Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 34 - Evidence - March 23, 2018 (morning meeting)
WINNIPEG, Friday, March 23, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 9:06 a.m. to study the new relationship between Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
Senator Lillian Eva Dyck (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome everybody to the meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples here in the beautiful city of Winnipeg.
Before we begin we need a motion. Is it agreed to allow filming and photography of our meeting today?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: The motion has carried.
We should introduce ourselves. We’ll start with our senator from Manitoba.
Senator McCallum: Mary Jane McCallum.
Senator Patterson: Dennis Patterson, Nunavut.
Senator Christmas: Dan Christmas, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: My name is Senator Lillian Eva Dyck, and I have the honour and privilege of chairing this committee.
We have a number of panels to present today. Our first panel that I’m happy to introduce and welcome is from the Manitoba Association of Friendship Centres: Mr. Ryan Paradis, Executive Director; and Roberta MacKinnon, President.
You have a presentation, after which the floor will be opened to questions from the senators.
Roberta MacKinnon, President, Manitoba Association of Friendship Centres: Good morning and thank you for inviting us to join you this morning, Madam Chair and distinguished members of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. Thank you as well for this opportunity to present to you on the new nation-to-nation relationship in Canada.
I wish to acknowledge the Anishinaabe, Cree, and Dakota people, as well as the Metis of the Red River Valley whose traditional lands we’re on today. I am Blue Star. My English name is Roberta MacKinnon. I am a member of the Beaver First Nation in Alberta, as well as the President of the Manitoba Association of Friendship Centres.
Today I would like to share with you my observations and experiences with the new relationship known as nation-to-nation. Nation-to-nation in practice really means government-to-government. While it is important to recognize Indigenous peoples’ right to self-government and self-determination. We have to be clear on its limitations.
The nation-to-nation relationship isn’t actually new. The British government made a series of peace and friendship treaties with the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet tribes in 1725 through to 1779, and then, again, notably when a young Canadian government signed Treaty 1 in 1871 in Lower Fort Garry.
The method of engagement by itself has great potential to send us backwards, by ignoring the fact that 60 per cent of all Indigenous people currently live off reserve and dwell in urban environments all across Canada.
Urban Indigenous people are by and large lost and forgotten in the nation-to-nation discussions, practices, and outcomes. There’s a strong need to recognize “distinctions” and keep our identities intact. Our basic needs are equal: a right to justice, health, housing, and food. Real and comprehensive engagements need to be approached with this principle in the forefront.
Currently, this new relationship is posed to divide Indigenous people even further. The vast majority of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit governing organizations do not have the capacity to provide services to its members in urban environments all through Canada. Who will provide much needed services to these people? Our people are already providing these services. Already existing infrastructures they possess are being shut out of both talks and the funding in this new relationship context.
Indigenous political organizations are mandated to provide services solely to their members. A Metis person cannot use the services from a First Nation service provider. The number of urban Inuit service providers is lacking across Canada. Inuit population levels in most Indigenous environments make it difficult for the provision of Inuit-specific services at all.
For over 60 years the friendship centres have been providing a broad range of holistic client-centered and culturally appropriate supports on a status-blind basis to all Indigenous people across Canada. As Canada’s oldest community-driven and reconciliation-based forum for urban Indigenous support, the friendship centre network is Canada’s largest and well-established off-reserve Indigenous service deliverance infrastructure.
Manitoba friendship centres alone combine a service to over 1,000 urban Indigenous people every day. These services and programs include daycare, housing, health clinics, emergency relief, mental health support, employment and training, education, economic development, justice, language and culture, sports and recreation, and community wellness. Programs and services are customized based on the needs presented by each client, and they do so in a non-judgmental, culturally safe way based on the Indigenous teachings of their respective regions. Friendship centres also provide interim and emergency relief programs, including clothing banks, transportation services, the weekly bread program at the Dauphin Friendship Centre in Manitoba, food boxes, food banks, community gardens, and nutrition programs.
Again, as a network and a movement, all friendship centres are status blind. When a non-Indigenous person walks through the doors and is in need of services, they will not be turned away. A newcomer can come in the door and be in need of services, and they will not be turned away. If Canada truly wants reconciliation, we all need to reach out and tear down those divides. We need to focus on our similarities and not our differences.
As a Sixties Scoop survivor, the friendship centre became my home. When I first moved to Manitoba I had no family here. I was not Anishinaabe and I was not Cree; I was Beaver. I was a transplanted Beaver woman to Manitoba. I had no place where I could go and get services culturally specific to my needs. I turned to the friendship centres and they became my home. They provided me with the cultural teachings that I needed. I found out who I was as a person through culturally specific programs that they had. I’m thankful that they are here for me today.
I have three recommendations. My first recommendation is I would like to continue this conversation past this singular study. There’s a great benefit in conversation, especially if we use conversation to practise listening.
My second recommendation is to engage with and listen to urban Indigenous people in addition to the Indigenous politicians. Political representation is very important, but it’s the people who need to be involved in this process of healing. This is not a situation that is appropriate for higher-up people to determine what’s best for the people who don’t have a voice.
My third and final recommendation is to simply increase supports for friendship centres. In today’s environment, friendship centres are strategically positioned to assist everyone. Why not make use of this infrastructure?
In closing and before I hand the floor to Ryan, I would like to invite the members of the committee and their colleagues in the Senate to visit the friendship centre in their riding, in their neighbouring ridings, to see the real and lasting positive impact that friendship centres have on their communities. Speak to the community and the staff and learn how the friendship centre network improves the quality of life for urban Indigenous people.
Thank you very much for your time and for listening to me.
Ryan Paradis, Executive Director, Manitoba Association of Friendship Centres: I would like to thank the Senate committee for the opportunity to speak to you on this issue. As Roberta has already pointed out, the nation-to-nation discussion is leaving the majority of Indigenous people in Canada out of the conversation. Sixty per cent of all Indigenous people now live and reside in the urban environment. The farther away they are from their home reserve, the harder it is to receive any kind of support to improve their quality of life. Friendship centres were originally formed over 60 years ago to help make the transition easier for Indigenous people leaving their traditional lands to function and have a higher quality of life in the urban environment.
Unfortunately, all the details of these service provisions are being forgotten in the spirit of reconciliation, the fervour of political goodwill coming from both sides, and the excitement of engagement; and justifiably so. The urban Indigenous person has no voice. As Roberta said, if a First Nation’s person residing in the urban environment has to travel using either public transportation or walking, it becomes very difficult to find community support. It’s those community hubs that urban Indigenous communities/people rely on. It’s those urban Indigenous hubs that help create lower crime, work toward lowering the rate of crime provide satisfaction in day-to-day life, and increase economic capacity through engaging with the community.
So essentially First Nations people, Metis people, Inuit, non-status — I don’t know where non-status people would go — but in the nation-to-nation discussion everyone will have to seek services through their home cultural identification and their governing body. That is going to lead to duplication of services in the same communities and higher costs. Really, it’s a waste of money, of time and of energy.
Friendship centres, as well as other urban Indigenous providers, already have infrastructure, people, and programs, and, most importantly, a trusted reputation in the communities they serve. This is something that takes time to build and it’s not prudent to start all over again. Urban Indigenous people and urban Indigenous service providers need renewed support. In this nation-to-nation discussion, this last year has been one of the hardest years in the 60-plus year history of friendship centres because of funding cuts at the federal level, which have been most problematic. When we tried to voice our concern, we’re essentially relegated to the sideline in this discussion. We’re not a political organization, we’re status blind, we have no political affiliation, and this position appears to be the reason why we’re left out of the conversation.
I fully support the recommendations Roberta has put forward, and I thank you again for this time.
The Chair: The floor is now open for questions. Senator Patterson.
Senator Patterson: Many of us are well aware of the good work that friendship centres do. When we were in Saskatchewan yesterday we heard the same alarming story that changes in Ottawa, and particularly the creation of two departments from one, have had perhaps unforeseen and certainly undesirable consequences for friendship centres; and in Saskatchewan, we were told, vital youth programs. You said that this was the toughest year for funding. Can you elaborate, give us more detail about what happened and why, please?
Mr. Paradis: I don’t have data to support the fact that it may have been the toughest year, but it might well have been. It certainly has been one of the toughest years, without question.
The lack of certainty is one thing. We were to enter a new agreement and contract for the previous fiscal year. It was already running late when we were told last July we would have an agreement; then it became before the fall; then before the New Year. In the end, we had bridge funding to take us through the entire fiscal year, so it became an ad hoc part to the five-year agreement that was supposed to be put in place.
The programs and services stream of funding has been slashed. Our youth funding has disappeared and it has been a struggle. The Friendship Centre Movement across Canada at the national level and certainly at the Manitoba level have felt the squeeze of being slowly pushed out of the conversation.
Certainly there’s no begrudging the ability for Metis people, First Nations and Inuit to self-govern, lobby and negotiate on behalf of their people. Of course, we support all of them. But there is no provision for the non-Indigenous people; the mixed families. How do you tell a family with a non-status child and a status child, “I’m sorry, you can only use these services for one of your children,” and the other one has to stand on the sidelines and watch as their brother or sister takes part in whatever service that might be?
It’s those types of situations that, with every passing month in this nation-to-nation discussion, are becoming more entrenched systemically and becoming more of a concern. They need to be recognized and then dealt with.
I hope that answers your question.
Senator Patterson: Your Saskatchewan colleagues felt that these funding difficulties — and they mentioned youth programs being cut in half in Saskatchewan — are the result of the creation of two departments, when Indigenous and Northern Affairs became Indigenous Services and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs. Who funds you now? Are you dealing with the same people who you dealt with before the split in the department? We were told that the unilateral announcement of the creation of two departments was to end the colonial approach. I guess we all hoped that this would be a good thing. Can you describe in a little more detail like how it affected your funding relationship with the federal government?
Mr. Paradis: Friendship centres by and large when it comes to federal funding under the current urban programming for Indigenous peoples receive funding through the National Association of Friendship Centres, which is made up of all the friendship centres, just like every provincial and territorial association. We are dealing with different people now at DISC, or Department of Indigenous Services Canada. In fact, that was part of the large amount of uncertainty, because in the midst of the negotiations and urgently trying to ink our agreement over the last year, we switched from Minister Bennett to Minister Philpott. Of course, as you can imagine, that’s not a model for efficiency.
That said, I think any time you split the discussion and compartmentalize, it’s actually a big step toward colonialism attitudes, not away from them. I think the discussion needs to be holistic, ongoing, public, and all-inclusive. It’s not going to be easy, but reconciliation, practically speaking, is not easy. If that’s what we’re really doing here, I think it’s reasonable to rethink that strategy.
Senator Patterson: Just to drill down a bit further, you were expecting a five-year agreement to be renewed last fiscal year, and do I understand you waited almost all fiscal year to get some news about that agreement, and you got some ad hoc funding at the end of the fiscal year, and still no five-year agreement? Is that the situation?
Mr. Paradis: That’s close to the situation. The previous programing ended outright. There was a new program, the Community Capacity Support program. The Urban Aboriginal Strategy was the previous program. Now it’s UPIP, Urban Programming for Indigenous People.
We were to have an agreement inked coming into the new fiscal year, but for whatever reason that did not occur and negotiations were ongoing. Every few months we would get different information on how we were to proceed. We didn’t receive all our funding at the last minute. We did receive it piecemeal. At the beginning, bridge funding was released so friendship centres could keep their doors open. More bridge funding was released in the summer, again in the late fall/early winter, and then again just weeks ago. Our friendship centres still don’t have their programs and services funding today. We’re still waiting. The logistics of how we’re going to deal with that given the fiscal year is ending in a week will be interesting.
Ms. MacKinnon: You mentioned the youth funding, and I am involved with the Brandon Friendship Centre. A few years ago we got $140,000 to run our youth program. A couple of years ago the federal government was all about the youth, “We’re going to help the youth, we’re going to give them more programs, we’re going to help them develop their interests culturally, and we’re going to do something with them to help decrease the crime.”
This year, we got $60,000 to run the youth program. I know some families who live on $60,000 a year. You cannot run a decent youth program that is open seven days a week, providing food because they may not have food at home, and culturally specific activities. You can’t do that on $60,000 a year. That barely covers our workers’ pay. That doesn’t leave very much for helping the youth. I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.
