In addition to the $125 million provided under the settlement agreement, the Government of Canada endowed the Aboriginal Healing Foundation with $350 million in 1998 and a further $40 million in 2005, for a total of $515 million. The last endowment of $125 million was for a five-year period, to 2012, as described in the healing foundation's corporate plan, released in December 2009. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation is currently implementing the wind-down strategy described in that plan.
The Government of Canada commends the Aboriginal Healing Foundation for the work it has done over the last 12 years; however, the foundation's annual report and corporate plan make it clear that it was not intended to be a permanent organization.
It is also important to note that budget 2010 funds for Health Canada have not been reallocated from funds that were previously intended for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Budget 2010 committed $66 million in additional resources to the resolution health support program over fiscal years 2010-11 and 2011-12. The additional funding is to meet the demand for program services resulting from the increased volume of independent assessment process applications and hearings, and for upcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission events.
Budget 2010 also committed additional resources of $133 million to INAC. So far, our original projections remain valid with respect to the number of CEP applications received and paid out. To date, $1.5 billion has been paid out.
However, when the agreement was reviewed by the courts in 2006, they added an intermediate step in the appeal process, called “reconsideration”. This is a review, performed by INAC, of the initial research, including any new information provided by the applicant. Approximately 24,500 requests for reconsideration have been received, of which over 95% have been processed.
The reconsideration process was not originally forecast and added to the cost of processing common experience payment applications, especially since more detailed research is required. Originally, the projection established in 2006 for the total number of claims to be submitted under the independent assessment process was 12,500; as of March 31, over 15,000 claims had been received, so the forecast for the remainder of the agreement until September 2012 has been revised upward to 21,000.
Another key component of the settlement agreement is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission will hold the first of its seven mandated national events this June at The Forks in Winnipeg. The Government of Canada is committed to accompanying former students and their families at this event. The federal government will participate fully in this and future events and will ensure that emotional and health support services are provided through Health Canada's resolution health support program.
In addition, we will continue to work with the commission on the $20-million commemoration program that is part of the settlement agreement.
At this point, I'll turn the microphone over to my colleague from Heath Canada, who will provide you with more details on the resolution health support program.
Thank you.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the invitation to appear before you and for the opportunity to respond to any questions the committee may have.
[Translation]
In follow-up to my colleague's presentation, I will describe Health Canada's Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program to you and the steps we have taken to support former Indian Residential School students and their families, including current action to reach out to clients of Aboriginal Healing Foundation projects.
[English]
Through the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the Government of Canada is responsible for providing mental health and emotional support services to former students of Indian residential schools and their family members as they participate in the common experience payments, the independent assessment process, Truth and Reconciliation Commission events, and commemoration activities.
Health Canada provides mental health and emotional supports through the resolution health support program, which includes a range of culturally safe services for eligible former students and their families to address issues related to Indian residential schools, as well as the disclosure of abuse, throughout the settlement agreement process.
The resolution health support program comprises four elements: cultural supports, emotional supports, individual and family counselling, and transportation assistance.
Cultural support services are provided by local aboriginal organizations. Through them, elders or traditional healers are available to assist former students and their families. Specific services are determined by the needs of the individual and include dialogue, ceremonies, prayers, and traditional healing.
Emotional support services are also provided by local aboriginal organizations. Through them, an aboriginal community-based worker, who has training and experience working with former students of Indian residential schools, will listen, talk, and support former students and their family members throughout the settlement agreement process. These community-based workers are of aboriginal descent and many speak aboriginal languages.
Access to professional counsellors is available for those who need their services. Professional counsellors are psychologists and other mental health professionals, such as social workers, who are registered with Health Canada and who have experience working with aboriginal people. A professional counsellor will listen, talk, and assist former students to find ways of healing from residential school experiences.
In addition to these services, assistance with the cost of transportation is provided so that an individual can access professional counsellors or traditional healers if they are not available in the individual's home community.
Through this program, Health Canada provides access to over 1,600 service providers, including counsellors, community-based aboriginal workers, elders, and traditional healers, in every province and territory in communities throughout Canada.
