[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, May 9, 1996
.1105 
[English]
The Chairman: I call the meeting to order. Although we don't have a quorum at this time, this is an information meeting and therefore we can proceed. There are no votes anticipated, so we can proceed without a quorum.
I'm pleased to invite and receive representatives from the Congress of Aboriginal People. We have with us today the president, Mr. Jim Sinclair, with his colleagues, Mr. Gary Bohnet andMr. Marc LeClair.
Just to put this meeting in perspective, I'd like to share with you, our guests, that this committee has decided to undergo an education process. Rather than undertake studies and be firing from all sides, we would like to have a coordinated approach to the work we do, and you are the first we have invited.
What we would appreciate receiving from you today is a perspective of your role, how you are created, and who appoints or elects you to the positions you hold. We are interested in finding out your priorities. We are interested in finding out what studies have been done already that may be on shelves somewhere and that you would like to have brought back from the shelves. Therefore, this is an opportunity for you to influence our agenda for the remainder of our term.
We plan on sitting until at the latest 12:30. I think that's sufficient time. If members of the committee disagree with that, please let me know. I'm very flexible.
We'll begin by asking our guests to make their presentation. The floor is yours.
Mr. Jim Sinclair (President, Congress of Aboriginal People): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm pleased to meet you.
I think the process of education is a never-ending thing for us, to educate others about the needs and about our position on different issues across the nation, and internationally of course.
First of all, I should say that we are an organization that has constituencies across Canada, from Newfoundland and Labrador to the Northwest Territories, Yukon, British Columbia and across the prairies.
Our annual meeting is held by the delegations, who then elect a president for a three-year term. I'm very strong on being a community person, so the only day I'll be happy is when, if you're going to have a national organization, everyone is allowed to vote for their leader. Or if we don't have that process, the people who elect their leaders from across the nation should be able to hold, as we have now, collective meetings to discuss issues that relate to them whenever they see the need for it.
I'm more community-based, because I believe very strongly in Canada's Constitution, that the Constitution is made for people, groups and individuals, and not for organizations. I think that's something that even the government hasn't had very clear over the last few years.
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I understand now that when they're talking about giving out certain programs, they will give a program to the AFN because it has the Indians in it, they'll give out certain programs to the Inuit because the Inuit are there, and they'll give out certain programs to the Métis, where the Métis have an organization, a national body, that was created a few years back through the courts and through the last constitutional conferences. As a result, when we want to access some of these programs and services as well as exercise our rights, there is some discussion about government dealing with the organizations that represent a number of people rather than dealing with the people who have their representatives through other kinds of organizations.
I don't think we can at some time in the future, when we're dealing with aboriginal rights, treaty rights, just limit people to race and belong to a certain organization because of your race. Partly it should be because of your philosophical views, your thinking, your geographical areas. Those should come into consideration when you're developing an organization.
I think as long as the organizations that are together express the views and the needs, then government must address those. If you talk about the inherent right to self-government, I don't think it separates whether you're a Métis, an Indian, or an Inuit; you have that inherent right. I think again you have the right to join with others when you want to set up these structures so that everybody can benefit in a given area.
In the area where I live there are Métis, there are Indians who live off the reserve, there are Indians who don't have any status, there are status Indians, and there are Indians who live on the reserve. So you have people who sometimes like to live and work together but some basic fundamental laws or government policies will separate these people.
I think one of the goals, hopefully, of inherent rights will allow these people to work and live together and be able to express views in unity not because they are only Métis or because they're only Indians but because they feel that's the way of expressing their inherent rights. I think that's important.
The problem we have, of course, is that we have a Department of Indian Affairs that in the past had supposedly represented all Indians or worked for all Indians. Lately it seems to me that the Department of Indian Affairs is taking its programming and delivering from a reserve-only point of view. That has caused some serious problems, because I think the reserves across the nation represent only 1% of the land, not very much more than 1% of the land, if they're even that much.
Again, if you talk about the treaty areas our forefathers were signature to, they represent a vast area across the nation. I think the treaty areas must be respected because the treaties came before the reservations and the reservations were an allocation of land onto which they tried to crowd people.
I think nowadays you have maybe 90% on some reservations where people don't live on those reserves. We don't deny that the people on those reserves need help. We don't deny that we need our traditional values and our traditional lives that come from many of those reservations, but we also can't deny our young people and our other people who want to get off those reserves and get into the communities and work for themselves.
We also have membership in our organization where the Métis are concerned. They were brought into the Constitution in 1982. We spent a number of years fighting for the Métis cause, trying to get the recognition the Métis deserve.
The history of the Métis of course is a very turbulent one. We may have had peaceful treaties with the Indians in many areas across the nation, but you also had a war with the Métis and some of the Indians who didn't agree with the treaty process or who were fighting for more lands. As a result of this joint effort of resistance in western Canada, which still exists today with many of the Indians and the Métis, the Métis have been denied rights over the years. With the recognition in the Constitution, we have still not clearly sat down and had the Métis define their own forms of self-government across the nation.
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Mr. Bohnet will address you later on. He's president of the Métis Nation in the Northwest Territories, where negotiations are an ongoing process of hopefully eventually constitutional agreements. But south of 60 we have very little, if any, except for the Alberta Métis colonies, where land and resources are involved.
I've always felt that of all the treaties that were signed across Canada, the largest treaty of all was the Manitoba Act. That was an act that was developed by the Métis people, put into process by the Métis people, and those very people who brought that act into being are now denied fundamental rights. It's a struggle in terms of our rights.
One of the serious problems I see with Canada at this time is that each time we have the federal government, which must have and should have by law fiduciary obligations to the three groups - Métis, Indians and Inuit - in many ways shirking those responsibilities and trying to dump those responsibilities from federal fiduciary responsibility to the provinces. That is wrong.
In the past, government has used the Quebec issue in order to draw this agenda together and to blame Quebec for the problems in other parts of Canada. Why must they pass these powers on to the provinces rather than accept the responsibility themselves?
In my discussions with some of the Quebec people - and I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong - I found that Quebec does not stand in the way of aboriginal rights, and in a sense has been supporting aboriginal rights. From time to time we'll be putting them to the test as well in terms of their commitment to our rights. We've had some discussions.
I want to make it very clear that when we have our rights entrenched in the Constitution, and it's a matter of exercising those rights through self-governing structures, I don't think we can have a constitutional meeting once every 50 years and that's our day of self-government. Self-government is an ongoing process, much like you people meet today and you'll meet tomorrow. It's an ongoing process that evolves. Something just doesn't happen and you stop it there. So we're going to have to take a look at those issues and discuss how we can exercise those rights on a daily basis.
