Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 21 - Evidence
VANCOUVER, Thursday, November 22, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 2 p.m. to study issues pertaining to the human rights of First Nations band members who reside off-reserve, with an emphasis on the current federal policy framework.
Senator Mobina S.B. Jaffer (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much for welcoming us so warmly with the prayers and the welcoming song, and before I start my remarks I want to apologize on behalf of all the senators who are here today for not being on time. We tried our best but sometimes things are out of our hands.
For me, it is a pleasure. It is like coming home. My sister, Susan, and I worked together for so many years, and I do not know how many times Chris has tried to get me to do things with him, and I have always enjoyed the experience. I am honoured to be here with you and so are the senators.
I want to start by acknowledging the territory of the Coast Salish people, in particular, Squamish, Musqueam and Klahoose Nations.
The Senate of Canada has entrusted us with a mandate to study issues respecting human rights in Canada and elsewhere. The process works in the following way: A senator will look around his community and see what issues need to be addressed, what issues should the Senate study. Senator Brazeau has identified a study that he thought was very important for people in our country, and he will expand on what his idea was so you will get an idea of what we are looking to hear from you today, but before I do that I will have my colleagues identify themselves.
Senator Brazeau: Senator Patrick Brazeau from Quebec.
Senator Hubley: Senator Elizabeth Hubley from Prince Edward Island.
Senator Harb: Mac Harb from Ontario.
The Chair: We were in Winnipeg and Saskatoon for two days of hearings. In both Winnipeg and Saskatoon, we were received very warmly. We know that there is an issue in our community that we need to address, and I ask my colleague Senator Brazeau to explain to you what the study is about.
Senator Brazeau: I too would like to apologize for being late. We are here to study human rights for First Nations people who live off reserve throughout Canada.
In contemplating this study, obviously a lot of bad blood and bad memories come to mind because we all know who created the labels "on reserve'' and "off reserve.'' I certainly know that as a First Nations person. As well, there are some realities in this country today. One is that First Nations people do not have the same rights as their on-reserve counterparts. For example, they cannot access the same programs and services as their on-reserve counterparts.
The purpose of this study is certainly not to dictate as a committee what should be done, but to hear directly from people. At the end of this exercise we will be in a position to offer some strong recommendations for the government to act upon. Regardless of where First Nations people choose to live in this country, whether it is in their traditional territory, their reserve community, our cities or any rural or remote area, they should be treated equally and have equitable access to programs and services just like every other Canadian.
These hearings are just the beginning of a dialogue. This is one of the first times that this has been done in the history of this country. I can tell you as a First Nations person that it is not always easy to get something accepted by Parliament in terms of having this type of exercise. However, we are here, and what is more fitting than discussing off- reserve issues at your friendship centre here in Vancouver?
Thank you for having us, and we look forward to the deliberations this afternoon.
The Chair: We will start with Mr. Lacerte from the British Columbia Association of Aboriginal friendship centres.
Paul Lacerte, Executive Director, British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres: Thank you, senators.
[Mr. Lacerte spoke in his native language.]
I thank the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre, Susan Tatoosh and John Webster, for hosting us.
I am a mixed blood Carrier First Nations person from north central British Columbia in the Carrier Territories, and I am a second generation residential school survivor. My dad, Marc Lacerte, attended the Lejac Residential School, which closed in 1984. Our family had two casualties, siblings who did not survive their time in our residential school. We continue in our family and in our community the intergenerational healing journey that many of our people are facing.
I wanted to thank and acknowledge our elder for the prayer and the beautiful song that he shared with us. I apologize for having my back toward our community here. I want you to know I mean no disrespect to any of our high ranking brothers and sisters who are here in a very important engagement with the Crown.
I want to thank and acknowledge our warrior brother for his very powerful song and for claiming victory in this space. We stand with our elder and our brother in presenting our words to you in a good way.
I want to acknowledge as well Senator Marge White whom we have with us. The National Association of Friendship Centres has its own Senate structure. Senator Marge White started the first friendship centre in Canada many years ago.
I ask her to stand up for a round of applause.
Also, I would like to bring greetings from the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres. We really appreciate the opportunity to present to you today. I was asked by our executive committee to clarify that this hearing not be seen as consultation with our organization. However, we very much appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback and input into your discussions and to offer our thoughts for your consideration.
This afternoon, senators, I want to offer a bit of a profile of the work of the friendship centres of British Columbia, provide a few of key messages about the conditions in which our people are living and share a bit about the range of services.
We have some heavy lifting to do, now and in the future, to have a better life for our people. We need to do that together. I want to some of the challenges that we are facing as our people move into all sorts of different conditions in our communities. Then we have some recommendations of ways in which the Government of Canada can work in a good way with our communities to move forward and transform this country into a place of real equity, honour and respect for the first peoples of our territories.
The first thing that we want to talk about is this notion of the mobility of our people and the experience that we have had around that mobility, and the experience of friendship centres in British Columbia. Our provincial association just turned 40, and we have been providing these services for over 40 years in British Columbia. For the past 20 years, I have served as the Executive Director of the B.C. Association of Friendship Centres.
Primarily the experience has been around the child welfare system and the forced removal of our children from our communities. Of course this approach is not an intergenerational system of our design, nor do we support the forced removal of our children into the child welfare system. This is a large reason for the migration of our people away from our home territories into urban communities, as is incarceration. Because of our relationship with the justice system, we are dramatically overrepresented in terms of incarceration. It is also a reason for the migration of our people.
I am a Carrier person. I live in Victoria, the capital city. We created a Carrier urban society. Vancouver as well has a number of urban societies. We called ourselves the Capital City Carriers, and over 50 per cent of our members had been relocated to the south to be imprisoned, and after serving their time they decided to stay in Victoria.
Two other reasons for our people moving into urban communities are the risk of violence or abuse as a result of living in the shadow of the intergenerational behaviours that came into our communities through the residential school system — the dislocation and colonization efforts of the Crown and the churches — and inadequate housing, poor quality housing and consequently poor living conditions.
Many of our people are relocating to urban communities for health reasons, the availability of health resources, particularly for the acute health needs of an aging population and the multi-hurdle health challenges people face in our communities. Very often we require specialized services, and people are moving into urban communities for specialized health care services.
Many of our people are also moving into urban communities to attend colleges and universities. One of my favourite statistics is that in 1969 there were about 350 status Indians in colleges and universities across Canada, and in 2000 there were over 38,000 Aboriginal students in universities across Canada. In and of itself that statistic is a litmus test for strength, and it is also very much a feeding dynamic for the migration of our people in urban communities and employment. Many of our people are moving to towns and cities looking for employment.
This is not an exhaustive list, but I wanted to give you a sense of the conditions by which friendship centres in British Columbia receive our people and the interests and the needs that they have as they settle into urban communities.
In the neighbourhood of 1,000 employees work in the B.C. friendship centres. We service about 1,400 Aboriginal people on a daily basis. We have 25 friendship centres are members of the British Columbia association. We register just over 20,000 volunteer hours of service in a given year, and that number is going up. In an environment where the spirit of volunteerism is in decline in this country, people continue to see the friendship centre movement as a valid place to invest their time without any compensation other than the pleasure of serving our people and our communities.
Our range of services includes crisis response and emergency shelters. People migrating into our communities often find it difficult to get an affordable place to live. We offer counselling and victim services. Of highlight lately has been the great trauma in our communities of murdered and Aboriginal woman, both here and on Highway 16 in north central British Columbia.
Many of our people, when they move to urban communities, are looking for a place to celebrate their culture, gather and hold community events to resist assimilation. A core service of the 25 friendship centres in British Columbia is cultural programming, cultural gatherings and community events.
We are heavily invested in early childhood development and providing a pathway to a brighter future to give our kids the best head start we possibly can and to repair the impact of the residential schools as it relates to intergenerational learning and education.
Grief and loss supports: Death and dying is a routine reality unfortunately in our communities. Often our people are being lost by their own hand, and there are layers of grief and loss that require support, and the friendship centres are front and centre in responding to the loss of many of our people of all ages.
As I mentioned, many of our people are moving to towns and cities looking for employment and a core service in the friendship centre movement is providing employment services. Youth, education and moving people: Really, we are a community development agency moving people along the continuum. As our warrior brother mentioned, we are moving from surviving back to thriving again, and employment, youth support and education services are really central to the revitalization of our culture and of our communities and rebuilding the resiliency in our families.
Friendship centres play a very important facilitative role in community development and planning and in educating people about our people. As a result a large part of where the rubber hits the road is between indigenous and non- indigenous Canadians. People have very little authentic information about our people, the true history of our country, our culture, our languages. A core role of friendship centres is to facilitate community engagement and relationship building and also to conduct a public education effort to help to re-educate non-indigenous Canadians about our history and the aspirations of our people to take our rightful place in this country.
Systemically, we have been addressing racism and the systemic barriers that our people face from a public policy perspective within the education system, the criminal justice system and the child welfare system primarily to remove those system barriers.
Despite this very significant capacity of these agencies to help our people when they move into town, we are still suffering. I think that you would have heard in your sessions to date about the mountain of pain that still exists for our people and the very urgent need to effect transformative change to create a better future. Of course, as I mentioned, this is very much in large part due to the experience of the residential school system, the systemic racism, the statutory and regulatory nature of public policy and the public funding perspective.
I have a few thoughts about an invitation for the Government of Canada to work with us moving forward. The first is we are very aware that there is an evolving perspective on the fiduciary relationship between the Government of Canada and Aboriginal people and First Nations people living in off-reserve communities. One of the programs within which that dialogue has been maturing has been the Urban Aboriginal Strategy. Our first recommendation is that the Government of Canada work closely with the friendship centre movement to grow, redefine and expand the Urban Aboriginal Strategy.
We have agencies in 117 communities across the country. One of the brightest lights about the friendship centre movement is that it did not come from federal or provincial legislation. It came from our communities. It grew up out of the soil of need of our people as they moved into towns and cities.
The second recommendation is related to the Cultural Connections for Aboriginal Youth Program and that it be regarded by the Government of Canada as a springboard to build a substantive relationship and a meaningful strategy that recognizes Aboriginal youth, urban and rural, as a very important and strategic aspect to a successful Canada over the next 15 to 20 years. Our demographics, as you know, are growing. Over half of our population in off-reserve communities is under the age of 25, and we applaud the decision of Treasury Board to ensure that the cultural connections program come back online this year, and our invitation is to enter into a long-term commitment.
The third recommendation is to significantly increase engagement and resourcing for employment and training services that are culturally based. We have a representative here from the Victoria Native Friendship Centre and I briefly want to give you an example of our best practices. They have a project for Aboriginal youth where they carve totem poles. They spend a third of their time carving the totem pole and two thirds learning from the employment readiness services. They have three intakes of 20 youth. We just raised the second pole in Victoria. We have a 100-per- cent success rate for job placement. All of those youth are working. However, they did not come to the program for job skills; they came to learn how to carve and paint a totem pole. When that pole gets raised they can look up at their work, and there is a sense of pride, ancestral connection and longevity of their efforts. That is the nature of the culture- centred services that we have been advocating for.
The fourth recommendation is to support indigenous community-led projects to end violence towards Aboriginal women. For us particularly as both indigenous and non-indigenous men, it is long overdue for us to individually and collectively speak up against the treatment, the lack of respect that gets shown towards indigenous women and children in this country, to apologize and to take responsibility, but it has to be our communities that lead that effort and with a restorative lens as opposed to a punitive lens. This is a perfect example of the kind of effort where we need to work together. None of us can do it alone. We have to raise our awareness, change policy and increase investment to enable that work.
Our last recommendation is that the Government of Canada implement all 46 articles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, particularly those that focus on the rights of our women and children.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you for your very comprehensive presentation. On behalf of the committee, I ask the witnesses and the audience to please see these hearings as the first step in our deliberations. If you think of other things, please let us know.
Before we hear from Ms. Tatoosh; Susan, I cannot resist saying that I marvel at the fact that you are still at it after all these years. I take my hat off to you, and to see you here today is a real pleasure.
Susan Tatoosh, Executive Director, Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Society: Thank you. I would like to give a few moments to one of my colleagues who has to leave to catch a plane. He has come from the Island, and I would like to share some of my time with him.
The Chair: Mr. Beaton, when do you have to catch your plane?
Chris Beaton, Project Manager, Tillicum Lelum Aboriginal Friendship Centre: My plane leaves at four o'clock, and unlike Victoria, there is nothing later, or I would stay.
The Chair: After Chris speaks, if any of my colleagues have particular questions of him, we will go to questions before we go to Ms. Tatoosh, if that is okay.
Mr. Beaton: Senators, I bring greetings from the Tillicum Lelum Aboriginal Friendship Centre in Nanaimo. We are honoured to have been invited to participate in today's proceedings. This is a critical issue for our community, the urban Aboriginal community, one of the fastest growing demographics in the country. We have agreed to just the two presentations from Mr. Lacerte and Ms. Tatoosh.
If there is any message that our friendship centre would like to deliver to this process, it is that we are long past conversation on many of these issues. As much as the good words will be shared today, I do not think that there will be a lot of new information. I think it is critical that we move to action, that everybody in this room make the commitment to take the information, accept the information and share the information with each other. We have to move into action so that in 10 years we do not have another hearing on these very same issues.