Senator Christmas: Good morning. I’m very pleased that you’re here.
I find I’m hearing a contradiction here, and please correct me if I’m wrong. Roberta, you described the friendship centres very well, as “client centres,” “culturally appropriate,” and “status blind.” It strikes me that the friendship centres are an essential service in urban areas. You serve a population that is so vulnerable, and without your services I even fear to think what will happen to those people.
Yet on the other side of the contradiction — again, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth — it seems to me that the nation-to-nation relationship fails you, that you’re outside of that nation-to-nation relationship, even though you’re an essential service. That’s the contradiction I see in my mind.
The other comment I’m trying to “reconcile” I guess, for lack of a better word, is that you’re non-political and deliberately so because of the nature of your service. You want to serve everyone who comes through your doors. It seems to me that you have a deliberate approach to be status blind, to make sure that everyone who comes through your door is serviced. But the price you pay for being a non-political organization is that you don’t have a voice. That’s the contradiction I see in my mind.
If you don’t have a political voice, and you don’t want one, at least from Indigenous political organizations, where can you get that voice? You need that voice, I think, to be able to articulate the needs of the people that you serve.
I see this contradiction, and I don’t know what we can recommend as a committee to get your services funded in the way they should be funded. It’s a dilemma, and I’m sorry to put that on you, but I’m trying to wrestle with these questions.
Ms. MacKinnon: How I see things nation-to-nation is that government is speaking to First Nations, the Metis and the Inuit. Where do urban Aboriginal people go to have their voice heard if they are not affiliated with a certain community? Like I stated earlier, I am a transplanted Beaver here in Manitoba. I am not Cree; I am not Anishinaabe; I am not Dakota. Where do I go? What office do I walk into and say, “I need some help, I need to find out where I can get these services?”
These are the same people that we serve every day. They don’t have a voice and we are their voice. Right now it seems with the funding that the Friendship Centre Movement and the friendship centres are in jeopardy of losing their funding altogether. They’re in jeopardy of not being able to provide the services that our people so badly need.
Being from Brandon, I’m going to use the Brandon Friendship Centre as an example. We have our homeless there. Gail is our executive director. She opens the doors and puts on coffee at 8:00 in the morning. There are people waiting at the door to get in to have a cup of coffee. They’ll come in, and they’ll sit, and they’ll say, “No, I’ll wait until the coffee is ready.” We don’t open until 8:30, but she’s not going to let them sit out there in the cold waiting for half an hour, so she lets them in, and they sit there.
Where do these people go? Quite often they are from northern communities. They come to an urban centre and they have no place, they have no office to walk into and say, “I need help.” Or if they do the reply is, “Well, you’ve got to go and see this politician, you’ve got to go and see that politician.” So they come to us and we are their voice. Yes, we don’t have a voice because we are not political. We are status blind and we help everybody that walks through our doors. We are losing our voice because we are not political.
Does that answer your question?
Senator Christmas: My conclusion is that the friendship centres have to be the voice of urban Indigenous people. I commented yesterday that one of the mistakes I think politicians make is that we immediately try to fit the friendship centres with all the other organizations; that we try to fit them with the First Nations, or the Metis, or the Inuit, and sometimes we fail to see that the friendship centre is its own unique organization because you serve all. You don’t serve one, you serve all.
It seems to me part of the solution here is to be able to encourage the federal government to recognize, as part of this nation-to-nation relationship, that the friendship centres across Canada should be recognized on their own, as their own entity. I don’t want to say “political organization,” I don’t think that’s what you want, but you definitely are urban service providers. I think that’s where the direction needs to go. Any thoughts on that approach?
Mr. Paradis: I think the language itself is first and foremost destructive. “Destructive” is an exaggeration, I suppose, but you get my point. It is one of the most detrimental factors here. “Nation-to-nation” automatically puts the conversation in a box, in a political box, and we’re talking about people. It’s more than governments. Governments are there to represent the people, but we all know that that can only occur to a certain extent. When we’re talking about, as you rightfully say, very vulnerable populations who don’t have that political representation, as soon as you talk about a nation-to-nation conversation, they’re immediately left out right from the beginning.
You’re quite correct in pointing out that friendship centres need to have a voice. The reality is though that we can’t afford to become a political organization and protect the people in the communities that we serve. I think we need to implore decision makers in this conversation to rethink the language.
Senator Christmas: On your last comment about rethinking, could you elaborate? I think I know where you’re heading, but could you just for the record elaborate what you mean by “rethinking this”?
Mr. Paradis: Thank you again for the opportunity to expand on that. “Rethink,” because, as I said, there is a detrimental effect immediately once you start discussing nations. I mean, what is a nation? A nation is a government, at least when you’re talking about discussions between them. It’s representative of a body of people. But what about the people who are lost to that nation? In today’s environment, you can be from a First Nation and then lose status and that support. You essentially lose your citizenship. I mean, not in relationships but in services when you are part of a vulnerable population. It’s very difficult to come back from that. How do you? Something that you can make a direct connection to is the simple language that’s used in the conversation. We should talk person-to-person.
Senator McCallum: Thank you for your presentation. I worked as a dental officer for the province for about four years. I’ve lived in Winnipeg for about 40 years. This has been, I think, one of the most complex — I don’t want to say “problems.” It’s such a complex mixture of so much. It was impossible for me to look at how the urban population accessed services in Manitoba, because there was really no one body that would hear and represent the voice of the people, to communicate with them; for Indigenous peoples, to say, “This is what we need.” I could never wrap my head around it.
It is even difficult for me to sit here, to ask the appropriate questions, because the system, as has been said, is a political system. It’s a colonial political system that has been passed down to First Nations’ leadership, and it does not take into account a lot of the voices. I think one of the problems is that when you look at nation-to-nation usually it’s land-based people. People who come to the city have no land base. Because of the way the system is set up, there’s nowhere that you can say, “Okay, we’re going to be a group.”
There are so many different groups in Winnipeg that have different voices. We hear them. There is not one body that has come together and said, “Okay, let’s work together.” Would you recommend that? Is it possible? The will is there. The know-how I think is there. Would that be a direction to go, or would you even recommend it? Perhaps there is such a body that exists already.
Ms. MacKinnon: While you were speaking my mind immediately went to my home community of Brandon. In Brandon, we have what is considered “the hub,” which is different service providers sitting around the table, similar to this. They look at the problems that are happening in Brandon, and with certain individuals or certain areas, they will put their heads together. They become one voice. I think that’s what we need to do here in Winnipeg. We need to do that here in Manitoba. All the service providers need to have at least one representative and sit around the table and say, “Okay, this is what we’re looking at, this is what we need to do,” and become one voice.
The friendship centres do that. We have our quarterly meetings, and then we have an annual meeting, where all friendship centres across Canada come together and voice their concerns, and “This is what’s happening in our region, so how can we work together with other regions to combat this one problem or this one area?”
That is a great way, I believe. Winnipeg could do it, Brandon has done it, Thompson could do it, Manitoba could do it, become one voice in whatever concerns we have.
Does that answer your question?
Senator McCallum: Yes, it does. You made such a good point about the nation-to-nation conversation putting you in a box, because I hadn’t even thought about it being its tendency to exclude. You just hope that you’re including everybody in there.
The way the political system is set up currently in Canada, voices come out through leadership, through chiefs and councils or the Grand Chief. Members would represent all these different groups in the urban areas across Canada. Do you see this as being a separate body from chiefs and councils? How would you set that up?
Mr. Paradis: In the real world or ideally?
Senator McCallum: Ideally.
Mr. Paradis: Yes, there’s a place there.
I’m going to be honest; there are the chiefs and councils. In Manitoba, there is the Manitoba Metis Federation. Again, what about non-status people? In Manitoba, the Inuit populations are at a level where it’s very difficult to get support for services. I’ve had a meeting and a few discussions with the next witness, the Manitoba Inuit Association. There’s a real difficulty for Inuit people in finding Inuit-based services in Manitoba in general. Yet, Winnipeg is the closest urban centre for many Inuit people to get certain levels of healthcare and other services that they need. But then they come here and then get stuck because they can’t afford to go home.
Like you initially said, it’s a very complex issue and I don’t know that there is a magic bullet solution. I think it’s going to have to be a nuanced approach. I think academics can play a role in pointing out gaps. I think that the conversation needs to progress. It needs to be a conversation. To oversimplify, it needs to be an ongoing conversation in the public sphere, and it needs to be something that’s spoken about frankly and without prejudice from any angle. My answer is I don’t think there’s any simple — I have no idea.
Senator McCallum: I think that’s part of the problem. I think this is a good step.
The Chair: Part of the reason the committee is out asking these kinds of questions and hearing answers is to prompt you to imagine. We don’t have the solutions. This exercise helps you to imagine, what would be the perfect solution or any kind of solution. As you were talking this morning about how you don’t fit into the so-called nation-to-nation conversation, I was trying to imagine if there was such a body. As you said, it is from one government to another. What came to my mind were things like intergovernmental organizations of some type, intergovernmental affairs.
Could you imagine that there could be some kind of body or mechanism within the nation-to-nation relationship that allowed them to work together? What you’re seeing right now is that it seems like we’re splitting things apart. Could you propose, for example, some mechanism within the structures that allows for an organization like the friendship centres to represent both nations, or both bodies, or multiple nations?
Mr. Paradis: It’s a good thought. I think if there was a government body that recognized the rights of Indigenous people as a whole, not worrying so much about status, not worrying whether you’re Metis, Inuit, First Nations, if you self-identify as an Indigenous person then that’s the start. I think that’s how the conversation needs to be framed. Again, things get complicated after that, but I think that that’s still the spirit that needs to be in the air as things are being fleshed out.
Ms. MacKinnon: Ideally it would be nice to have the friendship centre seen as a nation. You have First Nations, you have the chiefs and councils, you have the Inuit Association, you have the Metis Association; so why not have the friendship centre at the table also? They are the voice that could speak for everybody who accesses their services.
I’m going to use myself as an example. I am Beaver from Fort Vermilion, Alberta, Boyer River. When I need services, I cannot go home because it’s a two-day drive from here. It’s not easy for me just to jump in the car and say, “Oh, I need to see the dentist, so I need to go and get a paper from my band in order to be able to go and see the dentist.” It’s not that easy for me.
When I do go home, the very first question they ask me, “Do you live here? Are you on reserve?” And I say, “No, I live in Brandon; I live in Manitoba.” “Well, then we can’t help you,” is their answer. So where do I go for services?
The Friendship Centre Movement is a wonderful place to be able to go and have your voice heard. They are the ones that say, “Well, you go to this dentist.” As long as you have your status card you can get services. But if you’re non-status you don’t get those services. So we do need to be sitting at the table as a nation and to look at the friendship centres as a nation.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you both for being here. I’m late because my plane just landed.
I was very interested in the reference that you made about the role of academics. I wonder whether we could come back to that in a little more detail.
In my previous life I did a lot of research connected to social action, which came to be known as “evidence-based advocacy.” I wonder if we could explore, if you waved a magic wand and there were academics out there that wanted to be helpful, where would you like to see the start?
Mr. Paradis: Thank you for that question. There’s no need for a magic wand; there are already academics out there who are trying to be helpful. I think that there is an interest in the academic community to right a lot of these wrongs that are talked about in the nation-to-nation reconciliation discussions.
Unfortunately, a large portion of society is suspicious of academic information. I don’t really understand that line of thinking. It’s research; you look at the way things are and not the way you’d like to think things are.
Anyway, I digress; apologies.
There are a number of fields in sociology: urban planning, urban studies, social work. I know that there’s a plethora of academic literature out there that is relevant, that is current, and that is directed specifically to these communities that we talk about. It is peer reviewed, and it is a great resource that’s underused. We don’t need to create new studies because there are already new studies out there. We just have to do a big lit review.
Senator McPhedran: I want to make sure I’ve understood your reply. Would I be correct in understanding from your response that you don’t see any gaps or any need for initiating research that’s specific to friendship centres or issues that are of particular concern to friendship centres? You’re entirely satisfied with what’s available?