Of course, when we talk about the self-governing aspect and the constitutional commitments, we look at the federal government now, which has passed out a number of vetoes. Even though some lawyers try to assure me that the notwithstanding clauses that are in those vetoes protect our rights, I'm worried about the fact that a number of provinces will have vetoes and be able to stop anything we do or want to do that is legally right for us and is legal through the federal legislation and federal responsibilities - to be stopped by someone who will have a veto. Again, what does this veto really mean? Some say it means nothing; others say it means something. But in having those kinds of discussions, we're on the outside, not on the inside, where somebody else is making decisions on our lives again.
This will bring us to the fact that I think what we need in the future is that at any constitutional conference that takes place and any first ministers gathering that takes place - there's one expected in June - we should be there. We should be there even if someone says we're not on the agenda. The issues that are on the agenda will certainly affect us, regardless of what anyone says. We want input into those first ministers conferences; it was promised to us. Decisions are being made in our absence and we need to address those issues.
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When you talk about self-government you talk about who's going to pay for self-government. We've had this argument and discussion for so many years with governments about the taxpayers' money. We have some solutions without spending new moneys. I've said this at every meeting and to every committee I've met and I'm going to say it again: you must redirect the moneys you have now from a welfare mentality and from welfare structures and prison structures to training and economics and better living conditions for our people. You pay $70,000 for each aboriginal person you put in prison for one year.
You have made some statements from this Parliament that the baby-boomers are going to be retiring in the next few years. You are asking yourselves questions of who's going to pay for the pensions of these baby-boomers. Let me ask you the question of how can you expect a growing population like the youth we have today in our aboriginal communities, 75% of whom are under 25, are going to be able to carry a burden of paying taxes for other Canadians, which will eventually have to happen, or paying for other Canadians' old age pensions, which will eventually have to happen, if they are in the prison system at this time?
You have one group in prison who you're paying a huge amount of money today. You having a group who's retiring, and where are they going to get their pension cheques from? So you have to change your mentality from one that supports a welfare system and a prison system into one that will support human resources and development. There has to be some meaning behind that. You can't come along and say yes, we're doing it through this program, through this program, through that program.
If we have a strategy on the reservations that's dealing with reserve issues at this time, you now need an urban strategy to deal with those urban people who are living off the reserves. You don't need to spend new dollars, you need to redirect those dollars. Because if you look at the prison system today, you'll find that many of our people are in these jails and prisons simply because they couldn't pay a $50 fine, or simply because someone lost his driver's licence and then drove again and was caught again without a driver's licence and kept going to jail until they spend years in jail for driving without a driver's licence. There's no reason to have anyone in prison for that long and paying that kind of money for people because they don't have a driver's licence.
I think the other thing you must do is you're spending your money to make prisons very comfortable and a place where people don't mind spending time. Some people will do that for the winter. I remember many of us didn't mind going to jail for a couple of months during January and February - that's pretty cold. But I'll tell you something, when you make a prison a better place to go to than a school, then what do you expect of young people when you can walk into classrooms where the walls are torn down and where they don't have the proper facilities. You must take a look at your priorities.
So if your conscience is bothering you in white Canada, then you must take a look at this prison system and say our job is not to make better prisons so these people are comfortable in those prisons, our job is to make sure those prisons are deleted if we can. If we're 10% of the population as we exist now, then there should be no more than 10% of the aboriginal people in the prisons, not 70%, not 90%, not 100% like some of the women's jails across the nation. We need to change that attitude.
Again, you'll be saving money and we would be saving money if money was redirected. Again, we're saying that Canada doesn't have to find new money for this process. This money is already there and it's available. It's a matter of redirecting.
I want to be very clear on this. I'm not saying we harbour murderers, rapists or people who commit violent crimes. A prison should be a prison, there's no doubt about that. But prison shouldn't be a second home for anyone. We want to make that very clear.
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Then you talk about the process of paying. If you take a look at our population across the nation, the lands we live on and the lands we wish to claim, you will find there are a lot of resources on those treaty areas and on those lands we claim as ours and have not relinquished to date. You take a look at the poverty that's on some of the reservations. Those were and still are our resources.
Then the governments come along every spring and hand out a cheque in the form of a grant. The taxpayers are saying they're paying those Indians, those aboriginal people, those Métis, money out of our taxpayers' pockets, and trying to make the politicians look good and people look benevolent. That's not the way to go about it.
You have to take a look at the gross national product of this country and we have to take a look at our population. Then when we look at our population and the money that's given to us, because it's ours, we decide how to spend that money. Now you may come along and ask us what's going to happen if we mismanage our money. You may ask us if we are going to come back and ask for more. I think the answer is that we'll learn. We can do that over a period of time that can be agreed upon. But you will find again that if that's done, you'll have many of these people who are talking sovereignty at this time in our aboriginal nations across Canada will not be talking this way in a manner of wanting to be outside of confederation.
Many of us are outside wanting to be in. We want to make sure these people have an opportunity to be able to develop their own institutions. But they may come back to you and say, look, we're not going to pay the old age pensions, so some of this money will stay with the feds and they will pay the pensions; or we are not going to be involved in some aspects of foreign affairs, so the federal government will keep our share - national defence too. We can make those kinds of agreements with the national government.
We're not spending anyone's money but our own. We're not digging in any taxpayers' pockets, which again we're always accused of. So we have to address these issues.
One of the things we have to work with today - and I think Mr. Harper has seen that during his travels to the meetings we go to and from the people we talk to - is something that is growing among us that's talking about our way of life, our traditional lifestyles, our culture. There are some developments related to our particular problems, the issues we have to face. Rather than pushing us apart, it's drawing us closer together than any constitution can.
Out of those kinds of gatherings and out of that kind of momentum you can also see there are dangers in the fact that people will motivate themselves in order to take the action that's needed to make some of these things happen.
Again, our moneys must be spent in a positive manner. Our efforts must not be looked on as something that says we'll give these people a meeting today but tomorrow we'll forget about them. These are the issues I think you're going to have to face and to discuss and hopefully get Parliament to understand.
Now that brings us to the fact that we have in our hands here, and we're giving you a copy just for your information, a political accord that was signed with the federal government a few years back. It was signed with the Minister of Indian Affairs, who is responsible for Indians, and was signed with Minister Anne McLellan, who is responsible for Métis and off-reserve Indians at a national level.
We have an agenda and we've tried very hard to keep this agenda as our platform on which to build. We've had some severe difficulties in accessing parts of this agenda or even beginning some of the items on this agenda. Again, I think we've got to be able to use this as a foundation. Rather than give you a bunch of literature you won't worry about or read, this at least is the foundation for our development at this particular time. Many of the issues we face can come from this.
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I want to assure you at this time, and I may have some difficulty in getting some agreement from my colleagues, that we as an organization have suffered over the last few years. When this administration took over two years ago, we had a $1 million debt, $940,000. That was to haunt us as well.
With the government cutbacks, which came to maybe 30%, and with our deficit cutting, which we've done at 50% a year, that allowed us really only a 20% working budget. That hurt our people and gave us some real problems. As a result we had to exist with the kinds of funds or funding or resources that cause us great pain.
