Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Cities
Issue 2 - Evidence, April 29, 2009
OTTAWA, Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The Subcommittee on Cities met this day at 4:14 p.m. to examine and report on current social issues pertaining to Canada's largest cities.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome to the Subcommittee on Cities, which has been examining poverty, housing and homelessness in the major cities in our country.
Today, we will focus on the conditions that are faced by urban Aboriginals in poverty. We have a number of witnesses to assist us. We have at the table Dr. Frances Abele, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, whose research interests concern Aboriginal state relations and Aboriginal economic development. She is a former co-director of research for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. She is the author of the 2004 publication, Urgent Need, Serious Opportunity: Towards a New Social Model for Canada's Aboriginal Peoples from the Canada Policy Research Networks.
On our video screen is Dr. Doug Durst, Professor, Faculty of Social Work, University of Regina. He is from Regina, and he has worked with community groups on the issues pertaining to First Nations self-government in various regions of Canada. He is the author of Both Lost and Found: Urban Aboriginal Peoples in Prairie Cities.
Andy Siggner is a long-time employee of Statistics Canada. Mr. Siggner's focus is on Aboriginal social and economic issues. He recently presented on understanding the challenges of Metis, non-status Indians and urban Aboriginal peoples from the 2007 Labour Force Survey at the University of British Columbia.
Representing one of the service institutions for the Aboriginal people of our country, our National Association of Friendship Centres, which, of course, are in many cities right across the country, is Peter Dinsdale, Executive Director, who appeared previously before our other Subcommittee on Population Health. We welcome him back.
Andy Siggner, as an individual: Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to be here. A number of people at the witness table know I have been around Aboriginal statistical data for almost all my career since joining the civil service back in 1971. It is always a great opportunity to have a chance to speak about it with you.
I will take an overview type of approach to this subject. I have a handout of slides and I will give you an overview of the demographics of the urban Aboriginal population, based largely on census data from 1996 through to 2006. There will be a little data from the Labour Force Survey, which is another data source, which has just recently come on the scene within the last four or five years, which has an Aboriginal identity question on it. That now allows my colleagues at Statistics Canada to track Aboriginal labour force statistics on a monthly basis. It started out west in the Prairie provinces through to B.C. It has now been extended to the remaining provinces as of 2007. There is a great wealth of new data on the scene. Of course, Statistics Canada has also conducted the third Aboriginal Peoples Survey, which I will not be referring to today. There is simply not enough time to get into those data. However, it is a great source of information on the Aboriginal population and, indeed, the 1991 survey served as a source of information for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples when Ms. Abele and I worked on it in the 1990s.
As of 2006, there were approximately 1.2 million people in Canada who self-identified as an Aboriginal person. This was an increase from about 800,000 10 years before. This is the first chart. If you want to follow along, you will be able to see some of these numbers.
There are, of course, factors associated with such growth: Fertility and mortality being the primary ones. However, in recent years, there have been a series of non-demographic factors which have quite significantly affected the size of the Aboriginal population. In particular, back in the mid-1980s, the Indian Act changed and allowed women and their children to regain Indian status if they had lost status. That brought in to the registered Indian population well over 150,000 people over the course of that time.
In addition, we have been tracking a phenomenon that some of us sociology types have been declaring as ``ethnic mobility.'' This is where people are changing the way they report themselves on the census from one census to the next regarding their Aboriginality. We have seen a huge increase, certainly, in the Metis population, as well as the North American Indian population as it is captured in the census over time.
This has increased the population quite substantially. Between the 2001 census and 2006 census, the Metis grew by about 40-plus per cent. This is far faster-than-normal demographic growth. We know something is happening there and there are many reasons. I have written about this in documents and reports over the years, but I will not go down that path today. I simply want to ensure we had a chance to get a sense of the size of the population.
Please turn to the second chart, which just gives some absolute numbers of Aboriginal people in urban areas. For example, 623,000 or so are living in urban areas. This is about 53 per cent of the total Aboriginal population. Of those, about 366,000 are living in metropolitan areas, which are the largest centres.
The 53 per cent compares to the 81 per cent of non-Aboriginal people who are basically urban. We have heard this number many times. There has been a growth in proportion of Aboriginal people living in urban areas over the last 10 years, though not much longer than that.
In the third chart, we see what that growth looks like. It has roughly grown from about 49 per cent in 1996 to 53 per cent by 2006.
The Metis population tends to be more urban than their First Nation counterparts. They are at about 69 per cent urban, and the First Nation North American Indian identity population is sitting at about 45 per cent urban.
Since you have been focusing from the report I looked at on 14 cities, about four of them do not have very large Aboriginal populations. However, the remainder of them do, and some of them are captured in the next slide. There are a number of other cities on this slide which are not in your group of 14 which have significant percentages of Aboriginal people in the population. I am thinking, particularly, of Prince Albert. While Winnipeg has the largest absolute number sitting in around 68,000, Prince Albert had in 2006 an Aboriginal population percentage of about 34 per cent. A number of other cities, like Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury and Saskatoon, all have at least a 9 per cent or higher Aboriginal population. Those numbers are provided to give it some context.
Moving on and turning to one of the substantive topics you are looking at — namely housing — there is an interesting database on the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC, website which allows one to look at Aboriginal people in households in core need of housing, which is a function of housing needing major repairs, but also covers affordability and density — how many bedrooms there are per person.
There is some good news and bad news. The percentage of Aboriginal households in core need for housing has dropped from 32 per cent — which was one in three households back in 1996 — to 21 per cent by 2006. The bad-news side of it is that there are still a substantially higher number of households than the non-Aboriginal population. The gap has closed, which is a good thing. I have a chart after this which shows how the gap has closed. This is both in CMAs and the large metropolitan areas and in the smaller cities.
The gap has dropped from a 2:1 ratio gap in 1996 down to about a 1.5:1 ratio gap. The closer the ratio of the population gets to 100 means that there might be parity if things keep moving in this direction. There is some good news there.
I have not had enough time to go into the research as to why that core need is dropping, but it is interesting that it has over 10 years.
Senator Segal: Could I get a point of clarification on this chart, Mr. Chair? I want to be clear: You are suggesting here the gap is narrowing between non-Aboriginals who are in distress and Aboriginals who are in distress with respect to housing?
Mr. Siggner: Narrowing; that is right.
Senator Segal: We are dealing with two measures of distress, is that not so?
Mr. Siggner: That is true.
Mr. Siggner: Look at the chart that shows that both the proportions in both populations are dropping over time, as well. Both are progressing in a good direction and the gap is closing but is still quite wide.
The other issue the committee is looking at is poverty. The census has a measure which they call the ``low-income cut-off,'' which is a measure of the prevalence of low income. When you look at it from the point of view of the population in economic families, it certainly is quite high in 2006. I am not showing any historical data there but, if I had the time to get those data, you would see that percentage below the so-called LICO, low-income cut-off, has been declining in the past couple censuses because the economy had been doing so well up until recently, and it is reflected in that indicator.
The percentage of non-Aboriginal people in low-economic families is sitting at 13 per cent, which is less than one- half the Aboriginal population, which is almost 30 per cent. That is almost two and a half times greater. In metropolitan areas, we are looking at one in three population in households that are in that situation.
It becomes a little more dire when you look at non-family persons; Aboriginal people who are not living in or with families. More than one-half are in that situation. That is below the LICO, although the gap with their non-Aboriginal counterparts is not quite as wide as it is for the family counterparts.
Senator Segal: Are these single adults? Are these single seniors? Are these single mothers? Who is in this category?
Mr. Siggner: If they are mothers, they would constitute a family, so it is basically people who are on their own. It could be seniors on their own, anyone 15 years old and over.
Senator Segal: They live by themselves.
Mr. Siggner: Yes. Still looking at the measures of income characteristics, the median income from all sources, including government transfers, employment and other, is shown at slide 10. There is a fairly large gap of several thousand dollars between those reporting Aboriginal identity and non-Aboriginal. Aboriginal people reported about $19,000 per year and non-Aboriginal people reported a little over $26,000 per year. These figures are for 2005 and were reported in Census 2006.
Slide 11 looks at the sources of income for the two populations in urban areas, rural areas and on reserve. You can see that in urban areas, about 15.5 per cent of Aboriginals have income from government sources compared to about 10 per cent in the non-Aboriginal population. It is greater for on-reserve population and between the two for those in rural non-reserve areas.
