AANR Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS, NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES AUTOCHTONES, DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DU GRAND NORD ET DES RESSOURCES NATURELLES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 15, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order.

I'm hoping that we can put closure on the aboriginal housing issue, which we started out with when we first convened this committee. I'm going to recap what I talked about.

Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.): I have a point of order. Because we may lose our nine, I'd like to be able to handle this very quickly.

The Chair: All right.

Mr. John Godfrey: You all will have received a notice of motion to create a report by this committee that would have had the effect of asking the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to respond to the Cree-Naskapi.

I had a chat with the minister last night, and rather than proceeding in the way in which I proposed, which is a little bit aggressive, actually, and since we want to get along reasonably well with the minister, I asked him whether we could come at it another way if I withdrew my motion or I didn't put it forward. I've only given you a notice of motion.

He has agreed that if we send him this letter that I have drafted, he will respond favourably. I haven't given it out because it is available only in English. I just drafted it. That's why we haven't distributed it. It's a short letter. This would be signed by the chair.

Dear Minister:

The Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources has received the biennial Report of the Cree-Naskapi Commission for the year 2000 and discussed the report with the Commissioners. In order to have a better understanding of how your department intends to deal with the concerns and recommendations outlined in the report, we would appreciate receiving from you a timely, written, detailed and comprehensive response. We understand that you are amenable to responding favourably to such a request, and we look forward to hearing from you.

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In other words, he was willing to deal with the 2000 report because that has occurred on his watch, and since chapter 10 of the 2000 report includes a whole bunch of things from the 1998 report, I thought that was a reasonable trade-off. So I'm taking my motion away, and if the committee agrees on the chair submitting such a letter on our behalf, I think we'll come to the same result but perhaps in a more amiable fashion. So if people agree to that....

[Translation]

Is everything alright? Everyone understood more or less?

Mr. Richard Marceau (Charlesbourg—Jacques Cartier, BQ): Madam Chair, in a committee such as this one, it's important not to be too antagonistic. However, the following question comes to mind: if the legal obligation to respond to the report was not met in 1998, what reason do we have to think that a simple letter like this will spur them into action, when they refused to do so in the past, that is they failed to fulfil this legal obligation? Unless we have a firm commitment from the minister, I would prefer to go with Mr. Godfrey's motion first.

Mr. John Godfrey: The research hasn't yet been completed, and that's why I need Mary's help. According to the minister, the department is not legally obligated to respond to this kind of report. However, I would like to ask researcher Mary Hurley to conduct a brief analysis for us of all reports of this nature where the act stipulates that such reports must be tabled to Parliament. I'd like to know how many reports like this exist and if the situation faced by the Cree and Naskapi is exceptional. When the minister tables several reports at once in the House, as often happens, what provision is made in the Standing Orders for responses? Is there a stated obligation to respond? Is the Cree and Naskapi report part of a group of similar reports, or is it an exception? It would be interesting to have an answer to that question. In my opinion, there is no legal obligation, because this isn't like a committee report. However, before I go any further, I would like to do a little more research on the subject, if that's alright with everyone. For now, I think we'll get a response more readily by sending a letter like this one. I'm not rejecting your suggestion, but I would like to look into this a little further. My sense is that there is no such obligation, but I may be wrong about this. We were a little pressed for time last week and we weren't able to thoroughly research the matter.

[English]

The Chair: If I can add to that, I do know that there is no legal obligation for that.

But when I was in the House on Friday, two more reports were tabled. One was the Gwich'in annual report, and the other was the Indian Claims Commission report. The minister tabled those, and those became public documents.

The other difficulty with the Cree-Naskapi one, as far as I understand, and Mary can correct me.... I have to use my Nunavut Land Claims Agreement as an example. We have an implementation plan. Right now the implementation committee works with the Department of Indian Affairs on what we feel hasn't been addressed. We make recommendations in the areas of the land claims agreement that we feel have not been carried out according to the intent. If you have an implementation process and a committee, which I understand the Cree-Naskapi chose not to do, that's part of the difficulty in having responses to some of the recommendations that come out of the reports.

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I'll ask the researcher to add to that.

Ms. Mary Hurley (Committee Researcher): I am not able to give you a very detailed response at the moment because, as you'll understand, the land claim agreements that have been settled, between the first one in 1975 and the Nisga'a treaty in 1998, are all unique to the individual circumstances of the negotiating group. So I would have to do some research in order to discover, for example, how many have implementation plans and how many are required to submit reports.

