opportunities. What I mean by that is when I say in Atlantic Canada, you have ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. If someone needs a road or a breakwater in Atlantic Canada, the federal government will give New Brunswick or Newfoundland their equalization payments. On top of that, they can go to ACOA and say they need a new port, or a new paved road and they can apply to ACOA for that. In the West, in the richest part of Canada right now, you have Western Economic Diversification, which does the same thing. In Northern Ontario, you have FedNor, which does the same thing. North of 60, in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, in the most rural remote area of our country, there is nothing, absolutely nothing. There is no economic engine; there is no economic mechanism for that.
If we had an ACOA in the North, for example, on top of our transfers from the federal government, we could apply to this economic north organization to build the Bathurst port and road project to create economic opportunity. We could go to that organization and get money for our harbour, for example, in Pond Inlet or Iqaluit. We could improve our infrastructure.
Yet, in the territories, where 92 cents of every dollar of our revenue comes from our federal partner, we have no mechanism to do that. Why? I think that would be a fantastic part of getting ourselves out of poverty. It would increase economic opportunity and give us an opportunity to leverage those funds. Secondly, on the tax credit situation, Mr. Mulroney's government in 1987-88 introduced for the first time ever a Northern Tax Credit. What the tax credit did was help us stimulate the Northern economy, but also to attract nurses and doctors and other people and help northerners to try to factor in the extra cost of living that we have just talked about. However, that tax credit when it was brought in in 1987-88 has only marginally increased by less than one-tenth of 1 per cent in 20 years.
Successive governments in the North, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, federal MPs and our own Legislature wrote Finance Minister, Mr. Flaherty, Mr. Martin and Mr. Chrétien, whoever was in power. We asked them to increase that northern taxation allowance. We are asking for about 100,000 northerners in the three territories. Yet, nothing has happened.
Just that simple move of being able to increase that tax deduction from $5,400 and moving it to $7,000 or $8,000, or at least indexing it over the last 20 years, would be a major boost to northerners' income because it would mean more disposable income. If there is something that this committee could do right away, then that would be something I think would benefit all Nunavut residents who file income tax.
We want our fair share. We want to get into the game, but right now, we are sitting in the bleachers; we are not even on the playing field. Infrastructure, road development, just basic health and infrastructure services are what we are asking for as a territory. We are not asking for a handout. We are asking for a leg-up.
I would like to thank the members and thank you for your courage for appearing here in Nunavut even though you knew it was going to be costly, something that every northerner has to go through every day and shame on our federal friends in Ottawa, your colleagues, who would not actually come here.
I have been in New York City several times. I have a brother who lives in New York. I have never seen crime in New York. I have not seen muggings and murders, and so on. I know it occurs there. Sometimes, you have to go to a place to find out what it is about. You can read about it, you can see it on TV, but you actually sometimes have to physically go there and find out what is going on. That is what you have done.
I would like to again thank you, Senator Fairbairn, for bringing the committee here. I would like to give this opportunity to my colleagues at the table to address the committee. Qujannamiik.
The Chair: Thank you very much for those remarks, Ed. I guess it is all about fair chance and that is why we are here. We will see what comes of it, but we will do our best.
Bill Riddell, Residential Tenancies Officer, Magistrate, Government of Nunavut: First of all, what I am about to say has been quite heavily influenced by Kathy's father who was a very good friend of mine until he died a few years ago. Abe Okpik was a real guiding light in helping me to understand or to gain some insight into some of the things that I have seen and experienced up here.
You will hear a lot about the need for housing. By the way, there was a question earlier about how many public houses there are in Iqaluit. There are about 450 social housing units. I am going to focus on something else and then possibly, in the question period, we can move into some of the other areas that you might be interested in.
What I am going to try to talk about is the impact that poverty has on culture and on the way in which people live. We think of the problems as being houses and infrastructure, and it is, but I want to talk a little bit about the culture of poverty. I think we have to use our imagination on this because we really do not know what we are talking about when we are talking about the culture of poverty. We can only imagine what it could be like.
First, I was never asked bout my culture until I came up here. I had never been asked to describe my background, my traditions. I just took them for granted. I learned these things from the way in which my father and my mother behaved toward other people, my experiences, those kinds of things. Yet, Inuit have been challenged to describe their culture. They have attempted, at least over the last ten years that I know of, to describe it, so what I am going to do now is enter into that discussion as opposed to being an authority on it.
The first thing that I experienced when I came up here is that Inuit, generally speaking, are incredibly good at adjustment to their environment and their living conditions. We see it as survival, but Inuit view this as adjustment. They are adjusting to cold or adjusting to lack of food. They are adjusting to everything else. As a result of that, they make good use of their resources. They are creative, intuitively skilled to make adjustments, including creative architecture, tools, vehicles, use of animals, fuel, boats, hunting equipment, et cetera. They have adjusted; not survived; they have adjusted. Unfortunately, what has been happening with the changes and the development of poverty is that that adjustment has confused people up here.
We do not quite know how to adjust to poverty. Now, people are a little bit more frightened to adjust. They are frightened to adjust because possibly the rules and regulations of government, the policies of government cannot be challenged very easily. Adjustment is a very difficult thing and so people who are in their second or third generation of poverty are afraid of adjustment. That is how I see it.
Another value is sharing resources. How can you share resources when you do not have anything to share? You cannot. Now, if you came from a traditional family and the tradition was that you shared what you had, but you are going to starve to death, after a while, you do not share anymore. You begin to hoard. So the value of sharing is changing to the value of hoarding. People do not have that much to share anymore. They are in poverty. They do not have food.
They might be able to share their home and there are homes here in which two or three different families live, but the people who value the sharing are very often abused. Here, when somebody comes to Arctic College, they are provided with accommodation. If some relative of theirs in Pangnirtung or some place gets thrown out of the community because of their behaviour and they go to court and they end up being housed at Nunavut Arctic College, that person never ever contributes to the household. The student in that household now has to share his or her food, accommodation and time and put up with this misbehaviour and be abused. So sharing leads to abuse. What do people do? They close down a little bit. That is a value that is being challenged.
Like the Black American women, women seem to have the ability to get jobs up here. The men who had great value in terms of their hunting skills, in terms of providing for their family, are left at home. They cannot get the jobs as easily as the women do, just like the Blacks in the south, when the Black revolution started. The men feel left out; they feel despondent. They do not know what to do. They are left being the child care provider, but they have no training or tradition in child care. So, they are left floundering. We have many men in Nunavut who are confused. They do not have the focus of the values that they felt before. On top of that, they are killing themselves. Suicide is a really big thing up here. They get despondent and they kill themselves.
Respecting others, that is a huge, huge value. I felt it when I came up here. I thought that perhaps I would be isolated out. I was not isolated out. People included me. They were so welcoming. I never ever felt unwelcome. I ran in two elections, by the way, the last two federal elections and not once did I have a bad experience in terms of people shunning me because I am a white person or because I did not speak Inuktitut. It was a wonderful experience.
Respecting others is an important thing, but that is eroding. What we have here, and I have seen it and I know it, is there are some people abusing the elders. Elders are no longer being respected. There is such a difference of opinion and difference of experience. People who lived on the land do not have the skills or the knowledge, the background or the traditions to be able to help their young people understand what is going on in their community. Romance, for instance, and courting, all of these kinds of things, that are important now, but the elders never experienced that they way the youth are experiencing it today. In the elders' day, their marriages were arranged and they were functionally set up for specific purposes. Now, young people are really struggling with the value of respecting elders.