The next chart uses the labour force data for the Western provinces. This is non-reserve data for Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals. I used what they call ``supplementary unemployment rates,'' which include discouraged workers. The rate has been declining for Aboriginal people during the period from June 2004 to December 2008. There is a small upturn in the figures, as you might expect, toward the end of 2008. It will be interesting to see the more current numbers, but I have not been able to obtain them from Statistics Canada.
Interestingly, the overall trend in unemployment has declined. However, we see that the gap is beginning to widen a bit, using the same ratio approach that we used for the core housing data. It is also beginning to widen with the non- Aboriginal population, even though it is proportionally less.
The last chart is a good-news chart because it tells us something about the value of education for employment employability. This chart compares an individual's level of schooling with his or her employment status. We can see that as the level of schooling increases within the Aboriginal population and rises for those who eventually have a university degree, their employment rates are equal to those of the non-Aboriginal population. Whereas, those with less than high school or incomplete high school, there is a gap of about 15 percentage points between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal population. The Aboriginal population is at about 50 per cent and the non-Aboriginal at about 65 per cent. However, we can see what happens when they have a university degree. Granted, the percentage of Aboriginal people with a university degree is proportionally much lower than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Clearly, this chart demonstrates the value of education.
Doug Durst, Professor, Faculty of Social Work, University of Regina: It is an honour to come before the Senate committee to present some of the information that I have been collecting and been associated with over a number of years. I do not want to go over too many of the same statistics that Mr. Siggner just presented, but I would like to highlight a few things for the committee to consider.
Aboriginal persons reside in just about every region of Canada. However, in the largest cities, they are pretty much invisible. Aboriginal people comprise almost 4 per cent of the Canadian population. We heard that the Metis population is far more urban, close to 70 per cent, than First Nations or Aboriginal peoples with status, who are around 45 per cent.
The Metis are the most urban but it is interesting to note some of the regional differences in Canada. In Atlantic Canada and the three territories, the percentage of Aboriginal persons in the cities is much lower at about 46 per cent for individuals in both regions. Although the Prairie provinces have only 17 per cent of the national population, they hold 43 per cent of all Aboriginal people and over 50 per cent of the Metis population in Canada.
Following the national trend, Aboriginal people in the Prairie provinces are about 53 per cent urban, while First Nations are a little more than 40 per cent and the Metis around 70 per cent. I prepared and highlighted some of the national statistics in a paper that I sent this afternoon for your distribution. It provides an update on some previous work that contains national information.
About 60 per cent of all Inuit people live in the three territories, but it is surprising to know that 40 per cent of the Inuit people live in some kind of urban communities of 1,000 persons or more. The typical image of isolated Inuit living in small family clusters is not true. The modern Inuit live in communities with stores, restaurants, hotels, public programs, and education, health and social services.
Among the urban communities, Winnipeg has a huge population of well-known, visible Aboriginal people. Calgary has 38,000 to 40,000 Aboriginals living in the city, which represents only 5.3 per cent of the population. They are somewhat hidden in the overall population, except for those hanging around in areas of poverty. There is a huge population in the city that are not visible in that sense. The Aboriginal population in Montreal is 7,600, in Toronto 13,000 and in Vancouver 11,000. Except for those few that we see on East Hastings Street et environs, they are quite invisible in the city.
Some of the literature conceptualizes four types of urban Aboriginal individuals. First, there is the commuter, who maintains a residence on reserve but spends a substantial amount of time in the city. If the band has effective community and economic development that provides opportunities in the community, members are more likely to stay on reserve. Second, there is the transient, who moves from city to city and back and forth to the reserve and never holds a permanent residence. This group depends upon friends and family and are sometimes called ``couch surfers'' and often can be considered homeless. Third, there is the migrant, who moves into the city but maintains relationships only with other Aboriginal persons. They never truly adapt or integrate to the city life. Fourth, there is the urban dweller, an Aboriginal person who makes the city his or her permanent home. Some of these individuals might have been born in the city, but many of them maintain a strong cultural connection to their families' reserve. Even though some become permanent urban dwellers related to education, employment or special services that are unavailable on the home reserve, they still have that strong connection to their home.
The 2007 report of the Urban Aboriginal Task Force contains a number of issues that Aboriginal peoples encounter in the urban setting. The task force credits the information from the National Association of Friendship Centres and the Ontario Association of Indian Friendship Centres. The study highlights a number of issues that urban Aboriginal individuals face.
They encounter racism from landlords, from employers when they are seeking employment, from clerks and waiters in restaurants when they use their status cards, and from police and authorities with so-called zero tolerance. The racism is both personal and systemic. It is built into the system and it is difficult to address.
It is also compounded by the generational impact of residential schools. This is particularly apparent in those areas where a high percentage of kids were sent to the residential schools — particularly in the Prairies, but also in the East and the Atlantic region as well.
Mr. Siggner also mentioned the lack of affordable housing. This was something that was identified repeatedly in numerous reports on accessing affordable housing. In addition, there is another population issue as the urban Aboriginal youth are facing three challenges. They are finding difficulty in developing positive Aboriginal identity and they have problems finding suitable employment opportunities and success in secondary education. There are a number of statistics and data that support that.
Also, Aboriginal women — and we are talking briefly about families and women in the communities — suffer kind of a double jeopardy. They are both Aboriginal and women, and they find it difficult to find food, clothing and shelter for their children in an isolating and hostile environment. They are often alone and without the support of husbands or their children's fathers.
Over the years, there has been a growth in the number of social service agencies and organizations delivering services by Aboriginal workers to Aboriginal people. Many of them are organized and operated by Aboriginal leaders, while others are separate branches of mainstream services. They can be a series of various programs that the federal government and other governments are subsidizing and supporting, or they are independent, non-profit organizations. First Nation and Aboriginal people would much rather access those kinds of services.
One of the most difficult areas, for those Aboriginal persons that have disabilities or mothers who have children with disabilities, is accessing services. Particularly, things like non-insured health benefits can be a serious problem for those that have status.
A simple task for mothers, such as getting eyeglasses for their children, can run into a logistical nightmare through the difficulty of ping-ponging between the band offices, federal Indian and health services and provincial authorities. Sometimes they are better off if they do not have status because they can access the provincial programs directly.
For Aboriginal people, not all is bleak in the urban landscape. Many have been growing into a sophisticated middle class. There is an impressive array of shining vehicles in the parking lot at First Nations University here at the University of Regina. There is a successful group within the city, with increasing rates of education, active employment and successful entrepreneurial efforts. We have not been seeing them interfacing with existing social services, so it is sometimes difficult to know the extent of this population. There is not a lot of research on this group so we do not know much about them, but they are certainly in our cities.
I was talking with some colleagues at Carleton University about sophisticated urban Aboriginal people right in the City of Ottawa who are making major national contributions to the First Nation Aboriginal community.
Without question, the urban Aboriginal population is significant in size. It will continue to grow and will have a profound impact on our Canadian cities, particularly in the West, but also in other regions. Because of their distinct history and culture, Aboriginal people do not use the mainstream services, but usually seek to find culturally sensitive and specific services.
As in the title of my paper, many are indeed lost and experiencing difficulties that the municipal, provincial and federal governments can no longer ignore. However, there are success stories and success lies in partnerships with Aboriginal leadership, both men and women. There is an increasing number of positive experiences and a growing middle class who are participating economically, socially and politically in the urban life. Today, the situation has both those who are lost and those who are found in the urban jungle of Canadian cities.
Frances Abele, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University: I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today. I have read the committee's encouragingly frank report and some of the testimony. I have decided to focus my remarks on two points about the federal role, because much has been said about that in the testimony but maybe not in an integrated way.
There are three sources for my comments. The first source some work that continues on the Canadian Policy Research Networks, CPRN study that you mentioned. I am working with Martin Papillon on the impact of the 1990s changes to welfare provision upon Aboriginal people in different circumstances across Canada.
The second source is a recently completed part of a Canada-wide study on multi-level governance. My job was to study the shifting relationship in Ontario cities between the city governments and the Aboriginal people living in the cities.
The third project was a general study that I completed with Katherine Graham on the historical evolution of federal policy on urban Aboriginal matters. I will send the final versions of those last two studies for the committee's reference.