As a result of a greater number of common experience payment applications and increased rates of independent assessment process hearings, demand for the resolution health support program has increased significantly in recent years. Program expenditures have steadily increased as we have provided service to more people: from $5.1 million in 2006-07 to approximately $37 million in 2009-10.
Budget 2010 announced an additional $66 million over two years for the resolution health support program. This new money, plus the existing program budget, will result in a total budget of $47.6 million in 2010-11 and $46.8 million in 2011-12, allowing us to meet the demand for services under the settlement agreement, including the commencement of Truth and Reconciliation Commission events.
The resolution health support program is one of several mental health and addictions programs funded by the federal government that provide important community-based services to first nations and Inuit families.
Health Canada provides over $200 million in funds annually for mental health and addictions services to first nations and Inuit communities through a variety of programs, including: the national native alcohol and drug abuse program and the national youth solvent abuse program, which provide both residential treatment services in over 60 facilities and community-based prevention programming in over 550 communities; the Brighter Futures and Building Healthy Communities programs, which address mental wellness issues and crisis intervention programming, with funding provided directly to communities to support action on their own mental health priorities in over 600 communities; and the national aboriginal youth suicide prevention strategy, which provides support for over 200 communities for youth mental health and suicide prevention strategies.
Also, there is the non-insured health benefits program, which supports a short-term mental health crisis counselling benefit to first nations and Inuit clients across Canada.
Health Canada recognizes the important work the Aboriginal Healing Foundation has funded over the past 12 years. Since the budget 2010 decision that no further funding would be provided for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Health Canada has focused on ensuring that all eligible former students and their families who have received services from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation have access to the health support services provided by Health Canada through the resolution health support program.
Health Canada is proactively responding to the needs of these former students and their families by increasing awareness of the resolution health support program and by ensuring access to this program. With regard to increasing awareness, prior to the end of Aboriginal Healing Foundation projects on March 31, 2010, Health Canada's regional directors wrote to or made direct contact with the managers of AHF projects to make them aware of the process to refer their clients to the services offered by the resolution health support program.
This effort to raise awareness is in addition to other ongoing activities. For instance, since 2007, over 420,000 brochures describing the program have been sent directly to former students, band offices, community health centres, native friendship centres, nursing stations, treatment centres, and many other meeting places across the country.
Health Canada is also working to increase access to underserved communities that were previously served by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation projects. We're doing this by identifying communities with high numbers of eligible former students and low rates of resolution health support program demand, and negotiating new service agreements to provide health supports in communities with former Aboriginal Healing Foundation projects, consistent with the resolution health support program criteria, to build on the staff and services previously funded by the foundation.
In Nunavut, for example, on March 26, 2010, Health Canada officials met with the Pulaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre, the Kivalliq Outreach Program, and Coral Harbour Men's Group in Rankin Inlet regarding the need to ensure continuity of services. As a result of this meeting, the groups are collaborating with Health Canada to develop a viable funding proposal to provide resolution health support program services. Initial contact has also been made with projects in the Kitikmeot region--Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk--and Qikiqtaaluk--Iqaluit--as well as with the Government of Nunavut.
In British Columbia, two of the 17 former AHF projects operating in the province have contacted the department to explore ways to continue to provide services in their communities.
These are some examples of how Health Canada is responding. Our most recent update is that there are in play 60 new or amended contribution agreements to respond to the needs of former students in relation to Aboriginal Healing Foundation projects.
[Translation]
Health Canada's Regional Offices will continue to work with those former Aboriginal Healing Foundation Projects located in areas of high need that have low Resolution Health Support Program uptake, to explore how these local aboriginal organizations can provide services consistent with the Resolution Health Support Program criteria.
[English]
These steps demonstrate the Government of Canada's commitment to ensuring that former students are aware of and have access to mental health and emotional support services. The government remains dedicated to supporting communities, families, and individuals to recover from trauma to support their full participation in Canadian society.
Thank you to the witnesses. I want to say that you do great work.
As somebody who was involved in this as a signatory for more than 900 survivors, from the outset of this process, what we have seen overall is a fully integrated process, from the largest class action settlement in the history of the western world, to say the very least, the common law.
