Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 2 - Evidence - Meeting of October 5, 2011
OTTAWA, Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 6:48 p.m. to examine the federal government's constitutional, treaty, political and legal responsibilities to First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, and other matters generally relating to the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada (topic: Issues concerning First Nations Education).
Senator Gerry St. Germain (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Colleagues, we are being called back to the Senate this evening, so we shall start immediately.
I would like to welcome all honourable senators and members of the public who are watching this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. They will either be watching on CPAC or on the Web. I am Gerry St. Germain from British Columbia, and I have the honour of chairing this committee.
The mandate of this committee is to examine legislation and matters relating to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada generally. Given this mandate, the committee has undertaken a study to examine possible strategies for reform concerning First Nations primary and secondary education, with a view to improving outcomes.
Among other things, the study has focused on the following: tripartite education agreements, governance and delivery structures and possible legislative frameworks.
This evening, unlike other meetings, we will hear from only one witness, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. As the Inuit system differs so greatly from First Nations systems, this will allow us to focus our attention this evening exclusively on the Inuit experience.
In 2008, a national summit on Inuit education was held, which resulted in the creation of an Inuit Education Accord. The accord, signed by governments and regional Inuit organizations, set up the National Committee on Inuit Education mandated to examine the seven themes identified in the accord: bilingual education, mobilizing parents, Inuit-centred curriculum, post-secondary success, capacity building, collecting and sharing information, and early childhood education.
We look forward to more details on this from our witness here this evening.
[Translation]
Before we hear from our witness, I would like to introduce the committee members here this evening.
[English]
On my left is Senator Moore, from Nova Scotia; next to him is Senator Dyck, the vice-chair of this committee, she is from Saskatchewan; next to Senator Dyck is Senator McCoy, from Alberta; next to Senator McCoy is Senator Sibbeston, from the Northwest Territories. On my right is Senator Stratton, from Manitoba; next to Senator Stratton is Senator Ataullahjan, from Ontario; next to Senator Ataullahjan is Senator Nancy Ruth, who is also from Ontario; next to her is Senator Patterson, from Nunavut.
Members of the committee, please help me in welcoming our witness here this evening, from ITK, Mary Simon, the president.
Ms. Simon, welcome. It is nice to see you again. I hope we will have some time to ask you some very pertinent questions. Without further ado, the floor is all yours. Would you go ahead, please?
Mary Simon, President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami:
[The witness spoke in her native language.]
Thank you very much, Senator St. Germain, for inviting me here today to talk to you about one of the most important issues we are facing in this day and age. I would like to thank the rest of the senators for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening.
I am really honoured to join in the discussion on education tonight. I will try to give as much time as I can for the question-and-answer period, because that is where all the good stuff usually comes out anyway.
In 2008, on June 12, I appeared in the Senate following an extraordinary event in Canada's history: the Prime Minister's statement of apology to former students of Indian residential schools. I believed then, as I do now, that the path forward from the apology lies in thoughtful and deliberate measures of reconciliation, in innovative policy measures and investments, and in education directly aimed at improving outcomes. Let me tell you what has happened in the three years that have passed since my appearance in the Senate that day.
As many of you are aware, just four months ago, on Parliament Hill, we released the document you have before you, called the first-ever National Strategy on Inuit Education. The title of this document, First Canadians, Canadians First: The National Strategy on Inuit Education, is a phrase first coined by my late friend, Jose Kusugak.
Our process of information gathering was very much like the work of your committee. We looked at reports written about improving education outcomes. We commissioned a series of literature reviews on various themes in Inuit education, and examined more than 300 published documents in all. We invited expert witnesses to speak to members of our committee. We scanned existing resources to build a picture of where the gaps exist in our education system.
As Senator St. Germain mentioned, Inuit education differs from First Nations education in a number of ways, but most notably in governance. Our education systems are spread across two provinces, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, and two territories, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
The school systems in all four regions are public school systems, operating under provincial or territorial legislation. Where there are similarities with First Nations education systems, it is in education policy. In all four regions, Inuit are in the process of deconstructing policies that were put in place during the residential schools era, and building new Inuit-centred policies. Education systems are not being ``tweaked''; they are being completely overhauled.
We built on that work to develop, for the first time, a national vision for Inuit education. You can find that on page 70 of the strategy, which was given out to you, and page 20 in the French version. It speaks directly to our desire for education systems that reflect our culture and world view and, most importantly, that restores the central role of the Inuit language in our lives.
