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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, March 27, 2003

1050

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.))

Ms. Irene La Pierre (Principal, Piitoayis Family School, Calgary Board of Education)

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey (Executive Director, Chief Dan George Centre for Advanced Education (Simon Fraser University))

1055

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall (Retired Associate Professor, Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey)

1100

The Chair

Ms. Karen McClain (Instructor, Peterborough Native Learning Centre)

1105

1110

The Chair

Ms. Edwina Wetzel (Director of Education, St. Anne's School, Conne River First Nation)

1115

1120

The Chair

Mr. Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East, Canadian Alliance)

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

Mr. Peter Goldring

1125

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

1130

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

The Chair

Ms. Karen McClain

1135

Mr. Peter Goldring

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

The Chair

Mr. Gurbax Malhi (Bramalea—Gore—Malton—Springdale, Lib.)

Ms. Murdena Marshall

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

Ms. Murdena Marshall

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

The Chair

1140

Ms. Karen McClain

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

The Chair

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

1145

Ms. Karen McClain

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

The Chair

Ms. Irene La Pierre

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ)

1150

Ms. Karen McClain

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

The Chair

Ms. Irene La Pierre

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

Ms. Monique Guay

1155

The Chair

Ms. Karen McClain

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

1200

The Chair

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

The Chair

Ms. Irene La Pierre

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.)

The Chair

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

Ms. Murdena Marshall

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

The Chair

Ms. Irene La Pierre

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

1205

Ms. Karen McClain

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Ms. Murdena Marshall

1210

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Ms. Murdena Marshall

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Ms. Murdena Marshall

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

The Chair

Ms. Irene La Pierre

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

1215

The Chair

Mr. Peter Goldring

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Mr. Peter Goldring

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Karen McClain

Mr. Peter Goldring

1220

Ms. Karen McClain

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Irene La Pierre

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Mr. Peter Goldring

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Mr. Peter Goldring

The Chair

Ms. Irene La Pierre

1225

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

Ms. Karen McClain

1230

The Chair

Ms. Monique Guay

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Ms. Monique Guay

Ms. Karen McClain

1235

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

Ms. Karen McClain

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Ms. Karen McClain

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

1240

Ms. Karen McClain

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

1245

The Chair

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

1250

The Chair

Mr. Raymond Simard (Saint Boniface, Lib.)

Ms. Karen McClain

Mr. Raymond Simard

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Mr. Raymond Simard

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Mr. Raymond Simard

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

1255

Mr. Raymond Simard

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

Mr. Raymond Simard

The Chair

Ms. Irene La Pierre

The Chair

Ms. Karen McClain

1300

The Chair

Mr. Darrell Mounsey

The Chair

Ms. Edwina Wetzel

The Chair

Ms. Murdena Marshall

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

NUMBER 020

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Thursday, March 27, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

À (1050)

[English]

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.)): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you to the 20th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

To those of you who are...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...and to Ms. LaPierre, who is joining us from Calgary, I want to apologize on behalf of the committee for keeping you waiting. I know that you are all extremely busy people, and you shouldn't have to wait while we get our act together. I sincerely apologize for the delay.

We are continuing in our study on literacy. This morning we're focusing our discussion on aboriginal literacy, and we have some extremely important folks in terms of the work they are doing to help find a solution.

Ms. LaPierre, I'm going to ask you to begin. I know the clerk has been in touch with you and has indicated that it should be about a five-minute presentation.

We will hear from each of the presenters and then there'll be questions and answers.

So without further delay, welcome, Ms. LaPierre.

Ms. Irene La Pierre (Principal, Piitoayis Family School, Calgary Board of Education): Good morning, and thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation and for giving us an opportunity to present to you the work we're doing here in Calgary.

I'll give you a little bit of background information on the school. The Calgary Board of Education opened the Piitoayis Family School this year, September 3, 2002, so we're in our first year of operation. It is an alternative program of choice within the Calgary Board of Education, and we are housed within another school building.

The Piitoayis Family School is an elementary program that offers grades 1 to 6, based on aboriginal culture and practices. We have 103 students at this time. The CBE provides both transportation and lunch to the students, because many of the families we serve live way below the poverty line. The students are transported from all areas of the city.

We have over nine nations at our school, the majority being the Blackfoot and the Cree Nation. Therefore, we provide the Blackfoot and Cree language, as well as the cultural arts, drumming, singing, and we're going to be giving some hoop dancing on return from spring break.

Our school opens each day with aboriginal ceremonies, such as the Flag Song, and the smudge prayer. The school celebrations are culturally based, such as Round Dance feasts and blessings of the school by the elders in our community.

We take a balanced approach to literacy. The teachers at our school have had ongoing professional development through the school so that we can provide a whole-school approach to literacy. Each classroom has a small independent library with a high aboriginal content of material.

We have found that many of our students have arrived at our school one to two grade levels below in their reading. We decided to start where the students are at, and therefore we employ several means of differentiated learning. We have a resource teacher who works with approximately 40% of our students in reading.

We have a family portion of our program, which makes us unique, where we involve the parents as partners in education with the focus once again being on family literacy, healthy families, families and culture, and developing healthy lifestyles.

We have a cultural liaison that will develop programs, events, and cultural camps aimed at working with the families to strengthen their relationship to the school and the families' own education. The family portion of the program was made possible through early childhood development funding dollars. So we were very fortunate in receiving some of that.

Prior to our school opening, we held several community consultations. Within those community consultations it was shown that many parents do not feel that they are able to support their children in their education due to their limited education themselves. These parents are willing, but they lack the skill--but they're also willing to work on that.

The family is the focus of our school, and it will be our strength. Empowering parents through education will empower our students to become lifelong learners. This is evident in the vision statement of our school, which was created by our families. It states: “To create a respectful learning environment based on the balance of traditional cultural values and academic excellence.” This holistic and meaningful approach will enhance pride and self-esteem, enabling our students to become successful, responsible, lifelong learners.

With that, I will close. Once again, thank you for the opportunity for letting us share with you what we're doing here in Calgary.

The Chair: Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments.

Next I'm going to call on Darrell Mounsey from the Chief Dan George Centre for Advanced Education from Simon Fraser University.

Welcome, Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey (Executive Director, Chief Dan George Centre for Advanced Education (Simon Fraser University)): Thank you very much.

First of all, I'd like to thank the Ojibway for hosting this very important meeting on their traditional territory. Thank you very much.

I'm Shuswap, from the southern interior of British Columbia. I am the executive director of the Chief Dan George Centre.

I'd like to thank the MP, the Honourable Judi Longfield, for hosting us today and sharing this. Thank you very much.

I'll quickly go through a brief description of the Chief Dan George Centre. We're an aboriginal arm of Simon Fraser University. Simon Fraser University has created a strong presence in downtown Vancouver through the Harbour Centre Campus and Wosk Centre for Dialogue, and the new centre for management studies.

The Chief Dan George Centre for Advanced Education will provide a venue to meet the unique needs of urban aboriginal peoples and bridge the existing programs and services at Simon Fraser University. The Chief Dan George Centre for Advanced Education will be creating new and innovative programming, incorporating first nations, Inuit, and Métis content and perspectives that will complement and enhance Simon Fraser University's standing as the number one comprehensive university in Canada, as quoted in a Maclean's magazine survey.

The Chief Dan George Centre for Advanced Education will be creating new and innovative partnerships with both the public and private sector to support lifelong learning for aboriginal peoples, while embracing new approaches to advanced learning that will be of interest to first nations, Inuit communities, and Métis structures throughout Canada. The Chief Dan George Centre has a number of programs that are much like my friend's over here in Calgary. We're only one year old. We've just recently become incorporated.

One of the mandates from our community has been early childhood education and family literacy. So I'd like to quickly talk about home instruction through parent participation for the youngsters, more commonly known as HIPPY. This was established about 25 years ago at Hebrew University in Israel. It operates in 20 countries right now. The Chief Dan George Centre hosted training in the summer of 2001 towards establishing a British Columbia program, for the several organizations in Vancouver, to be supported by the Vancouver Sun's Raise a Reader program.

I'm here to support aboriginal peoples in their efforts to increase the level of awareness of family literacy, and what would be required to be successful with that.

I'll close with that and turn it over to the next speaker.

Thank you very much.

À (1055)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mounsey.

Representing the Mi'kmaw, my next speaker is Murdena Marshall, a retired associate professor.

Welcome, Ms. Marshall.

Ms. Murdena Marshall (Retired Associate Professor, Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey): Good morning, and thank you very much for inviting me. I'm truly honoured.

I'm here to represent the Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey, which translates as “the Mi'kmaw way to learn”. It's an organization that houses several bands in Nova Scotia. I do believe they house seven bands, and take care of education, funding, curricula, or whatever a community might need in terms of learning for their first nation schools.

They also serve communities that don't have schools on their own home reserves. They cater to children who might be in a provincial school but are lacking instructions in Mi'kmaw history or Mi'kmaw holidays or Mi'kmaw heroes or anything like that, that might require positive self-concepts towards learning.

I can only use my home reserve as an example of what's happening in literacy, and that's my home reserve of Eskasoni. It has a population of 3,500. And we have several schools on the reserve, one of which is our elementary and our junior high school, which houses approximately 800 students.

I know for a fact that not all first nations parents would agree that their children be taught in Mi'kmaw, so we have provided an alternative for parents who believe their children would get a better education in whichever format they want to use. In Eskasoni, we have an immersion program, starting from kindergarten, primary, and grade 1, where children learn in their own first language all of the concepts that you would use in terms of provincial curricula. They use the format or the model of the provincial curricula, but everything is transcribed into Mi'kmaw. The working language is the Mi'kmaw language. Children as young as six years of age are able to start a reading program in their own language.

I have a six-year-old grandson who recognizes letters like k and m and t, and the vowel system, and attempts to put those together to form a Mi'kmaw word. For instance, the Mi'kmaw word for “him” or “her” in Mi'kmaw is nekm, and I saw him putting those letters together to spell nekm. He would never be able to do that in English at six years of age, because, first of all, the letter h is a foreign sound in our language. So he would never have had the mentality to spell the words her or him. Besides, our language is genderless, so it's a very difficult concept.

I've always believed in immersion. Unfortunately, it's optional. We have to give the right to parents who fear that this isn't the best way for their children to be taught, and some of them have chosen to put their children in an all-English classroom. This is how they feel. You cannot take the right away of a parent when they feel that this is the right decision for their children.