And in the implementation, it's worth pointing out that this government has, in many instances, gone above and beyond what they actually agreed to as signatories to that agreement. Certainly we saw in the last budget an infusion of resources into a couple of key areas, and binding on that agreement, people were fully aware of some of the programs that were going to come to an end or sunset. I think it's important to point out that there are a number of healing centres that do important work through the AHF that will continue.
I know I don't share the views of some of my colleagues that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation necessarily got to all of the communities or constituents that it intended to. That may be somewhat overinflated, but I do know, with more than 25 isolated and remote first nations communities, that I have a tremendous respect for the work of the resolution health support program, because it's actually intended to deal more uniquely with survivors and their families, and it's delivered through elders, which is an underlying community concept or component to it.
Furthermore, with respect to the future care plan, I want to revisit an issue that you did very well at describing for one of my colleagues here. The four overarching components of the agreement were: the common experience payment; the individual assessment program, which has been called something different previously--ADR; the Aboriginal Healing Foundation; and truth and reconciliation.
As a component of the IAP, I think it's worth pointing out that the future care plan--and I've written hundreds of these--was actually intended to, again, deal with specific emotional and psychological needs of the survivor. That did in fact involve, at times, the participation of family members and the broader community, providing, within the criteria of the future care plan, that the emphasis was on the healing of the survivor.
Would that be a fair statement, Aideen?
Thank you for the time you've given us to make a few comments about the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and also for the opportunity to give my regrets from our chairman, Georges Erasmus, who lives in Yellowknife and was unable to attend.
Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, and members of the committee, I am pleased and honoured to have this opportunity, and I thank you for it.
As you well know, a great deal has been written and said about the government's decision to place resources for survivors from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation into Health Canada. There was a thorough debate in Parliament, which I believe represented well the arguments in favour of continued funding for community initiatives and, alternatively, for Health Canada's mental health support program.
As I am here to represent the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, I will do my best in the time allotted to speak from the perspective of community impacts.
In the short term, to be blunt, there is concern about increased suicide rates and alcohol and drug use in our community as a result of this decision. The end of funding for community-based healing programs has also resulted in higher unemployment, often in places where unemployment was high even before these recent losses.
I want to provide a quote from Annie Popert, the manager of an Inuit project in northern Quebec. She talked to us about the following, and she said:
Another important development in the region is as we gain a greater understanding of the link between trauma and the challenges we are faced with today, including childhood sexual abuse, we have begun to look at the types of programs we are going to have to access or develop in order to combat these challenges. The project--
That's our project, through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
--has provided tremendous insight and knowledge, which are the first things we must have in order to be able to empower ourselves to begin the process of taking responsibility for our lives.
Similar points have been made by other communities that write us letters as they dismantle their projects. Their shared fear is that all the learning, all the building, all the progress, and all the groundwork--the investments of money and time and labour that we have made and they have made--will quickly be lost. These are the short-term impacts we face.
Many of our funded projects have gone to government for funding. We are hearing from them that, yes, Health Canada is funding counsellors in the community, but there will be no support for the really innovative transformational work that communities have been developing through their community projects.
Here I'll quote George Dunkerly, of Rankin Inlet, in Nunavut. He said:
Youth are a prime concern here in our area. Many youth, and lots of older people, have issues that they refuse to deal with openly. Our projects division gave them something to draw them in.
This is the division of their program that deals specifically with our projects.
Once in an activity with other people, they were encouraged in an indirect way to participate in discussions regarding their issues. What made the Kivalliq Outreach Program work so well was the combination of counselling and projects. The projects division allowed people to come to the program and drew them into counselling services when needed or requested. Our staff team was also well known in our district, so we had projects that were fun to join, with people they knew and trusted that just happened to be professional counsellors. Under Health Canada, we will have “support workers”, but counsellors will be brought in from the south when required. This is not an ideal situation, as our clients will not know or trust the counsellors brought in for short periods of time. But it's what we have to work with, as [we have found] the parameters of the Health Canada funding to be very rigid.
We have long known that these community-based projects are drawing in people who have never participated in healing before, and I find this, frankly, surprising. Many of the traumas people have experienced through residential schools happened decades and decades ago, and yet this is the first time in their lives they feel safe enough, and that the trust is high enough, to come forward to deal with some of their issues.