We want our schools to graduate students who are proficient in the Inuit language and one of Canada's two official languages; we want them to be confident in their culture; and we want them to be able to contribute to their communities, their country and beyond.
Our work was prompted by three fundamental and urgent problems. First, we have a graduation problem. More than 75 per cent of Inuit students who begin school do not finish high school.
Second, we have a standards problem. Many of those who do graduate from high school do not have an education equivalent to their southern counterparts.
Finally, we have a supply-and-demand problem in our northern economy. There is a gap in the availability of educated Inuit to fill opportunities emerging from the Arctic's great resource wealth, and filling that gap cannot happen simply through training.
The strategy identifies ten recommendations that represent the existing gaps common to all four Inuit regions. You can find a summary of those ten focus areas on page 73, and page 23 in the French version.
Of those 10 areas of focus, we have identified three priority areas.
It begins with parents. Our education systems are only just emerging from the long shadow of residential schools and we have several generations of parents whose trust in the school system was badly shaken by their early experiences. We need to reach out and connect to those parents who are not engaged in their children's education.
Our second area of priority is investing in the early years. There is very good research documenting the role that effective early childhood education plays in readying children for school and in contributing to ongoing success.
Third, we need to monitor our progress. Imagine being a parent and not knowing how the education your child receives measures up against what they may receive anywhere else in Canada, and then imagine being told that there is very little data available to tell you what is working and what is not working.
The one thing that Statistics Canada data does confirm is that Inuit are an overwhelmingly young population. Our demographics are the opposite of what you might find elsewhere in the country. With so many young people in our communities, education has to be our focus.
Some of you may be wondering: Should not all of this fall to the provinces and territories to fix? I have two points to make in response to this question.
First, as I travel this country and speak to Canadians, I am greatly encouraged by the level of support I receive when I talk about improving outcomes in Inuit education. I sense that Canadians feel there is a moral imperative to improve our nation's record in Aboriginal education.
Our country operates on the fundamental premise that education provides citizens with the tools to contribute to the prosperity of our country. Therefore, if there are segments of the Canadian population in which educational attainment falls dramatically below the national average, is it not in the nation's interest to direct efforts and resources to change these circumstances, to improve this country's prosperity?
Second, it falls to the federal government to address what decades of failed education policy has produced. The Government of Canada has both the expertise and the capacity to help address some of the gaps that were identified in the strategy, specifically the following: improving access to quality early childhood education; improving access to services for students with special needs; increasing success in post-secondary education; establishing a university in the Arctic; and building our research and monitoring capacity.
We do not have to fight over jurisdiction. After all, the Government of Canada was a partner in the development of the strategy. This is about working as partners on deliberate measures of reconciliation that will transform our education system.
One of the notable developments since the Prime Minister's apology is the number of national conversations that have begun on the topic of Aboriginal education. Aboriginal affairs ministers have made it a priority; the Council of Ministers of Education have made it a priority; Canada's premiers have asked for a First Ministers' meeting on Aboriginal education; and of course, you have put it at the top of your agenda today.
I am encouraged by these developments because it says to me that Canadians recognize that we all have a role in what has been described as ``the biggest social policy challenge of our time.''
This Senate committee can also play a role. I know that your current focus is on First Nations education. I would respectfully encourage you to consider expanding your focus to include an examination of educational development in the Arctic.
You will have familiarized yourself with some of the educational challenges faced by Aboriginal Canadians in your current scope of work, and you will have our strategy written by and for Inuit. These two tools will give you ample information on which to focus an examination of how the Government of Canada can positively impact educational development in the Arctic.
When I first began to get politically involved back in the 1970s, Inuit were setting out to negotiate their land claims. Today, all our land claims are settled. We have a record of successfully tackling big ideas.
I believe that the next focus of our attention must be directed at improving the health of our families and communities by improving educational outcomes. We need to educate our way to prosperity and healthier communities.
I thank you for giving me the time to make this presentation, and I will be happy to receive any questions that you may have.
The Chair: Thank you, Madam president.
My capable associate here from the Library of Parliament wants me to ask a question. I do not want to misrepresent anything.
On June 16, First Canadians, Canadians First: The National Strategy on Inuit Education was released, the culmination of two years of intense work by the NSIE. The report makes ten recommendations aimed at graduating more Inuit students and transforming early childhood, K-12 and post-secondary programs throughout the four Inuit regions of Canada. Among the key recommendations is the creation of a bilingual Inuit education system.