I don't see the national office as being a large office with a large staff administering a lot of programs. In fact I don't see our national office delivering any real programming. But I see the cutbacks to our communities and to our provincial organizations that are now and should be in negotiations with regard to land claims, exercising inherent rights. They don't even have the basic resources with which to develop positions or sit down and have a dialogue with the government.
I also see the government in many ways as not being really available for the dialogue. In many of our communities the government demands us to go to Regina, to Winnipeg, to Victoria and deal with them in their offices rather than coming to our communities, which they have the resources to do, and dealing at a community level so as not to cause the kinds of political problems you face after some agreement is signed and people say they weren't involved in that agreement.
I think the federal government also has to quickly constitutionalize any agreement it makes with the aboriginal people. I'm very disappointed to hear that race is involved in the B.C. election. I'm disappointed to hear the Reform are prepared to tear up the agreement with the Nisga'a people. I'm disappointed to hear a Liberal leader stand up and say he's prepared to tear up the agreement made with the Nisga'a people.
Now if this is the kind of fairness that Canada stands for, that it can pick on the poorest and the people who have been living outside the system for so long that when they sign an agreement someone else is going to tear it up, that's not what this country is all about. I'm going to have to really look at the next time Quebec has a referendum. If that's the way we're treated inside our own country, then we'd better look at other people and their legitimate complaints about a system that's keeping them from exercising their rights.
I said I wouldn't speak very long, but again you said you're uneducated and maybe you can educate me a bit on some of your issues. We do have a number of other things we'd like to raise, maybe some specifics, so you can be up to date on some of these things we're having discussions on. Mind you, what I'm just giving is a very basic fundamental background. Mr. Bohnet may have a couple of things he wants to add. We also have Mr. LeClair with us, who may want to raise some issues.
The Chairman: I'll just comment that every minute you spoke was very valuable. You gave us excellent information and it will help us in our deliberations.
I just want to clarify if the Liberal leader you speak of is the leader of the provincial Liberal Party in B.C.
Mr. Sinclair: Yes.
The Chairman: I want to make that distinction. If it's a federal leader, I would like to know who that person is.
Mr. Sinclair: No.
The Chairman: So we have cleared that up.
Mr. Sinclair: It's the feds who made the deal.
Mr. Grose (Oshawa): Mr. Chairman, I might add that that particular Liberal leader was not well received by the federal Liberal caucus.
The Chairman: That's right.
Mr. Bohnet.
Mr. Gary Bohnet (President, Métis Nation, Northwest Territories, Congress of Aboriginal People): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Actually it is a pleasure also to have the opportunity to address the standing committee. The last time I came before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs there were a lot more members of the Progressive Conservative Party around this table. So it's been quite a while.
I like the idea and the approach you're taking, Mr. Chairman, as far as using the opportunity as an education role is concerned.
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At this particular meeting I wear two hats. At this meeting I'm representing the Congress of Aboriginal People as one of the co-chairs of the political task force. I look forward sometime in the future to an invitation from this committee to speak on purely northern issues from the Métis Nation, Northwest Territories, as the leader of that organization.
As far as the background is concerned, Jim touched on the idea of the political accord. We think that's a really good tool and mechanism to move forward on the Métis off-reserve agenda. We have the support of Minister Irwin and we've had the support of Minister McLellan. In fact, as late as yesterday we asked the question at the aboriginal commission forum that's taking place and they're still committed to that particular process. We're looking forward to that.
I want to identify one of the problems we face, and that is the role of the interlocutor. It's such a fuzzy role. Even the federal interlocutor indicated to us yesterday that she really doesn't know what the role is herself. There are very few resources that go with the job. There's no mandate that goes with the job. In fact, the job is supposed to be to set up meetings with the Métis and non-status people with line departments. That seldom happens.
If the government is serious about dealing with our aboriginal issues, what we have to do is take a good look at the role of interlocutor and maybe give him a few more teeth and more resources to do his job so he can do it properly.
The other thing that I think is important for the aboriginal agenda is this standing committee. I think it has a very important role to play. If a lot of the potential problems and some of the political posturing that may take place in the House of Commons are dealt with properly through a standing committee, it's a win-win situation for everybody.
I would encourage you that on issues this committee can find common ground on they should be able to proceed rapidly. Previous standing committees have done work already. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We know money's tight and we're trying to work within the means we can.
One of the issues that has really concerned me is the fur issue. From the north we've taken a very active role in the fur issue. There was a committee report called Canada Fur Watch: Aboriginal Livelihood At Risk. That had all-party agreement from this standing committee. Lo and behold, that thing has never seen the light of day. But the problem doesn't lie with the standing committee here today. At the last federal election it fell off the order table, as I understand it. It was very much supported by Ethel, by Jack Anawak, and by everybody who was on the previous committee. I'd like you to take a look at that. It had merit then and it should have the same merit today. Take a look at it, revisit it, and maybe bring it back.
The other thing I brought you today is a little note, one-page, ``EU's intentions to ban Canadian wild fur products''. I'm not going to read it, but basically it says that here's an opportunity for this standing committee to take a stand on an issue that will benefit all aboriginal people and also non-aboriginal people, because there are a lot of non-aboriginal trappers out there also. It's a gutsy move, but I think it has a lot of merit. I'd like you to seriously consider this. Let's turn the tables on the European Union. Let's tell them that Canada takes this seriously and we'll appoint a special envoy. Let's tell them to work with us.
I would really like you to take the issue of fur very seriously. A lot of the big national political issues seem to be the big ticket items but when we deal with some of the bread and butter issues like trapping - and I'm going to deal with another one of them in a minute, fishing - they don't tend to get the support I think is necessary.
I must say one thing. On the fur issue the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has done a marvellous job in working with a number of our organizations, but again it's with limited resources. They've done a very good.
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I think Foreign Affairs has been weak-kneed and limp-wristed when it comes to dealing with this particular issue. When it is dealing with the European Union, Foreign Affairs has tended to not want to rock the boat. I think it's time Canada gave some direction to rock the boat.
I'll leave the fur issue, but I want to move on to another issue, which is fishing. I'm speaking again on behalf of the Congress of Aboriginal People. We have seen a lot of money and resources going into the east coast fishery because of the problems it has, and rightfully so. We've seen the resources that are going into the west coast fishery. But somebody forgot about the other fishery, the inland fishery. And at least 85% of those individuals fishing on the inland lakes are aboriginal.
You would think that with the destruction of the two coastal fisheries the inland fisheries would be having a heyday. You would think that would happen, but in fact that has not happened. The aboriginal fishing strategy that was designed basically pays lip-service to the inland fisheries issues. I think it is an issue this committee should be looking at seriously.
I know that an individual was sent around to talk to the fishermen by former Minister Tobin, so there are some reports already out there. I guess we don't have to reinvent the wheel, but let's get a fair share of the resources to the fishermen on the inland lakes.