Perhaps most importantly, I'd like you to hear this point that I'm about to make: that this leads us to the longer-term impacts, the principal one being that we are now once again on a road that is leading in the direction of dependency for aboriginal people.
Instead of moving toward empowered communities that take control of their well-being, government has chosen to put its resources into a government service delivery model. This of course is their prerogative, but there are impacts to this decision that I hope we can impress upon you.
All of the research and anecdotal evidence from the communities was showing that the two together--government services working in partnership with community expertise--were getting the best results. Just last month we released a study on the common experience process, which I have with me and which makes this very point.
The loss of these community projects is a blow to the communities and to the government as well. They will have a harder time now delivering services on the ground. The model of transferring, cultivating, and enhancing community capacity is a model that has proven to be successful.
In the longer term, communities are expressing their concern that the legacy of residential schools will remain unresolved. There is a concern that this decision will disempower aboriginal people, leading to greater desperation. We at the Aboriginal Healing Foundation share this concern, and I can tell you, if we can't resolve the residential school experience, what will we do with the “sixties scoop” and those experiences that will soon be before us all as Canadians?
We believe the residential school system deprived us of the means to sustain our communities in a healthy manner. That's why our vision statement at the healing foundation speaks about addressing unresolved trauma in a comprehensive and meaningful way, putting to an end the intergenerational cycles of abuse, achieving reconciliation in the full range of relationships, and enhancing their capacity as individuals, families, communities, nations, and peoples, to sustain their well-being.
Our goal as an agency is to help create, reinforce, and sustain conditions conducive to healing, reconciliation, and, ultimately and perhaps most importantly, self-determination. We're committed to addressing the legacy of abuse in all its forms and manifestations, direct, indirect, and intergenerational, and we do this by building on the strengths and resilience of our own people. This vision, this goal, is built into every one of the projects and has been since the day we began.
There's a vast longer-term difference between this holistic model of community development and the government's model of service delivery. I want to emphasize this: this is not to say that the government's model is wrong or bad. I worked for Health Canada. I worked with these models. As an aboriginal person, I worked with a government service delivery model, but I never for a moment thought I was delivering a native program.
These are simply different things. That is why they're complementary to one another. There is a place for both of these service delivery models.
On the horizon, of course, we have the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Over the next few years, many survivors will be telling their stories of abuse for the first time--and I emphasize again--after many, many decades of silence. These traumatized individuals will not be prepared in many instances for what happens when you open up publicly, often for the first time, and you tell strangers your innermost secrets of pain, shame, and suffering as a child. There's no way a person can know this.
Health Canada will have to step into this very difficult situation where there is, as a result of this funding decision, less trust than there was before. Health Canada simply does not have the capacity or expertise to do this. This is not criticism; it's a fact. They shouldn't be expected to have this kind of expertise. No one, except for the community itself, except for aboriginal people themselves, has been directly engaged in this work to this extent. This is new territory, but now this nationwide network will not be there.
Granted, we were not present in every community--far from it. We had 134 projects on the ground, with most recently dismantled, but we were providing valuable experience-based lessons across the country, some of which took the better part of a decade to learn and to perfect.
With this loss of service, community trust is going to be a serious long-term impact. There is no substitute for the difficult work of trust building. Without trust, no program or service can work.
But let's assume the best of all possible outcomes. Even if the mental health services prevent suicides and reduce rates of addiction, violence, and unemployment, at the end of this road, we will be no further ahead on the way to community building.
What we're hearing is that communities that had an Aboriginal Healing Foundation project were making progress with their young people as well. Now, particularly in the north and in remote areas, the projects have had to close their doors and youth have nowhere to go. Anyone who has travelled to the north knows that there are not alternative resources around every corner. This represents our future. This is the long term. These are the youth who got a taste of hope and who have now seen it disappear.
We were moving along a path where the active principle driving our journey was that aboriginal people can take control of their destinies, that they can create a better future for themselves if they have support. Today, that seems far less certain across this country, and the mood out there is very sombre, but our people are resilient, as they always have been, and they have not given up on us.
Let me conclude by saying that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was never intended to last forever, absolutely not, and that was an understanding we all had, but it was our hope that it would last at least through this critical time in our history. We are grateful for what we've been able to do, we acknowledge Canadians who provided these funds, and we acknowledge especially aboriginal communities who worked so diligently to provide support to one another.