As an educator, I have constantly reinforced and taught, pushed and cried, begged and borrowed, and stole moments of time with parents to teach them the value of teaching a child in their own first language. I myself was taught at an Indian day school, where English was taught as a second language. Although the concept was not available in the forties and the fifties, my teachers had the tricks to teach us English as a second language. They knew darn well that as soon as we left the school we'd be immersed back in our own language, and therefore what we learned in school had to stick in our minds all through the years.

I never went to boarding school until I was 13, for my high school years, and by then I had a good concept of English. I knew the sounds, and I didn't have any problems with my th's and all of the other sounds that were foreign to me.

I've always believed, from my own teaching days, that when you teach a child their first language, you don't have to teach them their values, you don't have to teach them their traditions, you don't have to teach them their history, because they're involuntarily included in the language. They're just automatic. All of those things sort of slide in without too much effort.

Á (1100)

For my school, where my grandchildren go, once they leave the immersion program I do believe they should slide into a classroom where English is taught as a second language. I think that's the answer for our children who are struggling with English. Although some of them may not have any Mi'kmaw at all, they still have problems with English, the oral and written.

I saw, through tests and little studies that we did at the university, that children, when being taught English as a second language, fared better in terms of pride and volubility and all of the other things required for them to stand up and read out loud. I was really alarmed at the rate of our elementary school children who seemed to be having problems in reading simply because our school does not have the second-language program in place yet. We have the immersion program, which is a very big plus.

I also realize that your own first language is placed in the yeoman's role in acquiring English, because then you have a critical mind where you can compare concepts, words, and ideas in your own language and then compare them to English and try to come up with a common end result. Children compare languages and concepts and they find ways to reach a conclusion.

I wish I could talk to every parent in this fair land of ours and tell them about the ability to have a language other than English, and then learn English as a second language. I'm sure most educators across Canada feel this way.

Thank you very much for allowing me to speak. It's too bad it wasn't in my own language, but anyway....

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Marshall. I really appreciate the effort you've taken to join us today.

Our next presenter, Karen McClain, comes from the Peterborough Native Learning Centre.

Welcome, Karen.

Ms. Karen McClain (Instructor, Peterborough Native Learning Centre): Thank you. I'm glad to be here, and glad to speaking along with the Ontario Native Literacy Coalition, the program that supports our program.

I am Karen McClain. I'm a member of the Maayashingaming First Nation. At this time in my life I'm a full-time student, but I'm working on literacy part time in order to get myself through school. That's how I got interested in literacy. I spent my entire career in education, and when I got into literacy you could see the results of mismanagement at the bottom end showing up in the adult literacy field at the top end. That got me very interested.

I'm a part-time tutor. I tutor three days a week at the Peterborough Native Learning Program, a community program, a stand-alone native literacy program. It is served by the Ontario Native Literacy Coalition, which was incorporated in 1988, serving native literacy workers and learners in Ontario.

The mandate for Ontario Native Literacy is to advance the field of literacy through advocacy and lobbying; developing and sharing resources; providing training for native literacy workers in field development opportunities; conducting research to develop new resources and enhance support for native literacy; and developing strategies that will respond to the gaps in the delivery of native literacy services.

Our program then is funded by ONLS through MTCU, and our mandate is to provide information and referral; assess students and put them into their levels of training; do training plan development; do the training; and then do the follow-up on any of our programs.

As for some of the problems I've come across, there actually are two sets of them. First, there are six ministry-generated problems that we contend with in our program. And it's a one-man office, basically. Most of the programs are. There are 26 of them, and the majority of them have one person working in them. So when you look at hierarchy and the concept of the most important point of delivery being at the top, it makes it very difficult for the 26 isolated communities to work under.

As well, in our culture we don't have age restrictions in terms of who's going to learn, who's going to work, and who's going to attend different functions. And the aboriginal learners, when they come to us, want to bring their children when they find out that some of the difficulties they experienced came from their childhood and their education at the bottom end. When they find out that these problems could be surmounted, they want to bring their children in and get us to help them as well.

In terms of literacy definitions, we have a problem with that also, because in aboriginal literacy it's not just about reading, writing, and math; it's about history, past school experience, and feelings and emotions that have been subverted for a very long time and have become obstacles to their learning.

There are distinct barriers, or obstacles, if you will, that must be overcome before academic learning can happen. And some of the hours we spend with our learners, in terms of the front end that has to be dealt with first, are not allowed to be called “contact” hours, so we do a lot of work without pay in order to cover that, because it has to be done.

Concept of success is another problem we have with the measurement standards. Aboriginal people, for the most part, don't aspire to continuous competition for material proof of success. Success is having what is necessary to live well; to live in peace; to work, yet have leisure time to spend with family and community; and to look forward to and have a healthy, respected, honoured old age. It's not necessarily which college or university they're going to go to next, or which degree they're going to have next, or which job. Sometimes they only want to know so that they can feel good.

As for the finite and minute funding we operate under, the core funding for programs in the Ontario native literacy field has been stagnant since 1988, when they were incorporated. It looks as though the only way we can increase our funding is by having another program close down; then we get that funding spread amongst the 26 programs. That's not quite the way we prefer to operate.

Aboriginal learners also come with difficulties. It's not just all MTCU that creates the problems. For the learners who come to us, there are things we can do for them. They come with past school experiences, experiences that have convinced them that they cannot learn and that they're castaways, and a lot of their learning difficulties have been unrecognized over the years. They don't realize that those things can be worked with.

Á (1105)

They also come with the intergenerational impact of residential schools, which has given them really low self-esteem. We give them a lot of credit for even showing up at our door, and even more credit for staying. It takes them somewhere up to six months before they can actually begin to learn, and that's a lot of patience on their time and a lot of courage to keep coming, even though it seems like you haven't done anything for that period of time.

I don't believe in coming up with difficulties without solutions, and I can see five solutions here.

First, use the input from practitioners and programs before creating initiatives and guidelines. As people who are working on the front lines, who are working with these learners coming in the door, we know how long it takes and we know basically what their needs are before they can begin to learn. We need our voices heard.

Provide the native literacy field with the financial support it needs. We have core funding that allows us to open our doors, but we haven't very much funding after that to provide the services we want to give these students.

Native literacy must be seen as different. It is different. It's not that we don't want to be accountable, it's not that we don't want to follow rules, it's that it's different, and we need that input so we can change it and meet the needs more quickly for our learners.

Change the restrictions on who learners can be and for how long. We're not into putting our learners on the fast track so that we can put them out of our program into another program. It's taken them up to 40 years to come into an educational facility, and then when they get in and get comfortable, they want to stay. They found an aboriginal instructor, for one thing, and they want to stay because they're comfortable and they're getting the help they can get. As I said, they want to bring in their children after that, and we can't do that because we're an adult literacy program.

Clarify the definition of native literacy to reflect aboriginal values and requirements, and acknowledge that formal education up to this point has not been the best for aboriginal people. They have received many, many messages that their emotional difficulties, their intellectual or their learning difficulties, are part of their character, and not something that happened to them in a school system. We need to work with that.

So my solution, in the grand scale of things, would be to create a truly aboriginal native literacy field, native literacy programs. We would redefine success to include success other than numbers and dollars, and moving out of our programs. We can't lead our students to believe that if they get good enough we have to put them out. It doesn't work that way for us.

Remove age limits so that support can be given to those who have taken that giant step to go to college or university. Access programs have opened up. What hasn't been taken into account is that the students who show up have had the exact same school experience as the learners who are coming to our programs. They need the support in order to stay there. There are a lot of skills that they're short on.

Expand levels so that the aboriginal concept of collective, of community, can be restored. We're not going to get the support from our communities until we can prove or show that we're teaching people to be community-minded, as opposed to individual-minded, where they're going to go off and they're going to make their fortune.

Allow flexibility in terms of learning plans. In a holistic approach, spiritual and emotional strength builds sufficient physical strength to pursue further education. It is intellectually brilliant to recognize that, as far as I'm concerned, and I know very well that our aboriginal practitioners and learners know that. So when they come to our doors, we need to be able to say, this is what we do. We can't turn around and say, it's the other way.

Aboriginal people do not want pity, nor do we want handouts. What we're seeking are remedies for past and present injustices, but most of all we're seeking control of our lives and a better future for our children. We need to be able to do that our way, within the parameters of MTCU but still our way in terms of method, and how we're going to report. The native literacy field requires new financial support to fulfill this dream.

Thank you.

Á (1110)

The Chair: Thank you very much.

The final presentation today comes from Edwina Wetzel, who comes to us from St. Anne's School in Newfoundland.

Welcome.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel (Director of Education, St. Anne's School, Conne River First Nation): Thank you.

My name is Edwina Wetzel. I'm the director of education for the Mi'kmaq first nations on the Conne River Reserve in Newfoundland.

I have not had experience with aboriginal literacy initiatives on a national scale, but just listening to the speaker before me, I can say amen to everything she said.

What I will do is share with you our story at Conne River. Conne River is the only officially recognized reserve on the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador. I emphasize this because this is not to confuse it with the Labrador portion of the province.

Conne River officially became a reserve in 1986. At that time we took control of our education system. Our mission at the time, and it remains true today, was to provide all our members, from preschool to elders, with education if they desired.

Much of what I will relate today I also said when I appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs in June of 1990. The difference today is that we have now implemented our objectives and have reaped the benefits.

One of the first things we did when we took control of our education system was to include in our education plan our adult learners who needed upgrading. We needed to do this because, if we were to run our own affairs, we needed trained human resources, of which we had few at the time.

Back in the mid-1960s, when we were under the province, our high school section was closed down and all our students were shipped off to school in a non-native community. Since we were an isolated community at the time, the students had to board in private non-native homes for weeks at a time. As a result, a majority of them dropped out of school or failed.

These were the young adults we targeted immediately. Our first group was a group of 25, mainly women. Since 1986 we have graduated, from our program on reserve, approximately 60 band members with a high school diploma. A number of others went through the upgrading programs at community colleges and directly into the trades program.

Today the band controls and runs its own administrative office, education system, health and social services, tribal police, public works, capital works, and a number of economic development projects. All of its employees, except for a half-dozen high school teachers, are band members. In a community of 700, we have lawyers, nurses, teachers, accountants, pilots, secretaries, trained police officers, and every other trade that you can mention.

We are still offering adult education, but as our client base grows smaller, our focus now is on adults who had to drop out of the provincial school because of learning difficulties.

There are, however, other barriers to literacy that we have to consider. I'm sure others have experienced them as well. For us, the first of these was home support. When we first took control, there was little support from the home. Children were coming to us not knowing which end of the book was up.