There are many issues we could continue to deal with, but the big one is this political accord. As I said, that has to be revived and we have the commitment for that. The others are the fur issues and inland fisheries.
I want to say some other things. There's a level of frustration growing out there in the aboriginal community, by the youth and by the people at the community level. There's not an awful lot of faith in governments these days, either provincial or federal. The frustration level is growing, so there's going to have to be some action. I'm pleased to see some of the initiatives that have been taken by this government in certain areas, but I'm not sure that it's enough.
Another thing that I think causes a lot of frustration for the elected officials who are trying to work at the community level and work within the system in trying to work with the department is the funding level. For many of us, the funding for our internal structures comes from Heritage Canada and the ARO program.
Sometimes government is mind-boggling when they talk about fiscal restraint and accountability, but for the funding that goes to the provincial and territorial organizations under the ARO program, there's no policy as to how it is distributed.
Four or five years ago I raised the same issue, the issue of the funding, with exactly the same staff of senior bureaucrats who are still there, and we continue to see cuts. I come from northern Canada. There is nothing to do with remoteness, the cost of living in the north or anything else; it's an arbitrary cut across the table. It doesn't make any sense.
The other thing that doesn't make any sense is that there is no policy, but if a policy is developed the policy has to reflect accountability. Why should an organization that is not accountable or basically has become defunct, and the government of the day knows who they are, get increases in funding at the expense of those who are trying to do things right? Why are the provincial and territorial organizations and CAP itself being arbitrarily cut and basically punished for making sound financial decisions?
I hope you get what I'm getting at here. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. I would encourage this committee to basically review how the aboriginal organizations are funded, and in fact if there is no policy tell those people to get off their butts and develop a policy with us. If they don't want to develop a policy, maybe the standing committee should develop a policy.
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I have many other issues I could raise, but I think I am going to just hold it there and maybe ask Marc or whoever to read or see if they want to say anything else.
The Chairman: Again, before I go on to Mr. LeClair, I should have mentioned in my opening remarks that this committee has also made a decision on priority of our work to be given to economic development, northern development. This committee believes that if we can find ways of bringing wealth or helping communities create wealth for themselves, the other problems will solve themselves. I'd like to mention that it's the wish of this committee.
Mr. LeClair.
Mr. Marc LeClair (Adviser, Congress of Aboriginal People): Thank you. I want to pick up on a couple of things that Jim and Gary said and take them a little further.
As you may or may not know, the federal government has continued to narrow its responsibilities over the years to the point now where the department almost deals exclusively with the first nations and the Inuit. It moves most of the majority of the funding through Indian bands and first nations and Inuit through the northern territories, and has divested itself of what many people consider to be both a constitutional and a fiduciary responsibility for other aboriginal people who live off these reserves.
This has had a number of impacts. One, it means at the federal level the social and economic program initiatives have been narrowed. You can appreciate that during the 1970s and 1980s there was a growth in social and economic expenditures at the federal level for off-reserve aboriginal groups, which have steadily declined since 1984. So along with the decline in government, whereas first nations' expenditures have generally increased, the growth has been capped now on reserve. The opposite is true of off-reserve, where expenditures have declined in lock-step with the reduction in the size of government. But the impact is far greater because the resources were much smaller to begin with.
You have a policy context in the urban centres where the federal government has delimited its responsibilities, which has repercussions. It has particularly big repercussions for those provinces that have large off-reserve populations.
For members of the Reform Party, they will be quite familiar with the fact that there are many aboriginal urban Canadians in western Canada. From Elijah's province, the city of Winnipeg has over 30,000 in the urban centres. According to statistics, there may be as many as 60,000, as Jim has said.
With the federal government not taking its responsibility, what it has said is that these people aren't their responsibility, they're the provincial government's responsibility. Of course the provinces complain about offloading and say that these aren't their responsibility, they're the federal government's responsibility. What happens is people fall through the cracks. The problem is particularly acute in the urban centres themselves.
For example, yesterday the minister, Anne McLellan, addressed the Liberal Party's aboriginal people's commission, where they structured built-in participation of aboriginal people in their party holding a policy conference. The minister came there and said they didn't really have any responsibility for off-reserve people and their policy is not going to change. When she was wrapping up ten minutes later, she identified the urban issues as the big issues and the big challenge of the government.
Gary talked about frustration where you say that you're not going to do anything, yet this is the biggest challenge. It is a big challenge and it has regional implications for the west and the north. It has federal-provincial implications because the provincial government is saying, okay, for the sake of argument, let's say we'll agree with the federal government - which we don't - that the provinces should increase their activities and initiatives for urban aboriginal people. They should be encouraged to do that. Where is the federal government encouraging provinces to get involved?
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We've gone through those federal-provincial conferences for the last two decades. The Minister of Indian Affairs may not be fond of them, and there are always the political overtones with Quebec, but that is a discrete forum we have traditionally used to increase the amount of interest by the provinces. We don't always get them on the hook for something, but at least we're sitting down and talking with them. If the federal government does nothing else, it should at least encourage the provinces to work with aboriginal Canadians who live off reserve in the provinces. That should be the very least it does.
It may be that this is being done. It may be that Anne McLellan and Ron Irwin are twisting arms and the like, but you don't really see it. You don't see it. You don't hear about it. It does create some frustration.
So there's a big policy vacuum in the urban centres. I know the Minister of Indian Affairs has sympathy for the concerns of urban aboriginal issues, but he's kind of blocked by his mandate, too, in his department, the departmental statutes that say you deal with first nations. Oftentimes - and I don't think I'm talking out of school here - when you meet with the minister and he says, well, let's do this...and he points to the department: no, we can't do that, because we don't have a funding policy off-reserve; we really can only do it on-reserve. You get into that type of quagmire.
So the whole context of urban aboriginal issues, the vacuum, needs to be looked at - all the greater in the area of economic development. How can we in the urban centres charge these communities, enable the communities themselves, to facilitate increased employment and increased business opportunities for aboriginal business? How do you do that?
In Canada we've had some experience working with community development corporations. We did that in the rural areas for Community Futures and for community development. The Economic Council of Canada and the OECD have said that community development is really the next generation of developmental approaches, and it can be applied with success in have-not regions of have cities, in a sense, and with populations that are in distress in those cities. They endorsed it, and the government endorsed it.
Community development: can we develop some agencies in Winnipeg and Saskatoon and Edmonton and Regina? Aboriginal development institutions: can we support those? If there's going to be any increased expenditures in the urban centres, can we at least be there? Can we look at the possibility of community development in the centres? Can we give them the capacity to look at their human resources in the city, to look at the business opportunities in the city, to look at the city expansions and see how they might play a role? Those are the areas in which I think there are some very positives things that can be done.