I applaud that this is Senate process will make strong recommendations to the Government of Canada. I would ask that it take it further and become a strong advocate by taking this information forward and ensuring that change comes. We need action to address the issues.
Thank you, and again my regrets for having to leave so quickly.
The Chair: If you want to send us a written submission, we would appreciate that too, not that we are trying to make more work for you. You can just do it in point form.
I know that you have worked on these issues for a long time. You said that we have to move to action. What should be our first action? Can you tell us a few things we should be looking at right away?
Mr. Beaton: I think Mr. Lacerte touched on it, and that is relationship building. I am a strong believer in conversation, and if I was to request anything it would be to have these conversations on a regular basis so that relationships can be built, solutions can be found and action can be taken. I really do believe it is from these conversations that all of that will come.
On your point on the presentation, we had talked to the clerk of the committee previously about submitting a written paper as well.
Senator Brazeau: Mr. Beaton, we as a committee are seeking recommendations from the grassroots people. As you know, we met with friendship centres in Winnipeg and in Saskatoon. In Winnipeg, for example, there was, I guess, consensus and even a recommendation that went pretty far beyond what I thought I was going to hear, and it was personally music to my ears.
We know that for every $8 the federal government spends on reserve, only $1 is spent off reserve. Yet, the conditions on reserve are still, for the most part, pretty horrible. The off-reserve individuals seem to fare better even though less money is being put into that part of the system. The Winnipeg Friendship Centre basically said that perhaps the money should start falling where the individuals are.
That is a pretty strong comment. On the one hand, I am sure we do not want to take away from what the individuals on our reserve communities receive, but on the other hand people are falling between the cracks, and I say this openly, because of the jurisdictional fighting between the provincial and federal governments. My recommendation to friendship centres would be: sell the message. Let me expand on that, because while First Nations, Metis and Inuit people know what friendship centres do, the policymakers and politicians are not aware. My free advice is that we work together to reach a position that tells the story about the results that get achieved. When somebody walks through a friendship centre, goes out and comes back, they are establishing their history, a little focus on the programs that exist, education, job training. I think that if we worked together we could create that message. I know the friendship centres are not political, that they are focused on service delivery. However, just because you are not political does not mean you cannot be vocal. I would suggest that collectively you start being more vocal. If you do, the policymakers, both provincially and federally, will have no choice but to listen, to react and to act. When you are formulating your recommendations, I would respectfully but strongly advise that you think about that message.
Mr. Beaton: Thank you, senator, for the free advice. We always appreciate free advice. Unfortunately public relations and marketing does not come free, and the limited dollars that friendship centres get when we talk about the aid ratio for on and off reserve, one of the great success stories at our friendship centres is how they turn that $1 into $12 or $20 or $25 from a variety of different sources, and we do that through telling our stories and sharing our successes. I think we are good at it. Certainly having provincial spokespeople like Mr. Lacerte sitting next to me is very helpful, but it means taking time away from programs and services to be able to do that. I think we do a good job at it.
Could we do more? I guess so, but I come back to my initial point about sitting down on a regular basis and creating those relationships and having those conversations. Part of that selling will happen, and some of the solutions and actions required to address the issues we are talking about today will begin to get addressed.
Senator Brazeau: Somebody said earlier that we cannot do everything alone, and to that end I am here to help. I am not very old, but I too am tired of having meetings and meetings and studies and studies and those studies collecting dust. It is time to act and not just say it. So all I am saying is I am here to assist, and I am sure my colleagues are as well. It is time that we actually achieve something that is measurable and tangible for the benefit of our populations.
Mr. Beaton: I agree with that. I beg my adieu. I have to go. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Beaton, and we look forward to hearing from you as well.
Ms. Tatoosh: Thank you for allowing Mr. Beaton the time to have input. It is a long ways to come not to be heard, and I do hope that he has been heard.
I would just like to acknowledge the territory that offer their hospitality to us, the Coast Salish Territories and the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish bands who are very supportive of all the work that we do in the urban community.
The Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Society appreciates the opportunity to speak to the Senate committee as you consider the issues related to human rights of First Nations peoples who choose to reside off reserve with an emphasis on your current federal policy framework.
The Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Society was established in 1963 under the British Columbia Act as a non-profit organization with charitable status. The centre has been providing quality delivery of programs and services to First Nations, Metis, Inuit and non-status Aboriginal people for close to 58 years.
Our programming contributes to the cultural, educational, social, economic and recreational development of First Nations people who choose to live in the urban setting of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. These programs and services support the objectives of Aboriginal self-determination. Our services support off-reserve people in Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby, North Vancouver, New Westminster, and our cultural nights attract people from the Fraser Valley and the local surrounding reserves of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh.
In Vancouver, we have unique urban Aboriginal community organizations with a proud history and track record of responding to the needs of our migrating First Nations peoples from within the province, outside the province and outside of Canada who have come to our city seeking education, employment, health care, housing or retirement. Many of these organizations and agencies like ours have come into being as a direct result of our community expressing a need identified by a lack of culturally relevant and responsive services. There was a need to provide equality of access to programming services and opportunities in the urban area. We recognized and acknowledged the importance of the inclusion of culture, tradition and values in delivering culturally relevant and appropriate services to our people.
Our success has been in developing partnerships, cooperation, collaboration and sharing. These not-for-profit organizations and charitable organizations have established a track record and gained recognition from civic, provincial and federal governments in the quality of services provided. Some of these agencies are the Native Education College, Vancouver Native Health Society, Aboriginal Community Career Employment Services Society, Urban Native Youth Association, Circle of Eagles Lodge Society, Federation of Aboriginal Foster Parents, Helping Spirit Lodge Society, Vancouver Native Housing Society, Lu'ma Native Housing, Kla-How-Eya Aboriginal Centre in Surrey, Spirit of the Children in New Westminster, Nisqa'a Tsa'amiks Vancouver Society, Vancouver Aboriginal Child & Family Services, Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Society, Warriors Against Violence Society, Vancouver Aboriginal Transformative Justice Services Society, Healing our Spirit, Kekinow Housing, Aboriginal Front Door Society, Aboriginal Mother Centre, Canadian Aboriginal Aids Network, Knowledgeable Aboriginal Youth Society, Pacific Association of First Nations Women and the Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council. This does not include all of the urban Aboriginal organizations in the Greater Vancouver area, but it will emphasize and demonstrate the various issues and concerns of First Nations people living off reserve and that those needs have been met.
All of these organizations are operating without adequate financial support from the federal government, as many have not received increases for the past 10 years and more, and the salary levels have not kept up with the cost of living increase or the inflation rates of basic needs such as food and housing.
While we are proud of the collective work we do on behalf of Aboriginal off-reserve community members living in the Greater Vancouver area, there is a continued need to increase funding programs for off-reserve Aboriginal populations. There is a chronic need to ensure off-reserve Aboriginal populations are provided opportunities to access quality services.
Inequality of service remains a current challenge for off-reserve First Nations. First Nations on reserve receive childcare support, disability funding and active measures funding for people on income assistance.
These funding challenges are further compounded by the fact that in the past decade the overall Canadian funding provided to social services has been continually decreased leaving our social service agencies between a rock and a hard place. These funding challenges not only impact direct services and programs provided to Aboriginal clients, they also impact how our organization struggles to recruit and retain staff. We provide job training and professional development, and then we lose our employees to better paying jobs in the private and public sectors.
Our funding levels do not offer agencies the opportunity to provide employee benefits such as health plans, short- term disability, long-term disability or pension plans. Many of our employees retire without adequate financial planning because they have not had the salary levels that provide them with the luxury of planning for tomorrow.
Earlier this week, the First Call: B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition released the 2012 child poverty report card. This report confirms that British Columbia has the second worst child poverty rate at 14.3 per cent, the worst rate of any province except Manitoba. The report also highlights that child poverty is concentrated in the Greater Vancouver area. About two thirds of all poor children in B.C. live in Greater Vancouver.
One of the report's recommendations is to increase funding for First Nations child welfare services, education and community health services and Aboriginal friendship centres and develop a long-term poverty eradication strategy in coordination with First Nations, urban Aboriginal communities and provincial governments.
There is ongoing need to ensure adequate funding. It is equally important to ensure Aboriginal people lead all community-based, decision-making processes that pertain to the aspects of our lives. The Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre remains strongly connected to the Aboriginal urban community that we serve, and we will continue to work to support the social, health, education and economic well being of the Vancouver Aboriginal urban community.
I would like to thank you for your time and attention today.
I would also like to take the opportunity to introduce John Webster, the president of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Tatoosh.
Ms. Hutchison, I am assuming you will be answering questions. Is that correct?
Kari Hutchison, Assistant Executive Director, Victoria Friendship Centre: I will try.
The Chair: We all try.
Senator Brazeau: Thank you for your presentations.
Mr. Lacerte said that he did not view this as a consultation. Neither do we. It is a dialogue, and I hope that it is a healthy dialogue for the future. I have been taught that to have a healthy dialogue we have to speak the truth and ask tough questions, and sometimes we have to come up with tough answers.
My question is the following.
The federal government spends a lot of money for First Nations people on and off reserve. They spend more on reserve because they have taken the position since Canada was established that it had jurisdiction only for Indians living on reserve. When you talk about the federal government they say it is the provincial governments who are responsible for off-reserve Aboriginal people. Then when you talk to the provincial government, they say that the federal government is responsible for all Aboriginal people. They play their games, and that has not been addressed or fixed, and I do not foresee it getting fixed any time soon.
How much and at what level is you involvement with the provincial government. I am aware that there is underfunding in some areas. It is also the reality that the federal government transfers a lot of money to the provincial government for the benefit of all its citizens through many social programs such as education and health., What level of discussion do you have with your provincial government with respect to that funding?
Ms. Tatoosh: Thank you for your question. Here in the Vancouver area, and I can also speak for Mr. Lacerte, all of our friendship centres have a good working relationship with the provincial government; if not, we would not be here today because we do depend a lot on our relationship building with the provincial government, the municipal governments and the federal government. Without creating those partnerships, understandings and sometimes memorandums of agreement, we would not have the opportunity to present ourselves as we do in the urban community.
Senator Brazeau: Does that translate into serious and significant dollars for the benefit of off-reserve Aboriginal people in the province?
Ms. Tatoosh: I do not know if you are aware of it, but in the throne speech this past February, Lieutenant Governor Steven Point brought to the attention of the provincial government the need for an off-reserve Aboriginal action plan, and since that time we have been working closely with various ministries of the provincial government toward building that urban Aboriginal strategy and that urban Aboriginal action plan.
Senator Brazeau: That is really encouraging to hear. I have always said that regardless of the jurisdictional infighting between the levels of government that Aboriginal people should always hold both levels of government's feet to the fire because while they fight people fall between the cracks, and that should not happen.
My second question deals more specifically with our study at hand. Obviously you serve a lot of people in the area and in the province as well for the benefit of off-reserve Aboriginal people. Do you hear from individuals when they walk in, in terms of they perhaps not being able to access some rights, perhaps voting rights because they live off reserve and cannot vote in their band elections. Or perhaps they cannot access some programs and services in their home community, again, because of the fact that they live off reserve. In some instances band funding includes all band members regardless of where they live. However, it does happen that people cannot access some of these programs or even their rights because they live off reserve. Do you hear from people with respect to that kind of situation? The gist of this study is to ensure that people are able to exercise their rights.
Ms. Tatoosh: In the Greater Vancouver Area we service and accommodate First Nations bands by having their citizens here in the Greater Vancouver Area come to the friendship centre for their elections. They come and cast their ballots here at the friendship centre, and the bands are involved with that process.
The bands deliver food to us here in the city, fish for their members. Maybe where you come from it is not as cooperative or collaborative. Here in B.C. we find that there is a good working relationship because you have to remember that as First Nations people we are still members of our communities. We are in our home away from home, so that relationship is still there and will continue to be there.
Mr. Lacerte: To build on Ms. Tatoosh's comment about the throne speech commitment, it is actually the first provincial jurisdiction in the country to make a formal commitment to develop an off-reserve Aboriginal strategy. We have a really unique set of conditions in the British Columbia region of collaboration, federal/provincial collaboration, to develop a long-term plan to close the socioeconomic gap for our people.
As to the question about people walking through the doors of friendship centres and saying that they are being neglected or denied by their home community and whether there is a lack of connectivity, it is a very interesting question and something that we spend a great deal of time talking about. This whole relationship is rather like a treaty amongst ourselves between our brothers and sisters who live at home and live away. It is a very important part of the future of our people, and we want to reaffirm that. As Ms. Tatoosh has said, there is a very strong working relationship between the friendship centres and First Nations, and the people who come through our doors, for a variety of reasons, many of which are outside of the control of our people, require support and to a certain extent a recovery process. As we get healthier and more resilient, the recovery process is becoming one of re-culturalization. The way that we become strong again is to get strong in our identity by going back through our generations to connect to our culture to get a sense of place, Indigenous people, "indigenous'' meaning of the soil. A sense of place is really critical.