But there's one thing that's absolutely clear, and that is that the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement was concluded at the very inception of the comprehensive land claim process. It was at the time extremely unique. Between its conclusion in 1975 and 1993, there were only two more comprehensive land claim agreements settled, one for the Inuvialuit in 1984 and one for the northeastern Quebec aboriginal groups in 1978.

The whole notion of implementation plans occurred after the James Bay agreement. Implementation plans are relatively new. In fact, one of the criticisms of the Auditor General, in a report whose year I can't remember, was that there were gaps and they were lax in terms of implementation planning.

I'd be happy to look up these facts for you. I'd just like to say that all of the agreements are unique and that all of them probably have quite individual provisions in terms of reporting and planning.

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: As part of the research, I put this forward for the committee's consideration. I think we have to decide to what extent we want to be in the business of monitoring implementation agreements. If the land claim process speeds up and hence the implementation process speeds up, presumably there are going to be more and more reports. It would be nice to make sure that the first ones we do work right so that they'll be a better model for the other ones. It seems as if we have some problems, as we've just seen. In pursuing this particular one, we want to keep in mind what's going to happen down the road and how much involved we want to be.

I think it's important that reports be responded to, but of course that's going to create problems for the department with regard to resources. I like the idea of comparing a written report with a written response because it gives us something to go with. But I think that if we could reserve judgment on how we're going to do that until we've done a bit more research....

Also, Mary, we need to get a sense of how many. You mentioned four treaties that have included implementation plans. Is there a distinction between those and the other reports that keep getting submitted, as was the case on Friday? Are they different in some qualitative way? Would you like to tell us about that, not necessarily today, but...?

Ms. Mary Hurley: Maybe I could just correct one thing. I don't think I said there were four agreements that had implementation plans.

Mr. John Godfrey: Oh, I'm sorry.

Ms. Mary Hurley: I said that the situation with regard to implementation plans is going to depend on the nature of the agreement and the negotiations between the parties. That said, there are often similarities between them. What I meant to convey to the committee was that the notion of implementation plans is a relatively recent one in the land claim agreement process. But I'll have to look into the individual agreements so that I can tell you what each says.

Mr. John Godfrey: Thank you.

The Chair: The other option we have, and Mary can respond to this also, is we're still trying to book some slots for May 31. I'll just go through—

Mr. John Godfrey: Have we dealt with the letter? Have we had agreement to send the letter?

The Chair: No.

Mr. John Godfrey: Okay. I'm just curious.

The Chair: Did Mr. Martin have something to add to the letter? I thought I saw your hand up.

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Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre): I was just hoping we could get back to the order of the day at some point today.

Mr. John Godfrey: I just want to get this done.

Mr. Pat Martin: We're easily sidetracked today.

The Chair: Mr. Marceau, does that answer your inquiry?

Mr. Richard Marceau: Yes.

The Chair: So I have consensus here that we should take that approach and see what response the minister has.

The other word of caution is.... I look at our committee as being a board of directors type of operation, where we don't want to deal with personnel issues because that's what you have the bureaucracy and the administration for. I think we have to be careful about how far we go into that. One suggestion I would have—and I'm just going to go through a little bit of this before I lose quorum, in case some people leave—is we're trying to find opportunities to listen to the Indian Claims Commission. We have slotted them for May 29 for two hours, and we have the Métis National Council for May 31, and we felt that one hour would be sufficient.

Maybe that would give Mary enough time in the next hour to research that. I understand you only meant the Department of Indian Affairs—

Mr. John Godfrey: Right.

The Chair: —not every department in the government.

Mr. John Godfrey: Absolutely not.

The Chair: That might give her time to sort of give a general understanding of what this process is—an information session.

Mr. John Godfrey: If in your research you discover there are precedents from other departments that are helpful, just in terms of parliamentary procedure and how committees work and so on...I don't think you should restrict yourself to that, but let's worry about our own backyard. If there happen to be some other things that might bear on the case, I wouldn't want to rule those out.

The Chair: Another information item is that we had asked Minister Manley to come but he's unavailable. He's travelling right now and he wouldn't be able to come May 29 and May 31. So we weren't successful in that.

Going back to our agenda for today, I'm just going to recap a little of what I tried to say at the beginning of this undertaking. We have had numerous studies about housing for aboriginal peoples in Canada, we've had the royal commission.... I feel we don't need to do any more in the study mode. I said at the beginning that we would get a snapshot picture of the situation nationally.

My intent in introducing this topic with you again is so that you get a general understanding, especially for the new members, of what we're dealing with, to be able to flag the problem and try to come up with some suggestions and recommendations, so that we can, either in a letter form or a small report, ask the ministers responsible—whether it's just the Minister of Indian Affairs, or it's Public Works, and I guess try to convince the Minister of Finance that this is an issue he has to deal with, if the government wants to go the way the Speech from the Throne addressed as far as aboriginals in Canada are concerned.