If your focus is going to be economic and northern development, I'd encourage you to look at the unique challenges facing urban aboriginal people and the supports that are there, the industry supports that are there, to have their communities and their businesses, those individuals, plug into the economic opportunities in Canada. If you were to have a look at that and if you were to dedicate part of your report to that issue, I think it would be very useful.
The only other issue I just want to touch on briefly is this core funding issue. Around this table I know there may not be some sympathy for increasing resource funding for these organizations that can be viewed as lobby organizations. Everybody is being cut back. People are looking hard at these public expenditures.
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Having said that, I want you to look in your own mirror. I want you to look in your own mirror at one MP's salary, the travel, the points, and quantify the value of that, quantify the value of your office budgets, your staff and your constituency office. You quantify that. How much does it come to, roughly? Is it $400,000, $500,000, somewhere in there, when you add it all in, including the travel?
Then look at what you're asking the national organizations to do, a national organization like the congress, which receives core funding - really, it's organizational funding - of $320,000. It looks after the responsibilities and the interests of aboriginal people off-reserve for twelve regions, ten provinces and two territories. It is expected to convene an annual meeting to consult the people - and the annual meeting itself is $400,000 - to bring people together. What's fair?
It really requires you to look at what this funding is for. What is the political nature of these organizations? We've been part of the political culture in Canada since the funding policy really began in the 1970s. We're as much a part of this...
You come to ask for our help, and we give it to you. We ask for yours, and hopefully we'll get that. But what is our capacity? What capacity are we provided in order to come and help you do your jobs and to help us help the people we represent? The capacity is very limited, and I think it's fair game. I know there is little sympathy for organizations who come to say they need some more money, but really, put yourselves in our shoes and look at the job Jim Sinclair and Gary Bohnet have. They get just as much constituency mail as any one of you, perhaps more, and they have more people asking them to speak than perhaps you. Yet they're not resourced even to the same level of one MP.
So I think Gary's comments are really important. I would encourage you to pick up on his suggestion and look at the issue.
Mr. Bohnet: I would just add a few more things.
From your comments, Mr. Chairman, priorities in business development, if I heard correctly, would be the focus of the standing committee. That's fine. That's a great way to go. But hand in hand, before you can get the communities and individuals at that stage of community or business development, some other fundamental things would have to take place.
First, those communities have to be healthy, and they have to be educated. You can put all the business programs in the world out there, but if we don't have the people who are healthy, and if they're not educated, it's going to go right by us.
I want to touch on the health issue, because it came up over the last couple of days at another meeting I was at. There's been a major study of the health-insured benefits for aboriginal people. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on this study, and they came out with a report. But lo and behold, while they were out there doing this study, they found out that most aboriginal people live off-reserve, and they only did the study for on-reserve. At least 60% of the population lives off-reserve. So they spent several hundred thousand dollars doing this report and realized... They came to us, as a national organization, the day before yesterday and said for their report to mean anything, they had to consult with us. Several hundred thousand dollars on that report.
We said, well, that's fine - hindsight. They said it would be an addendum to the main report. It had to be done fast, by the fall. They said they had about $25,000 for consultation. Well, $25,000 to consult the 60% of the population they missed doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You can't develop programs and policy for aboriginal people based purely on reserve numbers.
Again, I would encourage you to take a look at all these initiatives. Health and education, I'll tell you, have to be the main focus of this government, of the governments of the day.
Thank you.
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The Chairman: Before we move on to questions - and I expect Mr. Murphy will probably address the issue of education, or at least make you aware of things going on - we have a saying in politics that if you want to neutralize somebody, you elect them chair. That's probably what happened in this committee. But there's no way I'll sit back and have people criticize the money I make. My hand never shakes when I get my cheque. Classroom teachers make more than every member in this room. So if you're going to throw -
Mr. LeClair: I didn't mean to imply that at all. I wasn't begrudging you anything. I was just saying -
The Chairman: We make $64,000 a year.
Mr. LeClair: - it's the levels. Believe me, I appreciate the role. I apologize for any -
The Chairman: That's the extent of my participation. I don't allow that to go on. The media is encouraging this, and it's not true.
I've gone beyond the line, but I make sure I do that every time this issue comes up.
We will open it up to questions. Mr. Bachand.
Ms Marie Frawley-Henry (Director, Youth Services, Congress of Aboriginal Peoples): Excuse me. Do you mind if I have a few moments?
The Chairman: Can you make it very short, please?
Ms Frawley-Henry: Yes.
The Chairman: First of all, please introduce yourself.
Ms Frawley-Henry: My name is Marie Frawley-Henry, and I am the youth intervener with the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Hon. Ethel Blondin-Andrew instituting the youth intervener program. Basically, the program in the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples has been vulnerable for several months out of the year. It reflects some of the basic comments that were brought up by my colleagues. One of them is that the funding issue has a serious detriment to the program. Who faces most of the pains of it? The youth I'm supposed to serve.
As you are aware, off-reserve aboriginal youth make up a major portion of our population. A growing, vastly increasing and frustrated population is coming up, because the needs are not being addressed. The gaps are very obvious. Some policies have to put into place to address that at every level.
We talk about issues. Economic development is critical, yes, but I have to agree with my colleague that if we do not address some of the healing components and some of the basic structure-building for our people, we cannot even secure that economic development is going to be.
We have a number of issues, of course. I'm not going to bring them up. I would like to encourage this committee to take a look, and invite some of the youths so that they can actually address these issues. I can intervene on their behalf, but they have the voice, and I think that would certainly be a welcome opportunity for you.
The Chairman: We'll take note of that. Thank you.
Monsieur Bachand.
[Translation]
Mr. Bachand (Saint-Jean): I wish to thank you for your excellent and very honest presentation. I would like to start off by making my apologies to Mr. Bohnet whom I didn't say hello to earlier. I hadn't recognized him and I do apologize. I met Mr. Bohnet during a visit I made to the Northwest Territories. I would like you to know, Mr. Bohnet, that the two arrowhead sashes you gave me are on display in my office and that the little book you game me is often read by my staff. I may even have hired someone who is a descendant of Archie Larocque. You will perhaps feel reassured to know that we really take the Metis issue to heart.
I have always believed that economic development is very important. If you remember, I insisted on having us meet with representaties who could tell us if we were on the right track. I am also pleased that you spoke about health and education. I am in full agreement with you and we will certainly be taking your remarks into account. We also wanted representatives to come and speak to us because the last time we carried out a study on education, representatives from the AFN had come to tell us that there was a whole library full of studies. I had felt a little embarrassed at the time and that is why this time I was intent upon us meeting with you before undertaking any further work.
My first question deals with Native justice. You talked about it earlier, but I would like to come back to the Political Accord that was signed in 1994 and ask you to give us an update on the status of the priority issues. If I understood correctly, Mr. Sinclair, you stated earlier that even if this accord has been signed, the negotiations themselves haven't progressed very much. Even if a firm political accord has been signed, it seems that there is some problem getting negotiations seriously underway. I would appreciate hearing from you if things have progressed or not.