Can you tell us, President Simon, what discussions, if any, are currently under way with the federal, territorial and provincial governments to implement these recommendations?
Ms. Simon: Thank you very much for your question.
We have had some discussions, but not a formal, face-to-face meeting yet. This fall, I am planning to start travelling to each of the capitals and meeting with the leaders who signed the accord, as I did before the launch. I went and spoke to each of the leaders before we launched the strategy.
Now that we have completed that work and we are getting into the implementation and identifying the resources needed to implement those strategies, we are hoping to have another process in place that would be comprised of a representative from each of the same regions, as well as myself talking directly to the leaders who signed the accord.
Senator Stratton: Welcome. I am a temporary substitution on this committee. I have served on this committee, but not for a while. Perhaps you can give me and the viewing audience a bit of a background on yourself, because that was not done earlier. I would appreciate it very much if you could tell me a bit about yourself.
Ms. Simon: Thank you, Senator Stratton.
My name is Mary Simon, and I come from a community called Kuujjuaq, which is in Nunavut, Northern Quebec, more commonly known as Northern Quebec. It used to be called Fort Chimo years ago. It was a military base. I was born in a small community on the Ungava Coast called Kangiqsualujjuaq.
Throughout my education, we were only able to go to school up to grade 6 in the North. That was the highest education level that was offered during my early years.
As a result of that whole era, we were educated mainly through my father, who ordered correspondence courses and taught us school. Even though the Indian Act was not supposed to apply to Inuit because we do not live on reserves, it was applied discriminately in different locations. Because our family was a very large family, the administrator at the time decided that we were not eligible to be educated under the federal system. Therefore, we had no option except to be taught by my father. That is how I got my education.
I have worked in many different areas, mostly in political development and policy development. I have been elected since I was 28 years old in different organizations, including Makivik Corporation. I was Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs for 10 years, and I was also ambassador for Canada in Denmark during a period of time.
In addition, I have been the President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council for over six years, and my present job is as President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which is a national Inuit organization that represents the Inuit of Canada. I have been there six years.
Senator Stratton: That is a remarkable resumé, and your father deserves a lot of credit.
You have been involved in the political system for a fair bit of time. Have you been involved in provincial or territorial consultations on education over the years?
Ms. Simon: Yes, I have. In fact, when I was still living in Quebec, I worked on educational issues for two years, and I did a lot of consultation between the Inuit of Nunavik and the Quebec government. When we were doing this work here on the national strategy, after the Prime Minister's apology, I travelled across the North from east to west, meeting with all the different leaders, teachers and educators. We also had an education summit in Inuvik where Michaëlle Jean, who was still the Governor General at the time, attended the three-day session. We had educators involved in that summit. A lot of the direction that came to do this work came out of that symposium in Inuvik. A lot of it came from the educators who were there. It is very grounded in the education system of the four Inuit regions.
Senator Stratton: That is the future. Are you optimistic about the future for the kids?
Ms. Simon: Well, I hope so. I am an optimist. We have a lot of challenges. If you read the document through, I think it tells a story in itself.
One of the things that we really have to do, and it is a difficult decision to make but it will have to be made, is that if we want to continue keeping our language healthy, it must be taught in the schools and must start at an early age. It must be spoken at home. It is a multi-level process.
In order to teach it in the schools, we have to standardize our writing system. In order to standardize our writing system, all the leaders and the political players of the North are going to have to make some difficult choices in the coming months or years. If we can get past that hurdle, the actual work itself will become easier because you are working towards a common goal. For example, right now two of our regions do not speak Inuktitut very much anymore, but there is still hope because as long as people are speaking the language, you can always bring it back.
Senator Stratton: Yes. Thank you very much. That was fascinating for me.
The Chair: I apologize for not giving a greater description, but Ms. Simon's very good and successful reputation precedes her so well; that is why I was neglectful in not describing more about our presenter here tonight.
Senator Patterson:
[The senator spoke in a native language.]
I want to congratulate you on the work that has been done. It is very ambitious to be pan-Inuit, covering all the Inuit regions of Canada which, as senators know, stretch from the far western part of the Northwest Territories to Labrador, Nunatsiavut and the East. I would like to ask a bit more about the next steps that our chairman alluded to.