That is the rationale or the force for us to reconnect with our home territories and to do that in a good way and respectful way because that is our pathway in reclaiming our identity and our strength.
To that end, all of the friendship centres in British Columbia got together, and we asked ourselves that very pointed question, and we made a declaration. We made a unanimous declaration that we recognize the representative relationship between First Nations and their citizens regardless of where their citizens live, full stop. Then we said that friendship centres are not governments, we are not structured as government, we are structured as non-profit societies, and we do not want to be governments, and we will never seek to be become governments. Then we said that a lot of our people live off reserve, over half of them live in towns and cities, so we have the right and the responsibility to provide services, to build our capacity to provide services to those people. These are community owned or operated organizations and we have the right and responsibility to advocate for the needs of those people but not to try to erode or derogate the legitimacy of the relationship between First Nations people and the governments, their traditional governments or their band elected governments.
Senator Hubley: Thank you al very much for your presentations. It is a pleasure from me to come from one coast directly to the other coast, so I am very pleased to be with you here today.
I will direct my first question to Mr. Lacerte. When you talk about mobility, would that be mobility from the reserve into the urban area, or would it be movement within an urban area? In other words, does the mobility stop when they come to the centre? If they come from the reserve to Vancouver, do they stay here generally?
Mr. Lacerte: It is really a unique province in that geographically we have so many different dynamics and so many reasons for mobility. The origins of the friendship centre program, the Canadian government called it the Migrating Native Peoples Program, which is what it was then. They removed the travel restrictions in the 1960 Indian Act amendments, so people starting migrating into towns and cities.
Now, it is a much more dynamic reality. We have third generation off-reserve families who have a very limited functional connection, to their home community.
Increasingly we have people with the means to travel back to their communities — and my family is one of them — particularly during the hunting season or fishing season or berry season. A lot of our people as we are getting healthier are accessing traditional thinkers and traditional practitioners to do ceremonies. There is two-way mobility. The primary condition for our communities is poverty, intergenerational poverty, resulting from the residential school system, and there are limitations. I would say necessity drives most of our migration, necessity for health care, employment and education.
Senator Hubley: Ms. Tatoosh shared with us that the friendship centre is a deliverer of programs. Programs are delivered through the centre to the Aboriginal people, but I think that it is an open-door policy as well in that any person in need can come to the centre. Is that something that your funding recognizes?
Ms. Tatoosh: Some of it does, but, as you have identified, we get, especially in this area of Vancouver, we get a lot of non-Aboriginal people coming through our doors. We have a food bank. It is supposed to be for our elders, but we have a lot of people especially within the past year who are not Aboriginal. It is getting harder and harder to meet those needs because the food bank that we provide comes from the Greater Vancouver city food bank, and initially we provide them with the statistics and the data of our numbers that will require assistance.
Ms. Tatoosh: The greater movement that is happening in Vancouver that is causing people to become homeless, that is causing people to be one or two paycheques away from poverty, that is making people more reliant on services, is causing them to come to friendship centres in that they know that the doors are always open, so we get a lot of that.
Senator Harb: I want to ask you a few questions about how your organization has evolved over time. Mr. Lacerte, you mentioned the advocacy role that your organization has played. Obviously today or this year you serve a lot more people than say 15 or 20 years ago. How do you see your role now given the social pressure that you see coming. How do you see your role from here on, and what are the things that the federal government can or should do specifically to assist you in fulfilling this role?
Mr. Lacerte: We have certainly expanded our capacity over the last 10 or 15 years. I would say we have probably doubled the size of our capacity over the last 10 or 15 years with the in-migration of Aboriginal people, the pressure, the demand for services. We have tracked it. Specifically, the demand for services in the last 10 years has doubled. That is in part due to the birth rate and the pressure, increasing levels of poverty in our communities, an increase in the number of non-Aboriginal people coming through our doors and the number of our people who are migrating away from their home communities and the inter-urban communities. The 2006 census says that 64 per cent of status Indians in this country now reside off reserve, and by our calculation about 90 per cent of the non-status Indians in this country reside off reserve, so we have had a very substantive demographic shift.
Our role in that regard has taken a few turns. One is to expand our capacity to meet a broader range of needs. Many organizations in this fiscal environment face so much downward pressure on public revenues. Many of our sister organizations are struggling and shrinking. There is a downward pressure on administrative revenues and recoveries. It is harder and harder for non-profit organizations to operate in this country, and the friendship centres in British Columbia have been able to hold their own and grow. That is in part because of the support that we provide to each other, the strength of the relationship that we have with First Nations, our focus on accountability and effectiveness and listening to our people. We have evolved as a needs-based organization. There is a need in the community. We organize ourselves. We identify the need, organize ourselves to respond to the need, enable the resources and the people to meet that need and then go back to find the next need.
It is cyclical development that is really anchored in the needs of our people, so we do not make third party solutions and then plunk them down in our community. We listen, we have our volunteer boards of directors, and we have a number of ways of determining what that need is.
How the Government of Canada can move forward with regard to friendship centres, I do not have an exhaustive list but I have a few thoughts on the way that we might be able to undertake that. One of the most pressing needs — I will just speak from my heart — for me is to provide space for systemic change in regard to the lack of respect for our indigenous women. I will just say personally that we as men need to be wholly indignant, and like our warrior brother, his dance here today, we need to take that level of urgency and speak out against violence towards indigenous women. It is a shame on all of us as men that those conditions continue to exist. It was never in our culture to harm our women and children, it was always in our culture to protect them, and so being silent or being neutral is not good enough anymore. If I had to think about one cause that we need to occupy, it is revolution of men in our society to stand up and speak out against the poor treatment of our women and children.
From a public policy perspective, it sounds as though the Senate discussions and your findings will really contribute to a new public policy framework for the way that the Government of Canada relates to indigenous people. One way you can work with us is not to put us in a situation to divide us. The suggestion of a sharing of resources is very challenging, and we do not want to contribute to any reduction of resources for our brothers and sisters living in First Nations communities.
The life conditions notwithstanding, the cost of the kinds of infrastructure services that have to go in, that system is not of the making of our people, and the perception that that is a burdensome cost is, from our perspective, inaccurate. This is a historical legacy cost that was the creation of the Crown and a permanent fiduciary responsibility of the Crown, to work with First Nations to undo the impact of the residential schools and the dislocation of our people off our traditional territories. Another way — and this might seem like an indirect answer, but it is quite direct — is to not put us in a situation where it is a reallocation of resources to off-reserve communities to follow the population.
We do not want to contribute to a notion that it is time for or appropriate to reduce the level of investment in First Nations communities. At the same time, we think that awareness building, policy change and increased investment are needed to respond to the new demographic reality of an increasing urban Aboriginal population. I mean, this is the future of this country in very many ways. Now that Canada has endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Senate recommendations could seek to find activities or pilots to implement specific recommendations that could become role models for leadership worldwide in relation to the Crown and our peoples.
Senator Harb: You strike me as being almost like a fire department, consistently trying to put our fires with so many needs coming your way. Over one third of your population is living below the poverty line. The ratio is 3 to 1 non- Aboriginal versus Aboriginal when it comes to a high school diploma. Fifty per cent of the population seems to have a medical condition defined as being chronic, and the unemployment rate is almost double when it comes to Aboriginals versus non-Aboriginals.
Are you a charitable organization under the federal law? Are you a charity or not-for-profit?
Mr. Lacerte: About 20 of our 25 friendship centres are charities and are registered as charities. Our provincial office is a registered charity, but we are incorporated under the provincial Non-Profit Society Act.
Senator Harb: Correct, but you are a charitable organization where federal status is concerned.
As such, your hands are tied. It strikes me that this is something we should really take note of. You are handcuffed in a sense because under the law as a charitable organization under federal statute you are not allowed to be an advocate. You are just a service provider of some sort, a charity; you raise money and distribute it. It is a very important issue. With over 50 per cent of your population coming to an urban setting bringing all kinds of issues along with them, along with the difficulties and challenges that go with those issues, you are handcuffed because at any given point in time any bureaucrat can come up to you and say, "Look, I am sorry, not only can I not give you money to do the job you do but I have to revoke your licence because you are doing advocacy work.''
A number of judgments have been rendered by both the Federal Court and the Supreme Court dealing with non- reserve Aboriginals who are living off reserve. Both levels of court have clearly sided with the Charter of Right and Freedoms when it come to the rights of First Nations, that whether you are on reserve or off reserve you have equal rights before the law, and, therefore, you are to receive the benefit as decided by the law. To what extent is there discussion in the community to take those decisions to the government and ask what specifically it is doing from here forward in order to clearly state those First Nations', notwithstanding where they live. As far as I am concerned not a lot of discussion has taken place at least on Parliament Hill. Has any discussion taken place in order to shatter the ceiling, and if there is no discussion, is there any intent to have a discussion within the community about those decisions.
Mr. Lacerte: Thank you, senator. I just wanted to reference a few of the cases that you have talked about.
One of the more significant cases for us has been Corbiere. John Corbiere came forward and said, "I have a right to exercise a vote.'' It speaks to Ms. Tatoosh's comment, and this friendship centre is one of the best examples in the province of polling stations and working with different First Nations to set up access. Poverty, again, becomes a substantial barrier to this question of do you participate in the democratic process of elections and not being caught in a system of mail-in votes with no sense of the candidates. One of the strategies that we have been trying to undertake as a Corbiere support strategy is to hold polling stations in friendship centres.
Another unique dynamic is the executive directors of many of our friendship centres, are from the local First Nation. Again, I do not know if it is similar in other places across the country, but it is a very important dynamic here because it facilitates that firsthand understanding of what is happening on the res.
So in the context of Corbiere we have made efforts to facilitate voting opportunities for people with their local First Nation. We have not launched a challenge — although we have considered it within our provincial board governance structure — around Corbiere to seek further implementation in terms of direct allocation of resources or a forced arrangement with First Nations. Instead, we have chosen a pathway of collaboration with our elected First Nations leadership.
The second case is Delgamuukw. In Delgamuukw, the Supreme Court said, we are all here to stay, here is the title of the Crown and here is the title of First Nations and the jurisdiction of First Nations. So we have not been engaged directly in the implementation of Delgamuukw, but it is a substantial watershed decision in terms of the rights of First Nations.
It was a hereditary system. Interestingly, the Delgamuukw, Gisday'wa, the Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs were behind the court case, and in those traditional governance structures they were very much land specific. In a traditional governance context people who are dislocated from their territory by choice or by force face real limitations to being able to travel home and participate in things like potlatches. Notwithstanding that the Supreme Court has said there is a disconnect here, that is reality for us, being located so far away from our home territories. Those are very much location specific governance functions, being there for potlatch. I have a name and a seat in my own potlatch territory, but it is 650 miles north from here. Many of our people find themselves in that exact same situation.
That is not disempowerment by our traditional leaders. That is a reality of the migration of our people, and poverty is a real barrier in that we cannot hop on a plane or jump in our car and take a week off work and go home because one of our hereditary chiefs died. We feel that pain of not being able to do that, but it is not a failure of our traditional system, it is a reality of the migration of our people.
The Supreme Court decisions around the natural resource development question, Taku and Haida, have come up in many discussions in northern British Columbia in particular and the requirement for adequate consultation. Does adequate consultation mean off-reserve citizens need to vote about whether or not a particular natural resource development project should move forward. We as friendship centres have no formal involvement in those natural resource decisions. Those are unique decisions between off-reserve citizens and their governments, and we have chosen not to participate systemically, nor does that conversation happen at our provincial board tables.
Those are the key cases.
Ms. Tatoosh: I would like to add that as friendship centres we do provide space for First Nations to come and educate their communities and to ask for their input into the decisions that they are making in their home territories.
We, as the friendship centre, do not get involved, but we do offer space for that discussion to happen to give urban people the opportunity for input into those decisions that are made for them in their home communities.
Senator Hubley: On that point, would it be non-political if you also provided space for the member of Parliament who would be running in this district to come to speak to any of your groups or to your people?
Ms. Tatoosh: We do that. We host those types of forums, and we also host celebrations after their elections.
Ms. Hutchison: We are also locations as polling stations for either federal or provincial elections.
Senator Brazeau: I would be remiss if I did not ask this question, and I guess I omitted to ask this in the sessions that we had earlier this week.
Like I mentioned earlier, I know the role of friendship centres, it is service delivery. I was the former national chief of an organization that represented and advocated for off-reserve Aboriginal people.
Ms. Tatoosh, you mentioned quite an exhaustive list of organizations here in the province, and there are primarily political organizations that represent on reserve people. Who in the province does a good job advocating politically for off-reserve Aboriginal people. If there is a strong voice that is better for the off-reserve Aboriginal population, but if not, obviously it creates some sort of vacuum specifically for the friendship centres and other organizations as well because the reality is that parliamentarians and policymakers will deal more with political representatives as opposed to service delivery. Is there a strong political voice off reserve here in the province?
Mr. Lacerte: I want to draw a distinction. This is, again, a fundamental question for us, and it speaks to Senator Harb's question as well.