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I would also like to mention that off-reserve Indians are the least well off among those Indian Affairs is responsible for. We all know that. I simply wanted to add something to what Mr. Leclair said earlier. I wasn't upset by your remark because it seems you wanted us to be aware of the fact that you have ten provinces, two territories, approximately 300,000 or 400,000 off-reserve Indians and that you must manage with an annual budget of $300,000. I can tell you that we, from the Bloc québécois, have heard you and that I will make representations to the minister to have that changed.
But you aren't the only ones to have been subjected to cuts. The AFN, the Metis, the Inuit, everyone is complaining of a significant phasing out or drop in funding.
As soon as community representatives stop getting funding, the Department has a better time of negotiating separately with each community. I will therefore make sure that the situation improves because I agree that that is unacceptable.
When I talk about the least well-off, I can tell you, after having gone to Toronto, that 50 per cent of Ontario's off-reserve Indians who live in Toronto are young people who live in horrid conditions.
I saw native youngsters lying on sidewalks in the middle of the winter. Even if we don't talk about it very often, I know that once in a while one of them is found dead. I therefore know that you are the least well off. You aren't recognized in the Canadian Constitution, and you have neither the capability nor the means to do anything about it. All of the money goes to on-reserve natives and the 50 per cent who live off the reserves get absolutely nothing, no help whatsoever, with the exception of that of the friendship centres, that also have very limited means.
I therefore wanted to tell you that I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for you and I will work on changing things, within the means at my disposal, naturally. You are aware that I am a member of the Official Opposition and you must know that we take note of these types of things and that we follow up with the minister as well as with you.
Mr. Sinclair, I would ask you to give us an update on the various issues covered under the Political Accord.
[English]
Mr. Sinclair: As I said, the political accord itself was put on the table more than two years ago. One of the commitments was, I believe, the right one for making sure that the communities benefited from any inherent right process, from any constitutional commitments. The commitment was that the Constitution is for people, not for organizations, and that the land claims process would move ahead and resolve the problem of the off-reserve Indians in the treaty areas, and would make sure that the federal government keeps its fiduciary responsibility for off-reserve Indians.
However, of the $5 billion that Indian Affairs gets at this time, our organization receives in the neighbourhood of $200,000. That was all given to the national organization. And the national organization was supposed to consult with many of the regions across the nation, but $200,000 doesn't go anywhere.
As I said, we are demanding that negotiations on any issues with regard to constitutional rights and the inherent right to self-government be done in the communities where the people live. Those negotiations must be done with those people and governments must spend some of their own money in getting into those communities if they can't give us the resources we need.
I think the fact you people are talking about would be addressed in our political court again. Economic issues are really the route. We want to get there, but as Mr. Bohnet and others have said, in order to get to that plateau we have to do some healing and some mending first. We have to put some things and some priorities in place. And that means changing, for us and for government. I think the political accord - and that's why we're raising it - is our foundation.
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Other than getting some money for the parent organization... Anne McLellan, who has the responsibility for Métis, hasn't any funds at all, except for maybe $200,000. Again, where do the Métis go for some of the funding they need to begin this process of self-government? They're kicked back and forth between the federal government and the province. They have some very difficult situations. I think we need to sit down and look at this. As Mr. Bohnet said to you people, I have high hopes that this committee will address some of these issues.
The Chairman: Mr. Dumas.
[Translation]
Mr. Dumas (Argenteuil - Papineau): My question is for Mr. Sinclair. You mentioned earlier the tremendous poverty that is found on reservations. You said that for a good many citizens prison was a second home. You also said that people were sent to prison for having driven without a licence, for which the fine is $50. You were probably talking about the situation in the Western provinces. Do you believe that the situation is the same in Quebec?
[English]
Mr. Sinclair: Well, we can't say it is in Quebec for sure. We have an organization in Quebec that addresses some of these issues, but I'm talking generally. The Indians in western Canada are a more visible people than the Indians in the east are, except for some of the traditional people in the east. They're a more visible minority in the west. That causes us some deep problems, because, as I said, Indians are easily recognized.
As I get further east and meet some of the aboriginal people in the east - I've known many of them for many years - it's hard to distinguish Quebeckers from the Indians sometimes, and there are some traditional Indians. I think the problem for aboriginal people is that once people know you're aboriginal and you live on a reserve, you're still living under the same threats, whether you're living on a reserve in Quebec or on a reserve in western Canada. It's just that stigma attached to it that our people face all the time, along with these problems. It's caused us some severe problems in terms of the poverty, as you said.
What's interesting about this whole thing is that government seems to say that if you stay at home where there are no jobs... Western Canada has faced that problem in many places, except when you get into some of the oil-rich Alberta reservations where they don't want to share their wealth. The government will say ``If you stay home, we'll give you a welfare cheque and we'll give you a house. But if you leave that reserve and need some help to find a job and find some training, go to somebody else.'' So you're encouraged to stay home; you're paid to stay home where there are no jobs. That's not the way Canada should be.
Mr. Bohnet: Mr. Chairman, could I also take a cut at that question? The aboriginal people in Quebec face exactly the same problems as aboriginal people do in any other part of the country. You have very poor aboriginal people in Quebec, and they face the same injustices as any other particular group does. I think we can be quite confident in saying that.
The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy (Annapolis Valley - Hants): Thank you for your presentations. Help me to understand ``off-reserve'' from your perspective, and help me with what your understanding is of fiduciary responsibility, if you will. Who...where is that?
There's another issue. We talk about economic development and I think that's very important. I think it's important for it to happen, because it brings self-sufficiency and it brings the self-esteem of the community up, etc. But you also said that health problems and educational problems need to be looked after.
I've done a lot of community development work over the years, and I always find that if I'm bombarded with so many problems I get hamstrung: I don't know where the hell to move; consequently, I don't move. I'd like to think that this committee could do something at the end of the day as well. I don't take any joy in just sitting around this table. I came here to do something.
I'll ask you this question. There are a lot of problems with the youth, but where do we start? Where best can the interventions be made to begin movement?
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I want to tell you also that I'm sitting over here but I'm not Reform Party, I'm Liberal.
The Chairman: You want to get that on the record too.
Mr. Sinclair: Again, on that issue of where you can start, what we're talking about is jobs, jobs, jobs. There's no doubt about that. The creation of jobs in the economy is important to us. Preparation for those jobs is important to us. I say that to change that, first of all there has to be a recognition of our inherent right and a recognition of our treaties.
By recognizing only the reserves you recognize limited rights for us. Our rights go beyond the reserves. There's a fiduciary responsibility there. Where I live, one treaty area extends to the next treaty area and they go right across the provinces.
