The Honourable Jane Philpott, Minister of Indigenous Services, appeared before honourable senators during Question Period.

Welcome, minister. In 2016, a jury issued recommendations following the inquest into the deaths of seven First Nations youth: Jethro Anderson, Curran Strang, Paul Panacheese, Robyn Harper, Reggie Bushie, Kyle Morriseau and Jordan Wabasse, all of whom died in Thunder Bay, Ontario, over a 10-year period. Like many of their classmates, these young people were forced to leave home at 14 to attend high school in Thunder Bay due to a lack of adequate high schools in their communities. As a result, they died hundreds of kilometres away from their homes, families and communities.

In August 2017, Aboriginal Legal Services, who represented the families of the seven students, issued a report card evaluating the implementation status of the inquest recommendations. As you undoubtedly know, the government at the time received the lowest grade of all evaluated parties, and the comments were made that in fact the government had failed to implement a number of the recommendations. Nothing was done with some and others were in progress.

Jury recommendation number 59 calls on the Government of Canada to provide sufficient funding to the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council to design, build, furnish, maintain, operate and adequately staff a student residence in Thunder Bay for the students because they have to travel to the city to attend schools like Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, which I had the privilege of visiting earlier this year.

This would involve the Government of Canada doing some feasibility studies and providing funding, and I’m curious to date what funding has been provided, to whom, what are the results, and when does the Government of Canada anticipate a residence will be open for the students? As well, when do you expect to see concrete steps along the line for the other recommendations?

Hon. Jane Philpott, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services: I thank you, honourable senator, for the question and raising another very important issue. This is something that’s been, I think, well documented and a real tragedy in terms of what happened to these particular young people, but it also speaks to the conditions that First Nations youth find themselves in when they have to go so very far from home.

We are continuing to respond to those recommendations in a number of ways, and I’ll tell you a few of them. I want to respond specifically to your question in terms of the residence, and I will tell you I believe it was the last time I was in Thunder Bay. I’ve been to Thunder Bay on a few occasions lately, and I think it was the most recent time that I met with First Nations leaders specifically about this project, and we are making good progress on it. I would be happy to get a report to you in terms of the details, which are not at the top of my head at the moment, but we have recognized this as a necessity. Again, it is being led by First Nations leaders, particularly those who are in the very close environs of Thunder Bay and who send a large number of students to that area to develop a residence as well as further and improved educational facilities for their young people.

In this area, we believe—and the report and the recommendations speak to this—that it needs to be addressed by multiple angles. One of them is providing better facilities in places like Thunder Bay, where many students have to go, in terms of safety, mental wellness supports for those communities, culturally appropriate and language-appropriate supports for those communities, as well as better residence opportunities for them.

But some of it, and this is longer-term work, is to find ways that not so many students will have to leave home as much as possible. My deputy and I had meetings last week to try to determine what more could be done to provide better educational opportunities for students from remote communities so that ideally they don’t have to leave, perhaps ever, to complete their high school education, or, if possible, it could be delayed by a couple of years so that you’re not sending very young teenagers to these communities.

I’m happy to say some progress is being made in improving educational services that can be delivered by tele-education, for example, which will be helpful.

I think the other area that I would raise, and the inquiry speaks to this, is the broader issue of attitudes of non-Indigenous Canadians and bridging that divide that continues to exist in this country in terms of respect and understanding of one another’s cultures. I think the fact that we are facing racism in places in this country is having a negative impact. I think we should be blunt about calling it that. And I think there is a great deal of work to do on this particular area. One of the things I speak to regularly, when I have the opportunity, is to encourage non-Indigenous Canadians to understand the work of reconciliation. But, as I am now starting to say, you can’t get to reconciliation without truth. There are still so many non-Indigenous Canadians that don’t understand truth, don’t understand the real history of our country, don’t understand the trauma that countless families have gone through as a result of the legacy of residential schools, and we have to share that truth so that we will understand one another better and so that young people will not be so severely discriminated against when they go to a community that’s far from home.