What we have in terms of respecting elders is we have elders whose children go to the post office, pick up their pension cheques and spend it. It never gets to the elders. We have some elders in Nunavut who are starving because they are not being fed properly because their young people no longer respect them. That value is going down the tubes.
Child rearing, I talked a little bit about child rearing, but a change from living in a community and living in a family group that is self-sufficient has challenged even the values of child rearing. Who looks after the child? It used to be the aunts, uncles, cousins and sisters and brothers who looked after all the same children. They looked after them really well. But now, that is breaking down because our communities are not set up as family supporting systems. They are set up in streets so that you have houses with different families living in different houses. They are not close together and they are having a difficult time with that.
One of the biggest values of the Inuit is to re-establish harmony in the family and that is breaking down.
I will turn to Ed on decision-making through discussion and consensus. In this case, we are not just looking at individuals who might be poverty-stricken. We are looking at a poverty-stricken government. When you have a government that is poverty stricken, their value is to reach consensus and what you see every day in the Government of Nunavut is a two-party system, the Cabinet and the regular members and they fight each other. This is not a nice place to be in the government. It is supposed to be consensus where everybody gets together and discusses things, but when you have few resources, even that value is breaking down.
Patience is being replaced by panic, anger and despondency. People are despondent all over. They are angry and they put that anger inside.
When I came up here, I knew the people had the strong value of honesty. I was amazed. If you asked somebody if he or she did something, he or she would say ``yes.'' That value is changing and now, they are becoming defensive because they have too much to lose. They are avoiding the truth. They are putting things off.
Third-party intervention in conflict is another value. If I had a fight with Ed, I might go to Kathy to tell Ed that I was having a fight with him. That is how it used to work. Now, I do not even do that. Third-party conflict resolution is just something that is losing its value and losing its way and nothing that has replaced it.
Those are just a few of the values that I have seen that have changed. I think what is happening is that the culture is being destroyed not just because of language, but because of poverty. Poverty does not allow people to live the way they used to live.
I think I will stop there. When you ask questions, you may want to ask a question about the GST.
Kathy Okpik, Deputy Minister, Department of Education, Government of Nunavut: Qujannamiik. I am not going to speak very long, just a few words. I want to reiterate what my Minister said, that I was born and raised here. I had the privilege of attending our school system and also doing my post-secondary education here in Nunavut. After being a teacher for 10 years, I decided to go into administration.
I am going to flip the discussion because when we talk about poverty, we hear many negative statistics. When you look at the North and Nunavut in general, you have the worst of everything. You have the highest suicide rates, the highest birth rates, and the lack of housing. I think I need to balance that with the tremendous amount of opportunity that is available out there for our young people.
We are doing wonderful things. We are doing absolutely wonderful things in our territory, in our school system even though in the last little while, we have heard the negative reports coming out on education. I heard a question about whether our culture is being lost. We have 98 Inuit teachers in our school systems that have Bachelor of Education degrees. They are teaching our youth. We have almost 300 more with teaching certificates that are in our school system, teaching language and culture. I also heard another question about maybe there should be a separate culture school. The aim of our school system is to have an Aboriginal-Inuit based school system.
Eighty-five per cent of our population is Inuit. Even though we are a public government, our school system is based on Inuit culture. We are actively recruiting Inuktitut-speaking teachers to provide education in Inuktitut and bilingually as well.
There is tremendous economic opportunity in our territory with mining coming. I am glad to say that we won a national award in innovation and technology, working with our communities. How is this all tied to poverty? It is economic opportunity. It is opportunities for youth. We have a very good benefit system for our students who want to attend post-secondary institutions both in the North and in the South.
There is a link between low literacy levels and poverty and we need more investment in those areas. We need to see investment in literacy to the North for Inuktitut first language and also English as a second language.
In closing, I would like to say that with many of the socio-economic issues that we face in Nunavut, we also have to focus on the tremendous opportunities as well. I will be available for any type of questions. Qujannamiik.
The Chair: It is a rare occasion that I do not ask a question, but I would like to make a comment. The words that you have just said, Bill, Kathy and Ed, have absolutely gone right to my very soul and that is the whole issue of learning and literacy. My friendship with people up here, in Rankin and elsewhere in the North started many years ago when I became a senator. The very first thing I became involved in after going across the country was literacy. I can remember Arctic College when it was just getting going, and how much they needed books that children could read in Inuktitut because they were not getting those books from the South.
It is very encouraging to hear how much has happened since then. It is the foundation of everything we do, but certainly in governance and opportunity, it is also a foundation. I applaud you for what you are doing. If ever I can be of help, just pick up the phone.
Senator Mercer: Thank you to all three presenters. Senator Fairbairn is right, this does go to the heart of what we are trying to do and those of us who find ourselves on the left side of the political spectrum this really hits home and it is amazing.
Bill, you gave me an answer to a question I had asked earlier on the number of public housing units. Minister, you talked about 700 new housing units in the next 18 to 24 months, but you are actually short 3,000 units. Are those 700 units social housing units, what we would call public housing? What is the mix between seniors housing and family housing?
Mr. Picco: As a result of the Kamloops meetings a couple of years ago, money was put on the table to make an investment in the housing infrastructure North of 60. We were able to take that money and move forward on building over 600 social housing units. They started last year. Because of the construction season, we bring them in on the ship in July or August when construction starts. That is why we say they will be built over a 12- 14- or 16-month period.
Those 700 units may be multiplexes or duplexes and then in the community where they are being built, they may decide that out of those five houses, three will be dedicated to elders, but those decisions that are made at the local level. What they try to do is bring people who are in core need. Each community has a local housing authority, which manages the housing portfolio in that given community. They will decide, based on their own needs list, and this means how many people are on the housing list. That list includes people who are in core need, elders, handicapped persons, a single person living in the community or a family. That is how the allocation is made.
Senator Mercer: I have asked this question in both the Northwest Territories and in the Yukon. You brought up the need for a northern development agreement with the Government of Canada. I am from Atlantic Canada and yes, ACOA is extremely important. We have a great concern that the current government is not a big fan of ACOA or FedNor or of Western Economic Diversification. I am not surprised that nothing is moving ahead up North. However, I do not think you can sit back and wait. We have to move forward.
Has the Government of Nunavut, along with the Government of the Northwest Territories the Government of Yukon, the three members of Parliament, the three senators and other governments come together in some sort of grand council?
Have you come together to say that you need this development agency and that you are going to put pressure on the government, no matter which government? Have you stated that you are going to put pressure on the government to come up with an agreement that would be equal to or better than ACOA or Western Economic Diversification, or FedNor? A Quebec agency deals with rural Quebec.
Has there been talk in the legislature here about joining forces with your colleagues in Whitehorse and Yellowknife?
Mr. Picco: First of all, there is a fantastic working relationship between the Premier of the Yukon and Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Indeed, Premier Fentie from the Yukon and Premier Roland from the Northwest Territories whom we know very well, have met on a regular basis now over the last several years with Premier Okalik. At the same time, Larry Bagnell from the Yukon, Dennis Bevington from the Northwest Territories and Nancy Karetak-Lindell have raised those issues in that type of forum, especially the tax reform issue. Specifically all territories and all jurisdictions North of 60 have been working on regional economic development for several years. I think you might notice some of the frustration in my voice when I say that. Again, it has not moved forward and you have given us and indication why.