We have overcome these barriers through a number of initiatives. We now begin before the child is born by educating mothers about nutrition and healthy lifestyles that will benefit her baby before and after birth. There is a Books for Babies program that encourages mothers to begin reading to their children. We have an outreach program for 18 months to 4 years, whereby trained early childhood educators go into the home several times a week to work with our children. Once the child turns two, they go into a day care program. Our day care program is coordinated by one of our primary teachers. As a result, children are closely monitored, learning difficulties are spotted early, and interventions are started. The child then comes into the school with an individual education plan in place if it is needed.

Even when the child reaches school age, home support may be lacking. Therefore, we have put in place, at school, after-school tutors. Again, we are fortunate in that one of our teachers coordinates the youth centre, and there are time slots allocated there for homework, with people to assist.

Á (1115)

We are continuously working on improving home-school communication. What we are doing seems to be working, because our dropout rate has gone from fifteen or more a year to one or two a year, and those eventually return to our adult education programs.

In terms of learning difficulties, the focus of our adult education today is adults who dropped out of provincial school because of learning difficulties and a lack of support. Today, in a regular school setting, much time and resources are focused on learning difficulties. Observations are begun as soon as a child begins day care. IEPs are in place, and the school simply picks up there. There is constant communication between home and school.

We have a teacher assigned to coordinate student support services, and special needs services, such as speech and educational psychologists, are purchased from the province.

One of the other difficulties we found sometimes was liaison between agencies. When information is not shared and one group does not know what the other is doing, there will be missing links. We are fortunate in that there is excellent communication between agencies and groups in my community because of our teachers coordinating adult education, day care, and the youth centre. There is a literacy committee at school that's made up of principals, student support leaders for special needs, adult education coordinators, the day care coordinator, and a community member. This provides for consistency and continuity.

At the same time, there is the question of our first nations language literacy. For us, as a group of first nations people who nearly lost their native language, Mi'kmaq language literacy has also been an important focus for us. When we took control in 1986, the language was all but gone in the community.

To make a long story short, by using the gifts that existed in the community, although they were limited, and through Mi'kmaq immersion in Eskasoni, Nova Scotia, for several teachers, we now have Mi'kmaq language classes from kindergarten to grade 10. We are now researching how we can offer the language in senior high as a graduation credit. We also offer Mi'kmaq language classes for school staff and community members.

Perhaps I can summarize the recommendations I am offering for aboriginal literacy solutions.

First, someone has to find a way to ensure there is long-term secure funding for aboriginal literacy, and literacy initiatives have to go where aboriginal people are, not the other way around.

Band governments must set education as a priority by ensuring that moneys for education be spent on education. Band governments must be dedicated to building self-esteem and pride in all their members. If there are talents and skills in the community, recognize and use them; upgrading and certification will follow.

Students, parents, and all band members must come to see the importance of education if the band members are to take control of their own affairs. There must be a strong national aboriginal organization for literacy that provides networking, research, and support for aboriginal educators.

These are the things that have been part of our journey to date. We are still identifying needs and finding creative ways to meet them.

Thank you.

Á (1120)

The Chair: Thank you very much.

We'll now turn to the question and answer portion.

Ms. LaPierre, just to orientate you, members representing the Canadian Alliance Party, the Bloc Québécois, and the Liberal Party are here with us today.

Today I think maybe ten-minute rounds would be appropriate, and we'll start with Mr. Peter Goldring, who represents the Canadian Alliance.

Mr. Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.

Thank you very much, ladies, for your presentation.

My first question, Ms. Wetzel, regards your school and your academic standing in the school. That school has been functioning, you say, from 1990, or for some time? Do you have any type of gauging of whether the academic standing of the students has increased over that period of time due to the concentration and the education on the reserve and at the school? Do you have some feel for the improvement in the academic standing?

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: Since 1986 we've put five nurses into the community. We've produced two lawyers. That's our gauge, the human resources we've put into our community. To me, more important than writing a CRT or writing the Canadian test of basic skills is the fact that every position in the community now is filled by a fully trained and qualified band member, as opposed to 1986, when it was just three or four people.

Mr. Peter Goldring: But obviously there are testing standards by the schools.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: We write the provincial public exam.

Mr. Peter Goldring: And has that been improving over the period of the years?

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: Yes.

Mr. Peter Goldring: Measurably so, appreciably so?

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: Yes.

Mr. Peter Goldring: Can you give us some kind of factoring on how much it has improved?

Á (1125)

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: I probably could, but I received the notice to come here the day before--

Mr. Peter Goldring: Well, one of the difficulties with illiteracy, and I've been asking the question in a variety of different ways, is how do we gauge success? In other words, it's one thing to come before us for more funding and more resources, but it's quite another thing for us to understand unless we have some method of gauging success, gauging effectiveness.

So whatever information like that you can provide to support that there have been improvements over a period of time because of a particular concentration, it would be certainly helpful for us to understand.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: In my community, if we hadn't done what we did, I think you'd have 700 people on welfare. And they're not on welfare, which to me is a good measure.

Mr. Peter Goldring: To Ms. LaPierre from Calgary, your school is relatively new and has been established. How does your cost per student compare with the ordinary school in the public system? Do you have some kind of budgetary comparison of the operation of your specialty school as compared with the normal public school?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Because this is our first year, we've had additional start-up costs, but for the most part our costs per student will be the same as any other school's. We're an alternative program of choice, and therefore we have some program renewal dollars put forth to make it happen.

Any other funding we get is certainly by aggressively looking for it elsewhere, because the mandate of the CBE board is not so much to educate families as students. So if we want to have an active family portion of our school, we need to look for dollars elsewhere.

Mr. Peter Goldring: So your school will receive normal public school funding per student population in the future? That's the intention of it? Okay.

Now, with your literacy efforts, and the cultural component of your school, how much of the academic time, say, is spent on cultural endeavours as opposed to the regular curriculum?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: We are a regular CBE school, so we have to follow the Alberta learning program of studies. That's mandated to us. What we do is incorporate the cultural component throughout our learning.

For example, whether it be in language arts or social studies, because we have cultural instructors available to us and to our teaching staff, if they are studying a certain unit, we will incorporate the aboriginal perspective throughout. So we maintain the hours and minutes necessary for the different programs, whether it be language arts, social studies, math, or science.

Mr. Peter Goldring: So you're following the relative curriculum of the regular public system?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Yes, we are.

Mr. Peter Goldring: Given that you're following the regular curriculum, will you be monitoring the effectiveness of the grading levels of your students as compared with students in the rest of the Calgary system?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: We'll be writing provincials like anyone else.

Mr. Peter Goldring: And you're into your first year now, so obviously it would be too early yet to see how that does compare.

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Too early, yes.

Mr. Peter Goldring: As a general question, it seems there are various opinions on how we can go about improving literacy and literacy levels. Some think that perhaps it should be in our standard educational system.

Can you see any area or any reason why the regular educational system can not and does not--and should not--have goals to improve its literacy level right within the system itself? Are there not sufficient resources, from your viewpoint, for the regular educational system to provide this literacy support?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Many of our schools have taken a balanced literacy approach already, where the focus is on literacy. However, the families that we target are not book-rich. A lot of our families are below the poverty line. They don't have a lot of supplementary reading materials at home.

So we have to work with the families. We're actually setting up a lending library so that the families will be coming into the school and accessing materials, for reading with the students as well as focusing on the adult literacy part of our program. There's never enough resources.

As well, with regard to training our teachers to take that balanced literacy approach, they don't come out of universities with those skills enhanced, so we need to.... If our focus is on literacy, we need to train our teachers so that they're able to pass on those skills to the students.

Á (1130)

Mr. Peter Goldring: Are we not doing that now? Are you aware of programs? I would think that this would be a direct way to impact on future generations, to have our educational system, certainly our teachers, apprised of ways to improve their literacy educational component. Are we not doing that now?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: I'm just not sure we're doing enough right now. I know, as an administrator, this year we spent many, many hours and many, many days sending our teaching staff for professional development, with the focus on literacy.

Teachers--I'm not saying just our teachers--did not come with that wide background of knowledge and experience. I have fairly new teachers. My oldest teacher is three years in the teaching field. That affords me the opportunity, when I have young teachers, to mould them, in a way, with the literacy component being a very strong component at our school.

Mr. Peter Goldring: I suppose one of the concerns is just this, that you can have a program of improving the overall literacy level of your nation, of your people in the country, but exactly how do you do this? How do you deliver this?

I would think--and maybe you could comment on it--the most direct way is to follow your regular educational system and do your work there. It seems to me the delivery systems, on a myriad of different methods, and doing it in the community, one on one or by volunteers, by other methods, perhaps would not give the direct concentration that the regular educational system could, if you had some extra resources to devote to that, whether it's teaching the teachers in the university or improving and making improvements within the system.

What is your feeling on that? Is that not the biggest bang for the buck, to do it in the regular system?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: We are doing the regular program of study, as I said earlier. Our school, like many other schools, is focusing on literacy in the primary areas, but because we are an alternative program of choice, we also have the benefit of immersing our students in language and culture as well as the regular program.

The Chair: Peter, I have four other witnesses at the table, and I suspect some of them may want to also comment. I'll give you a little bit more time after.

Just at this point, if there is something that one of the other witnesses wants to comment on or add to, please take this opportunity now. Then, as we go along, if there is a question that you hear that you want to answer, just signal to me and I'll make certain that I get to you right away.

Karen.

Ms. Karen McClain: When you're talking about fixing or ameliorating something that's broken, it's very difficult to go to the thing that broke it and expect it to fix it, basically. What makes it difficult for our students to survive and do well in the mainstream programs is that they come into the system with a lack of identity, with a lack of the feeling that they're there for themselves and are going to gain something. So they don't have the strength. They sneak into the building. If you look at them sideways or differently or whatever, they become intimidated, and there comes the obstacle to their learning.

Their way of putting in their identity is to understand that they're a worthwhile human being, which means they are worthwhile in their community and they are worthwhile in that classroom.

As a long-time primary school teacher, I've seen the little guys, four and five years old, get turned off education. That's when they lose their identity. It's not when they're in high school and in the mid-school range. They lose it in kindergarten, depending on the attitude that comes--not verbally, but through body language, through the fact that their culture is missing in the classroom, where everybody else's alphabet is up. The whole thing is “You're western”.

They have to walk into a building like I did today. This is a very intimidating place. It's not my comfort level. I'm not going to do my best in this building. But I know, as an adult, not to put myself in that position; children don't have that choice.