We have been wrestling in our committee with First Nations wherein the involvement of provinces or some say the involvement of the federal government should be exclusive. As I understand it, your plans to implement this strategy would be to involve both the federal government and the provincial-territorial education ministries. It is really a cooperative arrangement.
Can you elaborate a bit on how you see the strategy being realized and how you are going to bring the governments and the Inuit together?
Ms. Simon: Yes, I can. The next steps that have been discussed so far are that we would like to establish a national centre for Inuit education within ITK. It would be a very small centre, maybe two people working in terms of coordinating it. We need a body to oversee the implementation of this report, and ITK, as the national organization, would be best placed to do that.
Part of the next steps would include setting up another committee, a national committee like the one we had when we were developing the strategy itself. It could very well be some of the same people, or new people, but it would depend on the regions themselves selecting their representative. They would be working with ITK to start breaking down the ten recommendations as to how they are going to be implemented and how much money will be required to implement them. They will not happen all at once; we will have short-term goals, medium-term goals and long-term goals, depending on which recommendation we are talking about.
For instance, the top priorities right now recommended by the four Inuit regions are early childhood development, parental mobilization and engagement, identifying gaps and doing more research. Those are among the first of the short-term goals. We have to start working on breaking down the figures and the strategy as to how that will happen.
We are hoping that the national committee will be put in place fairly quickly, and from there, I have already been working all summer with Udloriak Hanson, who is now working for ITK. We have been working with the private sector because when you look at the amount of money that is going to be needed to implement the ten recommendations, the federal government has been saying to us right from the beginning — they are part of this process; they signed it as well — that they are not the only ones that should fund the strategy. It must be a partnership approach with the provincial government, the territorial governments, the federal government and the Inuit partners. We have been working with the land claims organizations for them to contribute to the work of the committee as well, not just in terms of paying for the committee members, but also actually paying for the implementation of these recommendations.
We have been working with the private sector out of Toronto. I had a round table discussion with 10 CEOs out of Toronto in June or July. We have been doing follow-up phone calls and conversations, and we are starting to pick up some donations — substantial ones, I might add — from the private sector.
By doing that, every time I speak to the federal government they say to me, ``If you can show me that other people are committed to what you are doing and other people are putting in money, we will look at it and we will contribute.'' Sometimes they will even go as far as saying, ``We will match whatever funding you can raise from the private sector.''
We are hoping this will have a multiplying effect so that we are not just relying on government sources for funding our school systems.
The other area that is just now beginning to be discussed came out of the international resource development conference we had this winter. There is a clause in that resource development declaration that calls for an education fund. Any time a proponent and an Inuit business corporation or a land claims organization negotiates a deal with a developer, an agreement that they will have on that development, not just for revenue sharing or for jobs and training, we want them to set aside a certain percentage of money out of the royalties for an education fund for Inuit. That may grow as well.
We are looking at different options to implement this. We are trying to get away from the status quo. We are trying to think outside of the box to see what other ways we can do this. The old system is like the federal government, where the governments have to pay for education. Nowadays a lot of private sector organizations contribute to training programs, to education funds, and so on. There is no reason why we cannot tap into that as well, because the development that people are talking about right now is really up in the North.
Senator Patterson: This answer is very helpful. For the record, we should ask this: Was it the federal government that funded the main work you did under the Inuit education strategy?
Ms. Simon: They were not the only one, no. They gave a contribution through the Inuit Relations Secretariat, and the regional involvement from the Inuit regions was paid for by the regions themselves. The committee meetings were a split responsibility. The federal government assisted us quite a bit in terms of the meetings themselves. It costs money to have those meetings here in Ottawa for three days. They helped us quite a bit in that, but the regions also contributed a substantial amount of money.
Senator Patterson: Can you elaborate a bit on the provincial ministers' plans to meet on Aboriginal education, please? You mentioned that.
Ms. Simon: They were participating in the committee meetings. It is really the Quebec and Newfoundland governments that are part of our group, because of Inuit living in Northern Quebec and in Labrador.
For instance, the Quebec government is working with the Kativik School Board. How they are going to do this is quite interesting. They are going to do it through the regular budgetary process. Once we identify the implementation plans and the dollars needed to deal with a gap in the education system or to start developing more curricula, one of the ways they have talked about is that they would ask the Kativik School Board to identify an area and increase it in the budget, rather than ask for a special contribution. It might become part of the budgetary process for some. For Quebec, that would be the case.