Mr. Paradis: Thank you for pointing out that flaw in what I just said. I don’t presume to have read all the academic literature out there, so I’m not going to say I’m entirely satisfied with what’s out there. I think that it needs to be ongoing, because five years from now the current studies won’t be so current. I think that one study leads to the identification of a need for another. All I’m going to say is they need to be considered, reviewed and looked at. Perhaps there is a need, there is a gap, there very well may be. It depends which lens and which point of view you want to look at things from. If you’re Inuit, if you want to look at things that are Inuit-specific lens, or Metis, or non-status, or Indigenous as a whole, that will affect what your outcomes and studies reveal. I think that there are always gaps.
I hope that answers your question. It’s not an easy one to answer.
Senator Christmas: It seems to me that when we talk about relationships with non-Indigenous peoples and we talk about nation-to-nation, we end up talking usually about the relationship with the federal government or the relationship with the provincial government. Since you’re an urban service provider, I wonder what your relationship is with local municipal governments. It would strike me that that relationship or that partnership would be very important to friendship centres.
Could you elaborate on how or if you partner with local municipal governments and services, and how does that impact your service?
Ms. MacKinnon: I can only use Brandon as an example. We have a very good relationship with our municipal governments. A comment that I’ve heard from the government, or from our mayor and our political body around Brandon, is the friendship centres are the best kept secret in Canada. Because we are such service providers, we’re not out there tooting our horn. Maybe we should be. But we don’t want to be forgotten and we don’t want to be around the table too. We don’t want to be left out sitting in the observers’ section. We would like to be able to have a voice for those who don’t have a voice.
Senator Christmas: So do friendship centres have an opportunity to have a voice at the municipal level? Do you have special relationships with mayors, or with their administrators, or with their staff? I mean it’s a whole range of municipal services, from policing to the whole thing. I’m just trying to figure out that relationship, and that seems to be a best-kept secret too. I’m trying to understand and bring some light to that relationship, because I suspect it’s very valuable in your work.
Ms. MacKinnon: In Brandon, on our board we have Jason Gobeil, who is our Brandon Urban Aboriginal Peoples’ Council director. He works hand-in-hand with the mayor. We also have a representative from the Brandon Police Service on our board. In Brandon, yes, we have a very good relationship, and we have the city’s approval, we have the police chief’s approval. We do have those close relationships. We have Larry Maguire our MP, who quite often comes to our events when he’s available. Oh goodness, I forget the name of our MLA. Drew Caldwell used to come all the time. There are different political people who come and just are there when we have our Aboriginal Day powwows or round dances, or whatever it is that we hold.
I can’t speak for Thompson, Winnipeg, or other centres within Manitoba, but we have talked about it around the table. We do go to different centres. We were in Selkirk just a couple of weeks ago for a meeting, and they had their political people come and give opening remarks and talk to us as Manitoba’s group. I believe that each centre has an association with their political parties.
The Chair: On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank our witnesses this morning from the Manitoba Association of Friendship Centres. Thank you Mr. Paradis and Ms. MacKinnon.
I would like to welcome our second panel this morning. From the Manitoba Inuit Association, we have Mr. Fred Ford, President and Board Chair; Rachel Dutton, Executive Director. And from the Youth Parliament of Manitoba, we have Mr. Garry McLean, Elder; and Adrienne Tessier, the Premier.
I understand, Mr. McLean, that you have some other commitments, so perhaps we could have you go first.
Garry McLean, Elder, Youth Parliament of Manitoba: Thank you.
[Editor’s Note: Mr. McLean spoke in Saulteaux.]
My name is Garry McLean. I’m originally from Lake Manitoba First Nation, which is Treaty 2 land. We’re an Ojibway nation and the language we speak is Saulteaux. I’m here today as the elder for the Manitoba Youth Parliament. I won’t go into it too much. We’ll get Adrienne to explain that.
I got involved with the youth parliament as an elder. They asked me to come and help, and I said sure. I think it’s a great opportunity for our youth to be involved. For pretty well all the youth involved, it’s the first time in the Manitoba legislature. It’s really neat to actually sit in a legislative chair and say, “Hey.”
One of the things I try to instill is the Anishinaabe ways and Anishinaabe law. Before Europeans came, back in the day we had our own laws, we had our own system. One of my grandfathers always say, “One of the weak areas we had was in immigration.” I never used to get the joke. Now I get it. But at the same time, when the treaties were signed, we welcomed all the people here and my uncle used to always say too, “We really are all treaty people because we signed treaties with the newcomers.” We have five distinct language groups in Manitoba. Of course, we have Anishinaabe. We break them down to Ojibway, Cree, Inuit, and Michif.
It’s a real privilege to be part of the youth parliament because we’ve got a chance to educate our kids and more so those in Winnipeg. In Manitoba, 60 per cent of our people live off the reserve. Once you leave the reserve, you become a Manitoban or an Albertan, whatever province you’re in, and that’s where you’re supposed to get service from. That’s the way the agreements with the government are written.
We have lots of service agencies, yes. In Manitoba we have over 100 service agencies that service our people at various levels. You just heard from the friendship centre, which is a service agency.
The confusion that happens with service agencies is they want to get into the political arena. That seems to be the biggest drawback, and seems to be a big source of confusion, not only for us as Anishinaabe people, but for the Metis and for the general population. In Manitoba, for example, we have two bodies: one that represents the Anishinaabe people, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs; and the other political body is the Metis Federation. And the rest of the people or agencies are service agencies. Of course, the Province of Manitoba has acts to cover all of that: the Justice Act, the Child Welfare Act and the Infrastructure Act. They have all of those.
But it’s only recently we’ve started to learn to play together. You’ve got to remember we didn’t vote until 1960 in Canada. That’s a short little while ago. Of course, the 1982 Constitution coming back to Canada was a big shock to many of us. We’ve had many, many reports. I think we’ve got roughly 40 reports out there that we try to use. I guess the most recent one is the TRC.
But the one I want to bring to your attention is the royal commission report of 1994. Back in those days it was recommended that the Department of Indian Affairs be split into two. I believe this is what the government is trying to do now, to bring that institution into play.
I got involved with the youth parliament because I see it as a way for our young people to prepare for next 5, 10, 20, 50 years, or even the next 150 years. We haven’t done well in the last 150 years with our Anishinaabe people and our visitors. If we don’t start we’re going to be talking about the same things.
I have a granddaughter who is 14 years old. I don’t want my granddaughter to discuss these same issues that I discussed or my daughter discussed. By the time she’s 18 or 21 years old, I want my granddaughter to be able to just talk with anybody, not because they’re German, not because they’re Ukrainian, not because they’re Italian. I just want my granddaughter to be open to that.
To me, the leaders of today are our youth. I know often we say that our youth are our future leaders, but I believe different. I believe our youth are our leaders of today.
I just want to share one more story and I’ll let Adrienne do the rest.
We just did a collaboration leadership initiative with the mayors of the Winnipeg greater region. The reason we picked Winnipeg greater region is there are 17 municipalities in Winnipeg greater region. As of October this year, we have 92,600 Anishinaabe people in Winnipeg. Between the Winnipeg greater region and our Anishinaabe people, we represent 68 per cent of the population of Manitoba. It is not to say that the other regions don’t matter, it’s just that the core seems to be here. Also, we represent 70 per cent plus of the GDP of this province. We need to be aware of that. There are stats for those figures. I didn’t bring them, but I know they’re there, and I think we need to be really aware of that.
I want to quote my hero, Murray Sinclair: “Reconciliation is about forging and maintaining respectful relationships. There are no shortcuts.” There are no shortcuts. If there were shortcuts, we would have found them in the last 150 years. But we have a chance to find them in the next 150 years. Hopefully it won’t take us that long. I don’t believe it will, I think you, the senators, have an opportunity to forge ahead with our 338 MPs in this country.
In a sense we’re fortunate here in Manitoba that we have 14 MP’s. That is not a whole lot, but we communicate with all of them, we communicate with all parties. That’s what I’m trying to teach the youth, to do that. I remind them, “The politicians are human beings like you and I. Chances are they put on their socks the same way.” Maybe not left and right, maybe they’re right and left. But if they want nice hair they’ve got to comb their hair in the morning, the many of us that still have hair. I’m teaching them to have fun, because they need to have fun, and I also teach them to stay away from the booze and the drugs.
Myself, I’ve been drug-free for 40 years. In my family, I had 37 aunts and uncles, and 75 per cent of my aunts and uncles died as a result of booze and drugs. Part of that, of course, goes to the residential school experience. I think it’s very, very important that we share those things.
I want to pass this on to the chair. In the Anishinaabe world tobacco is the first thing we present, and once you accept my tobacco then you’re going to carry on the message I’m trying to carry.
Thank you.
The Chair: Ms. Tessier, do you have a brief presentation?
Adrienne Tessier, Premier, Youth Parliament of Manitoba: Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you. Meegwetch.
It is an incredible honour to be here, and I’d very much like to thank the Senate for the opportunity to do so. My name is Adrienne Tessier and I’m the Premier of the Youth Parliament of Manitoba. I’m very grateful to Garry for being here today as well.
I’ll begin with some brief comments about who we are and our history as an organization. I’ll then describe the work of our Reconciliation Fund and what we have done to engage Indigenous Manitobans in our programming and in our organization.
Who is the Youth Parliament of Manitoba? We are a 97-year-old organization whose mission is to engage Manitoban youth in our parliamentary democracy. We’ve been holding parliamentary sessions in the Manitoba legislature since 1922.
As an organization, we’re entirely non-partisan, non-denominational, and run by youth. And by “run by youth,” I mean that the oldest person in our organization is 23 years old. None of our board of directors, including myself, are compensated for the time that we spend running this organization.
I would also like to acknowledge that we are a proud member of the youth parliament movement across Canada, in which hundreds of youth take part in legislatures across this country.
In particular, we’re very excited to welcome our sister youth parliaments across Western Canada here to the Manitoba legislature in May for the Western Canada Youth Parliament.
Our winter session, which occurs annually from December 26 to 31 at the Manitoba legislature brings together up to 90 Manitoba youth to discuss bills written by their peers in the centre of Manitoban politics. In both our programming and in the workings of our organization, we are committed to empowering and trusting in youth and our abilities.
I think what we do can be boiled done to three elements. First, we create an opportunity for youths to develop their skills. This can be a variety of things. This can be public speaking, this can be leadership, even things as varied as talking to the press and writing news releases. I don’t know of any other organization that lets 17 year old’s be the press relation officers. When I was 17, I was facilitating interviews at the Manitoba legislature. And I think that’s a really important part of what we do because we trust in these youth, we trust in their abilities, and we empower them to take these leadership roles.
Second, we create a safe and empowering community. This is our priority as a board, ensuring that whenever you show up to the Manitoba legislature what you say is valid and celebrated. As I said, we are non-denominational and we are non-partisan. Any youth and any of their perspectives are more than welcome.
Lastly, and I think Garry touched on this briefly, we demystify politics. Being in the legislature, speaking from the chair, meeting parliamentarians, meeting retired parliamentarians as well, you see yourself in the chamber. You see yourself in those places of politics. You realize that politicians really are just like us. I think that that’s an incredibly powerful experience. I think that’s an incredibly important experience that we can facilitate for youth.
In recent years, our membership, our executive, and our cabinet have worked extremely hard to accelerate the inclusivity of our programming. We are committed, for example, to keeping registration costs as low as possible, which makes us the cheapest youth parliament in western Canada amongst the anglophone youth parliaments.
Indeed, in 2014 we passed in our by-laws that any Manitoba youth aged 16 to 20 who wants to attend our event should be allowed and encouraged to do so regardless of financial status. To implement this change to our by-laws, we’ve introduced a robust system of financial aid. I’m extremely proud to say that of the 80 attendees of our 2017 winter session, a full 26 per cent did not pay to be there, through our systems of financial aid and partnerships with many organizations.
In the midst of this movement within our organization we received a challenge. Aimée Craft, who is an Indigenous lawyer and scholar currently with the University of Ottawa, was the keynote speaker at our 2016 annual gala. There she challenged us to meaningfully engage in actions of reconciliation as a board and as an organization. I’m proud to say that our membership took up the call and passed a motion at our next AGM that called for, amongst other things, an elder to advise our board of directors for YPM to recruit in northern Manitoba and on reserves, and to permanently incorporate Indigenous ceremony into our parliamentary sessions.