Á (1135)

Mr. Peter Goldring: No, I can appreciate that. I suppose what I'm rather fixating on here is the longer term. I appreciate that in the shorter term we have some catch-up and we have some remedial work to do. But in the long term, I think we have to analyze how we will be processing this and how we will be dealing with it in the longer term. That's what I'm trying to explore, whether the regular educational system wouldn't be the longer term.

The Chair: I'll let Mr. Mounsey make a comment, and after he's finished we'll go to questioners from the other side. You can get an opportunity in the second round.

Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: Thank you very much.

To try to expand upon what Karen is saying, I would tend to agree that, yes, in the long term the mainstream education system will work, but certainly we do need the cultural mix of our background, of our history, included in that to make it comfortable, make it relevant, and to help us carry on with our choice of employment opportunities in the long run.

But literacy starts for us certainly at three, four, and five years old. It has to be a combination of euro-colonialist education combined with our own culture to be successful, to allow mixing in both worlds. That's been my teaching.

The Chair: Thank you.

I'll now turn to Mr. Malhi.

Mr. Gurbax Malhi (Bramalea—Gore—Malton—Springdale, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just for information, how many different mother-tongue languages do aboriginal or native communities have?

Ms. Murdena Marshall: There are 53 distinctive first languages in Canada, not including Inuktitut.

Mr. Gurbax Malhi: Does the literacy rate vary among the different language communities? Which languages have a higher literacy rate among these 53?

Ms. Murdena Marshall: I'd like to say Mi'kmaw, because I am one, and everybody is ethnocentric. However, I must say, I think the Cree tribe is one of the more literate in their own language than are other tribes because of their vast number and their vast territory. They're spread out from northern Quebec to northern Saskatchewan, so they have a lot of space. Their level of literacy in their language is much higher than the literacy in my culture.

In terms of the formal education setting, I don't think I can say that one tribe surpasses another tribe. I think we are operating at a very good rate as compared with the atrocities we had to endure all during our years of learning.

I hope that answers your question.

Mr. Gurbax Malhi: What are your organizations doing to target the literacy problem among the adult population?

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: From our perspective, we're looking at parent participation. Over 50% of our adults are illiterate.

You spoke of the atrocities, where one generation through the residential school system lost that ability to communicate in their own language. Now they're afraid to be involved in the schooling of their children, because they don't know how.

From our perspective, at the Chief Dan George Centre, we want to incorporate parent participation with the youngsters so that it works both ways, so that we become comfortable teaching our children literacy. These can be simple things--how to read prescriptions, the health and safety issues with that, the issues around nutrition, being able to read what's on the back of a label. These are things that we take for granted.

We have a generation of adults who are missing that and aren't able to pass it on to their children. The Chief Dan George Centre is tackling that at the three-, four-, and five-year-old levels.

The Chair: Ms. McClain.

Á (1140)

Ms. Karen McClain: When we talk about the language barriers we have a tendency to look at the first nation language and English. But in my work with adult learners over the last 20 years--I work at a university level with adult learners in the summer--I found that they grew up speaking English. They came to us speaking English, we were teaching in English, but they were not understanding and comprehending what we were talking about. That's because of the translation from their language into English; there are huge gaps between what those two things mean.

We found out that we have to start, right from day one, tutoring them, doing the whole visual thing with them. The other thing we found with them was that there's a really high incidence of otitis media in the aboriginal population. For any of you who don't know what that is, it's an infection that can create hearing impairment.

So on top of the fact that they're trying to translate from their language, which is a verb-based language, into a noun-based language--and these don't match at all--they also couldn't hear the nuances and they couldn't hear the differences from one language to another. Putting something “above”, or “on top of“, or “at the top part” of a paper--that didn't compute when I was giving them simple instructions.

So I don't think we're just looking at a problem with first language and English. As Darrell says, we're looking at generations of people who have passed on a “language deficit”, as those people who come and test our children like to call it. And basically, it's just that in our language, one word expresses a lot, and in the English language, we try to do it in one word, and it doesn't work. So after a point we just don't do it.

The Chair: Ms. Marshall.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: Just to add to that, the thinking patterns of first nations learners are different from those of the dominant society. We think in a non-linear fashion, which means we don't go from a to b, or in columns, or in steps, or numbers. Our thinking pattern is in cycles. Everything we encounter in terms of writing or reading, but especially writing, comes in a circular fashion.

I found this out at the university level; this is where my actual revelation came. When the students' papers would come in, they were very well written, the English was perfect, but the format was not as expected for a university student. One of the things I noticed in my students' papers was that they sometimes started with the conclusion, then they'd justify the conclusion. That's not normal, and any professor would say, no, no, you have to have the introduction, you have to have the three-point body, and you have to have the conclusion.

Well, the Mi'kmaw students did it the opposite way. They started it with the conclusion, and they justified the conclusion. If you turned the paper upside down and started from the back, then it was okay.

So this was their thinking pattern, and that thinking pattern carries through their everyday learning process.

If you try to take that non-linear thinking and apply it to linear, it's just like trying to straighten a magnetic horseshoe--it's impossible to straighten out. So you have to adapt to their learning pattern.

The Chair: Ms. Wetzel.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: I just wanted to say that my community lost its Mi'kmaq language. My parents were speaking English, I was speaking English, and the little children in my school were speaking English.

However, to relate to what the others were saying, the kids would come to me and say, “Miss, we like our own teachers better”. Why? “'Cause.” 'Cause why? “'Cause they understand me better.”

Now, we had non-native teachers and we had band member teachers, both speaking English, but their reason was that the band member teachers understood them better; they were talking the same language, even though we had lost the first nations language.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Malhi.

Mr. Gurbax Malhi: Do you think that culture can play an important role in improving the literacy situation?

Á (1145)

Ms. Karen McClain: I think it's a huge component to that literacy issue. For one thing, if you take that literacy initiative into the community, then you understand that this learner is coming to you with a very collective, very community-minded picture. They know they're not there just for themselves. That's why we have such difficulties in terms of parents coming in and finding out that they can learn; that's a cultural thing. To all of a sudden find out that you can learn, that you're not the dumb person you thought just because you couldn't understand another person's language, or, as you said, the way it's written down on a piece of paper, that's cultural.

Culture is a living thing. These people are living in the same kinds of homes, with the same kinds of appliances, and on and on, that you have. Their culture is in here. It's the way they approach what they're doing. It's the way they understand that what they're learning is going to affect their entire community. It's like these hands that are always moving, holding people together.

They know that if they can learn to read, their child can learn to read, which means the generations down the road will learn to read. As soon as the light comes on, we hear, “Can I bring my daughter? Can I bring my son?”

To our way of thinking, we should be able to say, yes, by all means. But it's really difficult for a person of our culture...and ours is a very sharing culture, a very “I'm not better than you and you're not better than me” culture, and not an “I'm at the top and you're at the bottom” culture. We're walking side by side.

So for me to sit there at the door and say, I'm sorry, you can't come in, I didn't have enough money to hire another person.... I saw this huge need, but I had to write it on paper and send it to somebody in an ivory tower who has no way of understanding who I'm working with, and that is the person who has a learning disability but was told it was their capabilities, and not a mismatch with teaching, that caused it.

The Chair: Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: With regard to the cultural question, I think our people want to work within our peoples. Look at the four educators I'm sitting here with. They want to work within their own community. They want to teach their youngsters a better way, to give them opportunities for employment. I think by doing that, they have that innate passion to work with their own people. And working with our own people is part of our culture. We get excited about that. As you say, if it's within us, it makes it relevant for us.

The Chair: Ms. LaPierre, do you have anything to add?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Ditto.

The Chair: Okay.

Ms. Marshall.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: I think the type of thinking that we just talked about comes from the collectiveness we have. We have collective thought from the time we're born, or even way before we're born, and that collectiveness continues despite the media and all the new technology that happens. We still have collective thought when it comes to our tribe, our own children, our own ways, our own languages--everything that deals with us. You can drop everything and be collective, even for five minutes out of each day, and go back again to the normal world and be refreshed.

The Chair: Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Malhi.

I'll now turn to Monique Guay, who is representing the Bloc Québécois.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): A cheery good morning to all of you. I too will speak to you in my first language. Thank you for being here today. I think it is important that you also speak to us about what is going on in each of your communities.

As you were saying earlier, we may be far away from you, but we are nevertheless very much aware of the literacy problems everywhere, and especially in your area, because things are managed differently. The federal government has an even greater responsibility with regard to aboriginal persons, I believe. Thus, it is important that you let us know what is happening in your different communities.

Earlier, Ms. Marshall, you referred to the Crees who according to you are very advanced because they are a large community with a big territory, and also because they may have more independence. So, because they have bilateral agreements with Quebec, they have managed to develop according to their customs, their rules, their vision, and their language, more rapidly than some of the other communities. I know that there are several agreements which aim precisely to allow them to maintain this pride, rooted in their culture, their vision.

Ms. McClain, you referred to stagnating funding and you also mentioned that current literacy programs were only aimed at adults and that they could not be used for children.

I would like to hear your comments on one thing. If you could make two priority recommendations, what would they be? Would it not be preferable to have more flexibility among your communities and to set things up so that each community can set rules in order to be able to function, because I imagine that you are not all at the same level? There is a new school in Calgary. That does not mean that all of the other communities are at the same level of development.

So, should you be asking for more flexibility? There has to be accountability, but are the programs not too similar in any case? I would like to hear each of you on that. And if you had two priority recommendations to make, what would they be?

Á (1150)

[English]

Ms. Karen McClain: My first inclination would be to create a ministry of native education alongside a ministry of Ontario education in our province. It would be no less well-governed and it would contain no less-educated individuals. They would not dump Ontario native curriculum guidelines; they would teach the same content but in a different way, and maybe even in a different atmosphere.

The Chair: Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: Ditto.

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Chair: Ms. LaPierre.

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Well, I would certainly support that idea, but looking at it from our perspective, we are in a very large urban setting, and I would recommend continuing to support the large urban boards who do have a focus of aboriginal education already established.

Once again, it certainly would help with the funding so that we can provide the additional resources required and we can bring our children and our adult learners onto a level playing field.

The Chair: Ms. Marshall.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: I would recommend that the same formula that's used to enhance the French language be used for first nations languages as well. We're both different, and we both speak a different language, and we both need help. And we're greater in number.

The Chair: You can continue, Ms. Guay.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: I understand you completely, except that these are situations that are a bit different because French is very concentrated in Quebec, even though there is some in Ontario. Quebec has its own government, whereas aboriginal communities are spread out throughout Canada. Certainly, it is desirable that they govern themselves. In Quebec we are indeed working very hard to have them achieve that independence, but at the same time you have to have the infrastructure to do that, and these are things that are built over time; they must also be built in harmony with the provinces you live in. There are certain strategic aspects that must be considered in regard to the provinces you inhabit, and everyone must be able to work together.