The notion that we are charities and registered as federal charities prevents us from being advocates, and provincial office has a charitable foundation, but our organization itself is actually a registered lobby. We spend so much time in the legislature.
The criteria for the friendship centre movement says that we are non-partisan, but it does not say that we are non- political. An Aboriginal person can have so many designations — in my case I am a half breed and I got my status back halfway through my life, mixed blood, off reserve — you become political just by being born. An Aboriginal person born in this country has to become political. Friendship centres are very political. We engage in advocacy relationships all the time.
One primary example is when people come and take our kids away. There are no advocates built into the system, and people from the friendship centres go and argue for those people because they are usually marginalized people. A lot of the times they do not know what is happening to them just that somebody is taking their kids taken away.
People get abused in institutions, in the criminal justice institutions and education institutions. My kids get followed when they go to Safeway. The security guy will follow them. There is a litany of examples of systemic racism, and we engage in an advocacy function all the time to push back and to stand up for our people. Many people would call that a political function.
Is there a voice for Aboriginal people who live off reserve? Absolutely. It gets carried by many of the volunteers on our boards of directors, not just in friendship centres, but in the treatment centres, in the restorative justice societies, all of our sister organizations referred to. There is a very strong alliance of people in the community who stand up and speak out.
When people come into friendship centres do we say, "Sign this ballot so we can also legitimately speak politically for you?'' The answer is no. We do not have the delegated authority to be a representative organization, and we do not want to have that. We think, and both Ms. Tatoosh and Mr. Beaton spoke to this, that authentic relationships through dialogue is the way to build a shared understanding and a shared commitment to a different future. We do have a strong voice, and I think it is because we have not gone into the nebulous ground of competing with First Nations for speaking politically for them. It is not the core of the issue. The core of the issue is let us find practical, respectful ways to improve the quality of life for our people, and let us do that together. That is our engagement pathway. We do those political things, but not in the context of saying, "Yeah, we speak politically for these people.''
Senator Brazeau: Perhaps I should be more specific. There are some political organizations that represent off-reserve Aboriginal peoples in this province. My specific question is: Are they doing a got job at advocating politically, in your opinion, on behalf of the off-reserve Aboriginal population in British Columbia?
Mr. Lacerte: We do not have a response to that question. We would like to simply reaffirm the role that we play and the healthy relationship that we have with First Nations leadership and with the Métis Nation of British Columbia as well. We have all sorts of very healthy, functional examples of good working relationships where there are people and activities populating the landscape that we could point to that are meaningfully improving the quality of life for our people.
The Chair: In both Manitoba and Saskatchewan we had asked friendship centres how they anticipate responding to the changes in First Nations and Aboriginal populations. Do you see the role of friendship centres changing or evolving to respond to the demographic changes the Aboriginal community is experiencing?
Ms. Tatoosh: First and foremost, I would like to reiterate that the friendship centres came into being as a bridge between the reserve and the off reserve. It was the bridge to help in that transition from the reserve to the urban area. Our main role has been, for a long time, as a referral service, but we have developed into becoming the hub of the community where not only do we offer services but we also are the gathering place. This is the place where people come when they are looking for their relatives when they come to the city. This is the place that people come to when looking for housing, for assistance in how to apply for their status, when looking for help. Our role will always be one of offering that service to them, being the bridge for them and for the 10 per cent for whom we are allowed to advocate as charitable organizations. We will use that full 10 per cent to advocate on their behalf.
The Chair: I assume that you provide service to everybody. You do not ask what status is?
Mr. Lacerte: I think the answer is yes, we will change and evolve and our role will change. Two thoughts: One is our people are moving along the continuum. More and more of our people are healthy, strong, well-adjusted and looking for excellence and optimization space. There is a new energy in friendship centres around excellence and responding to people who are not in the first stage of Maslow's hierarchy of need, and the second is own source revenue.
We see the future. There is downward pressure and all sorts of gloomy clouds on the economic horizon for some time to come now, so we have been looking at own source revenue, social enterprise and social innovation. We are moving willingly into the space of finding ways of generating social profit, fiscal profit and social innovation. Again, the Vancouver centre is a great example of that with their cook training and their catering program here. We will move and change with the times and build as much independence as we can.
The Chair: Mr. Lacerte, you were speaking about youth employment programs, and you described them quite fully. One of the things about our dialogue with people is to share what is happening in different parts of the country.
Do you have any suggestions for friendship centres or service delivery organizations that might want to implement similar programs that you have on youth employment?
Mr. Lacerte: One of our great strengths is learning from each other, both here in British Columbia and across the country. We have actually gone en masse to Ontario to look at the work that our sister centres in Ontario are doing there, and knowledge transfer is a core part of our relationship building; we help each other.
One of the spaces that we host every year is called Gathering Our Voices. It is a provincial Aboriginal youth gathering. We get over a thousand youth, and we have been doing it for a dozen years now. In that space we are very much focused on education, health, employment, and lots of peer learning goes on, mentorship and peer networks, youth networks. We have a very strong Aboriginal youth movement in British Columbia, and we are more than happy to share. We have a number of staff working in that context as well. If there is anything specific or if any opportunity presents itself, please put us on record that we are happy to help.
The Chair: In your written submission, if you can put a little more detail, that would help.
Ms. Tatoosh, one of the things that we heard in Winnipeg and more in Saskatchewan is that there is always this fighting between on-reserve bands about the amount of money, who gets how much money. You said that you have a very good relationship with the provincial government. Maybe you will include more in the written presentation but for tonight, how were you able to achieve such success and what would you recommend to other communities to be able to build these partnerships between provincial governments and your organizations?
Ms. Tatoosh: The best way is through outreach. It is stepping out of the comfort zone and letting yourself be known as an organization, what the services are that you deliver and not being afraid to knock on doors.
At every opportunity when the feds or the province or the municipalities are having events, we are there. Our presence is always seen, and it goes from attending the neighbourhood planning meeting that wants to know how you would like to see your neighbourhood improved. Go to those meetings, get your people out there. That is what we have done. We have got totally involved with the municipality. We have really let ourselves be known to the province, the ministries and the federal government. Even though INAC, the old name, was responsible for on reserve, we still let them know that we are here, and we are still providing services to their people. In that way by building relationships we are down there knocking at their doors all the time. It is persistence and not being afraid to tell a story like it is. Truth, like Senator Brazeau said. One thing we are very poor at is bragging. We do not know how to brag, even though we have some really great success stories. We do not tell them often enough. The more people hear about your organization, the more they are aware of what is being done the better. Bring them to your organization. Invite them to have their events there. We have their career fares here. We have the election debates for the municipalities. We have the candidates come and present, and the only way you can do it is to engage.
Senator Brazeau: Would you be willing to perhaps provide services to INAC people on how to respond and act with Aboriginal people and perhaps get rid of them?
The Chair: You do not have to answer it.
Ms. Tatoosh: As Mr. Lacerte said, we work in cooperation with everyone that we deal with, and one of the greatest values we have is respect. That is something that we always observe in the way that we treat people, and in trying to work with people we begin with respect. I know that you said it in a joking way, but I have to remind you of our value.
The Chair: You have named this gym Judge Alfred Scow Gym. When I first practised as a lawyer, he showed me the ropes. When you talk about showing respect, one of the things you have not mentioned is your outreach to the diverse community of Vancouver, how much you are part of that community. Today we are in a special room that you have named after a very special person who taught us a lot. It is a real privilege to be here.
One of the things we did not speak about and would love to have in your written submissions is comment on the challenges of education. I know that this weekend there is a conference here on this issue about on-reserve children being off reserve and how do they obtain education. We have run out of time, so I am not going to ask you the question, but we would very much appreciate if you would cover that in your written submission. Thank you very much.
Senator Hubley: It gives me great pleasure on behalf of Senator Jaffer, Senator Brazeau, Senator Harb and our staff for sharing this time with us today. I would like to thank each of you. You have given us valuable information in straightforward answers that will certainly help us as we go forward and produce our report. I would be remiss because I just love the culture on the walls, if I did not mention this very beautiful setting. We are always so impressed with the dynamics of the people and how it is reflected in your art work. Never lose that.
Thank you so much.
The Chair: We will go on to our next panel. Ms. Rauch, please start.
Sarah J. Rauch, Director and Supervising Lawyer, UBC First Nations Legal Clinic: I am the director and supervising lawyer of the University of British Columbia First Nations Legal Clinic. This is a new relationship. I have not been to a Senate committee meeting before, but thank you for the opportunity. It is an honour to be here in this room at the friendship centre and, of course, on these territories.
Unfortunately I do have to leave soon, but the good thing about that is it gives time to other people to speak, and that is important too. I should add that I have a student volunteer who came along, Claire Anderson, who is also willing to stay and answer any questions about the clinic, if that is of assistance.
The First Nations Legal Clinic was founded by my colleague and mentor, Renee Taylor, who was the previous director and practitioner, and was the original brainchild of Madam Justice Lynn Smith, who was the dean of the UBC law school at the time, and has been in this neighbourhood since 1994, so about 18 years. We have moved a few times in the neighbourhood.
I myself am a graduate of the clinic, and the clinic is funded by the Law Foundation of British Columbia and the Faculty of Law at UBC, and all of our clients are indigenous peoples.
We offer a range of legal services to indigenous peoples. It is very wide and diverse, both the peoples and the range of services that we offer — everything from issues such as voting off reserve on which we took a case to federal court regarding a dispute over the issue of the territory. Other issues include band membership applications or disputes, human rights, and residential school settlement issues, processes and fallout. Probably the bulk of the work that we do is criminal defence work and family-related issues, civil issues, wills and estates. We do everything. So what the clinic does can be described as a weaving of education and community service.
Second and third year law students come, and they stay for an entire term of their law school experience. There are only six students at a time, so it is run like a small law firm.
We are just around the corner on Alexander Street. We have always been within about a six-block radius. For a while we shared space with the Native Court Workers and Counselling Association. We are now on our own in our own space at street level. We get clients from all walks of life, but we get a lot of off-reserve urban indigenous peoples who live in the Downtown East Side. We also do liaison and sometimes fully represent people from all over the province. We had a client from Nunavut, so we could be far reaching.
The biggest challenge at the clinic is the volume of calls that we get and the requirement for our services and always having to decide which cases to decide and which people to turn away. So it is extremely busy. It is a benefit to law students because it gives them a chance to learn in a pedagogy that is by doing. Students are articled under the Law Society Rules and can actually take conduct of a trial and run a trial, especially a criminal trial. During the term that they are at the clinic they often have an opportunity to do that, and Ms. Anderson has done that and will be doing that. She has a trial on Monday. So it teaches in what I understand to be a more traditional indigenous type of pedagogy, which is learning by doing rather than learning by being told.
The importance of listening to clients, where they come from and what they are dealing with is something that I stress as the supervisor and managing lawyer. There is an academic component to the clinic and students write a term paper. I call it a thoughtful way of being introduced to the practice of law. By "listening'' I mean not only listening to fellow students, myself or our staff at the clinic and being a hopefully cooperative group providing the service, but also and especially listening to the clients, learning to listen to their stories and to adapt what they have heard to provide innovative ways to represent them, which means sometimes creating innovative arguments to give to the courts and tribunals that are based on indigenous values rather than non-indigenous values, and there are some specific examples that I could use.
Mostly I just wanted to stress, given the context of this meeting, the importance of listening with open ears and being able to sometimes shift perspective from what we have already learned. Students find what they are learning in law school really does not necessarily jive with what they are learning when they come down to practice at the clinic, and especially when they start listening to the stories of their clients and what their clients are bringing to the clinic in terms of their legal issues.
There is a lot of strength in the spirit of our clients even when they are dealing with disputes. Clients never come to a lawyer because they are happy with what is going on. It is usually some kind of dispute that they are caught up in. Often the clients at the clinic are literally caught in a legal system that has been imposed on them and their people for years and years, and we help to try to navigate through that legal system, again, with a certain perspective and awareness and, hopefully, an ability to listen and then to assist in telling or sharing the story with triers of fact.
I have read some of the materials in preparation, again, for this new relationship because I have not been at a meeting such as this before, but what I think I understand some of the focus to be is about off-reserve indigenous peoples and the role that this committee can play in terms of understanding issues and looking for solutions and action, and I guess where the clinic falls is both in the category of education, so education for future lawyers, and also in community service in terms of access to justice.
The Legal Aid situation in British Columbia has been studied and studied recently. It is dire. There are a lot of problems. We do not try to fill the boots of where the Legal Aid system is failing, but we do try to fill a gap where our clients cannot qualify for Legal Aid for one reason or another, and, again, it is very challenging just because of the sheer volume of need, and that is just in the Downtown East Side in this neighbourhood, especially when you consider the need out there in some of the rural areas and communities.
We work closely with the manager of Aboriginal services of the Legal Services Society. Sometimes we have partnerships and share ideas about going into outlying areas, and it is something that we think we could expand if only we had the resources.
Those are my general comments.
The Chair: You were talking about fallout from residential schools. What did you mean by that?