I’m proud to say that we now begin and end our parliamentary sessions with a smudging and with a teaching. As of last year, we have engaged Garry to be our elder. I have to say that it was Garry who suggested that we include a closing smudge to ensure that our parliamentary sessions are bookended with an awareness of the land upon which we meet, and an awareness of the history that brought us all to the Manitoba legislature.
However, senators, what has unquestionably had the biggest impact on our organization is the Reconciliation Fund. This initiative, which was spearheaded by our then Minister of Reconciliation, Ronald Gamblin, recruits and funds 10 Indigenous youth to attend our winter session. Of those 10 Indigenous youth, our goal is to recruit five from reserves, five off reserve, five women, and five men. This includes their registration, any applicable travel costs, food and incidentals, and formal clothing if needed. Last year we received over 19 applications, of which nine were accepted and eventually seven attended our session, including two individuals who flew in from northern Manitoba. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the generous support of our many sponsors and donors who made this possible.
Madam Chair, this session, having these youth present, proved to us the necessity of this initiative to our organization. A more diverse inclusive membership was reflected not only in the quality of the debates that we were able to have in the chamber of the legislature, but the content as well. We unanimously passed a bill on child welfare reform that not only nationalized child welfare, but endorsed Jordan’s principle and the Phoenix principle, and gave Indigenous communities veto power over what happens in their communities. Most powerfully, we were able to have a nuanced thoughtful debate about Indigenous sovereignty that fundamentally reshaped the reserve system, as informed by the stories of Indigenous youth who have lived on reserve themselves. Hearing their stories of being in their communities, of gaining and losing status, of what it meant for them to be a part of their nations was an incredibly powerful experience that we simply could not have had without their presence in the Manitoba legislative chamber.
Given our success this year, we anticipate that we will meet our goals of ten youth attending through the Reconciliation Fund. This requires the effort of our Minister of Reconciliation and a member of our executive to raise the necessary funds, which amount to some $5,000 a year.
While we are incredibly proud of how far we have come in four short years since we passed that resolution at our AGM, and in two years since we received this challenge, we acknowledge that there is still far to go. For instance, as far as we know, we have never had an Indigenous member of the board, even though we did have two Indigenous candidates stand for election this year.
In closing, I would like to thank the incredible network of supporters who have helped us in this process. We are so incredibly lucky to be in Winnipeg, where we can draw on a huge wealth of time, insight, and resources to support us and aid us in this process. I can say that the youth parliament today is fundamentally different in many ways from the youth parliament that I entered eight years ago. I am so excited to see where this journey takes us in the future.
The Chair: We’ll now turn to our second panel of witnesses from the Manitoba Inuit Association: Mr. Fred Ford, the President and Board Chair; and Ms. Rachel Dutton, the Executive Director.
Rachel Dutton, Executive Director, Manitoba Inuit Association: Good morning, Madam Chair and the committee members of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. My name is Rachel Dutton. I’m Executive Director of the Manitoba Inuit Association, an organization representing Inuit living in Manitoba. I’m here with my friend and colleague Fred Ford, as our President and Board Chair.
I’d like to begin by acknowledging that we’re standing on Treaty 1 land, on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe people and the homeland of the Metis nation. We also acknowledge that northern Manitoba includes lands that were and are original homes of the Inuit. I would like to thank you for the invitation to be here with you today to speak as witnesses about what a new relationship between the federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments can be and should be.
Manitoba Inuit Association is a non-profit organization that represents Inuit living in Manitoba through social outreach that promotes quality of life through programs and services to help Inuit who reside in the province. In the past five years the organization was incorporated, formed a board of directors, and appointed an executive director to develop cultural programming, educational employment and training services, health and housing supports, and research collaborations with key stakeholders who share the goal of enhancing lives of Inuit living in Manitoba.
There are 60,000 Inuit living in Canada, and the majority live in 53 communities spread across Inuit Nunangat, the Inuktitut word for Inuit homeland. This homeland consists of the four Inuit land claim regions with their own self-governance structures in place that exercise Inuit-specific rights within those provinces and territories. The land claim regions, as I know you know, are Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.
However, the trend toward urbanization among Inuit is growing because of problematic living conditions in the North; namely, overcrowded housing, food insecurity, lack of economic and educational opportunities, and limited access to health services. Twenty-seven per cent of Inuit now live outside of Inuit Nunangat, and this percentage is growing at a rapid rate in cities such as Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal, and St. John’s, where health and education quarters have been created over the decades, and urban Inuit organizations such as the Manitoba Inuit Association, have a clear mandate, to ensure that Inuit-specific programs and services meet the unique needs of Inuit living in an urban landscape.
To date, there are no Inuit-specific programs and services in Manitoba, other than the Inuit Health Boarding Home, which is funded by the government of Nunavut. Approximately 350 Inuit live in Winnipeg, and just under 1,000 live in our province. But these statistics do not reflect the full picture. Winnipeg is home to a fast-growing, transient Inuit population that leave their home communities in order to access healthcare services. There are approximately 15,000 visits by Inuit from the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut coming to Manitoba annually for healthcare services that they can’t access in their home territory.
For example, cancer care and cancer treatment is not accessible in most Inuit communities, and therefore Inuit must travel south for diagnosis and cancer treatment. That, as many of you know, is a very lengthy health journey that also includes aftercare and follow-up services that are not available back home. So Inuit face very lengthy and very lonely stays in Winnipeg while undergoing cancer treatment, usually underscored by a lack of nutritional foods and country foods; a lack of Inuit culture and language surrounding them to help remove barriers and accessing equitable healthcare; and most fundamental to who they are as — a relationship with their family members. This is not fostered in providing the individual with familial support. It’s completely unacceptable in 2018.
Inuit also seek out the southern cities to pursue post-secondary education, employment opportunities, specialized training, or move temporarily to stay closer to children who have involvement with child and family services in the province. And there are a myriad of other social or economic reasons why Inuit come south.
With respect to Inuit access and success in post-secondary education, our organization conducted a research project examining Inuit enrolment and graduation rates in post-secondary institutions in Manitoba. The report and its recommendations can be found on our website. It’s entitled Education Connections Project, the final report in March 2014. Our findings suggested that over the course of a ten-year period, from 2004 to 2014, the total number of self-declared Inuit students at a post-secondary institution in Manitoba was 233. The institutions included in this study were Assiniboine Community College, Brandon University, Red River College, University of Manitoba, and University of Winnipeg. That’s an average of 23 Inuit students per year enrolled in these post-secondary institutions, and most of those were enrolled in Red River College and University of Manitoba. The third-highest enrolment rates were found in Brandon and Winnipeg. So on average there was a 2.7 graduation rate per year of Inuit students over ten years. In addition, Inuit students encountered barriers to accessing student financial support many times because this funding is administered by other organizations who represent their own nations and whose mandate is not Inuit-centric.
The province of Manitoba and its officials are at a critical time in recognizing Inuit who reside in Manitoba, who have an inherent right to access culturally appropriate healthcare, education and employment training services. Our measurement of success in these areas would be reflected in tangible Inuit space in our city, tangible Inuit programs and services where our language and traditions are heard and seen and celebrated. We don’t see or hear this.
Gaps continue between Inuit well-being and that of the general population of Canada. Yet Canadian cities are not fully prepared to facilitate the transition from northern hamlets to large southern urban areas. The infrastructure and capacity built to facilitate the transition of First Nations moving to the urban environment needs to be replicated and supported to meet the specific needs of Inuit. MIA seeks to build support and continually improve the services and programs needed for Inuit living in the urban environment, but we cannot do this alone.
Prime Minister Trudeau has vowed to implement the 94 recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation report, starting with the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples. And his government launched the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. But these strokes of a pen have created inequitable spaces for Inuit, as they continue to have to negotiate space within these mandates and its bureaucracy so that it reflects the Inuit experience, truth gathering, and Inuit community supports and services.
We clearly do not have a robust and equitable relationship with the Crown, the provincial or municipal governments. We do not feel that Inuit living in Manitoba and their inherent rights as Canada’s Indigenous peoples are recognized or respected. The metric for this has been a lack of governmental funding at all levels. It has been dismissive and humiliating at best when we receive small indiscriminate funding or funding surpluses from other “pots” that inevitably have no intention to be an annual investment, or nurture and support a community service provision that has a meaningful impact in our communities.
We need all levels of government, community organizations, academic institutions, and fellow Canadians to understand that we are in this together and that “Our challenges are your challenges.” “Respect for each other” is a principle of reconciliation, that it is the coming together, the face-to-face relationships that will move us all toward a more equitable space. It cannot be a one-sided relationship with the Crown. The Manitoba Inuit Association continues to want to work with the Crown and other levels of government to ensure that Inuit living in Manitoba can maintain their Inuit identity and connection to the land through the consumption of country foods, transfer of Inuit knowledge, cultural practices and languages made possible by local Inuit organizations such as Manitoba Inuit Association.
Thank you for your time today and providing Inuit the space to honour their story.
The Chair: Did you want to also say a few words, Mr. Ford?
Fred Ford, President and Board Chair, Manitoba Inuit Association: Yes, please.
Thank you, Rachel, for putting that so succinctly, describing our Manitoban association in the province and the challenges we face.
[Editor’s Note: Mr. Ford spoke in Inuktitut.]
Thank you very much, Madam Chair, senators, honoured guests. My name is Fred Ford. I’m a beneficiary of the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement. I was involved with the Kivalliq Inuit Association first as a board member representing Inuit from Baker Lake to the Land Claim Association and the Kivalliq Inuit Association during the land claim negotiations. I later became an executive director with that same organization.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Thank you to the Senate of Canada to be invited to speak as a representative organization of Inuit in Manitoba. We are here. We’re here now; we were here long ago and will continue to be here in the future. For millennia we’ve coexisted with other Indigenous groups in the north of what is now Manitoba, living side-by-side, negotiating informal agreements, because we share resources in that part of the province. In fact, when we negotiated our land claim agreement for the creation of Nunavut, we made special arrangements with our neighbours in Manitoba about the shared use of land and resources in that part of the province, and also with the Northwest Territories at the same time. These agreements that we have made continue to be visited and revisited in the spirit in which they were negotiated to, see to it that they’re working as they were set out to work, to create harmonious relationships between our people.
These overlap agreements are an integral part of stewardship of land and water around Nunavut, and recognize, as I say in our land claim, the special relationship that we have with other Indigenous people south of us, and also to the west of us in the north.
We have been coming to Manitoba for millennia to participate in those shared resources in the northern part of the province. On the land we hunt the same caribou, the same herds that migrate north and south of the tree line. We harvest the same seals and whales from the shores of Hudson Bay. There’s evidence of long-standing cohabitation and long-standing occupation by Inuit and other Indigenous groups in that part of the territory. We recognize that, and those Indigenous groups in the north of the province recognize that.
I mention those things because they are in the spirit of working things out. This is always a part of our guiding principles in what we’ve come to call IQ or referring to traditional knowledge in the North; that we have a responsibility for stewardship, and as leaders, to take responsibility for those relationships that we have with our neighbours, and also with the resources that we share with our neighbours. That extends in this day and age to the changing dynamic of how we continue to share land and services here in the province.
But we as Manitoba Inuit have never had that relationship with the Crown on our own. There’s always been somebody else who has spoken for us. In our land claim agreement discussions our northern governments were the negotiating bodies that spoke on behalf of Inuit and Canada. But even since our land claim was negotiated and signed, the dynamic has changed. Our communities a lot more mobile now than what they used to be. Inuit are going further afield looking for those economic opportunities that extend beyond harvesting, land and resources, food sources. Until we build hospitals in the North, until we build education facilities that will reasonably train our young people to take the reins and fulfil all of those dreams that we expressed in our land claim agreements, we will continue to come south.
A lot of us are here because we want to be here. I met my wife in Baker Lake. She was the nurse in charge of our community there. My father was born in Baker and moved away when he was a young boy. He was raised in Cape Dorset. He later moved south to go to school, the schools that he continued to run away from. Before he was married he decided to make a trip south to visit relatives that he had, and in fact he got stuck in the south in the late 1940s. I dare say he became one of the first urban Inuit, among others, who were stuck in the south and couldn’t find a way home. He couldn’t afford to get back home after coming south. But the story had a happy ending, he met my mother, and they married, and had a family.