The first point I would like to make is one that we all understand, which is that poverty is a systemic problem that uniquely the federal government can address in an integrated and evidence-based way. That includes the disproportionate poverty of urban Aboriginal people.
Most of the Aboriginal people living in Canadian cities are served by, and they are always affected by, the social welfare policies of general application. Whether you are talking about income support, homelessness programs or labour force programs, in many cases, there is a distinctive Aboriginal aspect to what is otherwise a national program.
Many people living in Canadian cities are more affected by changes to the national system or its inadequacies, just as are other residents of cities. Aboriginal people live disproportionately in poverty and they have a distinctive constitutional status which creates special obligations for federal and provincial governments.
I am arguing that the committee be extremely bold in making recommendations for new federal policies. Several decades of piecemeal, sometimes ideologically driven tinkering, compounding reductions in financial commitments by federal and provincial governments, and a weakening of federal capacity to act on a vision of what Canada could be, have brought us to this point. Further piecemeal measures will not get us out of the problems that we have in the areas of housing provision, income support, employment-related programs and the health care system.
The approach should be holistic because weaknesses in one aspect of the system create difficulties for the others. It all interacts. As some witnesses have already said, we need some sort of a mechanism to think through what we should do now, recognizing that there is so much interaction between these areas of social provision.
We could have a national housing program that would virtually eliminate homelessness. We could do that by building more places for people to live. That would also improve health outcomes, help keep kids in school and reduce substance abuse. It would make it easier for cities to serve their low-income populations, because they would not be dealing with a large population of homeless people who are expensive and unsatisfying to provide services to. It would also allow the cities and the non-governmental organizations in them to focus on manoeuvres that move beyond salvage and emergency aid toward measures that are integrative and remedial, which would lead to the eventual elimination of poverty.
That is an example of the case of housing — how providing adequate housing for people could create savings in other areas. It would also create opportunities for cities to enhance the quality of life that all of their residents enjoy.
You heard from the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, I believe. They have an interesting analysis of what is wrong with the current homelessness partnering strategy. While that strategy is admirably focused on community-based planning and on prevention, the strategy is underfunded and underpowered; it is a half measure. They say there has been no commitment for sustainable and ongoing funding to increase the supply of affordable housing. Most provinces do not have an official response to the Homelessness Partnering Strategy, nor a specific minister or department responsible for addressing homelessness.
Services for homeless people are often funded through health, community services or housing. Municipalities and the not-for-profit sector deliver most services for homeless people. The not-for-profit sector is notorious for being among the financially weakest sector in our society.
They conclude by saying Canada's national response to homelessness is fragmented, lacks cohesion and sufficient resources to do the job. This is an excellent illustration of the harm that can be done by half measures and by the failure of the federal government to commit to a sustaining leadership role. Partnership is good. Place-based programming is essential, and distinctive programs for Aboriginal people led by Aboriginal organizations are an essential aspect of any national program, but I think it is only the federal government that could lead such a rejuvenation of all of these interlinked systems. I know I am not suggesting a small thing, and likely, this has occurred to you before. It really is the only way we will address — in an effective way — the problem of poverty in the cities, and particularly the poverty of Aboriginal people.
A second point has to do with the community of Aboriginal people living in cities and the institutions that they have created. One of the good things about the changes that came to our country in the 1990s is that there was a new orientation in the federal government, and many other governments, towards partnership and making it possible for Aboriginal people to form organizations that would be the focus of a delivery of services to their own community.
With the changes-after-program review and the other structural changes that happen, we see a flowering of Aboriginal-controlled organizations in all of the cities of Canada — and some rural areas too — that are more likely to be culturally responsive, to deliver services that are appropriate and that are actually closer to the communities that need the service. That is a happy result of the changes of the 1990s.
These new organizations have a number of assets, and they also constitute an asset base for the solving of the problems that we now have. The asset that they have is that they tend to be very lean organizations with highly committed staff. They are all small. They are all usually underfunded. However, they are typically very effective and close to the community they serve. It is kind of a model of good program delivery and development.
These organizations have begun to form networks. They have created networks in cities across the country. There is a strong network here in Ottawa that involves a number of the service delivery organizations and the friendship centres, the venerable friendship centres and others. Those organizations provide a united voice for the diverse and heterogeneous community of Aboriginal people who live in the city. They improve program delivery because information is exchanged. They help the city because they give the city governments an organization to speak to where there is concentrated expertise about the needs of particular communities.
We have resilient new organizations. They are lean. We have networks formed by those organizations that are effective at the policy level and are good at program development and execution. We have these networks in a number of Canadian cities now.
These are important assets, and whatever new federal programs there will be should be designed so that they strengthen this sector, not undermine it or push it out of the way or bloat it out of shape because the policy purposes are coming from somewhere else.
I would like to mention two factors that have been important in stimulating this network development or making it stronger. In Ontario, the Urban Aboriginal Task Force that Mr. Durst mentioned and that the friendship centres led, worked by a system of community advisory committees. Those committees — in particular cities in Ontario — also became networks for the exchange of information and for collaboration among people trying to deliver services to the diverse Aboriginal community in each setting. The Urban Aboriginal Task Force was a research task force, but it had a community-building effect.
Another initiative is the federal initiative, the Urban Aboriginal Strategy, UAS, which has been running now for a number of years. This is a federal program that is devoted to community empowerment and creating space for Aboriginal people in selected cities to come together on the questions of concern to them.
The UAS has some problems. It suffers from the half-measures issue that I discussed earlier. Funding is not long term. The program does not seem to be stable. Where the UAS has been operating, you are more likely to find enduring networks of Aboriginal service organizations.
We have two examples of what can happen when some attention and a small amount of funding is devoted to helping the community third-sector organizations further development themselves. That would be something any new federal program should take into account.
I will close with a few comments about what I have learned are some of the urgent needs of the small organizations working in what I am calling this Aboriginal third sector. These are largely not-for-profit organizations that are small, relatively fragile and tend to depend upon funding from the federal government or from other levels of government.
What they have all told you — and what we all know is true — is that they require much more stable funding, much longer-term stability, longer-term predictability about the arrangements under which they will have to seek funding, and a much less onerous system of accountability and financial reporting that mostly applies.
Anyone who doubts this should go and work in one of those organizations for a week and engage in the activity of reporting to funders and looking for more money so that staff will be able to be paid the next year. This is something that is fixable, but we do not fix it in Canada. It has been a problem for many years.
The second thing is that most of those small organizations could benefit perhaps from access to legal and financial expertise. They do not all need a lawyer or a chartered accountant on staff, but all could benefit from access to such professional expertise. That is a simple, practical thing, and the only obstacle to that is funding. It seems to me that would be a big help.
Of course, times have changed, and many of these organizations rely in part on the charitable sector, especially for their more expensive or less mainline activities. With the impact of the global financial crisis on the charitable sector, we all know what has happened; there is no money available. Some amelioration of the impact of the decline in the charitable sector on these small organizations would also be welcome. We do not want to lose any of them because of this problem.
Finally, a common criticism of the UAS has been that while its support for community development is welcome, the strategy in itself does not make long-term commitments of support. The organizations need long-term commitments of public support. Future iterations of the UAS should be based on a model that allows ongoing, predictable support to ventures that seem to be working, so that people who have begun to make something of the opportunity are able to realize the benefits and can even look towards the feasible next steps.
An interesting and important feature of the collaborative networks appearing in Canadian cities is that they include both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organizations. They include not-for-profits, voluntary organizations and governments. In Kingston, for example, there is the Kingston Aboriginal Community Information Network. This network has members from organizations as disparate as the Royal Military College, which has good programs for Aboriginal recruitment, and the friendship centre. It brings people together across lines that most of us would expect to be respected.
These citizen-level collaborations are golden for our cities. They make the small organizations who work together more effective. The alliance lends weight to everyone, and they build bridges across ethnic divides.
We want to avoid, finally, in designing new federal policies, those that repeat the errors of the early 1970s when Aboriginal and non-status people were forced out of collaboration with First Nations, for example, by federal policy. While we want to respect the distinctive history of relations with the three constitutional groups, it would be important to respect also this community-driven process of building lines across old divides that can only harm social cohesion in Canadian cities.