What I find complicated for you, the aboriginal communities, is that you have to work with the federal government, which does indeed have a large responsibility where you are concerned involving literacy and education, while each province has its own rules. So you are forced to work with two levels of government, whereas for the provinces, it is different. We francophones work with the Department of Education in Quebec, period. So you have funding that comes from the federal government for education and literacy programs, and you have to manage that. Your situation is not easy, I acknowledge that.

There is one thing missing for us. The Library of Parliament did some research, and it appears we do not have many statistics on the outcomes of literacy programs in aboriginal nations. Are there any available? You may have some information which we do not have and which could help us to help you better; this could help us to see which programs are effective and which are not.

I have another question. After that, Madam Chair, you may give the floor to someone else. Do you work closely with provincial governments? Do the provinces provide you with programs to help you in your work?

Á (1155)

[English]

The Chair: Ms. McClain.

Ms. Karen McClain: The Ontario Native Literacy programs are under the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. That's where we're getting our funding. It's spread over 26 programs all throughout Ontario.

I just finished doing a report on how far and isolated those communities in fact are. And I don't know; there's been research done in terms of the cost of running a program, for example, somewhere in urban centres. There are two in Toronto, and ours in Peterborough...that's not in a native community.

Those programs are a little bit more...well, I wouldn't say easy to run, but the way the funding gets spent is easier than those that are isolated. You're talking about communities that have to depend on technology because that's a directive from MTCU, and they don't necessarily have speedy Internet access and all of those other things that we do in our program.

The report I was working on was about all 26 programs, and the information is beginning to come out for those programs. But again, your research gets done based on whether you win in a competition for projects through NLS or MTCU, and how they get disbursed is different again.

When you look at the origins of the literacy, and you think that the federal government is in fact providing education for aboriginal people, they're buying the provincial education. In a lot of cases their schools and communities are closed down and the kids are taken out to the provincial system.

So the literacy difficulties are not federal problems, basically. They've been created in a provincial curriculum and in a provincial system. It's kind of a funny combination. As you said, it's a really difficult parameter to work in, because it doesn't matter which way you turn, you're not going in the right direction somehow.

When you think of the ministry and how we're going to get it started, the impetus and the thought process and the vision to change it is going to come through education. That's how we went down the tube in the first place. We went down because of what we were socialized to believe. Now we have to be socialized to believe, hey, you know what? We can do this for ourselves. But we need the time and we need the place. We need to be able to teach our children and our communities.

You know, we're quite capable of self-government. We're very capable of teaching our children. But we need to socialize our communities, and it has to come through education, because that's where our weird thoughts came from in the first place.

So, yes, we need the help of both governments.

The Chair: Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: Thank you.

We talk about needing more money from the federal and provincial governments, from the private sector, through our own fundraising, through foundations. I guess the irony of it all that our good people are so busy preparing reports to justify the transfers of moneys--they're underneath a pile of reports this thick--they can't get out into the community and do what they're good at, teaching, teaching programs to our elders, to our youth, to our adults.

A typical band would probably have three or four or five CFAs, comprehensive funding agreements, in place to justify the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars transferred over. At the end of the week, then, all we've done is reports justifying how we got the money. We didn't do any programming to our communities.

I guess that's the frustration. If we could do one agreement, put all the departments into one agreement and have an audit process that is a little simpler than what is in place now, that would be my recommendation for our people. And perhaps you could support that.

Thank you.

Â (1200)

The Chair: Ms. Wetzel.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: As I said, I live in a small, isolated community on the south coast of the island portion of Newfoundland. We had a provincial school prior to becoming a band-controlled school, and the difference is like day and night.

Because we've been isolated and independent and so far away that nobody can watch what we're doing, we've done it our way. We've not accessed any literacy moneys from anywhere. We've found it within our own organization and we've done it for 16 years.

The first focus was to fix what the province did wrong, which would be the adults we've worked with over the last 16 years. They're the ones out there now who are trained as nurses and whatnot.

We're still doing the same thing, finding moneys within our organization, because education is a priority. We can do it. We know we can, because we've done it.

The Chair: Ms. LaPierre.

Ms. Irene La Pierre: The only connection we would have with the provincial government would be with the Department of Education, within Alberta learning. They're very aware of what we're doing here down in Calgary. They're very interested and they're watching to see how we do.

Again, we are a regular CBE school, with an alternative program of choice.

The Chair: Ms. Marshall.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: Most of our funding agreements are based on the fact that we have a curriculum that is at par with or better than the provincial curriculum in existence.

I have a little bit of a problem in Nova Scotia. There was a study done across the province, in provincial schools, and they failed. In counties like Inverness, for instance, they failed in science. In the County of Colchester, they failed in math. And they want us to follow this curriculum, which their own students are failing? It's quite hard to swallow. But you have to follow it. Otherwise, your funding will be exhausted, or your funding will be termed mismanagement, or your funding would be that you're not under the terms of the agreement.

So, no, this ship is sinking, and I want to get off it as soon as I possibly can.

The Chair: I've really expanded the timeframe here, but I think this is important.

Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: You'd asked about the data on first nations. We're the most studied group of people in the world, from birth to death. You can find statistics somewhere about us, I guarantee.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Bellemare.

[Translation]

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

[English]

Through federal-provincial jurisdictions, and especially with the sensitivities of some provinces, if not all, should the federal government concentrate exclusively on adult literacy programs? And if you say no, how can we do that without upsetting the provinces?

The Chair: Ms. Wetzel.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: I have nothing whatsoever to do with the province, so I can't upset them. Officially, in Newfoundland, Mi'kmaq don't exist, so I can't upset them.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: You're invisible.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: I'm invisible.

The Chair: Ms. LaPierre.

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Actually, I don't think it's fair to focus on one area as being more important than another. As my fellow presenter said earlier, we, as aboriginal people, take a balanced approach to all segments of life, whether it be youth, adults, elders, or young people. If you take that cyclical view, from the aboriginal perspective, then it would be fair to say that you can focus your efforts on all areas of our learners.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: My second question would be, should funding go directly to NGOs, non-governmental organizations such as Madam Wetzel's, through first nation groups, or should it go through the National Literacy Secretariat?

Â (1205)

Ms. Karen McClain: I think it would be more beneficial if.... For example, in Ontario we have the Ontario Native Literacy Coalition. That kind of tightens up the area somewhat, even though there are 26 organizations, but everything is being done to keep those programs in touch with another.

So in Ontario it would make more sense to put the funding into that organization. I think when you get national, you have a problem. If you can keep it in the different sections of the country, it would be more beneficial.

We're looking at less administration, more money to the grassroots, to the people who really need it, not the ones who already have it.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: I think it should go directly to services. In my area, the Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey serves the education needs of the population of Mi'kmaw in Nova Scotia, and they serve even those who do not belong to the organization, for one reason or another, but they are still available with networking and with curriculum or whatever help they can have.

They also have a holistic view, that just because you're in grade 4 it doesn't necessarily mean you can't get it because this is for one-year dropouts. You know, it's still a need, and the need is addressed first rather than statistics.

The Chair: So you're saying money, yes, but let us be flexible and put it to the best use.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: Let it be flexible, put it to the best use.

An organization such as the one I represent, or am speaking on behalf of, needs that flexibility in order to make their work visible, to make their work worthwhile, and to see the results.

The Chair: Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: Just to try to answer your question, I live in Vancouver, and we have a high rate of aboriginal people from right across the country. It's a beautiful place to live, as you're probably aware. So the urban organization I represent has a lot of people we're certainly trying to provide programs for. If it were given to a first nation directly, we wouldn't have access to those funding dollars and that core funding.

So my answer would be that we could split it, and certainly make it discretionary, both for on-reserve programs and the urban centres that have a high population of first nation people from across Canada.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: I was very interested in the family literacy programs you discussed earlier. If the federal government was providing funds directly to these groups, how could we monitor the accountability of it?

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: From my perspective in British Columbia, the school system is doing testing, relevant testing, on how the preschool programs are working. Headstart is on reserves, and we've introduced family literacy, we've introduced the HIPPY program in British Columbia. At grades 1, 3, 5 and 7, I believe, they actually test the children and see how they're doing in the system, and to see if the three-, four- and five-year-olds benefited from these programs I talked about.

So there are guidelines in place to test, to see if it's working.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: In my home community of Eskasoni, we have a training program, called the Unama'ki training program, which trains children or young adults, at-risk students, as an alternative for at-risk students. My daughter is the principal there, and she organizes a high school alternative program for at-risk children. She also runs an adult literacy program, where young adults who have been dropouts for a year or two years or ten years or whatever wish to continue their education process despite age or social standings.

She administers to these students, and she is very on top of report writing, because she has not only a director to answer to but also an organization such as the Department of Indian Affairs, where the funding comes from, that she must be liable to. So she keeps very strict protocols on how the money is spent, how many students, and the results, who graduates and who doesn't graduate. She has to in order for that funding to continue.

It's a very workable program. From that program we have had teachers, lawyers, nurses--people who would never have had the opportunity to move from the welfare syndrome they were in. Now there are people up there who are teaching, who are working for the government as lawyers, and there are students in nursing.

This TEC, as we call it for short, gave them that opportunity, gave them that first step, opened the door for them to continue their education by offering them a literacy program.

Â (1210)

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: In terms of those who deliver programs, who does that? Is it provided by the provinces or do you just seek out people who can train, or do they go and study in other provinces or anywhere they can?

Ms. Murdena Marshall: No, no, they look for the best teachers to teach those who wish to remain in the community. As soon as they reach a level of university acquisition they'll go to university, whichever university they choose. But before they can come up with the high school equivalency diploma, they must be taught by qualified teachers. And they look for the best teachers for this community.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Of course universities and colleges provide the education for training people, but it costs money to go to a college, to a university. Who pays for that? Is it the individual, or are you provided funds through the provinces or the federal government?

Ms. Murdena Marshall: Through the federal government. We receive block funding from the federal government to administer education needs from kindergarten to university.

Of course, not everybody has the opportunity to be funded, because there is always limited funding. Our funding level for university has not risen in 12 years, it has remained the same, although the university intake has doubled. They have to work with the few dollars they are given. They pay for the tuition and they give students some living allowance. In some cases only the tuition is paid, and the kid hitchhikes to school or whatever they do to maintain a standard of living. And some of them are really bad off.