The other interesting point that I see from the royal commission is that one of the recommendations is that the government and the people of Canada undertake to meet the needs of first nations people for adequate housing within ten years—and that was 1996. We're now in 2001, five years have gone by, and we're still trying to address this issue.

So Mary put together some points, a summary of all the information we heard, and there are several recommendations, one of them, I remember, coming from a chief from Manitoba, that there be a task force set up, an interdepartmental task force, that would have the right departments concerned with this issue trying to come up with some solutions and approaches.

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That's one of the things that I feel we can highlight and pass on.

So I'll open up the floor for discussion as to what approaches you want to take. As I said before, I'm not interested in a big, overdrawn study of the issue because those have already been done. What I'd very much like to see is what suggestions we can get from this committee, to give closure to this topic, so that we don't leave it open-ended before the end of the summer.

Mr. Martin.

Mr. Pat Martin: I think, Madam Chair, you hit the nail right on the head when you made reference to the recommendation from Kenneth Young, the regional vice-chief for Manitoba for the AFN.

I was actually hoping, after we go around this issue once or twice around the table, we might wind up with a recommendation pretty much like what he brought forward. I think that would be a fitting end to the comprehensive study we undertook—or as comprehensive as we could, given the circumstances. Seeing that this is the wish of the Assembly of First Nations, it's their firm recommendation and their hope that this is the way we can move the issue forward, I think we could endorse that, and one of us should move that.

I'd like to add further, though, that in a separate meeting with Ken Young, he put forth the idea that there should be an independent chair of that task force. He actually put forward the name of Phil Fontaine as someone who would undertake steering this new task force and ultimately pulling together the recommendations of the task force.

He also hoped there would be a specific timeframe given to the task force. Actually, I think it is mentioned in here. They would bring forward a report by the end of May—I presume he means May 2002.

So I would certainly speak strongly to endorse what Chief Young has recommended, and I would hope by the end of this meeting that might be a motion put forward by this committee.

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: This isn't inconsistent with what Mr. Martin has said, but I'm struck, after having had a meeting with the Six Nations folks from Grand River in southern Ontario, which is perhaps an anomalous group, although they're also associated with the folks at Akwesasne, that there may be some, how should I put it, best practices or alternative practices that we might want to think about as a committee, where actually there have been some solutions to the housing crisis.

One of the things that's interesting, to hear this report, was that 30 years ago this particular community actually traded a revolving loan fund for on-reserve folks. They allowed a kind of home ownership pattern. In a sense they act as the bank, and now people own their own properties. They had exactly the same problems the Crees did, which we heard in our first session. It was completely illegal what they did, by the way. It was against all the rules. They didn't ask permission. They had to ask forgiveness. But they have found a model that seems to be working. They're building houses. They're still getting some money from the Department of Indian Affairs.

It may be that it is a unique situation. It's a critical mass of 20,000 people. It's the largest reserve in the country. But I think it would be interesting to examine some of the folks and some of the reserves where they've actually solved the problem, to see whether there's a common pattern.

Certainly it would be easy enough to urge the creation of an interdepartmental task force, but they might just spend a lot of time meeting, right? If it turned out that this seemingly successful model, which may have other examples to it, had some principles that we might want to endorse.... One of the things I asked was that they produce some comparative housing data from the band minutes from 30 years ago, such as what was the situation then, what is the situation today, how much money has gone down the tube, and how do they revolve the funds.

They seem to have overcome a lot of the problems that we've been hearing about and that have been represented in previous reports, and it would be interesting to know how extendible or how replicable that is.

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So my only suggestion would be not to exclude the idea of the task force, but before we got to it...if we feel it would be worth our while looking at some success stories.

The Chair: I think I have to keep looking nationally. The real issue for me is social housing, because a lot of people in the communities cannot afford to go into home ownership. When we talk about home ownership, we're talking about a very small group of people, compared to the majority of people who need assistance in just getting a building, a house to live in.

I feel the government's role should be to provide a mechanism, such as dollars, so that people with ideas like that can approach this fund, and it would be flexible enough that people can take those dollars and create a unique solution to their problems.

We talk about letting people solve their own problems, but what has happened over the years with housing is sort of the other way. That's one of the reasons why I think it hasn't worked, because we're bringing in a solution and carrying it out and then leaving—building those units that don't quite meet the weather conditions, the numbers of people.... We have to find some way of dealing with overcrowding in the communities.