Although I was born in the south, I knew I had ancestry in the North, and it was always my desire to go north and find out about that part of my family. I had the joy in 1979 to return to Baker Lake to where my father was born with my young family. In fact, my father helped me to move there that year. He always said that if I went north he would return with me. True to his word, a few months after I moved there, he came back, realized what he had left behind, and the struggle that he had in the south, not being educated. He came back with my mother, and moved back to the community where he was born.
I’m always reminded of the story that Murray Sinclair tells about the ugly duckling. That was my dad growing up in the south, because he was poorly educated and working at a factory, could never make ends meet. The family grew and he just didn’t fit anywhere. So it was extremely important.
In my life time, the one thing I can say that I did was repatriate my father back to the place where he lived. He became a part of that community again, and he was embraced by it. I had never heard my father speak Inuktitut until he went home. He became a different person and got younger for every year that he stayed in the North.
That’s about being part of a community. When you’re in the south and not a part of the community, there are challenges that we all face. And anybody who is an urban Inuk, or anybody who is in the south for whatever reason has a story — they got here in different ways, and we all experience challenges. I didn’t know the experience of my father, of relocation and residential schools. He grew up thinking — and it is a word that still horrifies me — he was a “half-breed.” That’s how he described himself because other people described him that way. There was something that was reaffirming about returning him to where he was from; it made him whole again in his mind. While there are services here in this province for Indigenous peoples, there’s not really anything that’s offered that’s Inuit specific.
I’m going to return to my notes here because I don’t want to leave anything out that I wanted to include.
We have been having our babies here now for probably 50 or 60 years, whether in Churchill or here in Winnipeg. There are a few birthing centres now scattered across 28 communities in the North, but the majority of births, probably 90 per cent of them, are still happening outside of our territorial homelands. So that means a trip by a woman here to a boarding house in Manitoba where she stays, an institution basically with dormitory rooms are shared rooms with people. Maybe they’re Inuit, but we don’t necessarily know them or even speak the same dialect. There’s no country food. It’s stressful. You’re away from your family for a month at a time, the rest of your children and all of that. That adds to it.
We have a small hospital now in Iqaluit, and the health centres have been further developed in Rankin and Cambridge Bay. But for anything that’s really complicated, people are still flown out and brought to southern centres for treatment. It’s usually for diagnoses that come too late. Treatments start too late, and things that were perfectly treatable in other communities or other places in the country become terminal because of late diagnoses. Again, there are people who are here sometimes with escorts, sometimes not staying in hotels when the boarding house is filled, while they undergo the series of treatments, whether it’s for cancer radiation, or whatever. The North is not the place to be if you have special needs. Increasingly, we will see more mental health issues, dementia, as our population ages.
We certainly have challenges. Until we develop universities in the North or can provide education that will be suitable for our students, they will continue to come here. You heard a little bit about the study that we did some years ago that showed that fewer than 5 per cent of those students who are coming here year after year are graduating. It’s not because they’re not smart enough to finish their programs. It’s because there’s a lack of supports; there are challenges. Sometimes it’s housing, or the flow of money, or just the alienation of being away from home. While there are Indigenous services offered in different places, there’s nothing, again, that’s Inuit specific.
As concerned Inuit, we recognized here a few years ago that there was a way that we could make a difference. We first started as Manitoba Inuit Association, but soon realized that our mandate was broader than that. So we got together an active group of board members and undertook the work that would improve the lives of Inuit who are here in the province for whatever reason, including for medical services. There are 15,000 patient visits a year, at a huge cost to the Government of Nunavut, as the senator can attest in your previous life as premier. I mean, the costs are astronomical compared to providing those kinds of services in other urban centres, services which ultimately are still lacking in a lot of areas that could be improved.
This situation will continue. That demographic will grow for Inuit who are looking on their own to travel to urban centres for economic opportunities, or to find the healthcare on their own that they’re not provided in their communities.
You’ve heard from Rachel as well about Inuit children who are in care here in Manitoba, Child and Family Services. There are more children in care from Nunavut now than there were during the residential school period. There are children in foster care, children from Nunavut who are put into homes here in Manitoba, without any reasonable access to other Inuit services while away from their communities and culture. There are children with special needs who are here for care because we don’t have those kinds of facilities in the North, those specific kinds of services that somebody with severe disabilities or other ailments might need.
There are Inuit kids who have grown up here in foster care and moved from home to home. Some are now growing out of foster care and becoming adults. Many are not connected in any way with northern communities and living in difficult circumstances. There are Inuit coming out of provincial jails, out of federal penitentiaries into halfway houses here, making difficult transitions from the North to jail and from the jail to cities where there are no services that are Inuit specific.
While there are some programs that are offered through friendship centres and such, when somebody is in need of a specific kind of help, for example, treatment for addictions, it is difficult. They go to an organization that’s available here and are put in a circle. There are prayers in a language that we don’t understand. There’s smudging and things that in fact make us, as Inuit, feel even more alienated and not a part of something. Way too many Inuit here are in the shelters and the soup kitchens daily, many who take their chances and sleep out of doors or spend nights wandering around in bus shelters because they feel insecure or unsafe in those places where services are provided for other Indigenous people.
We as an Inuit association have strived to create a community here to bring together, as best we can, all of those diverse communities of Inuit here, bring them together at different times of the year for different events. We know that those Inuit who are going to do best are the ones that we can support.
The Chair: Mr. Ford, we have only a few minutes left for questions. Did you have any more to add very quickly?
Mr. Ford: This is not a short conversation.
The Chair: I know.
Mr. Ford: I’m happy that we’ve been able to state our case. Most importantly, what I want to say is that for the federal government to understand about Inuit in Manitoba you need to talk to Inuit in Manitoba. We’ve been an association that has endeavoured to get to the root of the systemic problems that face our communities here, and to do what we can to alleviate that, to make it a better experience. If Inuit are here in a problematic situation, we do what we can to get you home, or what we can to ease your journey if you’re on that health journey. We’ve been able to find monies to hire an education connections person every year, somebody who will work on campuses and connect with students, and just to make them part of our community.
The Chair: We have 15 minutes left in this session. We’ll start questioning with Senator Patterson and then Senator Christmas.
Senator Patterson: Thank you.
[Editor’s Note: Senator Patterson spoke in Inuktitut.]
Of course, I’d like to ask questions about the Manitoba Inuit Association. You talked about a poor relationship with the Crown, and we’re a federal parliamentary committee. You’re trying to offer programs, vital programs, for urban Inuit, the growing population. I wonder if you would talk a bit about the urban program for Indigenous people and whether you’re able to access funds from that program.
Ms. Dutton: You’re talking about the UPIP program, which has been a re-described program of the UAS, the Urban Aboriginal Strategy, which has been around for four years. Now we’re going into the sixth year of this reiteration. For the whole four years that UAS was in play, urban Inuit associations, ours included, were locked out of that process by way of its terms and conditions, because we were, and will not be, status blind as a service provider. We serve Inuit. Our programs are Inuit-centric and will always be.
So we were unable to attain any core funding and any program and service funding for the past four years. Now with the advent of the new program, UPIP, we have also been locked out of the organizational capacity funding stream, which is core funding. We put a proposal forward to obtain those core dollars and were not approved. We were very surprised because officials had come out from the previous INAC to have discussions with us and to get our recommendations moving forward as an Inuit organization. We made it clear that dollars needed to be put aside for urban Inuit. They require the same programs and services living in an urban environment, as their counterparts in Metis nations and First Nations. This apparently has fallen on deaf ears in as much as we’ve been able to understand the bureaucracy in play. UPIP programs and services has provided us with $209,000 for programs. It’s for one year. It was rolled out at the end of January of this year.
Senator Patterson: For which fiscal year?
Ms. Dutton: For 2017-18.
Senator Patterson: So you got funding three months before the end of the fiscal year?
Ms. Dutton: Correct. And we were told that DISC is in negotiations with ITK to try to understand who should be administering the four years that are standing in the wings waiting to be rolled out: Who will administer those dollars, how it will be divvied up throughout the 18 Inuit organizations in this country? We were pulled into Ottawa at the beginning of March to give our best thinking around this issue. Here we are at the end of March, and we still don’t know where our programs and services dollars are. I have not had any word as to where our core funding is coming from, if it’s coming. It’s a very disempowering experience, to say the least, and very frustrating.
The Chair: There will be just one question each because we’re running out of time, and we’ll swing back around if there is time.
Senator Christmas: I really have a comment. I just want to express my congratulations and my appreciation for the youth parliament and how you have embraced reconciliation. That is so encouraging and I just want to pass along my congratulations. In fact, when you mentioned about introducing smudging and ceremony into your youth parliament, it struck me that we as a Senate of Canada have not even done that after 150 years. Maybe we can learn from your parliament and maybe the Senate will change and introduce ceremony in our chamber. I just wanted to thank you and just pass along my congratulations to the young parliamentarians, and especially to the ten that will be most fortunate to be attending from Indigenous communities.
Senator Patterson: Hear, hear.
The Chair: As a point of clarification, this committee has done smudging on a couple of occasions, but not at actual committee meetings. I believe it’s just at special ceremonies and certain types of meetings. So we have done it, but perhaps we should do it more often.
Senator Christmas: Thank you. What I was thinking about was the Senate as a whole, as a chamber.
Senator McCallum: My comments are to the youth parliament, and Dan Christmas has articulated my sentiments so well. I’m wondering if you have any requests of us, or recommendations.
Ms. Tessier: My intention in being here was to show the possibilities when youth organizations embrace reconciliation. In our mandate we are not directed at Indigenous youth, we are not an Indigenous-focused organization. However, we have made reconciliation a part of who we are and we embrace it in our workings. My intention in being here today is to demonstrate to other youth organizations who may feel that their mandate or their mission is not “Indigenous specific,” for lack of a better expression, that you can do it; to echo, again, the words of Senator Sinclair, “There are no shortcuts.” I would encourage other youth organizations to do as we have done.
Senator McPhedran: I just want to acknowledge how honoured I was to be asked to also speak at the Youth Parliament of Manitoba and to support the Reconciliation Fund.
My question is to Mr. Ford and Ms. Dutton. You talked about the disproportionate impact on Inuit people in Manitoba of the lack of sustainable funding. You’re not able to plan ahead, you’re not able to rely on funding to build capacity. You also mentioned what’s often referred to as “aging out,” out of foster care. May I ask if you have any particular observations on the impact of aging out, or any of the other factors of the dislocation of youth in the urban environment, aging out and trafficking and also in terms of incarceration?
Mr. Ford: My phone rings more often about Incarceration than anything, somebody in dire circumstances with needs. As an organization we don’t have the capacity to deal with that, but we try to meet with people. We meet with their workers. We try together to work out something.
Rachel has been successful on several instances in finding avenues to get somebody into housing, to get somebody home, to get a ticket, to get some ID, and often it’s very complicated, in that people don’t have a place to go because there’s no housing or no jobs in the North. But oftentimes if they’re offenders they’re not welcome in their communities, or there are great barriers.
With regard to aging out, I’ve seen women on the streets, and they’re not ready to engage with our community. We know they’re there and we know they’re vulnerable. We know that we have a responsibility. In encouraging young people from the North, education is the way forward for our community. There’s value in that in order for self-determination to happen. They need to be educated, and through that time when young people are here, they’re vulnerable. We need to be able to connect, not just for an orientation, or one time, but to create a community where they can feel safe and not alone but a part of something that is Inuit-centric.
I don’t know if that addresses your question, but certainly the vulnerability exists. It’s something that terrifies me because I know that we should be, could be or ought to be doing more. But lacking capacity or the dollars to run those kinds of programs or initiate them even has become an impediment. That leaves us at risk.
The Chair: Go ahead, Mr. McLean.
Mr. McLean: That difficulty doesn’t apply just to the Inuit. That difficulty applies to the 64 per cent of First Nations people here in Manitoba. The simple fact is 50 per cent plus of our people live off the reserves. We have more kids in care today than we had kids in residential schools. The last school here in Manitoba was closed around 1974. Roughly 7,200 kids over the time went to residential school. As of today, we have roughly 10,300 kids in care.