You're asking again where to start. You have to start redirecting the money you have in the welfare system and the prison system. That has to change. The justice system has to change. There have been recommendations about an alternative justice system. If we go to jail for the same thing, I don't care who's sending me to jail, whether it's an Indian judge or a white judge, it's the same place under the same laws.
You have to take a look at your priorities. When you talk about an aboriginal justice system, I don't want to be sitting around a circle where I can decide what punishment somebody could get. I'd like to be getting there at the beginning when this child is born and when that person is having a problem and doesn't have a decent house, a decent place to live, and is discriminated against. There are racist policies against these people. I want to have those things changed so that these people can have an environment they can live in and be proud of. That's where you start.
You ask us today about the problems we face with alcoholism. Do we start with the parents who are drinking or do we start with the children, who are being abused in many cases? The majority of our people today don't drink and they try to raise a family, but they're all put in the same boat. You're far better off if you have a drinking problem because you're more likely to receive more funding to be able to continue that lifestyle than you are to have an opportunity to go to work if you want to go to work. No one wants to help. If you're sober they'll tell you to go out and get your own job.
You need to address these issues and somehow turn things around. Those recommendations can be made. I've had some meetings with a number of ministers and Ron Irwin over the last couple of days. I think a couple of good things can happen.
Of course, if you want to look at jobs you have to open up the unions. The unions are as guilty as anybody else of not providing us with opportunities because in many places they have closed shops. The Public Service Commission is to blame because they'll make sure there's somebody sitting there beside you when they want to hire somebody. If you don't have a friend around you don't get a job. So we don't get any jobs out of them either; it's very few, very limited.
The federal government also has billions of dollars of contracts that are given out each year to firms across the nation. The one aspect I like about it is that the other day I heard Mr. Irwin saying that he has a procurement program now that's going to offer up to $300 million for people to get some work. This I strongly support because government also has to put some funding aside if those contracts are given out each year. If it's 10% of the budget, that would good.
This is something that's important to our business people. When you're talking about grants for businesses, you're talking about grants to people who many times can't even operate a business or the business is going to go bankrupt as soon as the grant is gone. If you give a piece of paper to one of our business people on or off the reserve and he has a contract with the federal government, he can go to the bank with that contract and he or she is going to make money. That's the kind of thing that's needed.
We just can't put all the pressure on private industry; government has to accept part of that responsibility as well. I think there's a major move starting from that aspect and I appreciate that part, but it has to work, it has to develop, and it has to move ahead. I'm hoping that neither Reform nor anyone else will stand in the way of that kind of thing because we must have our share from Canada's contracts that are given out for building, even if it comes to building ships or something like that. We have to be involved in that process.
The Chairman: We'll go quickly with the answers. Carry on, but we have ten minutes and we have three more questions.
Mr. LeClair: You have an institutional problem in a sense in the urban centres, and without getting too bureaucratic, I think it requires some institutional solutions. We've had an employment equity policy and we did have a procurement policy, but without a catalyst to plug people into the opportunities, you really don't get the results you should get. This is where I think community development institutions are important.
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We would be very happy to come back to you specifically on community development in the urban centres and provide a brief to you on it once you get going.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. Gary.
Mr. Bohnet: The question was a good one. Where do we start? That's also what we ask ourselves. Simply put, from our experience, from where we come from, it has to start at the community level, and the community has to identify its needs and how it's going to heal and move on. It has to start at the community level.
National programs that are designed from Mecca here don't solve our problems at the community level.
Ms Frawley-Henry: Could I just very quickly add to that?
In the aboriginal value system or philosophy of life, we have a unique approach around the circle. As Jim Sinclair mentioned earlier, it starts with the children, so we have the children, the youth, the women, the men, our elders, the incarceration... We have all of the issues that need to be addressed. That can be a blueprint approach. And it's always community-based as well.
I would just like to mention one critical area that this can all be put into: education and awareness is critically needed in this country. Our youth are saying they don't know their history. It's not in the curriculum. They don't know who they are, they don't know where they're going, and they don't have a sense of identity. This has to be put in place. The mainstream needs to know the history, needs to know who we are, and needs to know the rights of our people. Education and awareness are critical. That's a place to start.
The Chairman: Mr. Harper.
Mr. Harper (Churchill): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to welcome my friends, Marie, Gary, Jim and Marc, to this forum, the aboriginal affairs parliamentary committee. I don't have very much time, but it is certainly an opportunity for you to provide us with information.
A lot of people seek education and awareness all the time. I've been doing that constantly since I've been here in my political life, and it is frustrating. As I said earlier this morning to a group of people, we need to have our own people involved to speak for us, not people who speak on our behalf. That's something I'm encouraging.
For aboriginal people, education requires respect and honour from the governments, certainly when you talk about the conditions in which our people live in urban centres. I believe that treaties are paramount over any federal piece of legislation. Treaty rights don't end at the reserve boundary. They should be extended into the urban centres. This is something I've been pushing all the time, and hopefully you'd support that.
The other thing that Mary talked about is education. We're going to be doing something on that, and also on the national aboriginal day that we are proposing to get the government to act on for the beginning of awareness and education across Canada. I'll leave you with that for now.
Mr. Sinclair: I'd just like to say one thing. I'd like to thank Elijah for setting up that conference that took place this winter. A number of people showed up.
But I also want to remind you of something. We're no different from the blacks in the United States who gathered around the Muslim religion, or from anyone else. When we take our religion or our positions back, the urge to do something about it also comes with it, and you know how explosive it can be when you put politics with religion. You've seen that around the world. And there are many people saying that good will come out of this if people talk to us, but if people deny us they're going to find that a lot of problems are going to develop into more hostilities across this nation.
At the meetings held here in Ottawa this winter, there were many people, particularly from the prairies, asking me to invite Elijah to the same kinds of meetings now. I think we're going to be dealing with some of those in the future.
The Chairman: Mr. Grose.
Mr. Grose: I'm not a regular member of this committee. As a matter of fact, I'm sitting in for Jack Anawak. But, Mr. Sinclair, you and I have met before at the human rights committee and we're discussing some of the same problems here today.
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Mr. Bohnet, I'm on the public accounts committee. We studied the AROP program, and we didn't like it either. Now I come here and I find you don't like it. Well, let's fix it.
One thing I do want to stress is that our problems, yours and mine, are being addressed, not in isolation in this committee but in other committees as well. I'll take what I have learned here today back to public accounts, for instance, and say let's take a look at that program and let's see what we can do with it. Maybe we'll get you to come and tell us what's wrong with it.
The Chairman: Mr. Finlay.
Mr. Finlay (Oxford): I want to thank the witnesses. It's been very revealing and very helpful, and I find myself in concert with many things you've said.
I want to ask a question following on what Mr. Bohnet said, that it must start with the community. Having worked for two years with the environment committee I came to pretty much that conclusion too as far as getting action going on things that most people in Canada want.