Peter Dinsdale, Executive Director, National Association of Friendship Centres: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee. It is an honour for me to be here and to appear with the other witnesses, each of whom we have dealt with in one way or another over our time. It is interesting that we come together on this topic.
My presentation will be short. I will give just a little — I promise — propaganda of who we are to set the stage as to the work we do. I will tell you about research we have done, in particular, in the 14 communities that you have identified, to highlight where we see some of the urban challenges. It is in development, so we have some pretty raw stuff to share with you, but we want to talk about the analysis together. I will provide a bit of feedback on your first report that we have read. We have some comments and considerations to provide, and then give you our sense of the main challenges we are facing, not just in these communities but everywhere.
Our job at the National Association of Friendship Centres is to represent the concerns and interests of 120 local frontline service delivery agencies across the country that are serving people on the ground. There is one here in Ottawa called the Odawa Native Friendship Centre, and seven regional bodies support friendship centres in the regions and engage with the province or territory and do that work.
Our broad mission is to improve the quality of lives of Aboriginal people in urban areas. Poverty reduction strategies are something that we do, for the most part, every day.
We provide priority programs to Canada's urban Aboriginal population. We provide about $114 million a year in programming through those 120 friendship centres. Around one-third of that funding is provincially based, around one-third is federally based and around one-third is that category of ``other,'' such as own-source revenue generation, municipalities, foundations et cetera. It is a diverse funding source.
The first friendship centre started in the 1950s in Canada, in Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg. Winnipeg was the first centre to use the words ``friendship centre'' in its title, but the others eventually became the various friendship centres. The National Association of Friendship Centres was developed in 1972 under the Department of the Secretary of State, and the program was then called the Migrating Native Peoples Programme. Indians were migrating from reserves to cities; that is how they would have said it then, and we received ``man years'' in our first contribution agreements. It is quite a historical document to look at to see how far we have come in a short amount of time.
In 1996, the Department of Canadian Heritage devolved the administration of the core funding of that program to us directly. We are kind of bureaucrats by nature in delivering these programs.
We provided you with a map to give you a sense of where these centres are located across Canada. There are three missing now since we have developed: Sept-Îles in Quebec and Sarnia and Peterborough in Ontario all have new and developing centres. We are in the 14 communities that you discuss, but, obviously, there are challenges we see all across the country as well.
I will go to a slide called AFCP Program Reach and will describe the programs and services we provide. I said earlier that we have $114 million in revenue, but we show $93 million on this graph. The difference is our regional bodies have some funding as well, which is not included. This funding is spent on the ground here.
Last year we provided 1.3 million client services. If I came in 10 times, that would count as 10. That is my methodological acknowledgement, but we serve 1.3 million client contacts, and about $93 million in revenue is spent.
We are heavy in youth and health programming, which are some of our biggest, and on the second line, you will see ``Families,'' which includes programs like Aboriginal Head Start programs and children's programs in community centres. Much of the work we do is poverty reduction and poverty mitigation, for example, food banks, employment and training, counselling, homelessness and so forth. Many operate shelters, and some have social enterprises where they have rent-geared-to-income units. It is an evolved network that is involved in a number of areas.
We have had third-party endorsement of the work that we do. EKOS has done some public opinion surveys on Aboriginal people and their satisfaction with First Nations, Metis, Inuit, friendship centres and others. We came out favourably. Some of the quotes from the survey are there to the effect that we are the most poplar and best known community service organizations that are there today.
Regarding the demographic work, you have seen the growth in urban centres, as Mr. Siggner reflected, from 1996 to 2006. Part of the challenge in the federal government system is that when we think of Aboriginal issues, rarely do we think of an urban person. We think of First Nations and water. We think of many other challenges. We do not think of people living in urban cities. The reality is quite a bit different.
Canada's Aboriginal population is growing six times faster than the non-Aboriginal population. One in 10 people in Winnipeg is Aboriginal and 5 per cent of Edmonton. There was a 51 per cent increase in the population of Halifax since the 2001 census. Some of Mr. Siggner's comments about mobility probably needs reflection, but the numbers are exploding. Frontline delivery agencies like ours are feeling the crunch every day.
Finally, 48 per cent of the Aboriginal population is under the age of 25. If there is a takeaway from this, for me, it is that we are very young — around 50 per cent under the age of 25; we are urban — half of us live in cities; and, we are very uneducated — around one-half do not graduate from high school. In short, the urban Aboriginal population is young, in cities and undereducated. These are the kinds of challenges we need to overcome as a country, and as a committee, you have an opportunity to reflect upon some of those things.
The National Association of Friendship Centres is engaged in a number of policy forums. We are a co-chair of the Aboriginal Policy Research Conference with Indian Affairs and the University of Western Ontario. We are trying to use some of our capital in this area to work with partners to do research to understand what is happening in urban areas across the country.
Much of the research we get on Aboriginal issues is around 13 communities, maybe CMAs and CAs if you are lucky. Rarely do we talk about Rankin Inlet or Kapuskasing, Ontario, but some unique issues are going on here. We are engaging in our own research in 224 communities across Canada. They are non-First Nation communities, with more than 500 Aboriginal people. We are doing demographic research on them.
Regarding the numbers you see here, we are trying to get a sense of how urban Aboriginal people compare to non- Aboriginal people in the same cities. We are using the methodology that Indian Affairs developed called the Community Well-Being Index, which is loosely based on the Human Development Index from the United Nations, but using census geography and measures that are available and applying them in urban areas.
The charts we provided you with the 14 communities show you some of the disparities out there. We separated Gatineau and Ottawa in our analysis and I want to highlight a couple of things that are interesting to us. If you look at the labour force scores for the Community Well-Being Index for these communities, you see that in communities like Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Gatineau, St. Johns, Toronto and Quebec, Aboriginal people are employed, or their labour force rates, are better than those of non-Aboriginal people. We have less unemployment; we are participating more in the economy. We are more active than non-Aboriginal people in the exact same communities.
Yet, in the exact same communities, you will not see a correlation in income measures. You are seeing us continue to fall behind. In some communities such as Halifax, where we have higher scores in labour force, we have much lower scores in income. It is the same thing across the board. While we work more, we have less income, and as a result, we live in poorer neighbourhoods. There are all kinds of sociological issues which Ms. Abele and others have commented on, as well.
On the next slide, we also did literacy education scores, housing scores and total Community Well-Being Index scores. We would be pleased to talk to your researchers and give them the opportunity to talk about the full research we were doing. The reports will come out later this year.
The highest levels of community well-being we have amongst Aboriginal people are in Toronto. The disparity between Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people is lowest in Toronto, but we are still at 96 per cent. Our community well-being is about 4 per cent less, an average. The highest disparity is in Regina: We are around 82 per cent of the community well-being of the rest of the community.
There are tremendous disparities that are in the exact same cities. Keep in mind we are working as much, if not more, in these communities. We are being paid less and the disparity continues to grow.
If I was in your moccasins and I was doing research on poverty and cities, this is the kind of question I would want to get at; I would want a better understanding. If we say Aboriginal people need to be better engaged in the labour market, we need to be better engaged in education, but to what end?
If we are coming to the cities, and we are facing these barriers and still not getting ahead, what are the reasons?
Your first report highlighted for us some of the potential areas to explore. We appeared before this committee twice. This is the third time in terms of leading up to the development of your first report, and we have an opportunity to reflect upon it now. We believe, and not surprisingly, that the disparities of urban Aboriginal people are far too great not to have an Aboriginal section of the report. In some of these communities, some of the greatest poverty in Canada is with the Aboriginal population.
Regina's Moccasin Flats is famous. It happens to be one of your communities at the very lowest levels of the Community Well-Being Index, but you do not focus on it. We focus immigrants, settlement issues and disability issues, which I think are entirely relevant. The issues and disparities we are seeing as Canada as a fabric are too great not to have a section, as well as a robust conversation about what is happening in these communities.
That being said, there are some options that you had reflected upon that we would like to comment on. Your first option in your report was around focusing social benefits on particular communities at risk, Aboriginal people and others.
We think that is a bad idea. Our concern is it may racialize poverty in these communities and that those that are poor or being perceived as such. The social fabric of some of these communities might be ripped apart. We think it is better to strengthen the social fabric more broadly than it is to target on particular sub-populations, which could have broader, negative social integration issues.