Newfoundland has not been as clear to us as to how they would do this, but they have been very active in the meetings. They have not missed one meeting.
Senator Dyck: I am trying to sort out in my head the type of governance structures because the situation you are describing, of course, is different than it is in the other provinces dealing with First Nations on and off reserve and the complications that poses.
ITK, from the information we have, is a national advocacy organization. I am wondering what its relationship is to the Government of Nunavut and whether the Government of Nunavut must have its own legislation regarding education, and maybe even language instruction. What is the relationship between ITK and that legislation, and what are you trying to advocate and promote?
Ms. Simon: The two organizations are separate. There is no connection there in terms of the organizational structure. The regions wanted to use ITK as a national Inuit organization to develop a vision for the kind of education Inuit want for the next century. We have never done this before. It has always been very regionalized. It is under different jurisdictions, and that will not change; that remains the same. We do not have any authority over trying to make changes to the legislative authority of each of the provincial governments or the territories, so that does not change.
We are hoping to work with the regions and governments to help them raise resources to fill the gaps that they are not able to meet with the existing funding. That is why we have been working quite closely with them.
For instance, the Nunavut assistant deputy minister was a member of the committee, and she was able to tell us exactly what areas are still lagging behind in their education system.
As a national organization, we would continue to work with the regions and raise money for them, not for us. We are not going to raise that money for ITK. The national Inuit centre will be very small. It is just a coordinating body.
Let us say we wanted to do a national strategy or a national campaign on Inuit parental engagement. A big problem right now is parental involvement in their children's education. Premier Aariak and I have talked about doing a campaign together for Nunavut. The funds would flow from a fund that has been put together by ITK through this committee, but it would be for the Nunavut region, and it could happen in each of the regions. That is how our involvement is; it is quite separate.
Senator Dyck: It sounds to me as though there is a funding problem as well across the provinces and the territories. The money that is provided through Aboriginal Affairs, I would guess, towards a Nunavut self-government is not sufficient to meet the kind of vision and goals you have set forth in the documents.
Ms. Simon: Yes. That is why we worked through the committee to identify the gaps. We also have best practices. There are a lot of good things in the education system that we did not want to throw out. We did not want to reinvent the wheel. We were careful in terms of identifying what has worked in the education system, which there are lots of. However, there are also a lot of gaps, especially in the cultural and Inuit-language development area. Those are still lagging far behind. These are some of the areas that require a lot of work.
Senator Dyck: Are the provinces and territories able to apply for these proposal-driven programs, like the student success program that allows development of curricula for language and so on? Were you able to apply for that?
Ms. Simon: You mean from us?
Senator Dyck: No, from the actual school systems.
Senator Patterson: You mean from Indian Affairs.
Ms. Simon: Yes, they do.
Senator Patterson: I do not think so. I do not think Inuit can apply.
Ms. Simon: I misunderstood the question. No, they do not. They are not on a reserve.
Senator Dyck: It is the same issue; it is just the location. It is just that you are not located on a reserve.
Ms. Simon: Yes. That is why, when you compare the dollars that are going into First Nations education and dollars going into Inuit education, there is a big disparity, even though the First Nations are saying that their investment is not enough either.
Senator Dyck: They get more than you?
Ms. Simon: Yes.
Senator Sibbeston: I have two questions. First, a number of years ago, Judge Berger did a study of the education system in Nunavut. Nunavut had been in existence for a number of years, and Inuit people had a great hope about controlling their destiny, and education is very much a part of it. He went up to Iqaluit and into the Eastern Arctic, into Nunavut, and looked at the education. He basically reported that there were some real problems, disappointments and frustrations with the education system for the Inuit people.
Are you doing all of this work in part as a result of that study, or is it just other things that make you want to do this?
Ms. Simon: It was a separate study altogether. It is as a result of the apology, the post-apology of the Prime Minister. We felt that after the apology was made that we wanted to do something tangible for the people, and education seemed to be the logical choice in terms of working with the federal government on something that would benefit the children. That is one of the reasons why we did it.
When you compare it to the Berger report, there is a lot of commonality in some of the areas, but we did not even refer to the Berger report in our research because we had already read it. I do not know if there is a reference in the report. I do not think there is. It is a stand-alone report.