Of course, when the kids age out, they age out into jails. We have four provincial jails here, and our people make up roughly 50 per cent of the people in those jails. We have one federal jail here, Stony Mountain, and a very high percentage of our kids are there. A lot of them have no homes to go to.
One of the other problems we have in our communities is a housing shortage. In my community, for example, out of 320 homes, only seven are single homes. The rest are two families, three families, four families in those homes. That’s the situation across Canada too.
I know that you and I can’t solve the problem today, but I believe that we should forward our suggestions to our MPs. One thing I do on an annual basis is drop off the stats in Ottawa in the House of Commons. So every MP gets a copy of the housing shortages. Here in Manitoba I do the same with seven MLA’s. So they’re all aware of it. There are nation-to-nation talks but we are only learning now to talk amongst ourselves. I was an Indian agent, a civil servant, for many years. If you were the chief of the community, I went to you as the Indian agent to say, “I know you need $300,000, but all I can give you is $92,000.” So right away I’m crippling you. Somehow that’s got to change.
The other thing that’s got to change is the funding structure of our communities. In my community, where there’s a band list of 2,200 people, but only 1,116 of us living in the community, and we get base funding on the 1,116, not on 2,200. The transfer dollars to this province recognize about 24 per cent of the population. It’s a mind-boggling challenge, but somehow we’ve got to simplify that. Until we do there is going to be study after study. Of course, it’s not funny, but us Ojibway people like to make fun of ourselves.
Today, for example, there are three committee meetings going on in the federal government. One is on treaties, you’re doing it on youth, there’s another one on infrastructure. That means our chiefs are ripped apart. Our Metis leaders are ripped apart. What do you do? Somehow the scheduling through the House of Commons has to be more organized. Talk to us. We’ll help you schedule these things. Talk to the First Nation leadership. Talk to the Metis leadership. We will help you schedule these things in a more meaningful way, in a more productive way, as opposed to having three different committees in the city of Winnipeg or in the province of Manitoba. Hopefully we can avoid that in the future. Again, in this province we have seven administrative bodies, the tribal councils. Then, of course, we have our own 64 First Nations. Then the Metis have the seven same regions.
I want to leave you this suggestion, that maybe we need two-year committee meetings. Possibly you could recommend it to the other provinces as something that they should look at. I mean it’s sad that in 151 years it is the first time the municipalities and the chiefs get together. It’s exciting, but it’s sad that it has taken this long. At the same time, we’re excited we’re a part of it. Anyway, I’ll shut up. Meegwetch.
The Chair: On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank our witnesses from the Manitoba Inuit Association, Fred Ford and Rachel Dutton; and from the Youth Parliament of Manitoba, Elder Garry McLean and Premier Adrienne Tessier.
For our third panel this morning, we are happy to have with us, from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, Ry Moran, Director; and from the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre, Damon Johnston, Board Member.
Mr. Moran, if you would like to go first.
Ry Moran, Director, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation: Thank you very much for having me here today. Thank you for visiting Winnipeg. So my name is Ry. My traditional name is Wappa Kinu. I’m Turtle Clan. I’m Metis. Turtle Clan people, as you’re probably well aware, have a particular responsibility for truth telling. That’s what we’re going to explore here today. I’m with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Prior to that, I spent my time with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission itself. I found myself on a very fascinating, very difficult, but very important journey of national reconciliation healing in this country.
As I understand it, we’ve been asked to respond to three questions. This is a big topic that we’re digging into, so I’m going to try and keep my remarks focused. I understand we’re exploring the history of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. One of the things that I think is very important to say at the outset is: We have to recognize that we live in a society where Indigenous peoples know a lot about non-Indigenous peoples and structures, but the same cannot be said the other way because non-Indigenous peoples know basically nothing about us. That speaks to the long-standing desire of Indigenous peoples to be in relationship with newcomers to this land. We can see that reflected in the treaty medallions, we can see that in the promise of treaty, we can see that in the ongoing request of Indigenous-led organizations to establish and maintain mutually respectful relationships. But that is not the society that has been created in this country. The relationship of respect has been largely one-sided, and Indigenous peoples have been subjected to an incredible amount of pain, hardship, suffering that can only be referred to as cultural genocide, if not full genocide.
I really want to be clear on the fact that when we talk about establishing a relationship, we have to recognize that we’re trying to create something in this country that has never before existed. We have not had a respectful relationship as of yet. We have to be very cautious that we don’t reimagine some other magical time back in the past where Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples were getting along. That has never existed. We have never lived in a balanced, and fair, and equal, and just society. That is the foundation upon which we have to base our conversations of reconciliation.
I understand the second question is: What are the principles of the relationship that we need to undertake as we adopt this healing journey moving forward? Well, I think it’s important to reflect upon the fact that we have collectively as Indigenous peoples been thinking about this question for a very long period of time. There are a lot of principles out there. They’ve been written and documented. The time now is not so much for questioning the principles. It’s how are we going to implement and how are we going to action the principles? Even in this one small booklet here that I have, which I’m sure many of you have seen, it talks about the 10 principles of reconciliation that the commission gave us, the 94 calls to action and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples. These principles that are articulated in here are the summary or the summation of thousands upon thousands of Indigenous voices across the country, and do provide us with a very strong starting point.
Critical though to the exercise is, we really have to look at balancing out who knows what about whom as we begin to create an equal society. So the intolerable fact that non-Indigenous peoples know very little about the social, cultural, political aspirations of the many different nations in this country needs to be rectified. We need to be investing very heavily across all sectors in education, and that includes professionals in professional sectors, adult learners, newcomers, students in universities, professors in universities, and, of course, the K to 12 system. When we think about education, we must try to take a holistic step change in terms of deepening our awareness, understanding, and knowledge of Indigenous peoples and aspirations.
What that speaks to is that we need to, right now in this country, be telling the truth and continuing processes of truth telling. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission itself recognized and affirmed this. The preambular statement of the TRC said that, “It is the truth of our common experiences that will set our spirits free and pave the way to reconciliation.” We have to ask ourselves why we only do these big national truth telling things when there’s some sort of crisis that initiates it. Why are we only doing that in response? Why do we only go to communities and sit down and really spend time bringing people together when there’s some sort of massive human rights violation or massive incident that has precipitated the need to talk? We need to talk on a regular and ongoing basis. That’s what it means to be in a relationship. You can’t just talk sometimes, we have to talk on a continual basis, and we have to do that on a national scale, we have to provide mechanisms to have conversations on a regular and ongoing basis, and those have to be structured in the right way.
As we go to apply the principles of this relationship, we have to remember that it is a rights-based framework that will serve us in good stead. We have to recognize that there has been a displacement of Indigenous peoples’ institutions of governance, and Indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing and being in this world. We really have to ask ourselves: How do we create parallel institutions or parallel structures that are equally anchored in Canadian society that will be as resilient as the western institutions that we’ve created? We know that the legislatures work because there’s a place to gather and there’s a bricks and mortar institution that has been built. What is the equivalent on the Indigenous side of the house? Where is the bricks and mortar institution?
Right now, as a Metis citizen, I know that my Metis government here has to represent me as a corporation basically. Is that a government or what is that? You know, Indigenous peoples, the AFN, other groups have to hold our meetings in hotel ballrooms across the country. Why? Where are our houses of governance? Where are our institutions? Where are we going to get together and have the sit down on an annual basis? Where are we going to have that dialogue?
I think the other piece is as we recognize the importance of having parallel institutions and building the unique ways that Indigenous peoples need to respond to the challenges that face their communities, we also cannot let Canada collectively off the hook in terms of memorialization, commemoration, and remembering who we are. In this, the truth-telling aspect of who we are as a nation and what we have done is fundamental. We continue to live in a society right now where truth telling is being frustrated. There are multiple serious cases that are in front of the courts right now regarding access to information, destruction of information, and/or Indigenous peoples’ rights to obtain and control and have a say over information.
I will tell you firsthand the national centre is deeply involved in some of these cases, and they are very troubling on a national basis. The affirmed destruction of the Independent Assessment Process records will result in a significant historical gap and our understanding. While principles of consent on that are very important, the inevitable fact that has emerged from that case is that mass amounts of information will be destroyed that detail Canada’s true genocidal intent towards Indigenous peoples. And there are other examples of that happening as we speak right now.
Truth telling is not something that we can turn on and off as a switch when it’s convenient to do so, it’s something that we have to commit to, and it’s something that we have to commit to on a regular daily basis as individuals, as organizations, as a nation. That’s where so many of the calls to action talk about memorialization, memory, and not forgetting what it is that we have gone through collectively as a society. We have a long way to go. We have a long way to go in terms of righting past wrongs. The question that we need to ask ourselves on a daily basis is: Are we establishing those respectful relationships? Are we doing that structurally? Are we doing that individually? Are we doing that organizationally? When we examine how we’ve built this country, for better or worse, there is the individual and structural exclusion of Indigenous peoples in many ways, shapes, and forms still. That needs to be rectified. We know that principles talk about significant investment of resources, and time, and effort in this. We’ve heard already from some of the other panel members in earlier presentations that money talks, and we have to start funding parallel ways of governance in this country.
I’ll leave it there. I look forward to any questions that you have in regard to what I’ve said.
The Chair: Thank you.
We’ll now move to our second witness, Mr. Johnston.
Damon Johnston, Board Member, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre: I want to thank the committee for the invitation to present today. I want to note that I cannot do justice to the subject matter of urban Indigenous organizations and the incredible powerful day-to-day positive impacts on the lives of many urban Indigenous persons, which now number 92,000 plus in the city of Winnipeg.
For those of you who don’t know, urban Indigenous organizations started with the Indian & Métis Friendship Centre of Winnipeg, established in 1958. There were some organizations even before then, but I’m not sure of what the names were. If you fast forward to today, that’s 59 years of continuous development in Winnipeg of a charitable an Indigenous charitable not-for-profit organization. Today there are over 30 of them. The other interesting thing about urban community development in Winnipeg is that almost all of those 30 those organizations were created or established by a mixed group of First Nations or Metis persons. That’s our history.
The other hat that I wear is as president of the Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg. In the year 2018 we are still the only organized urban political voice in the country. There is no other entity like us. The council, established in 1994, has done — all of our archives at the University of Manitoba — done an incredible amount of work over that period of time. We’ve looked at everything from urban Indigenous self-government, you name it, to all of the issues that confronted us in the past and are still confronting us today. That is all archived. The council is located right here in this building, and now has worked with some of those organizations to create the Winnipeg Indigenous Executive Circle. So this is a new collaborative table of urban Indigenous program and service agencies, of which one is the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre.
If you look at that 59 years of history, the focus has primarily been one of growing these organizations. You have the senior managers and the boards of directors creating strategic plans and growing their organizations directly in relation to the growth in the population and the demand for the programs and services they provide. Because these organizations are led by a mix of First Nations and Metis persons, they are fully conscious of many of the needs that our constituents bring to us. That involves needs around service and languages, cultural competency in the delivery of programs and services, all of those things. Each of us is one of those peoples. I am a First Nations person. I’m a band member of the Fort William First Nation in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I have two homes because I was born here in Winnipeg in 1947 because my father was a hunter, trapper, and guide in Ignace, Ontario. But both my parents were born on the Fort William First Nation. My mother and dad were forced off because their mothers married non-Indians, so they lost their status. I didn’t become an official Indian until 1985. Before that, I was a non-status Indian.
If you go back to 1959, why did we start these organizations? It was simple: There was recognition that there was a growing population of Indigenous persons, primarily First Nations and Metis, because Inuit are still a smaller community in Winnipeg and Manitoba. People recognized the gap. People were trying to find help or assistance with the issues they were facing, and that’s why the friendship centre was created. At that time, it was a one-stop shop. Anything that you were challenged by as an Indigenous person, you would go there. Of course, historically in Indigenous communities, the “moccasin telegraph” is still the most powerful communication in the city, talking to each other. Family members will come to this centre for programs and services. If their experience is good, then they pass it on to their brothers and sisters or members of their family, and that’s how we get known and how we get appreciated in a real way.