In Option 9, you talk about increased importance of EI programs. There is always this tension that was referenced between the federal-provincial, 91-24 kind of challenges. EI Part 2 is one of those areas where the federal government engages urban Aboriginal people although it is not robust. The Aboriginal Human Resource Development Strategy is a federal strategy aimed at improving employment measures of Aboriginal people, yet there is not a significant urban piece of it.
The federal government policy framework — and this is part of the conversation we had in the Health Subcommittee — is not focused on people where they live. If 54 per cent of all Aboriginal people live in cities, 54 per cent of any federal program aimed at Aboriginal people needs to reach them where they live if you want to impact them.
In Option 19, you talk about the need for children's broad social support and reflect upon the Canada Child Tax Benefit. I have to tell you that, in provinces across the country, the claw-back of those benefits of people that receive it are very real and continue. They are on social assistance. They receive the Canada Child Tax Benefit. All or part of that gets clawed back away from them. This is a policy imperative that the Senate can reflect and make recommendations upon. Doing so would impact some of the most disenfranchised in the communities. You can directly impact people on social assistance with children.
You reflect upon Canada's Action Plan Against Racism. It has been our experience that it does not nearly focus on Aboriginal people well enough. It is not clear to us where the largest service delivery provider is for Aboriginal people in Canada. We have no engagement whatsoever on Canada's Action Plan Against Racism. Their Aboriginal focus is not clear to me. You do make some recommendations and considerations in there that they take this as a greater priority. I encourage you to do so. We think it is critical.
By the way, I think some of the differences between their labour force participation rates and their income rates are this ``glass ceiling'' notion. Some of it might be related to racism. We need to have a conversation. It is also about our credentials. We think Canada's Action Plan Against Racism can have a great benefit on that.
While we are generally concerned about the treatment of Aboriginal people in the report, we are pleased with the housing focus and we think the recommendations are solid. There are two lessons that I think would be important to reflect upon, if you do a second report.
When the federal government in Budget 2006, I believe — I stand to be corrected — put aside $300 million for off- reserve Aboriginal housing, it delivered that through transfers to provinces in forms of a housing trust. I am sure you have heard from numerous people that access to that housing trust has been sporadic at best. There are far more efficient delivery models which Canada should be exploring. While you have very strong recommendations related to housing, I think it would be important to reflect upon that particular instrument which was used as a barrier to develop housing, even when money is being put on the table.
The second reflection we would like to provide is that we believe there are policy changes that can be made for the Native, non-profit housing providers, which have existing CMHC housing mortgages which are locked in, to allow them to remortgage those units to buy more homes. Right now, they are not allowed to by the nature of the agreements they have. It is peculiar to me that we would be focused on economic development and entrepreneurialism, yet this is a simple policy shift, which costs you nothing, other than maybe insuring a bunch of new houses, to address a housing crisis that exists in communities. Therefore, we encourage the committee to reflect upon that and, perhaps, make recommendations around the remortgaging of existing CMHC housing stock.
We heard about the types of networks that are developed. There have been challenges with funding for the Aboriginal Friendship Centre Program. The only time where I may deviate from some of the other witness testimony today is to say the mid-1990s were not a great time for us in terms of developing networks. We received a 25 per cent reduction in expenditure review. It remains stuck at those levels today. We are using 1996 dollars to address 2009 issues, and they have only grown and become more complicated.
While I appreciate this is a self-motivated plea, we are in the process of many centres having tremendous problems hiring, keeping qualified staff and navigating the tremendously difficult training which exists out there in these communities, and it requires robust investments. Therefore, another recommendation to address poverty is to ensure these institutions exist and they are properly resourced. It is a recommendation which could be made.
There is a broader question about inclusion of processes. The friendship centre movement and others need to ensure that the federal government policy authorities, where they have them and where they exercise them, reach urban Aboriginal people. We have heard a number of examples where housing, historically, and employment and training do not happen and it needs to.
Finally, from our perspective, the Urban Aboriginal Strategy is an important first step. It is in 13 communities. It provides funding for development through the community planning process of targeting investment in priority areas. However, so much more needs to be done. Right now, the federal government is very much still stove-piped. The employment training program is not caught up in the Urban Aboriginal Strategy. Neither is the homeless program, your housing work nor is what limited off-reserve education occurs. There is your health work.
Therefore, it is difficult to be strategic or have a strategy if you are simply asking communities to do planning and not the federal family themselves coordinating the work around urban Aboriginal challenges. That would be the third. However, I think the Urban Aboriginal Strategy through Indian Affairs is an important first step. You need to build upon their successes to coordinate the federal family a little more strategically.
That is my presentation. I will be pleased to take questions and, again, I am happy to share the full details of the research project I mentioned earlier.
The Chair: We have received a wealth of information from our witnesses today. We will move now to questions.
Mr. Dinsdale and Ms. Abele's comments provided some very valuable statistical information. While Mr. Siggner showed there is some progress in narrowing the gap, there still is a gap. Even the people who are non-Aboriginal need further help. Of course those who are Aboriginal have greater need.
Mr. Dinsdale, you said three words that you want us to remember, although I thought there were four words. I certainly heard that you have not had an increase in your budget since 1996. That is terrible.
You said three things that we should remember: The Aboriginal profile of today is largely young, in the cities and under educated. Let us focus on what we could do about education. You said that it is not simply a matter related to the labour market or education but that there are racism issues and other challenges facing Aboriginals. Mr. Siggner's chart 13 shows that the gap is quite significant for those who have less than high school, whereas it is almost equal for those with a university degree.
What do we do about the under-educated? Last week we heard from a group with Pathways to Education, which operates in Toronto in the Regent Park area. They have some marvellous success stories of helping to keep people in school and going on to higher education. According to Mr. Siggner's chart, people who do get there have a better chance in terms of earning, notwithstanding the other issues that you have mentioned. Would Pathways to Education, or something similar that provides a mentoring program, be particularly helpful in our urban areas?
Mr. Durst: Thank you for the question. It has been our experience in friendship centres that kids need a blanket of services around them to support them in the pursuit of their education. I was involved previously in developing an alternative school in downtown Toronto for Aboriginal street kids. We do not have a culture of education of achievement broadly speaking in our communities. If we drop out in high school because we are a single parent or because of labour market issues or because we need to work to help the family financially, it is not seen as a failure as it is seen in broader society. We need to achieve more.
I was the first person in my family to go to university. Leaving the community and going away to school was not seen as a good thing to do. I was asked why I was doing it and what it was all about. I was never pushed as a child but I guarantee that I will push my child.
The focus of many of our alternative schools is getting young Aboriginal women and their children through school. If a young Aboriginal woman is able to finish high school, either an alternative model or a blanket-of-services model, her life will be better, and she will not let her child drop out of school. We need to create a better culture of education in our communities.
We see a number of successful education initiatives across the country. On their own, they are fabulous, but they are disjointed because they are not connected and there is no meaningful strategy. As an example of what the UAS could or should be doing, they could negotiate with the provinces on education strategies because it is a provincial jurisdiction. We need to determine how to overcome the jurisdictional barrier in order to have more pathway programs, alternative schools and others that bring people back into the education system.
We would be remiss if we did not address two other educational issues. There is a 2 per cent budget cap on First Nations who are eligible for post-secondary support. The amount of people ready to go to school exceeds that figure, so we have many learners ready to go to university but the funding is not available. We have a backlog because of funding pressures. If we want to see more achievement in universities, then the funding has to be increased and allow them to have their funding declined in order to go.
As well, I would reflect upon the fact that First Nations without a high school, send their students into a city. They have tuition agreements with those school boards to have those students attend. The agreements are structured such that they have to be there for the first 30 days for that school board to have the tuition for the entire year. There is no incentive to keep that student coming from a First Nation into a city until graduation at the end of the year. In fact, the communities perceive it as a disincentive because if the students drop out after the first 30 days, the classroom size will decrease and the school keeps the money for the rest of the year. I am sure it is not as nefarious as that sounds, but that is the perception of the system. We have long recommended in other committees that these tuition agreements be changed to a backing grant. We receive our contribution agreements by reporting that these people are attending school and achieving success. They could provide a bonus if the students graduate. In that way schools would begin to focus and provide the required support services required. It is complicated but I would say that an off-reserve education strategy is needed where people live. It requires political will on the part of the federal government and the provinces. The federal government needs to exercise its authority with tuition cap agreements and review the 2 per cent cap in post-secondary and the First Nation tuition agreements.