At any rate, this block funding we receive is from the federal government. It could all be spent on elementary if we wanted, or we could spend it all at the high school level, but we have chosen to spread it across the board, from kindergarten to university and post-secondary.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: That's in your area, but what about--

The Chair: Two others want to say something, Ms. LaPierre and then Mr. Mounsey.

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Actually, that's what I was going to point out, that every situation is unique, as in every nation. For example, the Métis people don't always have the same access to funding as perhaps the first nations people who are with treaty.

So I just wanted to clarify that. Every situation, every community, and every area of Canada is different in regard to funding and education.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: The registrar of post-secondary education for the Department of Indian Affairs, back in 1991, put a cap on post-secondary funding at that point. What they decided to do at that point was transfer the funds in post-secondary to each first nation, over 600 first nations in Canada, and let them dole out the money.

Most first nations adopted the Indian Affairs approach to how to budget that money. I think it was $1,000 for tuition for university, and $500 for college, and then up to $500 for books and supplies, and the living allowance of approximately $600 a month for a single individual without dependants.

So most first nations adopted that, but again, as my colleague Ms. Marshall talked about, the increase in demand for post-secondary is going through the roof. Our chiefs and councils are expected to keep up with that, but they can't do it. There are not funds there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but $100 million was recently set aside for post-secondary. As well, I think $12 million went to John Kim Bell and the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, but it's still not meeting, I suppose, the need to fully subsidize a post-secondary education. I know I, and probably most of us, had to take part-time jobs, as probably the colleagues on the other side of the table had to take part-time jobs, to go to school, with student loans. Most of our people can't get a student loan, because we do have income from our first nation, if we declare that.

I hope that answers your question.

Â (1215)

The Chair: Mr. Bellemare, you are at 12 minutes, but there will probably be time after Mr. Goldring's questions.

Mr. Goldring.

Mr. Peter Goldring: Thank you.

I'll pose this question in general. As I expressed a little earlier, one of the problems is how to deliver it, speaking specifically of literacy funding here, not of the overall global requirements of the educational system. Would an effective way to deliver it be by having a provincial authority organizing, I suppose, the various groups, associations, and organizations, your organizations too, on a provincial basis so that all would form a committee to decide how the literacy funding would be distributed, split up, and shared appropriately? Would a provincial organization better meet the requirements across this country, province by province?

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: In British Columbia we've taken that step. We have two major parties, the First Nations Summit, which is an AFN arm, and we also have the UBCIC, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, which is another arm of our government. We have met, and we do have the first nations education steering committee--

Mr. Peter Goldring: I'm talking about all the provincial NGOs, government organizations, educators--all of them together, not just the aboriginals.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: To me, the level of bureaucracy that would create, the number of layers that would create, would then begin to stifle the process of trying to get back to programming for our people, and getting the grassroots involved. You would spend so much time in meetings, in phone calls, conference calls, writing reports....

I just think it would be a little overwhelming to have all those people pile into one room and try to govern at that level. We have 196 bands in British Columbia.

Mr. Peter Goldring: But to be sure that all of the organizations receive what they need in order to be able to accomplish what their overall goals are--whether it's adults, whether it's workplace, whether it's preschool, whether it's aboriginal, or whether it's the conventional educational system or whatever the conventional requirements are--this would look at it from a global aspect on a provincial level, and have a provincial authority do the administering, or at least the oversight on it.

Ms. Karen McClain: If you look at the Ontario Native Literacy Coalition, it's under the umbrella of MTCU, and my understanding is that MTCU gets money from the national level for literacy, and then they dole it out or they do whatever.

As I said, in the recent report I wrote, I made a hierarchy protocol thing, and discovered that the people who are actually administering “the programs”...is one person. And that person is answerable to 26 programs, who each have a one-person office, but has to work with a host organization, which may be the chief and council, a board of directors, or.... I forget what the third one was. So there's that whole area.

Then you go up and there are six or seven MTCU consultants that these program directors have to communicate with to get their needs met and to get their needs understood. Those six MTCU consultants are out evaluating programs, but there's wads of information that the programs are not getting even though they're in constant contact with these consultants from MTCU. And there are two sets of consultants. There are six over here for delivery, there's another one over there for development and training.

These poor little programs are trying to work with their ten learners who are coming in with their social problems, their FAS, or whatever the case may be, and they have somebody on the phone saying, you know, you haven't sent in your report with your stats from the last month. You have to send that person home so you can work on this crazy piece of technology that doesn't work half the time and tell those consultants and the MTCU that you're going to be down in your contact hours?

Mr. Peter Goldring: Well, I suppose this is one of the complications and problems of an overall provincial educational system. They have all of these things to work with and deal with from one end of a large province, like Quebec, to the other end of the province. So to say that just because it's a large organization it would be unwieldy might be overly simplifying it.

Would it not be still relative to the delivery, the fair delivery, of literacy programs and literacy to do it from a provincial organization?

Â (1220)

Ms. Karen McClain: I think your comment just now proves the point. We've been trying to explain to the consultants for 15 years what's needed at the grassroots. It's being filtered and it's not going to where we want it to go, because the people who we first talk to either don't understand or choose not to understand what we're trying to say in terms of that bureaucracy.

We didn't come into literacy to work with bureaucrats. We came in there to help our people improve their literacy skills. But now we're all tangled up in this paperwork and reporting mechanism, and all the rest of the things that go with it. And that's just one province.

Mr. Peter Goldring: But as Mr. Bellemare said as well, the educational system being provincial under the Constitution, and being the normal route of education for the provinces, the provinces are handling that portion of it.

Even with Ms. LaPierre, her school is basically under the Alberta educational system. I would just think that most of your delivery, certainly to your school-age children and school-age people, would be best through the established structure, and be encouraged.

Ms. LaPierre, what's your feeling on that?

Ms. Irene La Pierre: I understand the frustration of not delivering the programs you're aiming to deliver. If we can make it less convoluted, the better for the people who are on the receiving end of the program.

I agree about the dollars going down to the provincial level, but even maybe more so to a regional level, because every area is unique and the needs of the community will vary. It cannot be a global solution and a pan-Indian problem. It has to look at the grassroots and what's unique to the community.

The reason our school is fortunate is that we are under a large umbrella school. But there again, because we are a part of an institution, our access to funding is very limited. To do the work we are required to do, we need to go outside that umbrella so that we can get access to funding and we can deliver the literacy and the family portion of our programs.

So there are some pluses and there are drawbacks as well to being under a large urban education system.

The Chair: Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: I guess the issue or the frustration we run into is that because we're Indians, we're federally regulated. For us to try to transfer money to the province, to try to give back to the Indians, makes it very--

Mr. Peter Goldring: But Ms. LaPierre's school is under the province, and it is an aboriginal-based cultural school. So you are doing it, in effect.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: It is happening, absolutely. I wouldn't argue with Ms. LaPierre.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Peter Goldring: Absolutely.

I guess that's my overall question. I sense there's an encouragement to have the funding disbursed nation to nation, when here we have the example of Ms. LaPierre, who is operating a wonderful school within the existing structural system of the provincial school system.

The question is, why can't we do more of that?

The Chair: Ms. LaPierre is going to respond directly. Then we're going to have Ms. Marshall and then Ms. McClain. They we're going to go to Madam Guay.

Ms. LaPierre.

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Once again, it is and it isn't working under the large umbrella. To a certain extent, our hands are tied in terms of doing the programming we would like to do.

In response to that, yes, it's important to do the work within a progressive organization such as the Calgary Board of Education. Not all boards are that progressive, and neither do they want to look at the alternative programs. It just so happens that right now our board is doing program renewal in all areas, and not just in aboriginal education.

So there again, it's not a global solution for everyone. We just happen to be doing that work here in Calgary.

Â (1225)

The Chair: Ms. Marshall.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: I think it's quite unfair to keep using Ms. LaPierre as an example. Unfortunately, there are no statistics to prove the success yet of her school. It's in operation. But we must give her an opportunity to produce before we hang her up on a scaffold. She needs time to prove herself.

In two or three years' time, perhaps I shall follow her model, and I'll convince my organization to go provincial, or maybe I won't.

The Chair: Ms. McClain.

Ms. Karen McClain: If you want your statistics and you want some proof on paper, I think one of the things that needs to happen is that the dollars for research need to be turned over to aboriginal people, number one, as opposed to the higher institutions of learning, that being the universities. We're having trouble getting enough of our people into the universities so that they can access the research money to prove what you want to know about our elementary system.

In terms of our history, 500 years of ill-fitted education has created a whole world of traditional distrust and distaste for education. We have to get over that. You need to give us that time. I mean, 500 years of “We know better what's best for you” has created generations, a whole world, of really passive people. They're sitting back, waiting for us to wave the magic wand and say, poof, you're fixed. Well, some of us know that's not going to happen.

So 500 years of dependence has created generations of people who expect the “expert”, and most of us don't want to be the expert. We want to be the kiinomaagun. We want to be beside that person, helping them. We don't want to be the expert saying, I'm going to wave my magic wand now.

Unfortunately, it's created a whole level of bureaucracy of our own people that we're talking about trying to get past in a lot of situations. So in the process of getting your figures...and I know what she's talking about when she talks about that school. I started one. I began one. I had a fantastic time. I walked into a situation where the school was being operated by the provincial system, the board right next door to the reserve. The system was paid in chunks, and put into that community.

When they hired me, it was because their agreement had come to an end. When I walked in we took snow shovels and shovelled the crap out. There were no books and no desks in the building, and yet these kids left grade 3 and went to the next grade 4 level in the system that was teaching them.

Now, figure that one out. It was really rude and really awful.

Our mandate, again, was to follow the provincial guideline. The kids had to follow that, but to do it our way. At the end of a five-year period--and again, we're talking time, and we need the proof in our eyes, not your eyes--our students went into that system at grade 4. Then, of course, we didn't do any of this crazy provincial testing, because having an 8-year-old sit there for three hours and write something when they don't know what they're doing anyway was kind of a waste of effort. So we wouldn't do it. That was our prerogative. We were in our territory.

When they went to the other system and were tested, they were telling me that those grade 4 students were testing at a grade 6 level in communication and writing skills, and they were testing at a grade 7 in reading, and they were testing at a grade 5 in math. We did nothing but teach kindergarten to grade 3, but we dealt with their identity and how they felt. We gave them a vision of what their career was going to be and whether or not they were going to college or university when they finished school. They were led to believe that there were this many rungs on the ladder--not just grade 8, not just grade 12, but five more after that. And it worked.