Coming back to today, we’re talking about a new, or better, or improved relationship between Indigenous peoples of Canada, Aboriginal peoples of Canada. It’s couched now as nation-to-nation, and with that comes the distinctions-based approach. This is very new to us in urban settings and may well be challenging to us because we don’t function on a distinctions-based platform. The 30 organizations that I mentioned provide services to any person of Indigenous ancestry. So we don’t discriminate. And in the city, as First Nations and Metis persons, we’ve learned to work together for common cause. These 30 organizations represent an incredible array of capacity: capacities in child and family; capacities in justice; capacities in employment, education, and training; capacities in almost anything you can mention. Because many of us take a value-added approach to the programs and services we deliver, we are constantly monitoring what we’re doing, evaluating what we’re doing, and trying to improve what we do.
We probably, too, represent the group of Indigenous organizations in Canada that have been able to adjust to living in a city and to prospering in a city. We now have the highest representation of Indigenous students at the colleges and two universities we’ve ever had in our history. So these are all powerful positive outcomes of our work. In the first stages of that, the many years getting to here, we’re now beginning to see in Winnipeg the appearance of First Nations-specific capacity, Metis-specific capacity and Inuit-specific capacity. However, the majority of programs and services delivery still resides within those 30 non-aligned Indigenous urban program service delivery agencies.
One of the big concerns that the urban community has with the current nation-to-nation process is the exclusion of urban voice. You heard some of that today from the National Association of Friendship Centres, and now you’re hearing that from us. We believe that Canada is a country of inclusion. We believe that democracy hears all voices. We believe that in democracies we need to act to ensure that civil rights are protected, and this is in relation to any existing government of the day or any future government of the day. We know that under UNDRIP First Nations, Metis, and Inuit communities are pursuing self-government or self-determination. When you look at societies at a world level, the protection of civil rights primarily resides in charitable and not-for-profit organizations, what they call “civil society.” It is our position, as members of the largest Indigenous community in Canada, that we have a right to create and continue to create Indigenous charitable and not-for-profit structures, and that it has a true value to this country and to everyone in it.
We have acted on occasion to protect civil rights. Not that long ago, the council that I lead and the Centre for Aboriginal Human Resource Development, which is one of the main tenants of this building, took the Human Resources Development Canada to court on the practice of differential treatment. It was regarding a program known at the time as Aboriginal Human Resource Development Agreement. The federal government was trying to act on a bilateral basis with First Nations and Metis organizations, and we said that that was differential treatment and not acceptable in law. We took the case — it’s called Misquadis, et al. — as far as the Federal Court of Appeal, and we won at that level. The department and Canada decided not to go to the Supreme Court at that time and agreed to settle with us. The differential treatment was that the department made CAHRD respond to an RFP, whereas they were negotiating agreements with the First Nations and the Metis.
The Misquadis case also included representatives from Indigenous interests in Ontario and here in Manitoba. In Manitoba, the council that I lead was the political voice in that equation, and it was CAHRD that was the program and service voice. The council has worked with what they now call ISETS, Indigenous Skills and Employment Training Strategy, was previously ASETS, then previously ARTA, and before that Pathways, so I know the history.
When you look at governments and how they operate or function, there’s generally a separation between the political and the program and service. You have departments of government, through officials of government responding to direction from politicians. The council in that instance has done the same thing, CAHRD is the ISETS agreement holder, and is arm’s length from the council as the political operation for the urban Indigenous voice. We are aware of the safeguards that are put in place in democratic societies to ensure that all actors on the stage are being fair and reasonable and functioning within the letter of the law.
As Indigenous persons, we have some incredible choices ahead of us in this whole self-determination, self-government process, in that we enjoy three distinct sets of rights. We are Canadians. Although often, because we live on reserve, we are not treated like Canadians. Our rights are deemed not to be portable, so when I leave my reserve I am then dumped on the province and the city of Winnipeg. That’s not acceptable, but it’s there. I have that policy on my desk. We’re reviewing it, and we’re intending to move forward to determine whether it’s still applicable or if it’s acceptable.
In the Charter as a Canadian, if I’m a First Nations person and a member of a band, I have treaty rights, in my case, the Robinson Superior Treaty. If I’m Metis, I have Aboriginal rights. Aboriginal rights have primarily related to the Metis, because many of them weren’t part of treaties due to the Indian Act itself in script and all those things.
Excluding the urban Indigenous voice is not fair and reasonable, and I don’t think it’s good for us. Indigenous people represent only 4 per cent of the total Canadian population. Against incredible odds, we’ve created things like this. I say that is good. I don’t want anyone to tear it down. I don’t deem it to be necessary in any way, shape, or form. So that is what the council will stand against. I can also tell you that there are coalitions of urban Indigenous organizations forming in most of the major cities in Canada. In Vancouver you have the Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council. In Toronto you have the Toronto Aboriginal Support Services Council. In Ottawa you have the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition. In Edmonton you have Wicihitowin.
I’m going to Edmonton this weekend to visit and meet with them on the topic of, as I say, urban people as a whole in organizations being excluded from the nation-to-nation process. CAP has also been sidelined to some degree, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. The National Association of Friendship Centres and the Native Women’s Association of Canada as well.
We do not see any acceptable rationale for that exclusion. Many of those individuals have been part of our efforts at self-determination and self-government for many, years now. Some of us are further ahead in terms of our capacity, but we strive to help each other, to learn from each other, to benefit from our individual, organizational, and personal experience. All of that has value.
Earlier this morning, when I began my remarks, I couldn’t do justice to what we have to say to you today. We are going to create a written document that we will send to the Senate and the Government of Canada. We are looking at the Court Challenges Program because we may have to go back to court as per Misquadis to seek justice in this matter. We’re hoping we can avoid that.
We are not for one moment against Indigenous self-determination, against anything. We want due process. We believe that the nation-to-nation approach in the absence of a commitment by our leaders and the Government of Canada to either repeal or abolish the Indian Act, is a waste of time and energy. I am 70 years of age. I carry a card that says I am a ward of the state of Canada. This is not acceptable. I am not free until that act is gone. The act is the core of everything that was done against us. The placement on reserve and everything, the residential schools, it was law that enabled governments to do those things with their partners. We know those were the churches, et cetera.
I was encouraged at a young age to get educated, to use my gifts to help fight people; and I’m doing that. I will act in the best way possible, with respect, with understanding, with consideration, due consideration. But I, and the people I work with, will not accept unfair or unreasonable treatment.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you. We’ll now open the floor for questions from the senators.
Senator McCallum: Thank you for your presentations. They struck a chord with my heart and spirit.
Mr. Moran, you mentioned the Independent Assessment Process and the records that were going to be destroyed. I just had my hearing under that process in January of this year, and that was the first time I had heard about the issues involved. As one of the witnesses, with my story, I would appreciate it if my voice was heard, and I believe that other people feel the same. It’s just that we didn’t know. It’s a message that we have a right to because we need to be part of the decision making. How are you going to get this message to people to help support you in how you’re going to move this forward?
Mr. Moran: Thank you for the question. I have to report some unfortunate news. It’s important that we get it on the record so that you hear from the perspective of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation on this. I find it very disappointing.
The background of the Independent Assessment Process case goes all the way back to 2009-10. There were long-standing efforts an extensive amount of discussion and dialogue between the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Independent Assessment Process Secretariat to determine what would happen with those records. For a variety of reasons, the TRC was informed by the Independent Assessment Process itself, that despite the recognition in the settlement agreement, that survivors had the right to transfer their materials to the National Centre or to the TRC, there could be no sort of comprehensive or conclusive decision made on what would happen to the records. That resulted in the TRC needing to file a request for directions to the court, and asking three primary questions of the court: Could the records be retained; could they be destroyed; and if so, where?
It is a long story there. There were early mediation attempts, three levels of court, all the way up to the Supreme Court Canada. This hearing occurred on May 25 in Ottawa. We were there as the National Centre. We inherited this case from the TRC. It has been a massive responsibility, and quite truthfully, a heavy burden for us to bear, because this is a very, very complicated issue. I will tell you firsthand I have lost a lot of sleep over this case. It has been very emotionally difficult for me to try to figure out our best, sort of, set of responsibilities — how to be respectful with such incredibly sensitive material.
The positions that the National Centre has taken in court were informed by our survivors committee and by our governing circle the entire way, which comprised of First Nations, Inuit, Metis peoples from across the country. Our position has always been based on the understanding and full comprehension that the truth is exceptionally powerful, that there is a set of information here that will continue to affect how we understand what happened in the residential schools for generations to come. We are at the beginning of the journey, we are not at the end of the truth telling in this country.
Just this week, for example, CBC launched their Beyond 94 calls to action monitoring site. A handful of journalists went out and interviewed Winnipeggers asking, “Have you heard about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Have you heard anything about this thing?” Only 20 out of 90 that they interviewed had even heard of the TRC. When we’ve done our national polling, most Canadians have not heard of the TRC, most Canadians may have heard about residential schools, but have no understanding of what really went on, and the depth and extent of the harms inflicted upon the students in those schools, yourself included.
We from the centre always approach this on the basis of truth telling. We always recognized as well that survivors, individuals had the right to privacy and had the right to have their own identities protected. There are lots of ways to do that. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled against holistic preservation of the information, and did rule that the records could be destroyed after a 15-year notice program. This notice program would go out and inform survivors of the right to deposit their testimony with the NCTR. Let’s remember though that they’ve had that right since the beginning of the settlement agreement, and that right was not properly communicated to them for the majority of the hearings that occurred. It was only in 2015 that the IAP Secretariat began actually communicating to people in writing that they had the right to deposit their records.
There is no right of people that have deceased to retain their records. We know that survivors are passing at an exceptionally fast rate. Parliamentary committee hearings in 2005, in the early days of the settlement agreement, recognized how quickly we were losing survivors across the country. I personally have talked to survivors on the phone that have said, “Please preserve my record”, only to phone them back on Monday and they had passed away.
I am very, very concerned about this, and I’m very disturbed by it: The order given to the parties that were involved in this litigation is that there was to be this notice program, and that survivors and communities had a right to be informed. The language specifically said, in the lower court decision, that the notice program was awarded to the TRC and to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, because it recognized that ultimately we’re talking about the records coming to the NCTR. That is the Indigenous archive, this is the archive of the settlement agreement. We see it ceremonially as the child born.
The language said that the NCTR was to meaningfully contribute to this notice program. That changed a little bit at the Court of Appeals when the notice program process was awarded to the Independent Assessment Process Secretariat, to the chief adjudicator. That was done because they do hold all of the information on the claimants. We’re kind of on the outside looking in. The TRC has always been on the outside looking in at this set of records. So it changed, and it said, “Okay, the chief adjudicator has responsibility to inform survivors.” Still, that was supposed to be done with meaningful participation of the NCTR.
The sad news I have to report is that, as the Independent Assessment Process Secretariat filed its materials to the court to have them approved by the court, they wrote the NCTR out of the process. They are resisting the NCTR being present at the community hearings. They have not put our name on any of the posters or the pamphlet material that they’re distributing to survivors, and they’ve even gone so far as to say in some of their materials, “For more information on the NCTR phone the IAP.” This is concerning because we’re at the point now, after the Supreme Court has made its decision, where there is no going back. The issue now is informed consent. Survivors, their families, and the communities, have a right to know. They deserve to hear from the centre because they deserve to hold us to account, and to check us out, and see how truthful we are, and see how ethical we are, because this material is exceptionally sensitive. We do not underestimate for a second how complex and how serious that decision is for survivors to make this choice, to entrust the centre on a voluntary basis.
How can we have a respectful dialogue if the home of these records isn’t even included? I find that very dismaying, very disrespectful frankly. It does not bode well for communities across the country. Sadly, this is a pattern that has been repeated throughout this entire litigation process. The NCTR is an Indigenous institution. We try darn hard to live up to the promises that were made to survivors, and we try very, very hard to live our day-to-day existence in accordance with these principles of reconciliation and with the UNDRIP. We try to be the embodiment of this as best can. We’re not always perfect, but we have all those elders around us to tune us up when we don’t get it right.
But I’m deeply concerned that the Indigenous archive in this process is being excluded and is being prevented, because the responsibilities that we carry have been given to us by a whole bunch of other people. The truth is powerful. It is what can set our spirits free, but it is also under attack and easily suppressed, and we have to be very cautious with this right now in this country.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you very much to both of you for being here. As a senator from Manitoba it’s particularly meaningful.