Education is also linked to training. Labour market programs need to ensure that they are training people in the cities where they live so that they have higher credentials, graduate, enter the workforce and are able to compete at higher levels. Certainly, the issue is multi-faceted, in our perspective.
The Chair: I will ask Professor Abele a question about housing and homelessness. Another group of people who appeared before the committee are from cities that are adopting 10-year plans to eliminate homelessness — Calgary and Edmonton to name two. The United States has some 300 cities involved in it. Does this require a different strategy in respect of the Aboriginal population or can the Aboriginal population be part of such a 10-year plan to end homelessness? Given the cultural issues, should it be a separate program? A number of Aboriginal organizations focus specifically on homelessness and housing needs. How could we grapple with this and deal with homelessness in the Aboriginal population?
Ms. Abele: I do not know the full answer to that question because I have not studied the programs for a 10-year end to homelessness. I would like to do that before I comment.
It seems clear that the social housing programs in the cities that I have studied are run by Aboriginal people and used by Aboriginal people and are very effective. There are issues of cultural appropriateness and mutual understanding, but there are also issues of links to other service organizations that are provided in that way. I am sure that there is a need for Aboriginal-specific social housing.
Is that the only part of it? I do not know, and I defer to Mr. Dinsdale on that subject. Certainly, we could better fund existing social housing for those who are most in need.
In Ontario, it was particularly bad because of the federal cutbacks in the 1990s, the downloading to the province and the province promptly downloading to the cities. The result was that people working in friendship centres and other organizations had to educate provincial public servants about their work and then start over again to educate municipal governments. The municipal governments did not have the resources to look after this sector.
We have come through a very bad time in Ontario but things are looking up with more money in the system. Throughout that time, people hung on to Aboriginal-specific facilities for the reason that they were good for the people who lived in them.
On the other question I am not sure. Mr. Dinsdale, what do you think?
Mr. Dinsdale: In my previous life, when I worked in Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres managed their provincial homelessness initiative.
When the ``Skippy program'' was first developed with Minister Bradshaw, it was a requirement of all the community plans that they address homelessness within their community plans. Minister Bradshaw was a particularly active minister that signed off on most of those community plans; there were delays in funding, but she looked at every single one and some were actually sent back. The ``Skippy program'' was the name used for the Supporting Communities Partnerships Initiatives.
Where we saw some tension was in communities like Belleville and Sudbury, which have significant Aboriginal populations. They would meet the requirement of having Aboriginal issues in their community plan, but then have no projects targeted for Aboriginal people. It was problematic, with huge Aboriginal homeless populations.
Our experience in terms of best practice is that Aboriginal people be at the same planning table, that they have a subcommittee, that they articulate their own priorities and bring those priorities back to the bigger planning tables. You have to be cognizant of the fact that homelessness is a big industry. In some of these larger communities, you would have 50 people on their community planning board and one or two Aboriginal people at the table, not feeling empowered to make their voices heard in terms of their decisions. The ability for the minister to direct that there was an Aboriginal component to the community plan was very helpful. It is a best practice for us that there is a subcommittee so the Aboriginal organizations could come together to articulate more directly their priorities.
You mentioned the Calgary 10-year plan to end homelessness. We received a phone call from the Calgary Friendship Centre saying Calgary's 10-year plan does not address Aboriginal homelessness. It does not appear once in the document. They are not engaging the Aboriginal community in the projects they are funding or in the processes they are engaging in.
We are coming back to the Homelessness Partnering Strategy, to ask them is it still a requirement in the community plan. What are the plans for Aboriginal homelessness and what are the best ways to engage it?
We think they should be a part of same planning process because it is a part of social inclusion, but there needs to be room to articulate priorities in their own way.
Senator Segal: I want to put one question to all of our guests today and, first, express my appreciation for the time they have put into this. I have had the experience of working with Dr. Abele on other projects and I have a high regard for the tremendous contribution she makes. I have also read of the contribution made by others. I appreciate your making yourselves available to us.
In political science, there is a theory called ``path dependency.'' The theory, as I explain to my students at Queen's University, is it is easier to go back and forth in the same rut, with greater speed and intensity — however deep the rut gets — than it is to pop out of that rut and start a new direction. It is simpler by definition, because of all the expectations and all the interests around the table.
My question is around the specific issue of Aboriginal poverty. As a preamble to the question, I accept without any hesitation that the contributing factors to Aboriginal poverty may be significantly different from the contributing factors to other poverty in our community. However, in the beginning and in the end, poverty is about not having enough money.
There is a bias in my question, but feel free to set it aside. God knows my colleagues on the committee have, and thousands of other witnesses, so I am untroubled by the process; I have quite a thick skin.
What would happen to your assessment Mr. Dinsdale, of the remarkable service rendered by the friendship centres across Canada; Dr. Abele, your analysis of the dynamics of urban poverty for our Aboriginal brothers and sisters; your assessment, Mr. Siggner, of the statistical movement and change, which in some ways is not terribly encouraging; and Professor Durst, your concern about the kind of context within which Aboriginals have to try to negotiate a reasonable life for themselves in urban Canada? What would happen if not a single Aboriginal family or individual in urban Canada lived beneath the low-income cut-off? What would happen if all of them lived above that cut-off? Would that be good? Would it make a difference?
I ask the question with this concern: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. There is the rule of policy accumulation. A series of interesting policies and programs are developed over years with the best of intentions to help people, but after a time, the thicket of that policy accumulation begins to have a countervailing impact in a way that does not let people work their way through it.
If you assume that the federal government does many things badly — it does not matter who is in charge, which political party is in charge; and if you assume that the federal government has a primary obligation to First Nations, for reasons of history, treaty and the confederal nature of our relationship with our First Nations, would it make the most substantial difference if the federal government acted to ensure that no Aboriginal individual or family lived beneath the poverty line? Would it be better to spend their resources on a host of other programs — some of which do great work, which have been referenced here today — to try to achieve the goal if we assume they cannot do everything at once with an equal level of intensity and expenditure, that at some point you have to make a choice as to what you would do first?
If you had $25 billion to address the issue, and you had to make one choice, what would you do? Would the LICO issue and getting everyone above it be your first choice; or would you choose other options?
The Chair: That is not a leading question to a guaranteed annual income.
Senator Segal: I did not mention a guaranteed annual income. Let the record show the chair mentioned a guaranteed annual income.
Mr. Dinsdale: I would give it to the friendship centre program. I am joking.
I take the point. You have an increased economy. It would be a heck of a fiscal stimulus package; next time you have a caucus meeting, it would be a great thing to suggest.
When you were asking the question, I thought of Hobbema, Alberta. It is not an urban area, but it was one of the most challenged First Nations in the country. Prior to the oil boom, there were lots of reports of them sniffing gas. After the oil boom, when the revenue came in, they were sniffing cocaine. What they were doing changed, but not the social dysfunctions underneath.
I would invest the $25 billion in a robust Aboriginal healing wellness strategy. They do it in Ontario and other jurisdictions. We need to heal as communities; there is no question. The reference in Hobbema is illustrative of the fact that money alone is not the problem.
I do not want to let go of the notion that Aboriginal people, even those in cities, in some ways have a different world view of how they want to live their lives. Their version of the good life is not solely climbing the corporate ladder; it is about living in a certain way — whether that is working part-time so you can still hunt and fish in some of the more remote communities, or the level of interactions. It is not always about the corporate ladder and I think we need to reflect upon that.
It is about the healing the communities and allowing Aboriginal peoples to guide their own visions, direction and purpose in life and ways to fulfill them. Artificial barriers in education and employment training are barriers to people living those lives of free will and making those decisions. Our purpose is to remove those barriers so make they can those decisions and have them fall where they may.
I will end with this, because I am sure everyone else wants to talk. I would encourage them to give it to the friendship centre program.
One other thing — I think the federal government has path dependency. I think they have path dependency of going back and forth, doing the same thing over and over again. They talk to the same people, come up with the same programs and spend resources in the same ways. However, I also think we need to reflect on our path dependency. I would comment that if the federal government could do something bold, as was challenged, if they could look at urban poverty as an integrated strategy, it would begin to address some of the paths you discussed.