Quickly, to sum up, there is strong partnership and working arrangements between our different jurisdictions North of 60 on these common areas.
Senator Mercer: There is, of course, a rumour that there is going to be an election soon. There may or there may not be. It would seem to me that the opportunity might be right for you and your colleagues in the NWT and the Yukon to extract some commitments out of the candidates who will be running in the three northern seats. Perhaps it is time to have them make a commitment to a northern development agency.
I know that Larry Bagnell and Nancy Karetak-Lindell who were members of my caucus have been pressing this issue over the last number of years. I just offer that as a quick suggestion.
Bill I found it interesting that people asked you to describe your culture. Those of us who live South of 60 are not asked to make that description, especially those of us who are mostly white males. People assume they know our culture and we are not often asked to describe it. When you discussed that interesting perspective, I wondered how I would describe my culture. I am not sure I could.
You talked about the difficulty for elders. What does that do to young people in Nunavut when people are consciously challenging and imposing changes on their culture? Whether that is good or not is a matter for debate. What is that doing to the young people?
Mr. Riddell: Kathy spoke to the effort by the school system to be aggressive in developing cultural inclusion into the entire curriculum. I think that is very, very helpful. My perspective is what happens in a home where there is poverty. The big question that every single child should be asking is where am I going to live when I grown up. There is no legacy. If you live in social housing, you do not inherit a social house. In Arviat, for instance, there are a huge number of young people, a very, very huge number of young people, and I do not know what the statistic is, but percentage- wise, it is just frightening. Those young people will be adults very soon and they will have to live in the home of their parents. When their parents die, unless something has happened, they will not have a place to live because social housing does not pass from one generation to another. It stops.
I would say that I do not know. I really do not know. I am sure it is devastating. I have seen it. One of my jobs is to handle landlord/tenant disputes in all of Nunavut. I travel to the communities and I see what happens to people who cannot pay their rent. Their parents are $25,000 or $30,000 in debt for rental arrears. If I went into Nunavut, Arviat or some other place, and if I terminated a tenancy of just three families, that is three families moving into the three other houses. You have overcrowded housing and that would destroy the community literally. Just three in one small community would upset the whole community.
We are just on the brink of always balancing things off. The children are involved in that in some way and I really do not know what it does to them.
Senator Mercer: The last question I have is for Kathy. You spoke with pride as you should about the education system that you have developed here in Nunavut, being award-winning, et cetera. What is the graduation rate? What is the percentage of young people who go to school who graduate from high school and what would be the percentage be of those who go on to post-secondary education?
Another question to everyone, what do they do when they graduate? How many of them stay in the North? How many go South of 60 and return? We had one presentation about two weeks ago from a gentleman from Australia about a program to attract young people back to rural Australia. Are you putting an awful lot of effort in educating people who are going to work in other parts of the country and not North of 60?
Ms. Okpik: When we look at graduation rates, the number that we had last year or the year before was about 25 per cent. I think I need to put that into context for you because we have 25 communities and up until the 1990s, there were no high schools in all communities. I grew up in the generation where I had to leave my home community of Pangnirtung to come here for high school. That was reality in the 70s and 80s.
Certainly, graduation rates from the 80s when you would probably have 25 graduates, we now have up to 140 on average graduating. We have a very relative young education system in Nunavut. As I said, there are some communities where for years we did not have high schools. The whole idea of capacity-building, graduating students, but also teacher training, having Inuktitut-speaking teachers within our school system is a major focus of our bilingual education strategy, which is one of our biggest focuses of our government.
When our students leave our school system, they have an opportunity to go south and in most cases, they have to go south to attend post-secondary education. We do have degree programs in the North in nursing and we have the teacher education program. At one point, we also had a lawyer's program with the University of Victoria, but for many of our young people, the reality is they go south for other forms of education and most of them come back to the North to work, coming back to their communities. We would also like to promote the Government of Nunavut as an employer of choice.
What I would also like to say is whatever program they take especially in the North, it has to be equal so if they do go south and decide to live there, that the program that they take is as good as or even better than what they take in the south. Many times, people may say that because the program is offered in the North, that it may not be equal, but some of our graduates, people who have come out of our system, it shows that they can work in nursing down in Alberta. We have had that happen. Some of our students in the University of Victoria program article with the Supreme Court of Canada.
There are so many success stories in the North. People might look at the 25 per cent graduation rate, but if you look at from where we started in the 70s and the 80s and where we are at now, there has been tremendous growth.
I also acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do. We are vigorously undertaking re-writing our curriculum to make it based on Inuit culture and language. We have elders who work with us. We have IQ framework documents to base Inuit knowledge as the foundation of our curriculum and in our schoolwork. We also know that we have to move forward in the area of assessment. We have started in assessment. We have also undertaken language instruction consultations with nineteen of our communities, with six more to go where we would like the community to decide the strength of the language within their community. That is the whole basis of the bilingual education strategy and the models at the community level that they need to decide on.
Senator Mahovlich: I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before us.
I would like to address the minerals of this country and the future. I came from a mining community myself. I was very fortunate. The mining community contributed so much to our area. The mining companies helped with schooling costs. We had the advantage of a good education. We had to leave for post-secondary education and many people did. The mining companies helped the morale of the people. The miners built community centres. We had a hockey rink. We had bowling alleys. We had dance halls. We were very fortunate. If you were growing up at that time in the 40s and the 50s, the place to be was Timmins. It had everything that anybody ever wanted if you were a young boy. We looked after our youth up there.
I am addressing this to Nunavut because I think Nunavut is a place where corporations in the mining business are going to look to. If you look at mines in Africa, they did not leave much. They took out the diamonds and just left a mess. I was sent to Africa. It is okay to build a road, but all of a sudden, you need maintenance. If that road does not get maintenance, it is worse than what it was when there was not any pavement.
We have to be careful here. There is a lot of work to be done. Ed, maybe you can extrapolate a little bit on what is happening in this area.
Mr. Picco: I think when you look at what is going to occur in the next ten or fifteen years here in Nunavut will be nothing short of dramatic. We are poised to really lead the country in economic development because of the wealth that we have in Nunavut. We have already seen, for example, this year over $200 million spent on exploration. That is a record for exploration in Canada in jurisdictions like Nunavut. We have gold. We have diamonds. We have a lot of base metals and uranium. All of these are actually evident and in the ground. In North Baffin, a place called Mary River, we have the potential of over 1,500 jobs over the life of an iron ore mine, probably the highest grade of iron ore right now anywhere in the world that has not been developed. The life of that mine is between 70 and 100 years. So you are talking about a multi-generational mine which means really good opportunities for our communities.
We are sitting on over 30 per cent of the known oil and gas reserves in Canada. Because of the early frontier oil and drilling program in the 70s and early 80s by the federal government, we were able to actually have an oil well running in Nunavut called Bent Horn right up until 1985, 1986. A lot of people do not realize that.
So as things move forward in the next few years, Nunavut would be really well economically placed. As Kathy was saying earlier, is the glass half full or is the glass half empty and I believe there is a lot of room for optimism in Nunavut, something that we can also share economically with Canada. We are not always going to be there with a hand out. We will be there to put a hand up to help people in the other parts of the country.