Ms. Rauch: Over the years since the settlement agreement was reached we have had clients who, for example, are disputing estate matters because there is residential school claim money that other family members are trying to access. Virtually every single client that comes through the doors to access legal services at the clinic has been affected by residential school experience either in their own family or in their communities — I can only describe that as a certain pain that they bring in — and certain disputes arise, some monetary, some, again, wills and estates, some family matters, just simply family matters. We also assist people with the Common Experience Payment Process and with the IAP process, going to hearings and helping with that as well. It is extremely challenging.
The Chair: Your sole funding is the Law Foundation?
Ms. Rauch: Yes, the Law Foundation and the Faculty of Law.
The Chair: The committee heard from Ian Peach, who is the Dean of Law at the University of New Brunswick, who stated that although a blunt instrument, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms may be one of the only ways for First Nations people off reserve to obtain access to programs denied them. Have you used the Charter at all to help off- reserve people to access their rights, and how do you feel about using the courts to obtain equality for off reserve First Nations people?
I am from British Columbia. I am a member of the Law Society here, and the committee is very much aware of your challenges. I am wondering if you are looking at any of those cases.
Ms. Rauch: We do use the Charter of Rights and Freedoms wherever we can, and, again, we use it in some innovative ways. Of course we work with the instructions of our clients, and we have to be mindful of indigenous legal orders already in place. Sometimes the Charter does not fit, and, of course, it is a very blunt instrument, but as lawyers and training lawyers we use the Charter wherever we can.
The Chair: An example?
Ms. Rauch: One example that comes to mind is a voting case. I know there is some material about that.
Another case that I use as an example, where we challenged one of the City of Vancouver bylaws that prohibits selling and displaying goods on the street. The case did not get to court because it resolved at the last minute in a very interesting way. We had a client who — this is public knowledge so I can speak about it — who was an artist, and as part of his healing from his residential school experience he would engage the public in displaying his art, which was greeting cards that he developed. The images on the greeting cards were very meaningful to him as part of his healing process.
We challenged the bylaw on his behalf based on the Charter by advancing an Aboriginal right because he said he felt he had the right to do this as part of his healing process, and he could not understand where that right would have been taken away.
The thoughtful part of that process is to step back for a minute and understand where rights come from in the first place, and I think that that is important when you are advancing a rights argument because in indigenous values it is not necessarily that rights are given to a person by someone or by a government or by a law, for that matter. Sometimes rights are understood to be inherent, and this gentleman felt that he had the right to engage with the public about his art work as part of his healing process.
On a whole bunch of levels that draws together an interdisciplinary conundrum about health, about residential school experience, about Canadian history, about this person's ability to advocate for himself by just presenting his own evidence, saying he felt he had the right rather than going through a process of proving that right in court. We brought it to the provincial court, and because he was facing possible restrictions on his liberties if he kept getting these bylaw infraction tickets, we approached the matter through the Charter of Rights and Freedoms It did settle at the last minute.
Senator Brazeau: You mentioned that most people walk through your doors essentially to access the justice system. You are aware that in 2008 the Canadian Human Rights Act, section 67, was repealed to allow First Nations people both living on and off reserve to file with the Canadian Human Rights Commission complaints if they felt they had been discriminated against by the federal government. Subsequent to that, in 2011, First Nations people both on and off reserve gained the right to do the same with their own leadership if they are discriminated against in terms of education, housing, perhaps employment and the whole gamut of issues. Do you offer any services for people who are seeking assistance in perhaps formulating a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission?
Ms. Rauch: That is a service we would offer, yes.
Senator Brazeau: Have you had many individuals seeking assistance to do just that?
Ms. Rauch: We have had an increase since the change in the law. There are a few. Actually, there is an interesting ebb and flow of issues that come through the clinic. We have never done a formal study of looking at those issues, but I can say that both provincially and with the federal human rights changes there has been an increase in human rights cases lately, and some of that seems to be that there is more responsive human rights commissions to complaints that otherwise would have been dismissed or stopped at an early stage. We do have a few cases we are working on.
Senator Brazeau: Anecdotally, those cases would be by people who are trying to seek assistance with respect to discrimination. Could you share what they are about, without going into specific details? Are they about employment? Is it lack of housing?
Ms. Rauch: That is a good question because, as in so many areas of the law, human rights cases in particular, we see a systemic discrimination problem, so it is significant. We have employment situations, and we have situations where certain stereotypes have been advanced by employers usually or sometimes service providers about indigenous peoples. We had one woman who had a disability that caused a tremor and it was assumed that she had been drinking, so she was denied the service. Again, we see systemic discrimination factors all the time, especially in the human rights context.
Senator Brazeau: Would you say that most First Nations people are aware of the recourse that they have with the Canadian Human Rights Commission?
Ms. Rauch: No, I do not. There is a huge gap in the knowledge and especially knowing what is discrimination. We get a lot of inquiries where it is clearly not a human rights issue. I think there is not very much knowledge in the indigenous community.
Senator Brazeau: I suppose part and parcel of our study as well, given the fact that we are dealing with human rights and perhaps the discrimination that occurs across the country with First Nations people, it would be important for them to know that they do have a recourse which is not all that costly, time consuming but not all that costly.
Ms. Rauch: That is if you consider costs in purely dollars. It is always hard and it is a cost, I would say, for people to come forward with their stories, to have trust in any legal system, for good reason. There is a great cost. I do, in my private practice, work in prisons as well or places where people are re-traumatized or re-victimized just by bringing a legal action. Again, to the comment of the Charter being a blunt instrument, Western law itself is somewhat of a blunt instrument, and for indigenous peoples to even trust enough to engage and choose that recourse for solving their disputes is sometimes asking a lot.
Senator Brazeau: I have always believed that section 15 of the Charter should have included residency because of the Corbiere decision and others as well. Do you see any occurrence of residency in terms of First Nations people being a ground of discrimination in the work that you do?
Ms. Rauch: Absolutely, and, again, I point to the outlying areas, the rural areas.
The Chair: I am going to stop you now. We have already taken a lot of your time.
Ms. Rauch: Thank you. Again, Claire Anderson is currently a student at the clinic. She is available.
The Chair: We now go on to Mr. Guno from Carrier Sekani Family Services.
Preston Guno, Program Manager, Carrier Sekani Family Services: Before I begin and following the traditional protocol, I want to recognize the traditional territories of the Coast Salish. I also want to recognize the true experts on this discussion, the community members sitting behind us and the elders here who unfortunately may not have an opportunity to present here. As a footnote, maybe it would be useful to do some kind of a community engagement where the elders can step forward and access a system such as this here.
To the Senate committee, thank you for coming out to Vancouver, B.C.
As mentioned earlier, I work for Carrier Sekani Family Services. We are situated in Prince George, Vanderhoof and Burns Lake. We cover quite a large geographical area that includes rural and urban First Nations, so we have a pretty good perspective on the discussion we are having here today.
Also my background that gives me some authority to speak on some of these topics is my experience as a provincial child and youth advocate. My role was to work in this province to take a look at specific areas such as the rights of children, access to justice for young people and the child welfare system. I want to bring some of that forward and I hope it is beneficial to this committee.
On behalf of our agency, we want to make it very clear that this discussion must be framed within article 23 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. We want to talk about how we develop and craft our own programs. We need to take a look at how can that happen, and we heard previous presentations of the very good work that the friendship centre is doing right across the board. We have some suggestions on how that can be enhanced and improved long term. It is very important for us to really take a look at a situation here. If we are trying to address situations like access to justice, we need to reach out to, as what I heard earlier as grassroots agencies, and that is plural. There is not one agency that should be consulted on these discussions. The reason why I say that is that in this province, if you are not aware, there seems to be a particular way of doing business when we are looking at Aboriginal issues, and that is to look at an agency such as a friendship centre and say, "Here is money to address the situation.''
The work done in that area is very important. The 25 friendship centres across this province have a very important role in ensuring that we try to improve the lives of urban First Nations. At the same time we are looking to be included in those processes from the First Nations' perspective in those communities that they come from.
I was talking earlier to our executive director, and it is very important to understand that when they leave the reserve or their nation, there is not this invisible process where they show up here and are now urban First Nations.
Our terminology needs to be looked at in terms of how we view urban/rural First Nations people, and, again, I think that that kind of discussion is divisive. It kind of pits one versus the other, and the reality, as we heard earlier, is also the funding situation about the 8 to 1 ratio of rural versus urban First Nations.
We want to make it clear that we recognize the work and the role of the friendship centres. What we want to caution, in particular, is this one-stop shopping for First Nations community, that one person speaks on behalf of all the First Nations, that one agency speaks on behalf of all the First Nations. That has been tried in the past and has had very limited results. I think this committee here has common goals here in terms of accountability, and one of the main points of this Conservative government is accountability, whether it is fiscal or otherwise. In our presentation here we have the same goal at the end of the day. If we are looking at funding and putting money in certain specific umbrella groups, we should be able to be accountable for that funding situation.
Our agency is not here to ask for money. We are here to talk about a process that can be improved right across the board, whether it is in B.C. or other provinces. I am not sure what the criteria are in other provinces.
As an example, the friendship centres have a service delivery model, which is very important, but it has sort of morphed from a service delivery into a funder role also. There is a dual role here in this province in some aspects that we think requires discussion, to really take a look at that before we pursue it further, if it is the intent of federal or provincial governments to say, "Here is the answer, here is the funding for the issues with urban First Nations people, here is one group, it is your money, do what you need to do with it.''
In the spirit of accountability and transparency, that is what we are looking at in terms of trying to bring that forward. Certainly, again, as I said, the friendship centres have an important role in engaging urban First Nations from the rural community, but, again, as I stated before, they do come from specific nations, how will we recognize that in some of these centres.
Access to justice is another area that requires, I would say, some urgency, in particular for the young people. I do not need to go into the statistics about the overrepresentation of children in care, in the justice system, in the prison systems. I also was a former prison guard in a maximum security prison, and I can assure you that unfortunately the reality is we, our First Nations, are in those places. Now, if we want to drill a little deeper there, how did we get to that point?
I am happy to see that we have another presenter here from KAYA, Aboriginal youth agency, that is going to speak specifically on youth issues. Again, that is an area right across the province that requires some assistance right across the board, whether it is federal or provincial. Some of the examples I can give in terms of rights and access to justice is young people not being aware of what their rights are when they come in contact with RCMP.
We heard earlier a question about whether they know how to access a system for recourse. Unfortunately, in my experiences, they do not have that access to that recourse. They are not aware of it; they are not supported. We are asking young people to stand up against a very powerful system. It requires some type of assistance down the road to get down to the brass tacks in this question: Whose responsibility is that to ensure young people's rights are being respected provincially and federally?
The Chair: Was there anything extra you wanted to share with us right away?
Mr. Guno: Actually, I do. Respecting the people's time here, part of what we do want to end with, it is, again, we want people to understand that our concerns are not a knock against the friendship centres. It is not a knock against any type of specifics here. It is about process. We want to question process; how can we improve that process if we want to make sure that we get the best for our people especially off reserve.
The Chair: Ms. Smith.
Christine Smith, Co-chair, Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council: Good evening. I too want to acknowledge the beautiful Coast Salish Territory that we are on, and thank you for allowing us to do our work and be visitors in your home. I also want to acknowledge all the grassroots people behind us, the elders, the youth, the community members, the people who organized today and the Senate committee. Welcome to the living-room of our community, the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre.
My name is Christine Smith. My Haida name is "Hatyella.'' I come from the Yagu Laanas of Haida Gwaii. I lived on reserve until I was about 14 years old. My father went to university and decided that we should come here, and I have been an urban person since the age of 15.
I currently have a position as a co-chair of the Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council, and this council is comprised of the 24 organizations that Ms. Tatoosh was talking about earlier. I will not go through all the 24 organizations, but there are 24 of us ranging from health, justice, families, housing, education, employment, children, youth and family. Some of our executive directors are here today.
The reason that we developed this unique urban Aboriginal council is because we were finding that voices alone as urban Aboriginal organizations in Vancouver were not being heard, and we needed to develop a unified voice so that we could start having impact over decisions that were being made on our behalf. From our inception, we incorporated in 2009, we decided that we would start by taking a look at how we could have the most impact and how we could develop plans for ourselves. We were tired of people developing plans for us. We wanted to have our own urban Aboriginal Metro Vancouver health plan. We want our own justice plan. We want our own children's plan — language, arts, culture, housing, employment and education. We did not want people to do the same things that they were doing, developing plans on our behalf that do not work for us. That is how we came about.
We meet on a monthly basis to talk about various discussions. We are working. We just had a meeting yesterday with the mayor of Vancouver. We have quarterly meetings with the mayor and council. We are now in a unique position. You heard about the ORAAP initiative that is rolling out in our communities. We have always said that we needed the federal, provincial and municipal governments to sit down with our urban people to help us with funding sources to develop what we know will work in our community. We were very happy to sit down last week with those partners and start having meaningful discussion about our plans for the community. We are very happy about that movement. We are still in the process of developing that a little bit more, but with the premise being that that will help feed into our own plan in Vancouver here.
Before I go on, we at MVAEC we really believe in mentorship. We do not just talk it; we live and breathe it. We have been very fortunate to have this young lady beside us. She will introduce herself in a couple of minutes and talk a little bit about CCAY.