Ms. Abele: I know I will have to answer this, because I am the one that brought up the federal role.
It is a very good question. I wish I had about a year to think about an answer. The thicket is a problem. It is a problem in the whole social sector, not just for Aboriginal people, but I will just focus on programming for Aboriginal people. As a country, we have layered on, rather than erase everything and say: What should we really do?
A perfect example of that is the department of Indian and Northern Affairs — full of idealistic people and good intentions — actively administering an act that disempowers, undercuts and systematically replicates centuries-old colonial administration, and that is all about path dependency. It is a bureaucratic problem or machinery of government problem.
It is not a new idea with me, but I have thought for 20 years that we need to get rid of that department, at least lop off its policy function and create a service unit that is gradually working itself out of business and put the policy authority in the PCO where it can deal with Aboriginal governments. That is one part of it.
Then we look at the status-blind programs or the ones not just aimed at First Nations and Inuit. There we have created an intractable thicket of programming. It is uncoordinated. Sometimes it is actually dangerously uncoordinated because people working from the community level cannot put together a fairly simple package. They cannot build a community centre that has language-training programs and trains carpenters in the community and other normal community-development tasks. It is difficult to do with the existing array of programs.
It is a challenge to simplify and to integrate, as Mr. Dinsdale said. We have to reform that sector of the federal government. I do not think that is the expenditure answer, though. That is something that is essential that we do and we should not wait.
I would put a big chunk of that money into housing, because it is hard for kids to stay in school when they are living in crowded quarters. It is hard for kids to do well at university if they do not have anywhere to live and they are staying with relatives who are up all night.
In so many ways, inadequate housing — for poor people in general, and for Aboriginal people — undercuts the chance for success that young people have for education or for getting good jobs. This afternoon, that is where I would put a whole bunch of the money.
I do not think the answer is something like a guaranteed annual income. It does not address the social development issues and the community development issues that I think are really important.
Mr. Durst: Some of the research on communities and community development and building strong, healthy communities and well-being look at are the economic stability in the community and the social dimension and foundation of the community. Part of that includes recreation and sport. Also, political efficacy, and how much control the members of the community feel they have over decision making in their lives.
If you put those three together, what some of the studies have found is that before any kind of economic development or stability can happen, you do need that social foundation of a social and healthy community. That is what Mr. Dinsdale was referring to about healing and strengthening the healing issue. Unless that is addressed, efforts in political and economic development will probably fail.
My thinking would be targeted towards the youth and children and ensuring, in our urban communities, that these kids have — Mr. Dinsdale referred to a blanket, or sometimes in social programs, we refer to it as a wraparound. A wraparound is a total coverage and a comprehensive interdisciplinary strategy targeted to the children and youth so they develop strong identities of who they are and what they would like to do.
When they have that — with family supports — they will stay in school. I am an educator. Maybe I am biased here, but that is where we find the success stories. We see success when the child has a foundation of good self-esteem, good healthy attitudes and an education with which he or she can go out and participate economically and socially in the community.
It might be time to look at success stories of individuals who have been successful in achieving education. It strikes me, living in Regina, that there are a lot of racist attitudes around. My neighbour has never met an Aboriginal or First Nation person with a PhD or a lawyer or someone who is making major contributions to our community at large.
A lot of our studies and work have had a problem focus, and that is where I would like to switch us away from that and from being reactive to more proactive. I echo Mr. Dinsdale about using existing infrastructures, such as friendship centres across the country, as well as the many strong and dedicated First Nation and Aboriginal agencies and community groups that are struggling — almost week by week — to secure funding to keep operating. Those agencies are an infrastructure that can easily be used. Those are some thoughts and references to Senator Segal's points and question.
The Chair: Mr. Siggner, you have been a statistician. You are no longer with Statistics Canada, so if you have an opinion you can express it.
Mr. Siggner: I have two points: One that Mr. Durst mentioned, which relates to trying to keep kids in school and getting those achievements — clearly, we are seeing that statistically in the data. Second, I agree with what Ms. Abele had to say about housing. Those two areas are critical to improving the lives of Aboriginal people. If you were looking for a spot to spend your money, I would say those two would rank high on my list.
It is simplistic, what you have cooked this question down to be. On the other hand, you have probably heard from some people about what we see on the migration side, where you hear about the churn effect; people moving in and out of the city. You see it in the numbers. A huge volume of people move into urban areas, while there is also a volume moving out. The net impact in the last few censuses is shown to be in favour of the reserves. It is very small, mind you, but it is not the big flow that everyone thinks is coming into the city and staying in the city.
I have heard over the years, just from talking to people when we were going out to consult on census-data gathering and survey-data gathering, the notion the kids are not staying in the same jurisdiction when they are in school. They are moving around and it is hard to have that kind of stability and success when moving from one grade to the next with that kind of churn going on, even within the city.
Indeed, the data show that there is much more movement among houses and dwellings within the city as there is moving in and out of cities. In fact, that is the bulk of the mobility.
I must admit, I am not a policy and program kind of guy for coming up with those things, but clearly the data is telling us that is one of the issues affecting the population, where 40-odd per cent of the population is moving houses in the course of a year, or five years. That is significant. That is within the same community, as opposed to between communities.
Senator Martin: I wanted to say that it has been such an informative session, and all of you bring such a wide range of information and insight.
I am from Vancouver and I have visited the friendship centre there, and I am part of the Multicultural Advisory Council. We go to different cultural communities, and I have seen the kinds of services that are provided. As an educator, I also think about the absolute critical piece of getting to our children when they are very young and giving them a clear sense of identity and pride in their culture. I agree with the comments of our professor from Regina on that subject. My question connects some of these pieces.
Professor Abele, you mentioned that you would like to see a stronger federal presence in providing the interconnection among the groups that are working to support the Aboriginal community. I have visited friendship centres and worked in the schools. You all commented that the infrastructure does exist. It is sort of a symbol of the shift in your community. There is a movement from the reserves to the city, and the friendship centres would be the hub or the community centre wherever people are living.
When I came to Canada in 1972, there was one Korean church, and that became the centre for the community from far and wide. The language school came out of the church as well as the various festivals that we now hold. The friendship centre is the home away from home, and it can be an important hub for the community.
Mr. Dinsdale, how do the bands, the council chiefs and the people on the reserves view the relationship that the friendship centres have with the band councils? You mentioned inclusion in the process by the federal government, but what about inclusion within your own community? It seems to be playing a greater role at this time. If the population is leaving and coming to the urban centres and the friendship centres are playing that greater role, should the funding shift; should there be more emphasis there? What is your relationship with the band councils at this time?
Mr. Dinsdale: I could get myself in trouble here. It varies across the country from very strong to very poor. In B.C., the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres has taken a long time developing protocols with local First Nations as well as provincial First Nation authorities to entrench the notion that we are guests on First Nations land. As Aboriginal service providers, we are not a government. We serve people; we serve their nation members in the community. We seek to work with them. That relationship is obviously very strong. In some of the Prairie provinces it is very weak.
In many ways, because of the urbanization, and not necessarily due to migration but just to growth of numbers, it has become the wild west in Aboriginal policy. No one is clear on who will take the lead or when funding will be focused on it, but everyone is positioning themselves. Tribal councils are starting up in cities. People are saying that they will serve their people no matter where they live. That is code for, ``Give us the money and we will serve our clients in the cities.''
Some do it very well. It is more difficult in Vancouver. If I am a status Indian from Curve Lake First Nation near Peterborough, it is impossible for my First Nation to serve me here. If I have a need, I will not go back to Peterborough but to somewhere in Ottawa. There is a tension there.
The path dependency notion is the federal government continuing to go to political organizations for service delivery questions. Is the delivery of Aboriginal employment and training a political issue? According to the federal government, it is in a way because you develop national accords with the Assembly of First Nations, the Metis National Council, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and the Native Women's Association of Canada to provide employment training services. You go to politicians for service delivery, yet you do not talk to service delivery people. That was one of our challenges.
With the Kelowna Accord there are the same kinds of questions. You go to the politicians to talk about service delivery issues. Where does the delineation occur?
That is where I get myself into trouble. In some areas it is very strong and in other areas we have much work to do.
Mr. Durst: Something we have not talked about that might be of interest at a future time is the rise of urban reserves. Under land entitlement programs and settlements of past grievances, we are starting to see First Nations groups coming into the cities and establishing urban reserves in the communities. There are all kinds of implications associated with tensions between the municipal government and those kinds of dynamics.