I have a question for each of you, but I also want to thank you, Mr. Johnston, for your specific reference to the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the decades of exclusion that have gone on, all these missed opportunities for there to be women at the table, women’s voices, and over and over again the exclusion, including up to today.
And, Mr. Moran, thank you. I actually am changing my question based on what you just said. The summary of the case is very helpful. I want to ask you though to help us understand where we are today with the situation, because we all want there to be a long and substantial life for the NCTR, but the independent assessment body is fading. What are some of the practical considerations? Where are some of the pitfalls? What’s concerning you at this point in terms of the implications of the lifespan for the two organizations?
Mr. Moran: This is a rather complicated issue right now. So the Supreme Court hearing was May 25, the decision was rendered in I would say about October or early November of 2017. What that decision affirmed was that there would be this 15 year retention period, the records would be destroyed, but there needed to be this enhanced notice program to go out and inform survivors and communities of their rights. There was about a year and a half’s worth of dialogue between the AFN, ITK, NCTR, Independent Assessment Process Secretariat, Government of Canada as an observer until the decision was rendered, and the council representing survivors. There were efforts to kick-start the planning process for this notice program, because, despite perhaps the different path of trying to get there, everybody generally recognizes that the notice program is exceptionally important. We knew that we were going to have to hit the ground running if the Supreme Court decision went the way that it did.
Since then, we left the last negotiated meetings in late in 2017. The Independent Assessment Process filed its materials in early February. These materials set out how the Independent Assessment Process sees the notice program running. This is where the NCTR has filed materials saying that, “We have some fairly significant concerns over how survivors are being informed, and the exclusion of the NCTR from this process.”
There is a very important settlement agreement hearing happening at the Ontario Superior Court on April 23 and 24 that will be hearing this particular issue and some other issues related to document retention and production under the settlement agreement. From there we await whether or not the judge will approve the notice program. The challenge now — and this is the regrettable part — that the judge is going to have to make a decision between the IAP’s proposed materials and the NCTR’s proposed materials, as they aren’t the same. They should have been the same. The parties should have been able to agree. I find this a real failure. I’m very disappointed in this, very disappointed in the parties, that we weren’t able to come to some sort of conclusion, to any sort of resolution on this before. Maybe some people say, “Well, it was partially the NCTR’s fault,” or something; we’ve tried really hard to find common ground in this. Now we are five years into it.
The judge is going to have to render the verdict and then decide which of the materials that he’s going to support. He has to make a determination on whether or not the NCTR will be present in those hearings. Then we have to collectively hope that nobody appeals this decision, because then this thing could get appealed, and then we’re into another whole mess of litigation. That would be another massive failure. We need to get on with informing survivors.
The Independent Assessment Process Secretariat is slated to wind down in about another two years. The process does imagine a very intensive notice program in the front. I think all parties are generally in agreement on that, that there will be mass media, you know, television commercials, print, posters distributed to communities across the country and then community hearings that would also occur.
Because the records need to be retained for a period of 15 years, in accordance with this notice program, then there’s the idea that a third party — right now the IAP Secretariat has suggested Crawford’s class action would retain the records for the duration of the notice program, and would ultimately destroy the records at the end of the day.
Of course, as a country that has always sat underneath this overall question of destruction — and it is a big question — there’s not a firm date on which these records will be destroyed. We are asking the court to perhaps clarify this. Let’s say that the date is June 1, 2030. We can all think about how old we will be at that point. I know how old my kids will be. What does that day look like? Is that a day of celebration, of reconciliation, or is it a day of mourning? What is the conversation that’s happening in this country about Indigenous rights and reconciliation at that time? If we reflect on this conversation that we’re having today, about what needs to change in this country; we have to ask, how long have we been having this conversation for? How many people have sat in my chair and in Damon’s chair and said more or less this exact same stuff, about the need for action and the need for funding? That’s always been our concern, about where we’re going to be in 15 years. It has always been our concern about what type of information we need to create an informed society. When we think about June 1, 2030, who is there, what are we saying, what are the conversations that we’re having, what do the young people say on that day? It’s pretty serious.
Senator Patterson: I want to be careful not to be simplistic about a complex problem, but I would like to ask a question of Mr. Johnston. I’ve been reflecting on what you’ve said, what we heard in Saskatchewan and earlier today here in Winnipeg. The Aboriginal population of Canada is growing, 1.6738 million in 2016, just under 5 per cent of the population of Canada. It’s growing way faster than the non-Aboriginal population with; 42.5 per cent growth since 2006. There has been significant growth in urban centres, representing an amazing 60 per cent of the Aboriginal population that calculates to be over a million people.
The Indian Act was set up to divide, segregate, and limit the numbers of Aboriginal people. It’s an invidious statute. Now, I’m hearing from you, from friendship centres, from organizations providing vital services to urban Aboriginal people, who are now collaborating in our major urban centres, that the new nation-to-nation relationship is leaving out Aboriginal people. We’re not being heard. We’re not being listened to. We can’t get funding since the department split. Funding to youth has been cut.
Is that simplistic analysis correct? Are we now, with probably very good intentions, moving in Canada to develop new relations that ignore an amazing trend of urban Aboriginal people? I mean Ottawa is the second-largest Inuit community in Canada after Iqaluit, where I live in. It’s Ottawa, Ontario. Some people say there’s 8,000 Inuit in Ottawa. By the way, we don’t have a way of even counting Aboriginal peoples in urban centres, I believe.
We’re studying this new relationship. I think we have to shine a light on this overlooked story of the urban Aboriginal people. What’s the way out of that? What should we be recommending to Canada to deal with this oversight and neglect of people who are in great need of vital services?
Mr. Johnston: I’ve got some thoughts about that.
First of all, we don’t know right now, where INAC, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, is going with the split of the department into two departments. We now have Minister Bennett and Minister Philpott. But we’re seeing some glimmers. Again, the urban voice is speaking out. We’re speaking to INAC here in Manitoba, the Manitoba region, and working with them. I understand now that maybe they’re starting to hear us. This week Minister Philpott is going to be in Winnipeg and she’s going to be announcing the funding from FNIB for an urban Indigenous youth serving organization that is moving under her department called Ndinawe. The funding is for them to be able to keep a safe house operating 24/7. So that’s good news. I think that is coming because we are sending a strong signal to the department not to forget about urban Indigenous capacity and our future.
I have further word that we’re going to be invited to Ottawa early in April to meet with the department on what they call UPIP, the Urban Peoples Indigenous Programming, and I guess some discussion about future allocations of committed money from that program to our communities across Canada, and then maybe even some discussion about when it comes up for renewal, I think in 2020.
You may not know about what happened with the current renewal that occurred just last year. The Urban Aboriginal Strategy, which became UPIP, was renewed, but there was no increase in the national funding allocation for that program. That was quite surprising given, as you’ve just mentioned, the rapid rate of growth within urban Indigenous populations. We went from approximately 76,000 in the 2011 census to 92,000 plus in the 2016 census. That is now projected to grow to 114 in the census in 2021. It’s common sense that as the population grows the per capita cost is going to increase. It’s about demand and supply.
The other thing we know is that the many programs we’ve created over the year, even here in Winnipeg, are working. These are the things that are creating opportunity for Indigenous persons to heal — to get educated, trained, employed, to contribute to their city, province, and country.
You talked about informed consent, Ry. It’s pretty hard to be informed or make informed consent in the world we are in today without knowing how everything works.
Again, these organizations provide an invaluable service in terms of working with that bigger system in Canada — federal departments, provincial departments, municipal departments – and assisting Indigenous Canadians in accessing the many programs and services that are available to them; in understanding all the different elements of governance structure, the boards, the commissions, the trustees, all of these things. We are slowly, steadily increasing our participation in all of those areas. That’s invaluable in terms of us being able to influence the system.
We also act concretely when we notice an absence of voice, of Indigenous voice in places. I’ll give you a concrete example. Winnipeg has several school divisions here in the city. We have tried for years to get well-qualified Indigenous persons elected to those boards of trustees. We haven’t enjoyed much success. What we’re saying now, when we meet with school divisions — trustees and superintendents, other staff in the system – is that if we can’t get elected to the decision-making bodies, the trustees, we have to find a way to influence that system. One in every four children in Winnipeg now, going to school, is Indigenous. If we’re trying to make the school system more receptive to our students, more inclusive of our students, more representative of our students, then it has to be through engagement, conversation and dialogue, and then commitment to change.
If you don’t have an Indigenous voice on the boards of trustees, who are making those big decisions, giving direction to their officials, then there’s a gap. So how do we fill that gap? We’re encouraging them to establish an Indigenous advisory capacity by drawing leaders out of the Indigenous community — First Nations, Metis, Inuit, urban — to serve on these committees and give direct advice to trustees; answering questions that they have, what should they do, because they don’t really know. They will tell you that. That is an example of how you bring broad systemic change to different systems in Canada when there’s an absence of Indigenous voice in any of those places. It’s very practical.
Senator Christmas: I have a number of questions, but I realize that time is short.
Mr. Johnston, I was quite surprised and quite taken by your comment when you described the nation-to-nation process as a distinction-based approach that would exclude urban Indigenous people. You also mentioned that your organization, the Aboriginal council, is the only urban-based political voice in Canada.
In an ideal world, let’s say 15 years from now, what would urban Indigenous governance look like?
Mr. Johnston: Beautiful question. Thank you.
We have been doing a lot of thinking about that, and from several different perspectives. Very quickly, if we go back to the Indian Act that we mentioned earlier, we view the Indian Act as imposing a non-Indigenous governance structure on our peoples as a whole. We know that some of our societies — and we were societies; we were nations — were matriarchal. Women played a huge role in these societies, arguably the most important role, which is leadership. We know that where we see positive change in any community, there’s general good responsible leadership — vision, mission — and we have examples of that. Not enough of them, but they’re coming.
So we’re also hearing a term now in Winnipeg, we use it every day, “indigenization” of organization, of structure. What do we mean by that? It could be different for Anishinaabe or Ojibway, it could be different for Inuit or Cree. It could be different for Mohawk or Haudenosaunee. It’s a question that absolutely can be answered, needs to be answered, if we are truly to recover our ways of doing things. Important decisions must be decided by consensus, not by me as the chief, or you as a councillor, it’s about community and what’s good for the majority or all of us.
There was a huge interruption in our view of who we were. Again, our primary structure is the circle. The non-Indigenous structure is the pyramid, or the hierarchy. You would say as a general comment that by and large for Indigenous communities, prior to contact and for some time after — because we still had some integrity, and we still do in some places — the leadership structure, the governance structure was flatter. We didn’t create a situation where anyone was over powered, anyone could damage the community with poor decisions because there wasn’t enough voice questioning what they were saying or doing.
As a Canadian having lived 70 years in this country, having been born without status, so a Canadian from day one, as soon as I attained the age of 18, I could vote, unlike my brothers and sisters, relations on reserve. Then I went to school primarily with non-indigenous students, because we were the only Indigenous family in our little town outside of Thunder Bay, and got the same education as other Canadians, and probably the same opportunities. What I lost was my culture, my language, any real knowledge of who I was as Anishinaabe or an Indigenous person. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about what was better, or what was right, or what was wrong, but that was the reality. Today, I know a few words in Anishinaabe or Ojibway, but my primary language is English. Those are concrete examples.
The bigger question going forward: Where are we going? Are we going there as truly Indigenous, or are we going there as a hybrid? These are legitimate questions. For me, when I visit our remote and rural communities where cultural integrity is still incredibly high, I see a beauty in the people that is unbelievable. I have done this. I was a correctional prohibition officer in Ontario and I used to fly into remote communities in northern Ontario, and I’ve seen this firsthand. Our people would give you the shirt off their back, even if they didn’t have a shirt. That’s how beautiful it is. The pain and the suffering was there, the suicides, taking children away from their families and then placing them in foster homes off reserve, and then seeing some of them abused. I had to leave after some time. But, like I say, we’re trying to move beyond that, and we’re trying to ask the question: What is the best way to get there? And there’s no one way. It’s for us to work collectively to identify that.
The Chair: Unfortunately, we have these wonderful conversations that we have to end much too soon. Thank you, gentlemen.
(The committee adjourned.)