Senator Adams: I like the history of Nunavut. I have known Kathy since she was about this high, a little girl, maybe three or four years old. I am glad she is here. She is Inuk and is an assistant to the Minister of Education.
When I came up to Rankin Inlet in 1960, there were only two Inuk councillors, appointed by John Diefenbaker, who met twice a year with Indian Affairs in Ottawa. I am still looking for that picture at Rankin Inlet of Prime Minister Diefenbaker and John Ayaruak an old friend who died over 30 years ago. I will never forget those two men. The Government of Canada started recognizing the North and the Inuit people. Kathy's dad started it to help the people and the future of Nunavut.
My question is for Minister Picco. You guys wanted to change some of part of education in Nunavut. You were supposed to pass some legislation last spring and somehow, some of the public did not like them and they wanted better changes on language and stuff like that. The two bills that have been passed in the meantime had to go to Ottawa to be passed to allow for a better system of education in Nunavut. What do you think? Is there going to be more help for the system between you and Kathy if those two bills are passed?
Mr. Picco: The senator is correct. We have introduced three very important pieces of legislation in the Legislative Assembly over the last 12 months. Two of them are language bills and one is the new Education Act. For the first time ever in Canada or any jurisdiction in North America, a language other than English, French or the majority of language in that country will be legislated. So for the first time ever, you will have an Aboriginal language legislated in a legislature. That, in itself, is a precedent.
The two language bills are not like what we have seen with Bill 101 in Quebec, but we are talking about how to integrate the Inuktitut language, written and oral forms, through different factors and parts of our society.
On the proposed education act, I will give you an example for our elders. If an elder came into the classroom, because an elder does not have an academic standing of a formal education, they would probably be paid $10 or $15 an hour. This act, for example, for the first time ever, will say that an elder who comes into the classroom has a master's degree in lifelong learning and will be compensated for that degree.
For the first time ever, we are actually going to guarantee a pupil-teacher ratio better than the national average. So if the national average is 1-20, we will be at 1-19 and we will fund that. The new Education Act means over $14 million of new money to our education system.
The senator is definitely correct, we are moving along this path. We have to remember, Senator Fairbairn, that the government is only nine years old. We only started in 1999. We are going to make many mistakes, but we are getting a chance to take control of what is happening in Nunavut, which we would not have been able to do. I can compare both, because I was part of the Northwest Territories. I can compare. Sure, we have made mistakes but we all knew we would make them. We are learning and we are starting to grow. That is what Kathy is saying. You can hear the pride in some of the things that we have done. Is the glass half full? I think it is half full.
Senator Adams: If those language bills are passed through the legislation, do you think the federal government will approve them or say you can only have two languages here according to our laws and recognize English and French? How do you feel about that?
Mr. Picco: The senator brings up a very strong constitutional question. In our case, as a territorial legislature, if we passed any type of legislation that would be counter-productive or counter to any federal and current legislation, then the federal government has the opportunity to overturn that, of course. We do not see that happening with these bills. Once they are passed in our legislature, we believe they would be able to stand any type of court challenge. That has been reviewed by the Department of Justice Canada. Once they are passed in our legislature, the federal government will not need to ratify them and so on. We should be able to do that within our own legislature.
Senator Adams: I think it would be good and just like the law in Quebec; they would stand up in court. It would be helpful and hopefully, they will be passed and they will allow the people to use their language in court cases. It would be a lot better in the future for the people in this territory.
Senator Peterson: Mr. Picco, you talked about the economic wealth in Nunavut, which is very exciting, but I understand that most of the royalties go to Ottawa. You are having discussions on devolution of powers. How are those discussions going? When do you anticipate that being completed and what would the impact be on Nunavut?
Mr. Picco: When we are talking about jurisdictions in Canada, we have provinces and we have territories. One of the reasons why we are a territory is that we do not have control over the land resources. As an example, no one owns land in Nunavut. In the South, Mr. Mahovlich can own a home, it could have been in his family for 100 years, and he would own the land where the home is situated. In Nunavut, we have to lease the land. The commissioner holds the land in council. That is one of the big differences.
When we are talking about devolution, we are talking about how to get that type of control that a province has over land and water resources. The premier, with our federal partner has been pushing that discussion aggressively. We have actually appointed the former Premier of the Yukon, Mr. Penikett, to be our lead negotiator on that issue. There has been some movement on it, but it does take a long time. You do not work this out in six months or a year. There has been movement, maybe not the movement that we would like to see on it, in an expeditious manner, but there has been some movement.
We would like to be in a position where more of the royalties that occur in Nunavut could stay in Nunavut. If, for example, in Ontario, the government is generating a $300 million mine, the government can take 10 per cent to 25 per cent of that in royalties. In Nunavut, we are looking at less than 5 per cent. It is a huge difference.
Senator Adams: I want to congratulate Bill. I think it was very interesting what he had to say about poverty and culture. We call ourselves Inuit. A person on the land could be Bill, but we still would call him Inuk. In some ways it does not matter who you are, the Inuit welcome everybody. As you said, you learn from those people. I do not have a question; I just want to tell you that you make me feel good. I just wanted to say that you have done a good job.
The Chair: Thank you very much. This was a very uplifting panel that we have just had. The future is well in your hands. Thank you for what you are doing and keep on doing it.
Senators, we now have before us David Wilman, the Executive Director of the Iqaluit Community Tukisigiarvik Society. With him is Elisapi Davidee-Aningmiuq, Program Coordinator with the Tukisigiarvik Centre.
We are very pleased that you have taken the time to come here this afternoon so that we can hear what you have to say.
[Elisapi Davidee-Aningmiuq spoke in her native language.]
Elisapi Davidee-Aningmiuq, Program Coordinator, Iqaluit Community Tukisigiarvik Society: First of all, like I said, I greet you with a smile. It is just recently that Inuit started saying good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Usually, it would be, and still is, a smile. We greet people with a smile. So greetings to all of you and thank you for coming to Iqaluit
I must say that I cheered for you, Mr. Mahovlich. I am from that generation who did cheer for you. If the people knew you were here, the room would fill up because you are here today. Welcome.
It is a pleasure to come before you. I can say I have grown up in Iqaluit. I was born in a founding camp where we had four huts at that time and we actually came to Iqaluit because my grandfather and my father used to pilot for the C.D. Howe and Nascopie to Lake Harbour and Cape Dorset in those days. My father came to Iqaluit to purchase a motor part for his Peterhead boat, but then we were conned into staying because he was good with mechanics. So we stayed and stayed and stayed.
I have seen Iqaluit grow. I have seen a lot of the changes. I did not know how to speak English. I am forever learning the language. I would have preferred to speak Inuktitut, but I am going along with Dave today and speak in English.
We come from the Iqaluit Community Tukisigiarvik Society which was established after community consultations. The centre was established in 2003 and directs operations of the drop-in Tukisigiarvik Centre. The centre provides counselling, wellness, healing programs, practical support, cultural skill development programs and many others which are very popular. We also advocate for people of Iqaluit, particularly those who are homeless, disadvantaged and marginalized for any reason, including many of those who still suffer from the cultural upheaval and social dislocation caused by the imposition of government-sponsored health, education, justice, and welfare programs 50 years ago.