These urban reserves are sometimes entrepreneurial. We recently had a gas station and convenience store open up in the city that is owned and operated by a First Nation outside the city. Also, some of these urban reserves are providing various social services to band members who have moved back and forth.
That might be another discussion to have. I am not the best one to speak to it, but perhaps it should be looked at, particularly in the western communities.
The Chair: The next segment of our cities studies will be on social cohesion. I think it will come up in that context as well.
Senator Martin: Professor Durst, you mentioned focusing on positive initiatives and being proactive versus reactive. With regard to some of the other cultural groups, in spite of the problems that exist, we have to focus on that and ensure that funding, dialogue and consultation continue.
On the proactive side, empowering young people in the urban centres to celebrate their culture is very important for community building, as is inviting others to participate. It would be nice to see more of that. It will be competing with many other events, but festivals are very popular, especially in cities. Cultural events are an important thing to nurture and keep alive.
Ms. Abele: Here in Ottawa there is an interesting organization called Nunavut Sivuniksavut. It is a program that was started by Inuit from Nunavut before they negotiated the modern treaty. They were looking for a way to help children from small communities in Nunavut make the transition from high schools in the North to university. It has been running for about 23 years.
The people who started it began by teaching people about the modern treaty, the land claim and history. They come to Parliament Hill and they always go to Senator Watt's farm. It is a one-year program and there is much competition to get in. They pick the best students. Graduates of that program are now all over Nunavut running the territory.
I have been associated with them for 23 years, and over the time the space they have given to cultural activities has continued to grow so that the young people who come into that program now have a very sophisticated cultural program. They do traditional drum dancing, singing in Inuktitut and throat singing. They perform all over the city. They go to the schools and universities, anywhere that people will have them.
In this program they learned that by building cultural affirmation and giving young people the grounding in their own culture, they are creating the capacity for people to interact with the broader Canadian community from a position of some dignity.
This is a wonderful model of what a community organization can do. Hundreds of Inuit children have gone through this program.
Senator Cordy: I read today that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and wondering why you still get the same result. That is sort of what we have been talking about today. We wonder why things do not change.
There are some good things happening in education in Nova Scotia. At Cape Breton University, Aboriginal education has been around for a long time. There is promotion of education for Aboriginal people in Cape Breton, but also promotion for non-Aboriginal people. I also know there is a lot of good business development taking place in Sydney in Nova Scotia.
Dr. Durst, you talked about the correlation between employment and education. We have heard that before for non-Aboriginals, as well as you have talked about it today with Aboriginals. However, Mr. Dinsdale, you said the person might be working but will not receive the same income as a non-Aboriginal person. You both referred to racism — personal racism and systemic racism — and you talked about it in relation to housing and employment and that would go along with the lower incomes. You also said it is compounded by the residential school situation, which happened in Atlantic Canada as well as in other areas of Canada.
What can we do from the federal perspective about the racism that has been around for a very long time against Aboriginal peoples? This is something that we can certainly do. I know I just finished a committee dealing with aging populations, and we looked at the whole issue of ageism and what the federal government can do.
What can we do? If we do not do anything, then it will be a case of doing the same things over and over again and not getting any better results.
Mr. Dinsdale: I have a few perspectives. First, we need to acknowledge that racism is not just towards Aboriginal people. We engage in it as well. I was a part of a group in Halifax, actually — in Preston — going down, talking about the racism between the Black community and the Mi'kmaq community, and trying to foster relations. It is a broader systemic issue.
I do not think too many Canadians fully understand the Aboriginal conditions in this country. Going to school, a lot of curriculum shows you the Indian died with the buffalo. You see the train stop at buffalo bones with some man with a musket and then they move on to the rest of Canada's history.
It would be good to talk about treaties, residential schools and modern land claims. Canadians do not have this foundation of understanding. Therefore, that certainly contributes to it.
Programs like Canada's Action Plan Against Racism need to focus on Aboriginal people. There is no question that visible minorities, gays and lesbians and other forms of racism and prejudice which exist in society need to be addressed. There is no question. However, you need a focus on Aboriginal peoples and it does not exist at the level it needs to.
From a federal perspective, you can lead in terms of curriculum development where you have relationships with regions, provinces and education institutions. Where you do have programs and services, ensure it is robust and looking at this issue because it rarely does.
Mr. Durst: That is a very good question and it is a very important issue to deal with. The anti-racism programs, action plans and initiatives are effective and they do contribute to awareness and sensitivity, and also are effective in reducing racism across all levels. I think Mr. Dinsdale is quite right regarding education about treaties and the long history of the relationship between Western cultures and First Nation Aboriginal people needs to be more recognized and considered in our various education programs.
Something I have often argued for — which is part of this — is the need for more research on racism itself to have a deeper understanding. It is actually very contextual and it appears in very subtle and different ways. That would be an important kind of thing in the sense that I think Aboriginal youth here in Regina experience racism very differently than, say, elders or elderly Aboriginal people might in Halifax.
With Halifax, with an indigenous Black population and with an Aboriginal population just outside, their experiences about racism are very different. It is a very sensitive topic. The hairs on the back of people's necks go up when you start to touch on it, but we have had a lack of really good research that looks at the context from different perspectives.
I also include other forms of visible minorities and visible minorities' attitudes to one another. To give you an example, I am working with a graduate student who is looking at historic negative attitudes towards Ukrainians. You know about Ukrainians in Western Canada and jokes that used to float around 20 or 30 years ago. It was interesting to see that these Ukrainian women were telling us that they felt the most prejudicial attitude from other Ukrainians; the first generation that had settled before them.
Some of the issues we had not thought of before about racism and prejudicial attitudes are, in fact, more complicated than what we feel on the surface. Assumptions that we have can be challenged by looking at the whole question in a deeper and more contextual level.
The Chair: Anybody else at the table? Professor Abele, do you have any comments?
Ms. Abele: It is hard to answer this question without being a bit personal. I grew up in rural Southern Alberta, in a poor rural area which had a mixed population of Ukrainians, people of Anglo stock, Metis and Franco-Albertans. It was a very mixed area. It was the 1950s and racism was the air we breathed. There was nothing subtle about it. It went in all different directions, as Mr. Dinsdale said.
I sort of spent my life thinking and digesting that and figuring out what I think about those questions. I agree that there are different kinds of racism and that some cut more than others; some hurt more than others.
There are three things, in my opinion: First, we have to start telling the truth about Canadian history. Aboriginal people have a symbolic role. They are all with the Olympics in terms of the imagery, the inukshuk and all that sort of stuff. That is not telling the truth about Canadian history. That is not the truth about how the land came to European possession and so on.
When people become educated about the truth about our history, some of their prejudices tend to dissolve because they understand the forces that produced the situation we are in.
The second thing is economic equality. Stereotypes start to fall away when people start to see that Aboriginal people are not just the poor people on the street. There are Aboriginal professionals. It is crude, but I have noticed that it is true — it makes a difference to the attitudes that citizens have.
Third and I think it is the big one: We need many opportunities to work together, to work across the racial and ethnic divide. We need projects that make our communities better, that everybody does together and that allow us to cooperate. That is how people get to know each other and trust each other.
I really think that kind of a process in the community is the healthiest thing we can do about racism.
The Chair: Thank you for participating. We have a wealth of information. It is very helpful to us. I should point out that a couple of you commented on the issues and options paper. It is exactly that, issues and options; it is not carved in stone, in other words. We appreciate the input to that. If you have any further input, you can send us something in writing. In fact, Mr. Dinsdale, you have outlined your comments in writing in your report.
We will have a final report in the fall. We will complete our hearings by the end of June. By the way, we are also doing some fact-finding tours across the country. We were to Halifax and St. John's last year. Professor Durst will be coming out to Regina for one day and, hopefully, we will have a chance to see him then. We will be going to other places across the country, as well.
Then, over the summer, researchers will write the papers and we will have a final discussion on them in the fall on the subject of poverty, housing and homelessness.
As I said earlier, in answering one of Professor Durst's concerns, we will be moving on to the issues of social cohesion. Those are part of the mandate for this Cities Subcommittee.
Thanks everyone and, with that, our meeting is now adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)