Thank you.
Thanks to the witnesses for coming today.
I must qualify any questions that I ask by first directly addressing my colleague who said that the mood in this room was “sombre”. She does not speak for me, especially, or for members of our caucus here.
I think we need to be proud of the record we have with respect to a number of key components, not just the Indian residential schools agreement at the time, because we were not in government, but subsequent to that, with the recognition and a further infusion of resources to a myriad of activities that occurred under that agreement. Most recently, as of 2010, in fact, we added a number of key resource allocations, with more than $285 million for a number of programs that may mostly indirectly, but directly as well, impact and deal with a number of health and mental health issues in first nations communities.
I take that seriously, sir, because, like you, I worked for Health Canada for a great deal of time. I'm not sure I share your view that in the final analysis Health Canada, as this legacy is dealt with under the agreement and as a matter of policy within Health Canada and INAC, isn't well served by an incorporation into its existing government services.
I know that in the great Kenora riding we have 25 isolated communities with nursing stations situated. I'm wondering then if you, as the executive director, can tell me, then, how many communities in the Kenora riding, for example, are you aware of that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation had direct contact with.
When people are in the toughest and saddest situations in Canada, it's very hard to find solutions sometimes, and we've actually found a solution, as shown by the evaluation, I think we can see what the problem is when that's being closed and at least one government member is not distressed.
Related to the health centres in the member's riding, of course they're not the same as healing centres. Because we don't have time during these questions, perhaps you could write to us, if you want to, about the fact that a vast number of the centres and health offices in Mr. Rickford's riding are not doing this professional healing. They have a nurse, etc.
I also think that Mr. Rickford, Madam Crowder and you made a good point that even with this extra work you did not have enough to cover everyone, so you should actually have more funds. If you have time, could you later provide the clerk of the committee a map showing the locations of your projects, the approximate number of staff and volunteers, and the approximate number of clients? It would be a good visual for the committee.
A voice: Certainly.
Hon. Larry Bagnell: The question I want to ask is related to when healing goes on, when it's needed. I was a bit distressed when you and the INAC officials talked about it being a contract and a deal that ends in 2012. But healing doesn't end then. I think you gave examples. You could perhaps write down some examples for us of where some of these things occurred 20 years ago and the healing's not finished yet. INAC has said that there are thousands of people coming in the next couple of years.
That healing for these very, very serious problems goes on for a long time. When we found out that H1N1 wasn't solved halfway through, we didn't cut off the money. We kept providing more vaccines. If a bunch of people are starving and CIDA's project has run out, we don't cut off the money. We put in more money. If a child is dying and he doesn't have enough medicine, you don't stop the medicine because the contract and the dose are done. It's a success, you keep going until the job's done, and you make the arrangements there.
Perhaps you could talk about the fact that the healing does not end in 2012 for tens of thousands of people from residential schools.
We have funded 1,662 projects in different waves, which initially started in B.C., then went into the Prairies, and then into the Inuit region. It was based on when the community was ready, as I talked about earlier. How did we get to the 134? There were 134 projects and 12 healing centres in addition to the 134. It has been a debate. There was some confusion around it, but nevertheless that's what it was.
In 2005 the reason we got the extra $40 million was to take as many of our projects as possible to March 31, 2007, to just before the settlement agreement. At that time, we even had to cut a number of very good projects. Our board didn't want to cut any, but based on the funding that was provided to us, we did, and we got down to that amount.
Then we had to make a decision in 2007 on what to do: whether to do an additional call or continue to fund the existing healing network we had. We know that it takes a year and a half to get up and running, and to build the trust between the therapists and the survivors would put us into two or two and a half years. Our board decided that if we started a new project we'd have to shut down.
The most responsible thing we could do at that time, in 2007, was to retain those 134 projects and run them to 2010. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, we had the 12 healing centres.
Again, to summarize, we had a number of projects in 2005. Because of funding limitations, we had to cut a number of them, and we based that on what we called the best projects. We retained those that were well-governed and those that provided direct therapy, one-on-one counselling, group counselling, and traditional healing. Those were the criteria we set for those 134 projects.