David Wilman, Executive Director, Iqaluit Community Tukisigiarvik Society: I am a former educator. I came here as a teacher in 1970 for one year on my way around the world; I am still here. I am married to an Inuk woman I am a very close friend of Elisapi. I have two children and a couple of grandchildren. Like Elisapi, I have been trying to learn the other language for quite a while and she is a lot better in English than I am in Inuktitut, but I am still trying.
I have had a marvellous time here. I started as a teacher. I had a 30-year career in education and ended up as the director of the community college that was the founding principle of the teacher education program that Kathy Okpik talked about; it helped her get her B.Ed. degree. I negotiated the original degree-granting agreement with McGill and I negotiated the nursing program with Dalhousie University. I was on the advisory group that met faculty from the college in Inuvik just before the law school was started. At that point, I retired and started a consulting company mainly dealing with social issues and educational issues. After a couple of years, Elisapi came and asked me to help start up the Tukisigiarvik Society. She had the funding organized and the city had established the continuum of care for homelessness and other disadvantaged people. That is what we are here to talk about today. Neither of us are specialists on these topics, but we are involved in a community-driven project that tries to help individuals improve themselves and engage themselves more effectively in our society. We come to it from different perspectives, but we are quite passionate about it.
About a year and a half ago, the City of Iqaluit asked us to conduct an extensive community consultation on social issues in Iqaluit. We want to discuss some of the results and findings of that consultation with you. Some of the information we will give you took over 5 months and involved more than 350 people from the most senior government officials to the average person on the street.
The findings were remarkable to us, but they parallel some of the very negative statistics that you do find. In fact, the day after our major public meeting, some information appeared in The Globe and Mail that I do report in this document. I want to try to show the parallel between the statistical information from The Globe and Mail and other reports, and what the people in Iqaluit said to us. I think the outcome is that the people of Iqaluit know exactly what the problems are and they know the solutions. That is what we are trying to focus on, not the negative stuff, but what the solutions are and how solutions can be found.
The first finding of the public consultation was, and far in excess of all others, the lack of affordable, decent quality housing is the most significant social issue. This is supported by a federal report on homelessness done by HRSD Canada in 2006. That report also talked about the impact of inadequate housing and lack of housing, forcing people into homelessness. There is the other phenomenon that was spoken to earlier: The hidden homelessness where people who do not have their own home shelter and move from place to place, sometimes day by day, trying to find a place to stay warm and stay safe because they cannot do that on the streets. It is a major problem.
Senator Mercer asked about numbers. I can tell you that there are no numbers, but a recent estimate by the Pauktuutit Inuit Women's Association said that for women in Iqaluit alone, there are probably over 300 homeless and near homeless and there is no emergency shelter for the women.
The same federal report pointed out the solution to the homelessness problem is very simple: build more houses. Again, earlier, a question was raised about how many social houses there are in Iqaluit, and how many are needed. The answer you had from Bill Riddell is that we need about 450 social housing units right now. But the federal report said that there is an immediate need for 1,000 more bedrooms, bedrooms not houses. With the potential growth of the community, that has already doubled in size in the last ten years, by 2022, we will need as many as 2,243 new bedrooms. That is 750 new three-bedroom houses for Iqaluit alone.
Minister Picco said we are going to build 750 houses. That is across the 25 communities in Nunavut in the next two years. That will only start to nibble at the problem. It will not address the problem and it will not address the rapid increase in the need for houses as a result of the very young population and very high birth rates.
I will now go to The Globe and Mail report, as I said, that was published the day after we had our public meeting. The title was, ``In Nunavut, an epidemic of violence and despair.'' The article listed a long list of statistics, many I am sure you have heard before. Deaths by suicide, 8.3 times the national average, about 40 times the national average for males in the age range 15 to 24; median income, $49,000, about $10,000 less than the national median of $58,000. That statistic does not take into account all those with no income. It is just the total income for people in Nunavut divided by the number of people. There are many people with no income. High school graduation rates, 25.6 per cent compared to 75.6 per cent in other parts of Canada; infant mortality, 16.1 per 1,000 live births compared to 5.3 per 1,000 nationally; age of the population, very young compared to national averages, with a very small proportion of people 65 years and older. I am not quite there; I think that is next year. More than 50 per cent of the population is under 20 years of age. That is the biggest factor that we have to consider. The crime rates for homicide, assault and sexual assault are 3.5, 6 and 8 times the national average respectively. Only robbery is more positive, less than a quarter of the national average. I do not know why that is.
These social economic indicators allow us to gauge the situation here in Nunavut and to compare it to the rest of Canada. Statistically, the more they vary away from the national average, the more extreme the social condition and the more serious the problem, and the more complex the problem that Nunavummiut face. ``Nunavummiut'' is an Inuk word for people of Nunavut. ``Iqalummiut'' means the people of Iqaluit.
There is a close inter-relationship between housing and other social conditions and these were the subject of another major report of housing in 2006. That report stressed the negative effects of poor housing on children, on youth, on health, on education and on community wellness, mental wellness and economic wellness.
That report concluded that unless drastic measures are taken immediately to improve the housing situation in Nunavut, and this is very important and I will quote, ``Inuit will not make progress in the other social, cultural and economic fields'' and that at present, the housing crisis ``is preventing Inuit from progressing in nearly all social and cultural fields.'' Those are pretty frightening words.
When we looked at the list of economic indicators from The Globe and Mail and the information from the NTI report, the relationships between the two sets of information jumped out. There are obviously other contributing factors, but poor or inadequate housing fuels the social problems of suicide, interpersonal violence, poor health, family violence, substance abuse, low levels of educational achievement, high crime rates and dysfunctional individuals, families and communities.
The 350 people who took part in our consultation brought these very same issues to us. That consultation was not just one public meeting but face-to-face interviews with key people, key informants, radio call-in shows, questionnaires and various meetings over five months.
I will list the issues that the people of Iqaluit said were critical. The housing and homelessness crisis was by far the most frequently raised issue in the consultation process. Most of the problems of homelessness could be resolved by building enough new homes to meet the demand. One informant, Judge Beverly Browne who is the Chief Justice of the Court of Nunavut said if we could just build the houses, half of the problems of crime and alcohol and drug abuse would go away.
The next problem that people raised was addictions, abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs, but they saw them as symptoms of the underlying issues that affect many Inuit today. There is no doubt that even if they are symptoms, they do play a major role in exacerbating the levels of crime, violence and other problems in Nunavut.
Family violence was the third concern that people raised and it is a major concern for both the justice system and for health and social services programs. We think, again, that they are symptoms of the underlying problems of overcrowded homes, living in poverty due to unemployment and the very high cost of living that Mr. Picco raised with you this morning. Another underlying factor is the low level of educational achievement because people cannot get jobs. Even when the jobs are there, they do not have the skills. The underlying problems also include alcohol and drug abuse and other factors.
The director of the local health and social services office told us that, in fact, all the staff in Iqaluit were overwhelmed and that because of the prevalence of family violence, all staff had been allocated to child protection and child apprehension services. The staff had been taken away from mental health counselling, from social counselling and everything. She stood up and said that at the public meeting which I think was sort of brave of her.
The lack of educational opportunity is another concern. As I said, I am a former educator and I agree with Mr. Picco and Kathy Okpik that we have made great progress and things have improved tremendously. But it is still not good enough and it is still not in tune with the needs of the people of Nunavut. We still have a largely foreign-imposed curriculum. I know it is being changed. I know we have trained Inuit teachers, but the system still is failing young people in Nunavut. Justice Thomas Berger wrote a report on the progress of the land claims just a year and a half ago. He said that Nunavut is facing a moment of crisis much of which is due to the poor quality and inappropriateness of the education system.