Senator Sibbeston: The educational reality is that education is being done all along the Arctic coast, right from the west to Nunavut, through Northern Quebec. The Inuit live up on the Arctic coast. That is where education is. In all cases, the Northwest Territories government, the Nunavut government and the government in Northern Quebec are basically influenced, and to a certain extent controlled, by Inuit people. That is a good situation to begin with, I think.
Do you see your role as influencing those governments, those people who are involved in education, to make the changes that you think are necessary?
I will point to one aspect that was done in the Northwest Territories years ago, in the 1960s. The Catholic Church set up a school for leaders. They designed this program where they picked all the outstanding students in the communities and brought them together. They were kind of the elite, the cream of the Aboriginal people then. They educated them, and for a generation they were the leaders in the North.
When you talk about leadership, are you thinking of a similar type of undertaking?
Ms. Simon: Not necessarily, no. We are talking more about starting with early childhood education, when a child starts school or goes into a day care at the age of 2 or 3, and starting the learning process. We want them to start in their language.
We also want them to have a better opportunity to be evaluated for learning disabilities that they may have. In Nunavik, where I come from, they did a major study in one of the communities, in Kangiqsualujjuaq, where I was born. The lady who did the study was on a conference call with us, with a bunch of educators, and she said that in that community, at least 67 per cent of the children had some kind of learning disability. It could be a language barrier, a hearing problem, or it could be because of FASD. They were not being evaluated properly, so they end up going into kindergarten without having a proper evaluation of what their learning abilities are. Therefore, they are starting off on bad ground.
It is to try to start the school system in a way that embraces their culture and their language right off the bat, right from the beginning. As I said earlier, one of the biggest decisions the Inuit have to make in the next few months or years is that we need one writing system. Having three or four different writing systems, as one people, with one culture, is eroding our language at a fast pace. We have to make a difficult decision soon so that we can start to develop our curriculum through the school system and eventually start graduating kids that write in the same writing system, like they did in Greenland. They did it in Greenland, so I suppose we can do it as well.
Some Inuit are very attached to the syllabic system. Some Inuit are attached to the orthography system, and we have three different orthography systems. We have the Labrador, we have the Central, and we have the Western Arctic. All of that has to come together.
I try to tell people now that people our age do not have to change anything. They can continue what they do. It will come through the school system, and you will never even know it happened. I think that is the way to do it. It is a touchy and sensitive issue. Whenever you talk about changing someone's writing system, you get into a lot of hot water. I have been in hot water for it.
Senator Meredith: Ms. Simon, I am encouraged by your report. Others have appeared before us. In terms of this comprehensive report that you are putting forward on Inuit education, I commend you for that.
Earlier you mentioned that your number one recommendation in your report is to engage parents. You talked about it being problematic in that there are a lot of problems around engagement of parents right now. Can you elaborate for us a little more on that?
What are those problems that are causing the lack of parent engagement and causing students to not attend school and thus affecting their LDs and so forth? Elaborate for me a little bit on that.
The next question would be, what are your top two barriers to these recommendations? You have created a comprehensive report, but obviously now the challenges are before you. Elaborate on those for me, if you would.
Ms. Simon: Just on that one?
Senator Meredith: The first one, and then the challenges to the report.
Ms. Simon: To the whole report?
Senator Meredith: Yes.
Ms. Simon: Engaging parents became the number one issue in our work, when we were working for a year and a half. The simple answer is that the residential schools era created a lot of negative feelings about school, with kids being taken away from their parents and families being broken up. You have heard all the stories, I am sure. That created a lot of negative feelings about sending their children to school. Many families did not want their children to go to school at all. Even when they were told they had to send their kids to school, they just did not listen. That is part of the problem.
One other way of not letting their children go to school is that they do not get them out of bed in the morning. With my kids, you have to try to wake them up three or four times in the morning to get them to school on time. Some parents do not do that because they do not want their children to go to school, so that is another way of making sure they do not go to school.
However, it has become more of a problem now because kids are starting to take it for granted that, if they do not want to go to school, they do not need to go to school. It is creating quite a big problem because the graduation rate in Nunavik is 12 per cent. It might be a little higher in Nunavut. They start dropping out at Grade 8 and 9, so they never finish school.
Other issues related to this are poor housing and the lack of space where kids can do their work when they get home. There is no space at home.