We know it was good for our children; they did great all over the place. They're doing great things. But to go to every reserve and say, okay, give me how many numbers got to grade 5 and how many numbers in your community got an 80%, 90% or whatever, in our eyes is a waste of time. I know we have to jump the hoops to get the money, but give us the dollars to do the research and we will prove it to you. But you're not going to get PhDs and people with master's degrees among our people who are going to be able to get you the real research; we need it for us.

Â (1230)

The Chair: Thank you.

Madam Guay.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: Thank you, Madam Chair.

It is unfortunate that we don't have someone here from Quebec, because it would be interesting to draw comparisons between the situation of the Cree, who have their own schools and are very advanced in this area, and other groups. It would have been very interesting to be able to draw comparisons.

Mr. Mounsey, because you are in Vancouver, I would like to hear a comparison between literacy on reserves and off reserves. Are the programs different? Are you able to reach people who live off reserve as well as those who live on reserves?

[English]

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: There are studies with regard to literacy both on and off reserve. They're a little outdated. Actually, the Chief Dan George Centre has been given a contract to do those exact studies that we're talking about. Right now we can probably only do them on reserve. That's where we'd have our mandate. With the provincial schools, we wouldn't have the mandate to do that from the provincial side. But we've been given the federal mandate, from the first nations side, to do the testing and find out how they relate.

I guess the further you get away from an urban centre, such as Vancouver or Victoria, I think it's natural that, sadly, both on and off reserve, the testing and results will drop. Perhaps I can get support for that. I think we talked earlier about the languages that are still strong. You'll find the languages that are still strong--Ojibway or Dene--are further away from the urban centres. Geographically, the Crees are large, but still they're very close to urban centres and they're probably not as well spoken as perhaps a Dene and Ojibway that are a little further away.

I hope I've answered your question.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: Madam McClain, earlier, you gave a very eloquent example to illustrate the situation in Ontario. You referred to an Aboriginal people and you seemed to want to give them back their pride and hope to be able to have careers and more interesting jobs. That is to some extent also our history in Quebec as well; we went through a similar development. Because we were different, we had to work harder to make it. I encourage you to continue and I hope that we will be able to find a solution to provide concrete assistance to you because it does not make any sense at all that there are 26 different programs and that you are obliged to make and list reports. You have to have people who work full time on that and during that time this prevents you from working in the field. Consequently means have to be found to help you concretely to work in the field and make things move forward more rapidly.

I don't know if this is feasible but I was wondering why the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development could not manage this file. Why are you being forced to run from one department to another? Could things not be concentrated in one place so that you have less representation to do, as you said, in the ivory tower? It is not an ivory tower, but the fact remains that you are wasting an enormous amount of time. I don't know if you can respond. Would it be interesting for you to be able to address yourselves to one place rather than having to run this way and that, in different departments, to meet federal criteria?

[English]

Ms. Karen McClain: That would sound effective to me. Just recently we put in a request after...and we've been researching it now since 2000, with our practitioners in our programs. We've come up with a process of training and supporting our practitioners so that they can spend more contact time with their learners. We started to put in a proposal for what we call a field development worker. They're going to have to be a miracle worker, mind you, but it was a start in the right direction; it was to strengthen the practitioners.

We just were told, no, don't even send in the proposal. So there went three years' worth of work of talking to the practitioners and interviewing them. We were told to go away. We keep saying it and nothing is happening.

We got really close this time, right to writing the proposal for the position, and then we got told no.

Â (1235)

The Chair: Ms. Marshall, I see you nodding your head. I'm sure you have something to add.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: We write proposals too, and we send them on to the Department of Indian Affairs hoping to get some results. The only thing we ever get are communiqués telling us that there are funds available at the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Somehow we are bunched in there, and we are again bunched under learning disabilities, immigrants, refugees, and inmates. I don't see aboriginal in there, but somehow I got in through the parameters, and here I am. And someone is telling me, go back to Indian Affairs, when Indian Affairs sent me here! I'm running back and forth like a ping-pong ball.

After a while, when you grow as old as I am, you run out of patience. Before long you go into Mi'kmaw and you tell them, “Abatkimlek, siwiay, elkimulek; siwiay.” Your mind just goes blank. You get frustrated and angry and you say, “I'm not going until I get a few bucks off of you.”

The Chair: Well, Ms. Marshall, I for one am very happy that you found us. We're taking what you have to say very seriously.

Ms. McClain.

Ms. Karen McClain: In response to Ms. Marshall's comment about the ping-pong effect, being sent here and there and everywhere, I actually got prepared for this session by watching that CPAC thing on TV in the morning. I was listening to that fellow from StatsCan, and you should have seen me doing a little old war dance in my living room when I found out we'd been lumped in with inmates in institutions, and immigrants. We didn't get to be counted because we were only 1.5% of the population.

Well, I choose to differ. We're 3%, without the inmates--and that's another whole 1% of us.

The Chair: Any more?

Mr. Bellemare.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: [Inaudible—Editor]...the program that you watched.

The Chair: It brought her here, so....

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Oh, my God, he was something else.

Ms. Karen McClain: And it shows me what people are thinking about us.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Well, him. And you probably heard what I said to him.

I'll come back to provincial jurisdiction. We talk about regular streams, enrichment programs, special education. Some of them don't do a very good job in special education, especially in Ontario. Of course, they also talk about a second-chance school, as long as they address their people, those up to the age of 21, at least in the province of Ontario. I don't know what it's like in the other provinces, because I was an administrator in the school system in Ontario. So as to what happens elsewhere, I had my plate full with Ontario.

Really, our study is adult literacy in the workplace, and we're getting away from that. But it is interesting to explore what's happening, in getting away from this focus.

To my mind, literacy addresses adult literacy, family programs, and life skills. You hardly touched on the life skills programs, but I think they're all part of the literacy programs. It's a bottom rung. You first have to go through life skills programs before you do basic education. Otherwise, you can't even take the bus to get to the darn place where you're going to learn basic education if you have no life skills or if you're in need of life skills.

So we're trying to focus on adult literacy in the workplace. We need to learn in order to be able to valorize ourselves, and to be able to valorize ourselves, we need funds. To get funds, we need to work, or to have someone give us money so that we can do things that valorize ourselves on our own--become a painter or a singer, even a volunteer singer, a volunteer painter.

If we stick to that focus, just for a minute, just that--adult literacy in the workplace--how does that parameter affect all of your programs?

Â (1240)

Ms. Karen McClain: The learners who are coming to us are 40 and 50 years old. So when you're training them to get into the workforce, you have to do it really quickly or they won't get into it. That's number one.

The second thing is that those people who we're going to get into the workforce, that age group, they're not ready to come into the literacy programs. They have problems of their own due to their history. They're being sent to us through Ontario Works, or social services, and most of the time we can hang on to them. They have a nasty habit of thinking that they're all ripping off the system, and they have to come to literacy programs in order to keep their assistance. Well, that's not a good preliminary to learning.

For the adult literacy component, you're talking about people 40 years old who you have to back up to grade 2, and the parameters are telling us you only have so long to do this. And our adult learners who are coming in now, after all this time, they've worked. They've been working all along, but it's all work that lasts for six months, or so many weeks, or whatever, or they're having babies, and all these things that kick in.

There are some very weird rules in there about when they don't show up after so many weeks, you're supposed to do this weird stuff like “exit” them, and do some strange little statistical things with them. We know why they're not there. We know that they've fallen apart because they've all of a sudden realized, “Oh, my goodness, I'm in grade 2, and I'm 42 years old.” It's a real downer. You have to work through that.

So what I'm saying is, when it comes to adult literacy, if we could get that picture out of there that we're doing adult literacy...and take the workforce mandate out of it, we would get them into the workforce faster.

In a lot of cases, our adult learners are afraid to get good enough that they have to be sent to another institution that's not going to understand them like we do. So they'll get so far and they'll stop.

When you have to back them up that many years, and the mandate says that shouldn't be, that you can't go and mess up with their heads or their psychology by giving them baby work, or work that looks like it's child's work, or whatever, well, I'm sorry; if the chunk that's missing is very early primary, then that's what needs to be done.

We're trying to do this in terms of cultural awareness and ways that you can teach them their phonetics, their grammar, their structures, and their money problems, or whatever.... I mean, they know that, but in terms of their community, what's going to happen, that takes time and money.

When you're talking about adult literacy in the workforce for aboriginal people, how many opportunities for employment are in fact in that community for them, at that age? It's not that they don't want to work. They want to work. But we have to be able to be a little bit more tuned in to where they're going to go and what's available to them.

The Chair: Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: In Vancouver we have a high demand for first nations employees. There's no shortage of opportunity. But the Chief Dan George Centre was established to take care of that gap that you're talking about, of the people who don't feel comfortable. They want to work, but they just don't have the confidence that they're going to succeed. For one thing, literacy is a huge issue.

So for us, tourism is a natural. We've just signed an agreement with the 2010 Olympic Bid Corporation to start training our people in something they feel comfortable with, tourism, and tourism of the aboriginal culture, again from our perspective, not perhaps from the Hollywood or commercialized perspective.

So we're taking it upon ourselves to start at the ground level and start to teach literacy, build the confidence, put them in an accredited diploma program that has aboriginal tourism as written by aboriginal people. That will create the confidence.

We all carry our culture with us, and our own self-esteem and confidence about our being, about our first nations background and traditions, but we don't have, as we talked about earlier, the European side of it, the academic understanding and the ability to communicate in a different language, in the English language.

We recognize that the opportunity is there for the Chief Dan George Centre to take those urban folks and start building their confidence and their academic levels into something that they're going to feel comfortable with, that they have a passion for, their own culture, and they mix that with the tourism in Vancouver.

Â (1245)

The Chair: Ms. Wetzel.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: As I said, our whole focus for literacy in my community when we started was that we had positions to be filled, and we wanted to fill them with our own people. So our focus was the workplace.

One of the things we found, and are still experiencing, is that we have to take our people where we find them. If that means a 35-year-old woman comes this year for six months, but then her baby gets sick, or her husband gets sick, she has to have the flexibility to stop for awhile and then come back again.

We also found, and I've mentioned this before, that sometimes it's first recognizing the value of the person before that person can even start thinking about being educated. I'll give you an example.

I hired a young man--and I'll call him “young” because he's 45 years old--as my school maintenance person 15 years ago. When he came to me, he wouldn't even come around the staff room door to say hello to the people who were in there. Last year, he signed up for adult literacy. After 15 years he signed up. When I went in a couple of days ago--he still hasn't reached his high school level--I found that he'd quit.

“What happened?” I asked him. “Why did you quit?” He told me, “I just can't do it.” I found out he was trying to do three courses--communications, science, and math--and it was too much; he couldn't do it.