Once we started getting together, one thing that we really found troubling is that all the decisions were being made on our behalf in our community. We started asking health authorities, school districts, school boards how much money is being spent on our behalf in our community, and I have yet to have an answer of that.
I know that money is being transferred on our behalf. I know that some of that comes into our communities, but there needs to be a whole heck of a lot more accountability for that money that comes in to ensure that it gets to our community. I do not need to go through the statistics in our community, but Mr. Guno talked a little bit about the rate — his sister shared with me before we came in here the fact that a report came out that said our children are the poorest poverty stricken children in Canada, and we know that. Our organizations and the friendship centres and everybody who delivers services knows that wholeheartedly.
One of the most recent challenges that we have been dealing with, as you may or may not know, is a tripartite agreement that has been signed with the First Nations, the federal government and the provincial government, in terms of health. From the get-go we were a little bit concerned because we wanted to ensure that that does not include our health dollars and what that would look like for our community. We are not saying that because we do not agree with what the First Nations Health Council is doing for the on reserve; we support that, wish them well and hope that things succeed. However, it is very sad that they have not had any consultation. Nobody has had any consultation with the urban community. We still cannot, to this day tell our brothers and sisters, whether they are in Vancouver or the Downtown East Side, how that will impact our community. That has been a very pressing matter for us. It is not because we have not tried. We have written letters to the federal government. We have written letters to the provincial government. We have written letters to the First Nations Health Council saying that somebody should consult with us, let us help develop our plan in our community. We have not got there yet. My sense is that the urban plan is being developed on our behalf, and by the time that we have input into it, it will be a little bit too late.
That is one example; there are many more. You will find a lot of the offloading is happening in health, children and family, housing. It is a bit scary in the urban community. We do not come at it in terms of us against the First Nations at all. It has to go back to the government and its responsibility to come to us and have dialogue with us personally, not somebody on our behalf. The people on our behalf do not know what our concerns are, our health concerns, our justice concerns. In our community we deliver the services, so does it not make sense that you have a direct relationship?
We are optimistic with the ORAAP and the UAS initiatives in terms of really being in a true partnership with us, allowing us to get where we want to and allowing us to engage with our community. We are cautiously optimistic that that will be really beneficial to our community, and we are working hard towards that.
I want to talk about some recommendations. You were asking earlier about who represents us, I know in Metro Vancouver, MVAEC and our 24 organizations speak for our community when it comes to service delivery. We work really hard at doing that, but it is very frustrating when you have, not just consultations, but meaningful consultations.
We cannot have a cookie-cutter approach like Mr. Guno was talking about. What may work down here in Vancouver may not work in Prince George or Victoria, so it is important that we recognize that each First Nations community is diverse. We cannot approach it as a cookie-cutter approach. Come to see what is working in Vancouver and ask and deliberate with us. How MVAEC as a community, the 24 organizations, got funding was we all paid membership fees into MVAEC so that we can hire somebody to work on our behalf. For three years we have been doing that. We have had our own office, we have paid our own staff, and we have continued to try to advocate for our community.
I think the big recommendation is that we need some accountability in those dollars that are being spent in our community on our people's behalf. There is no accountability for that money.
Some of my sisters in the Downtown East Side are sitting in the back, if you want to stand up for a second.
These lovely ladies are at the forefront. When you hear on the news or anywhere else about bringing up the issue of the murdered or missing Aboriginal women and the girls across Canada who are going missing, their concern is always the same, and I raise my hands to them because they are always there asking those questions: What is being done about this issue and what is going to be done? That is the message that they want you guys to ask the government: What is being done nationally across Canada on the issue and what are we going to do that it?
I will pass it over to Angeline.
Angeline Nelson, Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council: Good afternoon, senators.
[Ms. Nelson spoke in her native language.]
My name is Angeline Nelson, and I am from the Knowledgeable Aboriginal Youth Association. I want to acknowledge the Coast Salish Territory that we are on.
As you know, many issues face our youth today. The list, really it is exhaustive, and we just do not have time to go over all of it, so my focus today is to really expand on what Paul Lacerte touched on, and that is the CCAY funding.
As you are all aware, the mandate of the Harper government has shifted to focus more on employment and education without regard to considering how much importance we as Aboriginal people place on culture. Growing up I was always told by the elders that if you teach our youth about the roots or help to strengthen that connection with their spirit, we strengthen their hearts and their minds, and if we empower them with that knowledge we are building on the next generations to come.
Cultural identity is a really big part of being an Aboriginal person. It is really what makes us who we are. For some Aboriginal youth cultural identity has not been a part of their lives, and a lot of Aboriginal people tend to fall through the cracks. My recommendation would be to ensure that there are always opportunities for the Aboriginal youth to connect with their culture. This is how you will see us thrive and succeed in the world. Thank you.
Senator Brazeau: I thank all of you for your very good presentations.
Mr. Guno, you said you did not want organizations to be a one-stop shop in terms of advocacy and even service delivery. You also talked about different labels, urban, on reserve, off reserve. The way I see this study — perhaps I am dreaming big, but so be it, sometimes we have to do that — is that even though we are looking specifically at the human rights of First Nations people who live off reserve perhaps one of our recommendations will be to eliminate the labels because it is time. I just leave that out there.
I sense with you, Ms. Smith, as well, from both your presentations, a lot of frustration. I think the frustration, deals with a lack of mobilization or the mobilization that would be necessary to really hit hard and hit where it is needed. You are talking about the need to have dialogue and be consulted. You are the frontline workers, and I have a lot of respect for our political leadership, although I have been critical of some when needed. I do respect the leadership and they have a role to play. The frontline workers, in my view, are the ones who make more of a difference, an immediate difference, in the lives of our peoples on a daily basis. While some may want to talk about treaty rights, which have not been addressed in the last 100, 200 or 300 hundred years or so and it is still an ongoing battle, when we meet youth and young Aboriginal people, they want a roof over their heads, a decent education, the tools necessary to have a decent job.
In my previous capacity it was always difficult to mobilize the off-reserve population. It is easier on reserve because everybody is physically and geographically there. What recommendations do you have that would enable the mobilization of First Nations people off reserve because I think that is desperately needed?
Mr. Guno: You raise a very good point in terms of labels. I have taken note of a number of your points.
I think in terms of your description of being frustrated, I would not go and say we are frustrated. We are raising issues that need to be raised at this platform at this level, again, about this idea that provincial or federal governments will recognize only one group versus the actual grassroots.
Now, whether you want to say it is political or not, it is political. There is no way around it. How do you mobilize communities that are apathetic to a process that does not include them? You continue to say that one agency speaks on behalf of all people without their inclusion. Again, how do we address that? Well, they need to have access to these processes also.
In terms of this overall process with on reserve versus off-reserve, possibly looking at a similar process where the on reserve get an opportunity to speak about their direct relationship between on and off reserve to get the 360-degree input you are looking for, versus the position of an agency that is strategically positioned at a table that community members cannot access but they present as if they are speaking on our behalf, as Ms. Smith mentioned. We have created a lot of agencies or a lot of organizations that have the attention of some of the policymakers, some of the funders, and that attention basically is driven in a particular direction without the input of the grassroots on the ground.
Where is the accountability in that? Well, that is the million dollar question? These types of processes, I think, will elevate it at that level.
Part of my discussion was to caution against of looking at that one agency that speaks on behalf of all. If we continue to do that, we are going to be back here 20 years down the road with the same questions and the same concerns.
Ms. Smith: I find that I am frustrated. I am frustrated that our people are dying in the streets, that our children are getting apprehended at an alarming rate, that we still live in a city where we our kids live in such dire poverty and that we struggle for every penny that we have in our agencies, and that we have to make due.
Our organizations work together to try to make a difference with what limited resources we have, and it is not only governments' — provincial, federal and municipal — responsibility to start discussing with urban communities, but our First Nations community too, our political governments.
Ms. Nelson and I went to the BCAFN meeting, and talked with our national chief and said that there needs to be some movement in this urban piece, that we cannot just give it lip service, we have to have some meaningful consultations in our community. It has to start all the way through; it cannot just be one sector. It has to be all of us, and we have no problems in getting us together.
We had a gathering against Enbridge. There were thousands of people there. We have west coast family night that has 250 people and powwow night that has exactly the same, so our people gather with or without government there. It is not a matter of getting us together. We are together. We have organized without government funds because we know how important it is, but we need to be acknowledged. It is like that big white elephant in the room. Everybody knows that the urban community exists, but nobody really wants to deal with it.
Senator Brazeau: Perhaps you can think about that over the next several weeks and offer something in writing. I guess the question is: How do we mobilize groups such as yours so that you are truly consulted and truly involved in the dialogue that is meaningful from this day forward? Part of this process is to ensure that the off-reserve population is no longer forgotten, is included and that we actually start policy-wise dealing with the issue because it is not going to go away. We need your advice and recommendations as to how we do that. Obviously if anyone tries a top-down approach, you know what is going to happen; it is going to crash and burn. This is why we are having this dialogue, to come up with specific recommendations from you as to how we establish that, how we go about doing that to ensure that it is something that is developed by you that works and really provides results and accountability. Once the mobilization is there people have to be accountable and have to answer to very tough questions. If the mobilization is not there and questions are just coming from groups here, groups there, you know how reality works. Going forward I would like you to seriously think about that.
Ms. Smith, you ask a question on missing and murdered Aboriginal women. It is rare that we receive questions, but I will take a shot at answering it.
You know about the Sisters in Spirit Campaign that took place over several years. Two years ago the federal government did announce $10 million over two years for a more coordinated strategy around the issue involving law enforcement officials, the RCMP creating a national database, putting some money into the communities for preventive measures. That announcement was made two years ago. Now whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing, I am not going to say either way, but I am just outlining the facts.
Having said that, I have been working since 2004 on this issue. I stood shoulder to shoulder with my sisters at the Native Women's Association of Canada, and I have called for a national inquiry on missing and murdered Aboriginal women because the women deserve it and their families deserve it as well. It is inconceivable, in my personal view, that in 2012 we still allow this type of violence against our women. It is unacceptable.
I do not share my schedule very often, but later I am going on a tour of the Downtown East Side, and I will be meeting with people who know Aboriginal women who have gone missing. The issue is not dead with me. Obviously it is not easy, but I care about this issue and I will stand shoulder to shoulder with my brothers and sisters until something is done about this issue.
Senator Harb: Your presentations are complementary to the first panel. You covered a wide range, in particular the element of the study that deals with participation in the community-based decision-making process. All three of you made this point eloquently, and thank you for that.
My question is in relation to access to rights. Ms. Anderson, from your experience in your office, could you give us a little synopsis of some of the cases that involve human rights? What sort of human rights cases come to your attention? For example, Mr. A or Ms. B came to us with a problem and we felt that it was a human rights case and took it on.
Claire Anderson, Student, UBC First Nations Legal Clinic: I can only speak about the cases that I am working on. There was a certain individual that we think was selected randomly by her employer and kind of monitored while she was working at a grocery store where she was employed. We think it was an unfair screening process because she had a perfect work record up until the investigation. They found certain of her acts — her and a couple other colleagues were in a group where they would give each other promotions that, I guess, they were not supposed to. We think that it may have had something to do with her Aboriginal background. She is one of our clients, and I am working on that file right now. We have to first deal with the criminal component of it, but once that matter is dealt with, we will be looking into making a human rights complaint.
Senator Harb: Would you say that the majority of cases that come to your attention and the people who bring them basically feel that they were discriminated against because of their cultural background, because of their nationality as First Nations?
Ms. Anderson: I think that does play a factor, although our clinic is located on the Downtown East Side, and I find when it comes down to it, ethnicity, I think is important but so is class, and we only service indigenous clients, so, yes, the complaints that we do get generally are about Aboriginal status.
That said, the majority of our files are in relation to criminal law. We do not actually have too many human rights complaints. Somebody raised the issue about whether people are aware that there are avenues that deal with human rights complaints. A lot of indigenous people just internalize the problems and they do not seek help, so I think maybe that is an issue.
Senator Harb: Did you come across any situation where somebody came to you and told you that I believe that I should continue to have the same right I had, for example, on reserve. Now I am off reserve and I do not have access to say, for example, education or health care or social services and I need your help so I can have the same access I had on reserve?
Ms. Anderson: Yes, absolutely. I have got one client who is hoping to gain the same compensation money from her First Nation that people on reserve gained for a reason that I cannot disclose. She feels that because she was living off reserve she was not available to have those compensation dollars. I do not think that I can go too far into it.
Senator Harb: As a remedy for that case, what tools would you use? Would you use the Charter of Rights, say, for example, section 15(1) of the Charter of Rights?
Ms. Anderson: I feel like I should be taking notes from you because a lot of the times we do not have a manual or a specific process to follow. Again, we are second and third year law students, and a lot of it is just trial and error and a lot of time spent on the phone talking to different people, talking to lawyers. Lawyers in the Vancouver community have been tremendously helpful. They provide us with advice. They give us their cards, their personal information, and they are just a wonderful resource to the students at the UBC First Nations Legal Clinic.