Our report deliberately did not deal with all the causes of why kids are not getting through school. Our mandate was strictly academic, and we kept it quite narrow to the academic side, even though we wanted to do more. We felt that this would really be touching the academic side as much as it could if we did not bring in all the other issues. There is poor housing, lack of housing, overcrowded housing and many health-related issues. Addiction is a big problem. We are seven times higher than the rest of Canada in terms of suicide in young people in the North. It is very high. It is unacceptable.
Senator Meredith: Just to interrupt quickly and to jump in on that, how are you dealing with that? Many First Nation communities are grappling with that issue. What kind of intervention are you doing?
Ms. Simon: As you know, it was on the agenda yesterday. We issued a press release today. We have strategies, and Nunavut has a strategy. The Mental Health Commission just announced its mental health strategy. Canada is now calling on a national suicide strategy. It is okay to have strategies. There is nothing wrong with that. It is good to know what you want to do.
However, in our case, the problem arises, in many ways, because we do not have the services. Mental health has many faces. If you have a suicidal youth, it is because he or she has a mental health issue. There is a problem with their mental state. It may be a simple mental state, or it could be a very serious mental state, but we do not have any diagnostic services. We do not have counselling services, really, unless you go into a bigger place like Iqaluit, where you may have some. In most of the 53 communities, it does not exist.
When a youth has suicidal thoughts or they are contemplating suicide or they have attempted suicide, they bring them into a little hospital or nursing station for three days. It takes about three days before the child calms down again. They are not treated for anything. They are just put in the hospital to calm down, and there is a security guard at the door so that the child cannot get out. After three days, they send them home, with no plan for counselling and no plan for after-care. That same person will attempt again, and they eventually succeed.
This is what we are facing in the North. We do not have any infrastructure. I will say that Iqaluit probably has more services than any other Inuit community in the North because it has close to 10,000 people living there now. However, when you get to Kuujjuak, where I come from, you have one social worker. We do not have any people who can diagnose mental health. They do not diagnose mental health. They think it is all just one big ball of pain or something. That is how kids are talking.
I am really pleased about one thing. I care so deeply about this issue, because recently we have had a tragic incident in our family related to suicide. It was something that should not be talked about. It is a stigma to talk about a person dying from suicide. However, recently, ever since the Richards started to talk publicly about their 14-year-old daughter, people are being more verbal about it and talking about it more and more. I am able to talk to my nieces and nephews more about it. It is not such a taboo thing anymore. That is what it will take. You need to talk about it. You cannot be silent. When you are always silent about it, you cannot verbalize your thoughts.
The doctor told me recently that when someone is contemplating suicide, they start to develop a plan, and it evolves over time. If it does not get broken, that train of thought continues right to the end until the person dies of suicide, whereas if someone has a mental health issue and is contemplating suicide and they are getting the right kind of counselling and the right kind of medication, if you need it, you can break that cycle of thought. Once you break the cycle of thought, the person can start thinking about other things. They are not in this black hole any longer, spiralling down. It breaks the train of thought. When the doctor explained it to me like that, it made a lot of sense.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I wanted to ask about money. Let me give you all my questions. What is the budget to implement the strategy? Using the example of Nunavut, how much now is in the educational budget there? When you talk about the federal government perhaps matching funds, is this in the transfer payments to, say, Nunavut, or is this separate monies that would come in? Would the education program in Nunavut change to follow this kind of thing so that those financial resources that are already transferred be available to implement it?
The Chair: How much time will you take?
Ms. Simon: I will be very short.
The Chair: You could write the response, but if you think you can answer, go ahead.
Ms. Simon: How much money do we need? We do not really know, because there is no implementation plan in this. We did that deliberately, because we wanted to plan it really well and work with the regions.
We do not have any money right now, so that is the answer. I am not sure if it would go through the transfer payments. It could go any way. We do not have any one way of doing it. It is open. It is up to the regions and the governments to determine how they would do it.
I do not think it would change Nunavut education. I think it would strengthen it. It would bring the culture and the language closer to the people.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I have a question I would like you to respond to in writing, if you would be so kind. Have you any apprehension in dealing with the provinces and their educational systems, either in a bilateral or a tripartite agreement? That is what we are focusing on for our study.
Ms. Simon: Did you say provinces and territories?
The Chair: Yes, provinces and territories.
Thank you again for your excellent presentation and your straightforward, candid answers to our questions.
Honourable senators, we have to go back to the chamber. I thank you for your patience and your participation.
(The committee adjourned.)