I saw him again the other day, and he told me he's back at school. He took three or four weeks off, thought about it, and talked to people about it. He's only doing math this time, and we're allowing him to do that.

A few days later, there he was on one of the computers in the computer room. And this is a man who wouldn't even come into the room and say hello. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, “Oh, I'm checking the weather. I do that every morning now.” Just the look of pride on his face...and I was going, “Jervaise is back, and he's on the computer!”

These are little things, but we have to allow people to do these things. It can't be all statistics--you have to finish here, and you have to finish now. We've been fortunate that we've been funding ourselves and we can do that, but you can't say to someone, you have to finish in this length of time. They may stop for a full year. Again, they have to have self-esteem first. We have to recognize that if they have talents to work, then work, and later we'll work on the other things. He can read the labels on his cleaning fluids now, and he couldn't do that when he came to us.

The Chair: Okay, thank you.

Ms. Marshall.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: I also feel that getting educated is not solely for the purpose of finding a job. I think sometimes getting educated is also having a good sense of a good quality of life. You're able to read labels, you're able to read the weather, you're able to pick up a normal newspaper and find out what's happening in the world--although at the moment that's not very pleasant. These are the things that people who can read take for granted.

Take a person who cannot read and what it would mean to them if all those words came in as pictures, if the entire newspaper was in picture form. But we don't have the technology, we don't have the means, we don't have the time, and the expense would be exorbitant if we had to do that.

When you teach someone how to read, you have opened a door for them that was closed from the time they were born. I mean, even way before they were born, that door was closed. The door to literacy, the door to knowledge, the door to information--those doors were all closed.

It does not mean that person will find a high-paying job at the end of the literacy program, but it does mean that person will have a reason to get up in the morning. Sometimes it's far more important to get up feeling good about yourself, welcoming a new day, and thanking God for being alive, than to go to a job that you hate.

The spiritual well-being of a person, in my world, is far more important than their physical well-being. We have to teach our students, our people, that they must function, not only in two worlds but sometimes in three--their tribal world, their workplace world, and their spiritual world.

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The Chair: I'm going to go to Mr. Simard, who rushed back from another meeting to get here. Mr. Simard is extremely interested in this whole area, and I want to give him the opportunity to pose some questions.

Mr. Simard.

Mr. Raymond Simard (Saint Boniface, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm sorry I missed the last part. I was here for the presentations, but I had something else that was inevitable. I am very interested in this topic.

I have three questions. They may have been answered already, and if they have, just tell me and we'll bypass it and I'll read the record.

A lot of the presenters in the past have talked about a pan-Canadian strategy, but the more people we meet here, the more we find there are local challenges, local differences, local needs. This pan-Canadian strategy may work in terms of an umbrella type of thing, but it seems to me that, once again, the aboriginal community has even different challenges, and different needs. It seems that is what I've been hearing here.

Someone, I think Ms. McClain, said that native literacy must be different. It must reflect aboriginal values and culture. And I couldn't agree with that more.

My question is, do you see one aboriginal strategy? We have on-reserve communities and off-reserve. They all have different components, if you will. I'm just curious to see if you think there could be one aboriginal strategy that could apply across Canada in terms of literacy.

Ms. Karen McClain: I believe there is, but it's your understanding of what is aboriginal that's going to make the difference. The feeling or the spirit of the organization, of the program, is going to be the same, but the way in which it manifests itself in the different areas throughout Canada will be different. The whole purpose and the whole feeling and spirit in that movement for all aboriginal people is the same. It's how they make it work and how they manifest it. That's all that's different.

So what you see, on the outside, is different, but in here it's exactly the same.

Mr. Raymond Simard: Okay.

Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: Our Canadian population can't agree on one party, so for first nations to agree on one strategy would be a little difficult, although not necessarily impossible. I think it would probably streamline a lot of things, but again, if you start looking across the country, up north they don't do things the same way. English is not their first language. So for them to interpret it their way, again, that strategy takes a little crook in the road there.

Mr. Raymond Simard: As we found when we interviewed people from the Northwest Territories, for instance, all their communities are at a considerable distance. They have different challenges there already.

My second question is specifically for you, Mr. Mounsey. I'm just curious, is the Chief Dan George Centre physically on the Simon Fraser campus? If so, what is the relationship like? What kind of services do they provide you, or is there a direct link, in terms of literacy?

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: Yes, we're fortunate right now in that we're housed in the Harbour Centre SFU campus, which is right downtown. They've assisted us in securing a 10,000-square-foot building downtown on Hornby Street, but physically we are located on their site now, and we use their facilities. They've given us a very good deal on rental of classroom space. They're working with us on registration, making sure that we register our students properly for accounting purposes. They give us telephones and computer access. So we've signed a very good agreement with Simon Fraser University.

Mr. Raymond Simard: How about training? Do they train some of the people you used to teach?

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: We're working together on curriculum development and making sure we have the SFU academic integrity in our courses for credits. We also have the cultural component from our first nations professionals, elders, and other professional aboriginal educators combining to write that curriculum.

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Mr. Raymond Simard: I got the impression that you don't only deal with adult students. Is that correct? Or do you deal with youth as well?

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: We're training the trainers. We're training people to go into communities to look after that. They call it the HIPPY, or home instruction through parent participation for youngsters.

Mr. Raymond Simard: Excellent.

Finally, in of all the presentations I don't think I heard anybody say they've followed up after. I think Ms. McClain said they have a program where they provide an information and referral training plan, and the training then is a follow-up.

Again, one of the things we have a challenge with is, how do you measure success in this field? For some persons, success might be, as this lady was saying, self-fulfillment, if you will, and self-confidence, whereas another person's success may be that he or she has moved on to university or something.

I'm just wondering, in your community, how do you measure success? As far as you're concerned, what is a success story?

The Chair: When you answer that, at the same time you might want to include a wrap-up if there's something you want to include.

I'm going to just be arbitrary here and start with Ms. LaPierre.

Ms. Irene La Pierre: Thank you.

First of all, just to answer the last question, I think programs need to be locally developed with regard to the different strategies. Yes, it could be one strategy, but every nation's needs and every community's needs are unique. I think it's very important to take that into account.

As well, it's very difficult to separate pieces of literacy at different levels. You talk about aboriginal literacy in the workplace. In order to get our people literate, we need to start with them even before they get to school. So it's all interconnected, and I think it's important to realize that. The more people who become literate, the more literate people you will have in the workplace ultimately.

So, yes, we can focus on adult learners, and we can focus on preschool, and we can focus on youth and our elders, but you can't just pick little pieces and work that way. I think it's very important to take a holistic approach to any strategy that's part of a recommendation.

I'm not sure whether I answered your question, but that was part and parcel of my wrap-up, I guess you can call it.

The Chair: Ms. McClain.

Ms. Karen McClain: In terms of the follow-up, if you know anything about an aboriginal community, you know that we survive on the moccasin telegraph. We survive on that whole issue of family community; we're all related. There isn't one person in my community who can move sideways, backwards, upside down or whatever without our knowing about it in one way, shape, or form. What we want is to be able to put that more positively than it is right now. It's our duty and our responsibility to know what people in our community are doing.

So in terms of follow-up, I know that person is out there having a baby. I know that person has a position of some description in a school as a result of gaining confidence through the literacy program. We have students who are gone for a year, a year and a half. We don't know where they went, but we know we've been a success when they show up back at our door after two years and say, okay, I'm ready for the next step.

That's basically the kind of follow-up we can do. So it would have to be in anecdotal form for that to happen.

The other way that we know we've been a success with our learners is that they have enough social literacy to be able to advocate for themselves with different programs that they have to work with. And we have them aware now that a lot of their difficulties are not due to their capabilities. A lot of their difficulties are due to political things that went on in their past.

On the concept of success, I think I could go around and around in circles for hours and hours on end. But I know that in the master's degree program--I'm now at OISE--there are three PhD candidates, all aboriginal, and they were ever so impressed to have an aboriginal instructor. They came back for extra courses just because that was their one and only experience with an aboriginal instructor.

So when those students come into the aboriginal literacy programs, that's what's keeping them coming, and they're learning stuff out of that.

The current literacy guidelines only allow us to prepare for further education or work. We're wanting to prepare them for life. That's native literacy, preparing them for that life, with life skills. The ministry really doesn't like us to get involved in that emotional, spiritual stuff. It's not considered good contact hours. We have to wait until we're doing the math and the communication to be able to count it.

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The Chair: Mr. Mounsey.

Mr. Darrell Mounsey: I will be shameless and say that we need core funding for the Chief Dan George Centre. If you could help me with that, I'd be so appreciative. Thank you for your time.

How do you measure success, sir? By a healthy community. If our community is healthy for our children, that's how I measure success.

The Chair: Good.

Ms. Wetzel.

Ms. Edwina Wetzel: He stole my answer.

I live in a community of 700 people. I've been a teacher, a principal, a director of education there for the last 42 years. I know everybody, as she said. I know when they move sideways, upside down, crossways, when they go to bed, when they get up, who their boyfriend is, who their girlfriend is--you name it. I know what they want when they come through my door for adult literacy, and I know when they've achieved it.

I was going to tell one other little story. I had this old guy come in when we started. He was 62 or 63 years old. He came into adult literacy. His goal was, “I want to learn how to write my name.” He learned how to write his name and he left. So he achieved something.

The Chair: Ms. Marshall.

Ms. Murdena Marshall: How do you measure success? As a teacher, as a professor, if I were doing an academic appraisal I would read the paper and score them on their English and their format. But as a community member, looking at my peers and at my old people and my mentors, I measure success in a different fashion. I measure success when someone has risen and come back to the community alive. When they have gained enough self-confidence to be able to participate in all activities--volunteer activities, fund-raising activities, activities that require a community to be healthy--and they have become part of it, I call that success. I call that an accomplishment. I call that a triumph for the person themselves and for us on the receiving end.

I thank you for inviting me--and I also need money for my organization, the Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey.

The Chair: There are people banging down the door trying to get in, because the room has been reserved for 1 o'clock, but I first want to thank each and every one of you who have been here.

I have to tell you, every time I have a presenter I'm sort of wowed, and I think I'm not going to hear anything better . But every time someone comes in, I hear yet another unbelievably heartfelt and informative presentation.

So on behalf of the members of the committee, I want to thank each and every one of you, not only for the time you've taken to come to visit us but also for the outstanding work that I know you are doing in your own communities.

As chair of the committee, I know that each and every member of the committee is going to try to be able to provide you the tools to do the jobs that you are dedicated to doing. Again, I thank you all.

Meeting adjourned.