Senator Hubley: Ms. Anderson, Ms. Rauch identified one of her roles as education and training new lawyers. I believe you are a law student at the moment; is that correct?
Ms. Anderson: Yes, third year law student at UBC.
Senator Hubley: Could you share with us the education you have received in Aboriginal culture or in what I think she described as indigenous values? How much do you receive during your training process?
Ms. Anderson: I am glad you asked that question. There are six students in the clinic each term, and this term we have five students who self-identify as indigenous. We have one Musqueam person, one Tsleil-Waututh woman, one woman from Peguis First Nation, one Cree fellow and myself, Taku River Tlingit First Nation. More than anything we are teaching Ms. Rauch a little bit about First Nations values and culture. Once a week we have a seminar where we are able to read academic journals and speak openly and frankly about some of the issues of working with indigenous people. Just last week I suggested that we stop reading academic papers written by White people about indigenous people and that we start turning to indigenous scholars and indigenous people, community members that just display a tremendous amount of strength and start learning from them. My suggestion was accepted and acknowledged, and I feel, more than anything, that we can bring our indigenous perspective into the classroom. At the same time in our practice she is encouraging us to bring our indigenous heritage or our perspective into the courtroom. I am happy to say on Monday I am hoping to do just that. In my final submissions I am hoping to address Coast Salish law in the courtroom.
Senator Hubley: Would the justice system on a reserve differ from the justice system off reserve?
Ms. Anderson: Right now, at least in my home community, we have circuit courts. They go to Atlin, B.C. quarterly, and court is generally exactly what it would be like at 222 Main Street, which is our provincial courthouse. There are communities that have some of the indigenous knowledge written into their legislation, and I can think of Teslin, Yukon, for example. They have haa kusteeyi in their legislation, which means Tlingit way of life, and they acknowledge the traditional teachings as a valid legal code.
There are aspects or initiatives in the communities, and I would like to see them somehow used in an urban setting. The problem of jurisdiction is something that I think about. I am Tlingit and I am representing a Cree person, and we are on Coast Salish territory, whose laws do I use anyway? I think that is a good problem, to have too many laws and finding one that works best for our clients and focusing on rehabilitation.
The Chair: Are you using Gladue?
Ms. Anderson: Yes.
The Chair: In today's paper is an article saying that often Gladue is not being followed. What is your experience with Gladue?
Ms. Anderson: Part of that judgment acknowledged the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the prison system. I think the reason we get so many indigenous clients is that the courts have recognized that we cannot just keep sending indigenous people to prison, so they find different sentences, whether it is a conditional discharge or a suspended sentence. Oftentimes Legal Aid does not accept files for those the sentences, and our Aboriginal clientele, are kind of stuck in a limbo. They are not facing jail time, so they do not have access to Legal Aid. I am very thankful that we have a clinic that is able to provide legal services to these people, but I do not think there are very many legal clinics like ours.
The Chair: Are you following the case of Gladue when you do sentencing?
Ms. Anderson: Yes.
Ms. Smith: The other hat I wear is I am the Executive Director of the Vancouver Aboriginal Transformative Justice Services. We do provide culturally appropriate circles in our community that involves volunteers, elders, the victim, offender in the reconciliation process. The actual Aboriginal Justice Strategy is up as of March 31 this year. We have 24 Aboriginal Justice Strategy programs across B.C. that are on reserve and off reserve, and the majority of those justice programs are based on the communities themselves. That is what makes them so successful.
We developed our program based on our community's needs, and the Nisga'a have their program in their community in the Nisga'a territory that is based on their house — the way that they are set up. That is a great example. Gladue, unfortunately, in BC is not utilized as much as it is in Ontario, for whatever reason. We have two Gladue writers at our organization who write Gladue reports. A lot of the times it involves having to inform lawyers and Crown counsels and judges on what Gladue is and what it looks like. A lot of the times we are just kind of letting them know that that is a right that they have, but it is not utilized in B.C. as it is by my friend in Toronto. Their Toronto legal centre, utilizes it. They actually have two Gladue report writers that are on full time.
Senator Hubley: With so many Aboriginal persons in the justice system, does it ever happen that they are referred back to their band community to deal with an issue that perhaps would best be dealt with there and not within the justice system as it is presented in the urban setting?
Mr. Guno: That is a good question. The scale of those referrals back to the community — I think Ms. Smith's agency can speak to that — is very minimal.
The system needs to refer to programs that are Aboriginal specific and trust that those programs are qualified, are competent and can deliver a better service than a non-Aboriginal service. It may happen, but on a larger scale as a provincial advocate in this province, I can tell you that those referrals are not coming through the front door. If you want to question why, we need to ask those non-Aboriginal systems why they do not refer to an Aboriginal program. Again, I think that is part of the focus for this committee when we talk about access to justice. If we are talking about First Nations in the criminal justice system, they start at the RCMP. We all know there is a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of cultural competency on that end, and also young people who are involved in that system need to know their rights.
Senator Hubley: You mentioned the number of students that were involved, and I think five of them were Aboriginal. Is that program just open to Aboriginal law students, and is that everything that happens within the law school to prepare a lawyer to go out into this community as we know it to deal the situations they are going to be running into?
Ms. Anderson: The legal clinic is open to anybody, but Ms. Rauch, the director of the First Nations Legal Clinic, does give first priority to First Nations students, and it is extremely helpful. We have court time. We have criminal trials. We get to go to family court. Some of us go to the downtown community court. So it does equip us in a lot of ways, and at the same time we also see some of the shortcomings of the Canadian legal system as we know it. Having such a solid group with such strong indigenous roots, we are hoping to try and find ways to bring First Nations legal traditions into the court system in whatever ways we can.
Ms. Smith: You asked about engaging other on-reserve communities, and with our community and all the other Aboriginal justice programs, they do work very closely with the surrounding communities because we know that they have the best solutions. A lot of the times we will refer that particular case and work with that community to see what kind of plan they come up with.
The biggest hurdle that we have is prevention. I always call it the "P word'' because nobody wants to fund prevention. You talked about CCAY and the cultural piece. Prevention is just as important. We have basketball teams that are up north. Right now our biggest form of prevention to keep our kids off the streets, is keeping them in our gyms. We have cultural activities. We have a lot of things that happen in our community without funding. All of these things that are happening right now in our community, we scrape together money to send our basketball teams and have cultural events happening every single week.
Senator Harb: On behalf of my colleagues, I thank you individually and collectively. You have contributed greatly to our study. You have brought in a bundle of knowledge that we will go back and read through, and hopefully reflect it in the report we will be making to the Senate and ultimately to the Government of Canada.
The Chair: We have with us Larissa Williams and Ali Davis from the B.C. Aboriginal Network on Disability Society.
Alison Davies, Disability Case Manager, B.C. Aboriginal Network on Disability Society: I am a disability case manager with BCANDS, the B.C. Aboriginal Network on Disability Society. I would like to introduce you to Larissa Williams, also a disability case manager. Our executive director, Neil Belanger, sends his regrets.
I would like to first acknowledge that we are on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people and thank them for allowing us to be visitors here today. I would also like to thank the staff of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre for allowing us to be here today and for the preparations that have gone in to assist in putting this together. Hi'swke.
Honourable senators, we are honoured to be invited to share with you a little bit about what we do at BCANDS.
BCANDS has been in existence since 1991 serving the Aboriginal population of British Columbia both on and off reserve living with disabilities. Most of our clients are living with complex disability and health care needs and often require assistance in navigating through what can seem a rather unsystematic system.
Aboriginal persons in British Columbia and across Canada continue to deal with the generational effects that European contact has had on all aspects of their lives.
It is well documented that the health status of Aboriginal people in British Columbia and Canada is significantly lower than the non-Aboriginal population. I will give you a few statistics.
British Columbia disability statistics state that a recent survey showed that in B.C. more than 1 out of 10 persons, 11.2 per cent, in the working age population defined as those 15 to 64 years of age has a disability. The conditions most prevalent were mobility and agility. Over 6 per cent of the population is affected. The psychological problems, just less than 3 per cent noted that disability. The severity of the disability increases with age. Less than half of those with the young age group, 15 to 24, had more than a mild disability compared to two thirds of those age 25 to 64.
General B.C. and Canada First Nations statistics state that 30 per cent of Aboriginal adults report a disability, almost twice the national rate. Among Aboriginal people, the 15 to 34 age group has a disability rate three times the national average, and 3.9 per cent of Aboriginal people with disabilities complete university compared to 5.8 per cent of those without disabilities. The average household income of Aboriginal adults with disabilities was 85 per cent of the Aboriginal adults without disabilities, $16,755 a year compared to $19,800.
Levels of employment are lower among Aboriginal adults with disabilities than Aboriginal adults without disabilities, 41 per cent versus 61 per cent.
Of Aboriginal people with disabilities, 30 per cent rated their health as fair or poor compared to only 5 per cent of Aboriginal people without disabilities. Canada Stats from September 30, 2006 indicate that the total Aboriginal population of British Columbia was 196,075 people. The total number of Indian bands in B.C. as of September 30 was 198. Total number of reserves, 1,701. Percentage of the Aboriginal population in B.C. living on reserve is 26 per cent. The report also notes that 54 per cent of Aboriginal people now live in urban areas in Canada. That number is 74 per cent of Aboriginal people in B.C. living off reserve.
When we look at the numbers, the current situation is: Of 196,075 Aboriginal people living in British Columbia, 74 per cent are living off reserve. That is 145,096 people. Of those, 30 per cent are living with a disability. That is 43,529.
Many Aboriginal communities are additionally affected by minimal economical and employment opportunities, community remoteness, limited community access to necessary health and social services, their associated professionals, limited community amenities and so forth. Demands and expectations placed on Aboriginal communities and organizational leadership are high from their membership. While their membership identify multiple priorities within the community or organization, all of which compete for any available financial resources.
Understanding this, leadership with Aboriginal communities and organizations across British Columbia are forced to make difficult decisions in regard to programs, services and special funding allocations made available. Due to these important and ever increasing community and organizational needs, specialized disability and support services may be minimal with only limited resources available to the membership, leaving the disabled individual, their family and support systems at times quite frustrated.
Stats Canada shows us that there are approximately 43,529 Aboriginal people living off reserve in British Columbia who are living with some sort of disability. At BCANDS we currently have 305 clients: 157 off reserve; 148 on reserve. Of those, 181 are active clients — people who need something from us this week — and 124 are inactive clients, which basically means that we have not worked with them in the last 3 months, and 27 people are currently on a wait list for our services.
There were some questions that you asked that we have attempted to address; such as barriers preventing residency on reserve, why do people feel they need to leave their communities, factors leading to a decision to leave reserve.
First we went through housing. Limited access to housing and an ability to own limited housing for disabled and elderly. The RRAP program is no longer available on reserve. That was the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, which is now HAFI. The On First Nations CMHC program has limited funding. They are currently not taking any applications until next year, and they are not sure if there is going to be any funding then either. Overcrowding in housing, discrepancy in using housing codes, many people live in unsafe homes. Mould is a major issue.
Education: Individuals need to leave their community to access education.
Employment: There is limited opportunity for employment, and there is high competition when there are job openings, discrepancy in pay rates, pensions and benefits between on- and off-reserve people for similar positions and qualifications.
Health care: There is limited access to acute medicine in remote areas, medical health and addiction services, psychiatrists, psychologists and other specialists, limited access ability. Community Living B.C. does not provide services at all on reserve.
Transport: There is limited HandyDart service on reserves, limited transit system in remote areas, bus passes, bus tickets, limited accessibility, limited resource to own a vehicle.
Amenities: There are higher costs in remote areas for the groceries, limited access to groceries and other retail outlets, limited access to recreational facilities, limited access to playgrounds and schools.
There is limited access to legal services.
PWD: Persons with disabilities benefits, there is a discrepancy between provincial and federal earning eligibilities.
The Chair: We have your written presentation. I do not mean to cut you off, but I know you have to go. I promise you it will be part of this transcript.
Ms. Williams, are you going to add anything?
Larissa Williams, Disability Case Manager, B.C. Aboriginal Network on Disability Society: I will just introduce myself quickly. My name is Larissa Williams. I am First Nations. I come from the Tla-o-qui-at tribe which located on the Nuu-chah-ulth territory, and I am also a disability case manager two days a week. I have not been here as long, so I will pass it along to Ali, but I will try to answer any questions I can.
The Chair: Thank you. Please do not feel that I am being disrespectful, but we really do have questions.
Mr. Williams, you also have very kindly provided us with a written submission, for which we are very appreciative, and rest assured that we will read it carefully. We take this very seriously. So if I may, would you highlight what is in your presentation. That will give us time to ask you questions.
Bill Williams, President, United Native Nations Local 510: First, I would like to thank you very much for having me here, and on behalf of myself and others I have a gift for you to show how appreciative we are in that you have taken this time to go across Canada to learn more about the First Nations community and the needs of the people.
The Chair: Mr. Williams, we very much appreciate your gift, but I can tell you that we already got many gifts this afternoon from all of your presentations.
Mr. Williams: Yes.
The Chair: We are very sensitive to the fact that you have a lot of work to do and this is additional work that we have asked, so we already feel we received many gifts from you already.