I know that much of what the Department of Education is doing, the changes they are making, and the new education act that is being developed, are trying to implement the recommendations that Justice Berger made, but we still have a whole range of needs that include adequate training, job skills training, employment training and training for family life. The need is overwhelming.
The next concern is youth at risk. Obviously, people mentioned the epidemic of suicide. When over 100 young people a year, mainly young men, are killing themselves, the crisis is obvious. We have to realize that those young people are the future of Nunavut. They are the future employers. They are the future parents. Somehow, they have to be engaged in the economy, in the social fabric of the community and they have to have a chance for a future.
One of my former teaching colleagues said that she was concerned now because many young people in many communities in Nunavut are growing up, and I am quoting her, ``doing nothing as a way of life.'' Justice Browne said that boredom is probably one of the major problems in Nunavut.
Ms. Davidee-Aningmiuq: Because Iqaluit is the capital, we tend to lose out in many of the programs that are implemented in some of the smaller communities. Iqaluit may be the centre, but when it comes to doing programs, it is left out because it is not seen as a small community. Iqaluit is a very transient community. In our consultations, we frequently heard people who are concerned about the overall lack of prevention and social support programs for Iqaluit. Like I said, many Iqalummiut believe that the community is losing out because it is the capital of Nunavut and because it is very transient, other parts of Canada increase the demands of local support programs to a level where long-term Iqaluit residents cannot get the services they need when they need them. We saw that many people feel that the issues often need to be at crisis level before somebody does something.
Iqaluit has grown very rapidly, I think too fast for anybody to keep up and deal with social issues that are coming with the rapid growth. Over the last ten years, Iqaluit has just doubled in size. There was a time when we knew everybody in the community. Now, we do not know even who our fellow Inuit are in this community. In fact, earlier this morning, I asked one young man how long he had been here and he said six years. I said, ``This is the first time I have seen you and you are leaving Iqaluit.'' It is a transient community.
Although we talk about the negative things, there are positive things as well, but what we are saying to you that these are the things where we need help. We need to partner up on these things. All levels of government, municipal, territorial and federal, are responsible to a degree for the provision of these services in Iqaluit and all must urgently begin to address these critical situations.
As Inuit, you heard earlier, we are very quick to adapt. That is true. Sometimes, we adapt not really understanding what it is that we are adapting to. Inuit are very trusting people. They will believe a word and often, people believe that people are doing things for the positive when it can lead to negative things down the road. Alcohol is one of them.
I remember one elder said, ``If it is no good, why did you bring it? We do not understand. Why do you bring things that are not good? Why do you do things that are not good for you as a person and for others?'' The elder was referring to tobacco and alcohol.
These citizens are especially vulnerable to the adverse consequences of the societal problems in our community. This fact was well acknowledged in the literature and reports that we reviewed in preparing the report on last year's public consultation. What we found is often acknowledged by both non-Inuit and Inuit alike.
Another concern is the effect of rapid cultural change. Many Inuit respondents talked about the rapid pace of cultural change that they have experienced over the last 50 years. Some Inuit are able to embrace and take advantage of both worlds, but there are many people who just do not understand and get caught up in the negative things that drive them to their life choices.
Even recently, scholars working with Aboriginal people who have experienced government-sponsored upheavals in their way of life similar to those experienced by Inuit have diagnosed a debilitating psychological condition called ``intergenerational trauma.'' This occurs when over time, a group of people are traumatized through forced assimilation and cumulative losses involving language, culture and spirituality. This results in the breakdown of family kinship networks and social structures.
I think some of these you have heard about the residential school syndrome. The federal day school syndrome is a big issue here. I think there are close to 100 survivors of the federal day school system here in Iqaluit. Also, the TB epidemic syndrome has had some very negative impact on children whose parents may have been taken away or who may have died and they did not know until years later that their parents or their relatives died and there was no way of communicating.
Many of the impacts that have traumatized the Aboriginal peoples in Canada are now widely recognized which is good, but there are generations of people who suffer from this debilitating condition, which result in a number of aberrant behaviours. These behaviours include alcohol and drug addictions, family and interpersonal violence, poor mental health, low education achievement, dependency, and suicidal tendencies. Unfortunately, we have not dealt with these deep-rooted issues. We believe that the psychological condition of intergenerational trauma provides an extremely plausible explanation for many of the social problems facing individuals in Iqaluit and our community as a whole.
We have a lot of hope. Even when we talk about the negative things that have happened, Inuit are survivors. A lot of times, you will hear on the radio all the negative things that people say about the Aboriginal people, about First Nations, about Inuit, having the highest rate of suicide, the highest rate of this and the highest rate of that. Even listening to that as an Inuk depresses the people.
We have all that, yes. Statistically, that is true, but in reality too, there are things that are working in the community. If we can all partner up to reach out to those in need and also those reaching out to those in need, reaching out to all levels of government, I think we can find a possible solution.
We are so fortunate to have you here. We want to stress to the Senate committee that there is a critical need to involve communities in determining and implementing programs and services required to resolve the problems that we, Inuit, face. We also need a long-term, stable financial commitment for people like me. We spend a lot of time doing proposals, yearly, yearly, yearly, yearly, to a point, where I wonder if this is worth my time. We know they have a very positive impact in the communities, very short-term, but it does get hard.
I think we are still driven by the positive changes that we see in people. I see positive changes in people who are taking part in some of the healing programs and some of the cultural skills development programs. When I first started seeing young women, young adults and men who were making tools or making their own garments for the first time, being able to scrape their first seal skin and softening it, I saw tears of joy because that is connecting back with your roots. It is also bringing back pride and self-esteem and the people say, ``I did not know I could do this.'' When you start formal education, you have to sacrifice what you may have learned culturally.
I think we are very fortunate today because many of us can take advantage of both worlds. I can quickly switch from addressing the Senate of the Canadian government, and tomorrow, I am going to put my other clothing and go out on the land and start ice fishing. The sooner we can do that; we want some of your climate, climate change we keep hearing about.
As we say, we have many problems, but there are solutions. There are people out there who will give their time. The funding is not sustainable and sometimes runs out in just a few months. It often does not sustain what we have set out to accomplish.
For my generation, for my children and for my grandchildren-to-be, I want them to be able to know the best of both worlds. We have gone away from staying at home and learning from the mother, learning from the father, our children are going out to the schools and so therefore, they are relying on funded programs to learn these cultural skills today; we see that. We have many elders who are very professional in their ways; they are our professors. They are our bridge to teach these customs to our children.
I think the Government of Canada must recognize that the healing work has only just begun. If it is not sustainable or successful in the long term, it will not be successful unless national agencies like the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, the National Aboriginal Health Organization and groups like Iqaluit Tukisigiarvik Society receive the resources they need to see the work through to completion. We need to have ongoing, sustainable funding.
We trust that the success of the many community projects sponsored by these national- and community-sponsored organizations will convince the Government of Canada of these facts and that the members of the Senate will use their influence to ensure the survival of these critically important national- and community-level institutions through the provision of stable, long-term funding.
We know that these things are possible, but we need the funding. We know that there are Inuit who are very strong, who have a very strong sense of family, who are very strong in educating their children and they are the ones who can teach the parenting skills, the survival skills and other cultural skills. We have professional weather forecasters who are very professional in their lifestyles.