You mentioned that you have an affirmative action policy and a procurement policy and you have some concern that the Department of Indian Affairs pays more attention to on-reserve native people than those off reserve. I want to suggest that it's probably a fairly logical position, whether it's the right one or not. Elijah keeps trying to educate me, but it seems to me that there is a difference.
You say that 50% of all off-reserve native people in Ontario live in Toronto. What kind of response do you get from the Toronto City Council? What kind of response do you get from the Metro council? What kind of response do you get from the provincial authorities?
All I'm saying is that DIAND and this committee and the Parliament of Canada have certain responsibilities, but at the present time they don't cover education. That's a provincial responsibility.
Mr. LeClair: Well, there's a lot of federal money that goes into education.
Mr. Finlay: What's your comment about that?
Mr. Sinclair: In the first place, I don't think city councils really have that much to do with our lives. I think that's been part of the problem. Governments have pushed those problems onto urban municipalities. They're even trying to make municipalities out of our reservations in our treaty lands. That's wrong.
Again, I believe our rights go beyond the reserve boundaries. If you try to limit people to lands where you can't even have enough houses, where you have a power line through the reserve in many places and you have houses all the way down, there's nothing for anything else. There are no jobs. You have to go off that reserve.
You're asking what happens if someone leaves the reserve. If you leave the reserve you're still in the treaty area. When you leave your province, Ontario, and you go to Saskatchewan, do you have fewer rights in Saskatchewan than you have in Ontario? That's the question we're faced with. Are we going to have fewer rights if we go from a reserve to Regina when we might live 20 miles out of Regina?
I think we have to priorize that Indians still have ownership of this land. That's been agreed upon through treaties, and those treaties must be recognized. If you go back and look at the medicine chest, in those days that was just a medicine chest but today it's a health program and you've never sat down with us to have a discussion of how that health care would take place. You have a housing program. You have all those things, but we can do things for ourselves if we get a share of the resources of this country, not welfare handouts.
I hate it that when you work up north there's only one place to work, and that's a uranium mine. We're against uranium, but if we don't work there we don't have a job. Those resources coming out of the north are going into the big coffers in France, New York, or wherever. It goes back to Regina and comes back to us in a welfare cheque for our people living on welfare. Then they say we're looking after you people, but those resources are coming from our lands. We're taking all the risks of uranium development but we're not getting any of the benefits.
People are moving into Ontario, into Toronto, to get an education. Where the hell else are they going to go from overcrowded reserves? Why aren't they prepared when they get there? Why isn't the opportunity there when they get there?
Mr. LeClair: We have a corporate culture in a sense in Canada. Municipalities are responsible for this, provinces are responsible for this, and the federal government is responsible for this. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but that's the way it is.
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When you're dealing with municipalities today in Ontario, which have been cut back because of reductions in provincial expenditures, do you expect them to open a new envelope? You can't expect them to open an envelope, because they think, well, the federal government... The reason the federal government was given responsibility in the first place was because it had the larger resource base from which to look after the issue. Second, the federal government was seen as the best protectorate in a sense, fiduciary in a sense, to ensure that the local majorities didn't trample on the rights of the aboriginal people. That was in 1867, but that principle still holds true, and it's the federal government that's responsible.
It's like, get into charities. Why don't Canadians pay more into charities? Well, because the government...because of our large social safety net. They expect the government to do it, and that's why we don't have as much expenditure from private corporations. Every time you press them and put the pinch on them, it's well, why can't you go to the government? Because that's the way things have been. It may not be the way it should be, but that's the way it is.
Mr. Finlay: Don't misunderstand me; I quite agree with what you just said. That's the situation we're faced with. That's how we have to work this out.
I heard one of you say that part of the problem was perhaps injustice, prejudice or racism. I'm not sure how much that -
Mr. Sinclair: Oh, yes.
Mr. Finlay: - raises its ugly head, but -
Mr. Sinclair: Racism is very common in Canada. You can't just put that to the Reform Party. That comes from everybody. Institutions are racist.
I think when people point fingers at each other, you have to take a good look in the mirror before you do that. It's one thing to talk about racism, and make racist remarks. It's another thing when you practise them in your everyday institutions, which still happens in this country.
Mr. Finlay: Believe me, it's not happening by choice of the federal government or by the kinds of laws we're trying to make. That's one of the things about this country I think I'm most proud of.
Mr. LeClair: Let me ask you a question. What would call this: Gary is a Métis in the Northwest Territories. I'm a Métis from Saskatchewan. In his area they had a land settlement scheme. When Canada settled the west, they had a land scrip system whereby the Métis were defrauded of their lands. That occurred in the territories and in Saskatchewan.
Now Gary's in land claims. Gary's going to be a claims recipient when they conclude the agreement. He'll have his rights protected. I will never have my rights protected. The magic boundary is the 60th parallel. North of 60 - something occurred magically up there. All of a sudden, he gets a chance to have his rights. And I, south of 60, don't. Is that racism? Is that discrimination, and on what basis?
The Chairman: Let's not engage in a debate, because we're overshooting our time, but the point is -
Mr. Sinclair: I think we're all politicians around the table. Nobody can resist it.
The Chairman: We all have issues we like to push.
Mr. Bohnet: Please disregard everything Marc LeClair says.
Voices: Oh, oh.
The Chairman: What I will do is say a few words in order to allow you the last word, because I will invite you to make closing comments.
On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for having been here. I want to say to you that already we know we've made the right decision to engage in this education process. It's going to be valuable for us, and it will help us to do our work better, probably better than anyone before, because I know this education process has never been done before for us politicians who come from all over.
Having said that, I invite you to have the last word in your closing remarks.
Mr. Sinclair: Well, it's good to meet you people. I think the questions that were brought up on the floor were the kinds of questions that at least we like to hear, because we think people understand issues a lot better than they pretend to do.
We certainly have to address these issues, and I'll take your word for today that this committee will pass on the information through their respective parties and through the government to try to make things happen.
I don't want it to appear that we're here looking for handouts; that's the last thing we want to appear to do. But I think that when we're talking about Canada and the realism of it, we have to face the way the economy is, the way the money situation is; we have to look at alternatives. It doesn't take extra money; it takes a redirection of money.
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Again, I would like you to have the opportunity to get in touch with us at any time you wish in order to look at some specific issues you'd like to discuss - be it the youth or be it strictly based on the economy or the delivery of certain services - and we can come back and give a report on them.
I'd rather give it to you where you will do something with it right away, rather than have it sit on a shelf with a study. We can save ourselves a lot of money and do some action. Study money is just a matter of saying we'll give them money and they can go and sit there for a year and do a study. Let's do something that can make things happen. I hope you will do that.
Thank you very much for allowing me to come and meet you. I enjoyed meeting every one of you.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Relating to your study, we have a saying in Sudbury: when you hire a consultant, they borrow your watch and then they tell you what time it is. That's how we feel. That's how I feel about consultants.
This meeting stands adjourned.