Mr. Williams: Yes.
The Chair: We appreciate the gift you have given, but all of you here have given us already many gifts, and if you can start your presentation. Thank you.
Mr. Williams: We have heard a lot of things from the different parties' and individuals, and one of the many things I would like to raise is about the word "reserve'' in the Indian Act. I propose to you to bring to the government, not as a personal request but on behalf of the First Nations all across Canada, the suggestion to have that removed. As you have seen earlier and in other meetings you have gone to, it always has been addressed as the First Nations community, and if you would, if it pleases you, Madam Chairman, that this really is a burden on the First Nations community. We all know how Canada came about, and we feel like a herd of cattle being put into a section of land and saying this is your home. It is really very embarrassing. You hear some of the kids going to school. Unless you have lived that life you really do not know the burden and the hurt especially on the younger kids and as well as all of the community.
Housing is a real burden on the reserve, and one of the main reasons why people move off is because of the housing conditions. I propose to you, Madam Chairman, that it be brought to the government that there needs to be accountability to the contractors, the electrical inspectors, and the plumbers.
Just on our reserve alone in Gold River, five new buildings were built last year. They already have complications: mould, the bathroom floor sinks and the list goes on. I propose that in the future there needs to be accountability on the contractors, and one of the solutions could be what happens when you are living in a town or a city. There is a building inspector, an electrical inspector, plumbing inspector, but it is not the case on the reserve. I propose to you that you bring to the government this issue as one of the main things that could be looked at in terms of the housing problems. One of the solutions could be that we need inspectors, be they our own or what have you. There needs to be accountability, otherwise this rot keeps going on and on; people living on reserve, moving off the reserve because of housing. These are just some of the things that I wanted to bring to your attention.
We have also heard some of the issues of different organizations and the work that we do for the off-reserve community, and one of the biggest issues I see is funding issues for the organizations, for the work that they do. I hear up and down Vancouver Island where organizations cannot get the funding they used to.
Years ago it might have been $80,000, the next year it is $60,000, and the number seems to be going down. I am wondering whether it be would feasible, Madam Chairman, to really look at this because our community is growing not only in the Aboriginal community but also in the non-Aboriginal community, and we need to really look at how to not only cater to those people in need but also the people who may have jobs, houses, cars who need help too. People in all walks of life in the Aboriginal community all across Canada need help, whether it is counselling for abuse or the generational thing where grandparents and parents have gone to residential school and there is depression, anger, things that need to be looked at in terms of how to remedy this. I hear from some people on our reserve that there is not enough money to hire a counsellor so that we can take care of the people not only on reserve but off reserve. I propose that this issue be brought before not only the Senate but the government.
The Chair: Was there anything else you wanted to add? We certainly have your paper and which Senator Harb will make sure that both your paper and Ms. Davies' paper become part of our transcript, which, of course, you know what I mean is that it will be as if you spoke.
Mr. Williams: There is one more thing I would like to bring up, and that is accountability to doctors.
For example, nine months before I met my wife, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She walked into the doctor's office — and this is the case among a lot of the native ladies and girls who go to the doctor's office and mention emotional, physical or what have you — and the doctor right away, "Oh, you are schizophrenic.'' By the time I met my wife in April 28, 2000, which is a Saturday, she was already on multiple schizophrenic medication, and it took many, many months and years to advocate on her behalf, to fight for her because she could not. She was overly medicated, and finally she was re-diagnosed by a specialist in Victoria, and she has now been off the medications for 29 months. This is another issue that my wife wants to bring to your attention, the people who are automatically put on medication and that there needs to be accountability among doctors, not just to put Aboriginal people on medication.
The Chair: Thank you for all your presentations.
I would like to start with asking both of you if you could help us by giving a scenario of what happens when someone walks into your office. You have mentioned it, but if you can just give more detail. Ms. X walks into your office. She has a number of ailments. She does not live on the reserve. From the day she walks in, goes to the hospital, what kind of services is she able to access? Is it the same services as any British Columbian can access, or what are the challenges?
Ms. Davies: I will try to maybe use a few people that I can think of.
We have one individual who has a brain injury, and he required surgery on his foot. He was having difficulty accessing transportation. He was having difficulty making the appointments with the doctor partially because of his brain injury, partially because of where he was located.
We went through setting him up with the doctor, with transportation. One thing that he was having difficulty accessing, living off reserve, was applying for medical transportation, so we assisted him with that.
I am not sure if that answers your question. This particular individual went through getting set up with a brain injury clinic, learning to cope with his brain injury. After his surgeries and things like that we helped him. He was also an intergenerational survivor of residential school so we set him up with counselling.
As a result of this particular individual, we at BCANDS, before referring someone to a counsellor, will do an interview with the counsellor. What had happened was with this individual— and it has happened more than once — showed up specifically around residential school. We had a time where there was a couple of counsellors who actually spoke to them about the low pay rate that they were getting from servicing a person who was off reserve and dealing with residential school survivors.
There are things like that. That may not happen with someone else. I am not sure if that answers your question.
The Chair: Yes, it does. One of the things, of course, is the issue of counselling, culturally sensitive counselling, and you have identified that. You are sensitive to that, for if that person had gone somewhere else they would not have received that same kind of consideration?
Ms. Davies: We just get a list, right? I do not know who those people are, and this particular client had gone there, and he had gone for a few visits. I asked how is it going, and he said, "Well, I do not know, Ali, I have never really been to a counsellor before, I guess, it is okay.'' So asked if there was anything he wanted to share with me about what was happening there. He shared a little bit about what was happening, and then he shared with me that the counsellor had brought up with him that she was not getting paid as much as she would normally charge. She actually said that he had been given 20 visits but she would do it in 10 and double charge each time because she was actually really good at what she did.
I told him that is not okay and that he was being re-abused, and we talked a little bit about how he felt about that. I reported the incident, and from then on I made sure that I interviewed counsellors beforehand. I have a list now that I go by. I make sure that they are clear. I talk about all the money with them first because our clients do not need to be talking about the money. They are already going there for other things.
The Chair: Let us take prescriptions, wheelchairs, all the additional things a person needs sometimes. Are they available through their province? Do they have to go to the band? What happens to a person that comes into your office?
Ms. Davies: It has a lot to do with where they are located. They may live off reserve, but they may live in a more remote area. That has something to do with it. That may be the same for a non-Aboriginal person too; however, there may be some other difficulties than an Aboriginal person might face, cultural sensitivities and awarenesses, depending on what their life story is, how they feel about going into a place and asking for things and understanding that. That is a lot of what we do as disability case managers is help them to manoeuvre through the system.
The Chair: Mr. Williams, would you like to add something to what Ms. Davies has said?
Mr. Williams: You must excuse me. I have been up since five o'clock this morning.
The Chair: That is okay. We will have other questions for you. Do not worry.
Mr. Williams: Could you state the question?
The Chair: Do the people you work with have difficulty obtaining, say, prescription drugs, wheelchairs, additional services like counselling? What steps do you have to take to make sure that people who live off reserve get the same services as other British Columbians?
Mr. Williams: One of the things that I have observed is the cutbacks that INAC has made to the Aboriginal community in terms of medication, other services, whether they go for therapy or whatnot or other things that they have to go to. The money has been cut back, so they cannot get the medications — they can get this medication, but they cannot get this one because it is not authorized or INAC did not authorize it.
Over the years — I do not do it too often — when I see a problem like that I help that person. If it cost $39, I will pay for that, but I have made numerous e-mails to INAC and to other ministries to bring this to their attention, but it just seems to be dormant.
Another service, as my friend here has pointed out, is the lack of transportation, especially in very remote places like Zeballos on Vancouver Island. If you know how remote that is, the road conditions, it is horrific. Unless you have money — they go through cars like we can go through candy sometimes. They have tried to lobby around, especially with the highway the B.C. Ministry of Transport, the town of Zeballos and the Ministry of Forests, because it is their responsibility to look after that road too, but they always seem to pass the buck. The crux is no one has the money to repair this road, so it is very difficult to get to and from Campbell River for shopping, medication, doctors' appointments. I say this because I drive for the native community. If they cannot get to their appointment, I take them to their appointment.
The Chair: Thank you.
Before we proceed any further, I want to make sure that both your reports are appended to the transcript.
Senator Harb: Madam Chair, I move that the presentations of Alison Davies as well as Bill Williams be tabled with the committee as an exhibit and that be appended to the committee proceeding.
The Chair: All those in favour?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
[For text of documents, see Appendix, p. 21:63 (available in print format PDF).]
Senator Harb: My question is really to Ms. Davies. In outlining the statistics, you talked about the different disabilities that exist within the population that you serve. We have some statistics here from Statistics Canada which state that 54 per cent of adults have some sort of chronic condition. Some of it is disability and some is not a disability. Do you consider alcohol and drug addiction as being a disability, and if so, what is the percentage of your constituency, the population that you serve?
Ms. Davies: We would definitely consider addiction a disability or at a minimum a health care issue that we would deal with. Statistically it is probably rather low with most of the people that we are dealing with. Maybe I should reword that: It is not often that that is specifically what we are dealing with when we are dealing with people. Because of the complex care issues that many of our clients face, there may be diabetes and asthma and cancer and they are an intergenerational or residential school survivor themselves, and, oh, by the way, they are recovering from some sort of addiction. I could go through files and take a look, but it does not tend to be one of the main things that we are dealing with because usually there are so many other things.
Senator Harb: Is it possible that because some of those potential clients do not become clients because they cannot access the systems or because some of them end up behind bars because of problems beyond their control. If so, have you made any attempt to go, for example, to Correctional Services and say, "Look, I want to look at your prison population to examine their conditions. I want to look at their medical status and medical report to find out how many of those people are in fact disabled whether due to alcohol addiction, drugs or due to disability of some sort, mental disability of some sort?'' Have you done that, or is there any possibility you will do that in the future?
Ms. Davies: Yes and yes. I go twice a year. For instance, Ford Mountain Correctional Facility, located in Chilliwack, has an information fare. A number of different agencies will set up booths there, and I will go and see if there are clients in there. I go — I do not know how many times — with some regularity to Wilkinson Correctional Facility when I know that we have a client there.
The truth is that I am the only full-time case manager. Ms. Williams works two days a week. We have very minimal funding; we have 305 clients, 181 active. Between the two of us, she probably can see maybe 8 or 10 people a week. When I say "see,'' a lot of it is on the phone because we are provincial, of course, so maybe 20 to 25. The reality is that in any given week there are about 150 people have I cannot see, that we cannot do anything with, that we know that are out there. Of our inactive files, which are about 124, I cannot honestly tell you that it is because they do not need anything right now. But the reality is that it is very difficult to get to even a small amount of them.
The reality, again, is that there are those thousands of people out there who we are not able to help. I want to be able to help them, but I cannot even help who we have right now. That is the truth. We do not have the funding. We do not have the bodies to be able to do it.
The first time that I went to the Wilkinson Correctional Facility, I had been asked to meet with someone. I came back, and I said to Neil Belanger, our director, that that place is full of our clients. I saw physical characteristics which would lend themselves to fetal alcohol. I could see so many First Nations people in the holding place where I was, but I was just going to see the people that I was going to see. Yes, there is a huge need for it.
Senator Harb: Is it fair to say then that if you had the resources you would do a lot more?
Ms. Davies: Yes.
Senator Harb: Is it also fair to say that perhaps one of the recommendations we should be making to the government is that it not only provide resources but acknowledge the fact that we have people who live outside the community, to use a correct word, rather than outside of the reserve, who have mental disability and human rights issues that have not been addressed because of the lack of resources?
Ms. Davies: Absolutely, and people without the ability or resources to actually even get to us.
Ms. Williams has reminded me of something that you had asked about, Madam Chair. There is a lack of awareness about non-insured benefits and what they cover and what they do not, especially with health care providers who are off reserve. Quite often we will have a client go to a health care professional, and that person is not aware of what they can give. It may be a small thing, but, for instance, they write a prescription, not being aware of what is on the list of things that are covered, and that person could go back and forth. Imagine being not well and having to go back and forth, taking a bus back and forth because the doctor does not know what is covered. That is just one small thing, but that is very common.
Ms. Williams: I want to add one thing too. A lot of people who come in to access our services are not aware that you can appeal non-insured health benefits. Health care professionals who I have dealt with do not know either. People are falling through the cracks and not getting wheelchairs, not getting prescriptions, having to take away from their persons with disability funding to cover their inhalers for COPD or whatever it is? It is a real big problem.
The Chair: The saddest part about all of it is that with all that back and forth sometimes they just give up, and then they deteriorate, so it is horrible.
We run out of time. There is so much we could ask. You were here all afternoon and we really appreciate it. If there is anything else, please let us know.
Senator Brazeau: On half of the committee, thank you very much for presenting before us today. It has been very enlightening. Obviously we are dealing with very serious issues, but we are trying to make a difference, and we are trying to provide a voice and to have an inclusive process where people can either come before the committee or provide written briefs for us to consider when drafting the final report.
Like I said from the onset, this is the beginning of a dialogue.
(The committee adjourned.)