I am happy to say that there are many children, both young boys and girls, who are learning to play hockey, Senator Mahovlich, but unfortunately, we do not have artificial ice in many of the communities. I think only one in Iqaluit and one other community may have artificial ice, but I hear that they can skate for two months every year, which is very unfortunate for this part of the country because the children cannot learn how to play hockey, they do not learn how to skate. When we have the ice, the programs work very well. In a population of about 7,000, I hear there are approximately three-quarters of children who are out playing hockey, street hockey, and there is one hockey player in almost all the families in Iqaluit. That is just to give you an example of some of the positive things, but we need the programs to support the positive changes that we are asking you to support.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That has been a very tough but a very helpful presentation that you have given to us. We appreciate that.
Senator Mercer: You said in your presentation that people feel the issues often need to be at crisis level before assistance becomes available and at that point, small issues are out of control. I would contend that you already told us that we have reached that crisis level that we are not waiting for anything; we are here. I have seen the enemy and he is us.
The issues of suicide eight times the national average, the median income at $49,900 and high school graduation rates, which is an improvement I recognize, of 25.6 per cent compared to 75.6 per cent in the rest of the country. Infant mortality of 16.1 per 1,000 live births compared to 5.3 in the rest of the country, if this is not a crisis, I have never seen one. I will not quote all the other statistics, but this is a very useful study. When did you complete this study?
Mr. Wilman: We completed it in March last year and presented it to the City of Iqaluit.
Senator Mercer: What has the city done with this report?
Mr. Wilman: I think one of the next presenters early in the afternoon is from the city and I know that she is going to speak to that report, too.
The city has followed some of the recommendations. They have already appointed a coordinator for community wellness and they have started to focus the funding that they receive which is pretty limited on some of the core problems, including our own program, the soup kitchen and food bank and the emergency shelters rather than try and spread it more thinly over other groups.
When a young man needs to talk to someone and is told, ``You can have an appointment to see a counsellor five weeks from now'' and three days later, he shoots himself, it is out of control.
Senator Mercer: Everybody has told us that the most significant social issue is the lack of affordable housing. We have heard that all across the country, but it is more critical in the North it seems.
If government had a program that could address this crisis, what type of houses do they need to be building? Do we need to be helping build individual homes, apartments or triplexes? What type of housing do we need? Do we need to encourage private entrepreneurs to build rental units and make sure that they are at rents that are affordable to the local people? If you could design the program, what would they be building?
Mr. Wilman: I will defer to Elisapi, but I have a thought in answer to that, too.
Ms. Davidee-Aningmiuq: In one of our initial consultations looking at homelessness in Iqaluit, what we found was that people want shelter. They did not necessarily have to be three- or five-bedroom homes. People just wanted four walls where they can sleep. A lot of them said they do not have to be big necessarily, but one of the things that we recommended at that time was to build traditional housing that models a qammaq, it is not very big, the ceilings are lower in a qammaq. People just want basic housing, just shelter.
I do not think people want big apartment buildings; they want small individual homes.
Senator Mercer: The government should not oppose a style of housing that is acceptable or culturally in tune with the local people. We have talked about culture.
By the way, one of the statistics that is doing very well in your culture is the one on robbery, which is less than one- quarter of the national average. Senator Adams has always told us about the sharing that is part of the culture. If you are sharing, then there is not a great need for robbery.
Ms. Davidee-Aningmiuq: What we also saw was that there were some families, instead of using the bedrooms; they would just put their mattresses in the living room, coming from that culture of living in a qammaq or living close to each other. We saw that people, the families actually enjoyed that; it is something that some people do.
Senator Mahovlich: Mr. Wilman, you have been living here for quite a few years and you still do not have a Canadian accent.
Mr. Wilman: It is because I live here and there are so many Hudson's Bay people around that I can practise my own language. I do not have the influence of Toronto or Ottawa. I did move temporarily to the United States to do my doctoral studies. I guess a nice North Yorkshire's Moors accent is hard to dislodge.
Senator Mahovlich: If we go outside our borders, we can look at the Sami of Norway, Russia and Sweden. They are very similar to the Aboriginal people here. I spent some time in Sweden, inside the Arctic Circle. The social life is not the same in the North as it is in the southern part of Canada. You cannot have the same so you have to be different. I believe that their governments help.
You are mentioning you do not have artificial ice. Paul Henderson was with me and we went and had a game of tennis in a community centre in the community. For one dollar, you could play tennis, you could play basketball. They had every kind of opportunity there for the youth and it was like belonging to a private club down in Toronto or anywhere. It was just as good.
We need this here because you are talking about young people committing suicides. That is not only here. I was in Quebec in a town, in Drummondville, where in one month, we had nine suicides in high schools. The reason for it, they tell me, is they do not have anything to look forward to. The governments need to do something to encourage them and give them some incentive, something to look forward to. I am sure there are a lot of good things that are coming so that we could paint a nicer picture for them.
Mr. Wilman: I am very familiar with Northern Sweden and Northern Norway. In fact, I taught as a visiting scholar at the Sami Teacher's College at Kautokeino. I have been there. The development there is incredible compared to the situation here and it is largely government-sponsored.
In the consultations that we are reporting here, in the longer report, the community told us some of the things it does not have. Very high among those items, close to the top in priorities, was good quality recreation facilities. We have some gyms in town. We have a hockey arena, a skating arena, we have lots of clubs, but basically a full range of recreational activities is not available. I would say that one of the things that a recreational facility should do would be not just focus on sports, but focus on cultural skills and activities as well. The people who are not inclined to sports might want to learn other things like traditional dancing or different sewing skills and arts training, arts production.
I think the biggest weakness, going back to this growing up with nothing to do as a way of life, is boredom. That is what leads to the problems and to the suicides.
Mr. Picco talked about all the potential economic opportunity, but for the young people to get a hold of that opportunity, get engaged with that opportunity, they have to have the training. That is where we need to change and modify what we are doing in the educational system, in the economic system. We need to focus on making sure that the young people can get the skills that they need to effectively participate in whatever way they want and we are not doing that.
Senator Mahovlich: Is there a country that you would chose as a sample country that we could look to in Europe or part of the North or are they all having problems?
Mr. Wilman: I think that the Sami model and particularly the level of government support is better than ours. They also have the advantage in that even though they are in the Arctic, they have a road system. So while the curses are high, they are not as excessively high as they are here. Greenland has some good examples, but also has some major problems, too.
I go back to the message that we are giving. The people in the communities, people like Enopik Sigeatuk the elder who was here earlier, they know many of the answers. They just do not have the resources to implement the solutions. One of the reasons the Tukisigiarvik Centre has been successful is that we have deliberately tried to partner with government. Mr. Picco provides us with our building, about 4,000 square feet, rent free. We have to pay the utilities. We have to raise the funds and everything else, but the government gives us that space rent-free.
The Oqota Emergency Shelter is charged rent and can barely manage to get by with the funds it can raise. We negotiate with all sorts of different funding agencies to keep us ourselves abreast and we have done very well. There are times almost every year when we have to say we have to lay so-and-so off, we have to stop this program, or we cannot afford to do this. Sometimes, the funding runs out.
One of the major needs in our community is an effective alcohol and drug counselling and detoxification centre. We used to have one, which was government-funded. An arbitrary decision made 10 years ago cut off funding and all the people involved in the centre were laid off. Those cuts included laying off Inuit drug and alcohol counsellors. We desperately need that centre.
We need recreational facilities also. The housing crisis could be resolved with a simple infusion of money. That should, if that ever occurs, be tied in with a requirement for a training program that will involve local people in learning how to build houses, construct houses and then how to maintain them. One community, Sanikiluaq, has developed a school program where the senior Grade 11 and Grade 12 students build a house or in one case, a daycare, every year. They get the skills while they are in school and earn credits toward their diploma. Automatically, they have jobs when they come out or they have an access to an apprenticeship program. But we are missing these boats. We are missing the connections.
[Interpretation]
Senator Adams: I know Elisapi. She is a good friend of my second oldest daughter; they went to high school together here in Iqaluit. Now, she reminds me of my second daughter who is now in Rankin Inlet.
I am glad that you explained to the senators that we must all work together and it would be nice for the different committees of the Senate to come up here to see what is happening in Nunavut and the territories.
I remember the move of the territorial government to Yellowknife in 1967. Yellowknife became the capital of a huge territory. I was part of the Northwest Territories Council from 1970 until 1974. The area was too large. The Government of Canada recognized just one culture even though we have many different cultures in the territory such as the Dogrib and the Chipewyan.
The Inuit have been confused about how the system works. Before moving the government to Yellowknife, Indian Affairs took care of the housing and the schools. Indian Affairs built the northern housing, small one-room accommodations, which cost nothing to rent. There was no cost for electricity, fuel and garbage delivery and so on. Now, suddenly the area is Nunavut, which is no longer under Indian Affairs. Suddenly, the Inuit have to pay rent, electricity et cetera, and the people do not have an income. That is really, really, typical. In the meantime, Indian Affairs does not tell you how much the houses cost to build. Now, all of a sudden, everything is changed, everyone has to have a job.
Some of the people there wanted to keep the culture. They did not want to go to school. They wanted to make a good living off the land, have a good time hunting and fishing. In the meantime, animal rights activists came in 1970. Before that, one white fox fur was $70 through Hudson's Bay or the government. At that time, a seal pelt was around $40. The fox skin has gone down to $3 because of regulations saying you are not allowed to hunt anymore and the animal rights people saying you cannot kill foxes and seals. The elders cannot go out and hunt anymore because they cannot afford to hunt for $3 for a fox fur. The son or daughter cannot go out with dad to go hunting and living on the land. It is really tough.
When I was young, we only had the Hudson's Bay, the mission and the RCMP. We did not have anything. We had a good living. Somehow, I think the government should have done something, even started apologizing for the residential schools. I think that is when the problems started for the Inuit. We do not live the same way we used to and we are losing our culture and language. It is going to be tough to get our culture and language back, particularly right now when kids have to go to school. How will we do it? I know we need more money from government.
In my hometown of Rankin Inlet, between last year and this year, there were three suicides. One was not young anymore; he was in his 50s. I do not know how people have more hope in the future.
[Interpretation]
Ms. Davidee-Aningmiuq: For the last ten years, I have been taking disadvantaged families, single mothers out on the land, taking their children out too. What I have learned and seen, from running out-on-the-land cultural programs is we have many children who do want to go out on the land. I see that the children must be introduced to the land and their culture when they are very young. I see other youth who I can call city slickers because they were not introduced to our culture at a young age. We must plant the desire to be part of our culture when they are young. That is the only way they are motivated to carry on with our customs. The earlier we start these programs, the more positive the impact.
I see young people, who I taught 10 years ago when I started these programs, teaching our children. We can see positive changes if we start working with very young children. If we do not make things available to them when they are young, they will never learn our customs. It is the same with our own children; we have to teach them when they are young; we have to introduce them to our ways when they are very young. How can they learn if we do not teach them? When we expand this knowledge, the same thing applies to a community.
[English]
Senator Peterson: It is troubling, in that hearing after hearing, we seem to identify the problem, yet nothing happens. You wonder if anyone has ever quantified it in human and financial terms. Has anyone taken the time to calculate what it costs to do nothing? We go around and around. What is out there to change things? What do we have to look forward to that will end this tragedy? Is it just money? That would be a real tragedy. Is it the Arctic sovereignty? Will that be the trigger that will get things turned around? There has to be something.
Mr. Wilman: Senator, I believe there are three parts to the answer to that question. First, to a large extent, the mess that we are in has been caused by government-sponsored programs. Those programs may have been well meaning. For example, when the government decided years ago to send young people off to residential schools, they did so with good intentions. They had no idea of the horrendous consequences of the loss of culture, loss of language, physical and sexual abuse. They did not expect that, it was not part of their equation, but it happened.
Other programs were introduced such as the schools and the hospitals. These institutions forced people off the land, took them away from their traditional activities. They got houses, but they were moved away from activities and eventually, started to have difficulty pursuing those activities.
People are naturally skeptical about more government programs perhaps resolving the issue. That is why we stress today the need for collaboration and cooperation between community-driven solutions and government. Government needs to support the communities to implement the solutions, work together.
People are also skeptical because they see this as a revolving door of programs and with these programs come new people. The people see new government programs that take some time to get going. After five or so years, the program might start to show results, but by that time the government priority might have changed and the program is stopped. Priorities change or the government changes and the funding stops and the whole process has to begin again. At our public hearings, we hear repeatedly that the people are fed up of saying the same thing over and over again. The participants are sick of their complaints being ignored. The lack of sustainability of these programs is a big problem here. Well thought-out programs, funded over the long-term would help the people who live here. The communities need sustainability in what they are trying to do.
Ms. Davidee-Aningmiuq: I will add that when there is a lack of cultural identity, the people will suffer from negative impacts, which lead to poor life choices. As I said earlier, I have seen people feel so much better about themselves while participating in my cultural skill development programs. In those programs, the people have learned and achieved skills that they could not learn at school or anywhere else. I have seen their sense of accomplishment and their amazement and doing something they never thought they could do. I have seen tears of joy, mostly from ladies who finally say, ``I can do this, I did not know I could do this.'' I have seen people who actually have gone out to look for jobs who have never held jobs before just because they felt better about themselves.
I think the lack of a cultural identity really brings people down.
Senator Peterson: I am on the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples as well and I just got back from New Mexico. We met with the Apache, the Navajo and the Pueblo. They have the same problems as we have here in education, health and so on, but they work on their culture. They stress to the youth that they have to know who they are, what they are and teach them how to be comfortable in their own skin. If nothing else, and they have instilled in the youth a sense of belonging to a specific culture of which they can be proud. They do this through their schools and have done it with their language and their culture. I was really impressed with that.
Mr. Wilman: I did my doctorate in New Mexico, specifically trying to find out how to develop a teacher-training program for Nunavut based on the Navajo teacher education program. You are exactly right. They do know and they are in charge. They do this through the schools and really teach the culture and the language to a fabulous degree.
Senator Peterson: You can see it in their eyes.
The Chair: I come from southwest part of Alberta, we are very much an Aboriginal country, and some of the things you talk about are there, too. Some of the things you have just said in the last 10 minutes are extremely important and I hope we can push them forward because there is a chance if government and others who are attached to government will have the courage and the generosity to do it.
You have given us a wonderful presentation here today. We are very proud to have you here and thank you very much.
The committee adjourned.