I'll use my riding as an example. We do have some mechanisms for people to get into home ownership. The majority of our problems are with people who can't afford any alternative housing other than social housing.

One of the suggestions that has come from people I've spoken to is partnerships. They're not just asking for a big handout of money to build houses. They're asking for opportunities to do partnerships between the federal government, the territorial government, and the private sector. It's the same way we have the infrastructure program, but because of the lack of numbers, the per capita formula does not get the money out to Mr. St-Julien's riding and my riding, and probably the NWT.

I like the idea of the task force, but from what I understand, it's for first nations housing. Again, what we're looking for is some mechanism that would take care of off-reserve housing, because I know the Department of Indian Affairs already has an on-reserve housing program, and I think we've heard there's a requirement to expand that. We also have another large sector of off-reserve housing.

When we were dealing with the sustainable development fund and we were putting a lot of money into that, with people able to access that pot of money.... If there was some way we could have some sort of fund where people with very good proposals could submit them and be able to have capital dollars to take on a project, those are the.... It has to be general enough for specific issues like yours to be able to be approved on their own merit where they solve their unique problems.

That's my take on that.

Mr. John Godfrey: My only question would be this. With all respect to bureaucrats, in a sense these are ultimately policy and political decisions. I fully take the point that part of the challenge is going to be finding answers to off-reserve, finding answers to social housing problems.

I don't think that undermines the point I'm trying to make, which is to say, let's look across the country. For example, the Six Nations also run social housing programs with the money.

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I think what we would really like to do is to accumulate enough best practices or alternatives where we can make a political case for greater flexibility, which may offend those who like an orderly world where one size fits all and we can use one cookie-cutter approach, but where we can say we have enough evidence here that if you give people the right kind of guidance, tools, and resources, they can actually come up with some pretty neat solutions.

We will need to have accountability, for sure, but I don't know that if we simply create a task force, we can tell them to do that. I think only we can do that. And in order for us to do that, we're going to have to do a bit of work to actually find some existing solutions, where folks within the current Indian Act have actually done things. How the heck do we generalize that into a set of principles? With all respect to bureaucrats, I don't think that's really their job; I think that's our job.

The Chair: Mr. Elley.

Mr. Reed Elley (Nanaimo—Cowichan, Canadian Alliance): Madam Chair, I think all of us are concerned about the continuing duplication of work under task forces. Each Parliament seems to generate its own task force. They go out, they observe the problem, they gather the information, they come back with the recommendations. That's all well and good, but so often we feel let down that nothing actually happens. We have the royal commission report sitting there for I don't know how many years now, with very little actually happening out of that huge endeavour.

So I guess I'm fairly skeptical about another task force. If we, as John has indicated, feel we have a significant role to play as a committee in talking about the solutions as we see them, then I would be very much in favour of moving our efforts as a committee into those very positive areas. I don't think we can abrogate our responsibility on this parliamentary committee and pass it on to a task force to do what I think we're elected to do here on behalf of all Canadians, particularly native people. I would urge that we strive for something that would be unique for us to do as a committee, along the lines of what John has said.

The Chair: Mr. Martin.

Mr. Pat Martin: My only observation on that argument is that we don't have the expertise to do these things, nor do we have any right to impose our Eurocentric ideas on what aboriginal housing should look like in first nations communities, homeownership being one such idea. Not all aboriginal people want to own their own home. They have more a sense of shared things. It isn't that important to have title and actual lease. So I don't think that's a real fix we want to be pushing on anybody.

I also think that around this table there's a lot of goodwill and very little practical expertise. That's why we do seek out people who actually live and eat and breathe this subject to create a national task force. Let them do their work and bring back meaningful recommendations after consultation to find the best practices and the ideas that are working around the country. We ourselves I don't think have the time, energy, resources, or background to do that kind of work. Look at us so far. We've been meeting for months on the subject of aboriginal housing. We've heard from three, maybe four groups—this little random ad hoc selection of briefs brought to our attention. You really can't craft national policy in the limited time we have to actually hear what's going on out there.

So the logical thing is to let the people who are seized of the issue do their job, go out there, and take a snapshot for us, see what's actually going on, what's working and what isn't. Then let them bring those recommendations back to us for implementation. We're legislators, we're not architects, urban planners, etc.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau: Madam Chair, I'm trying to understand how exactly a working group would operate. Does this mean that we, as a committee, would pass a resolution calling for the creation of a task force? We would refer a matter to the task force for study, analyze the findings and so forth? Is that what this process would entail?

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[English]

The Chair: The recommendation on page 6, which came from Chief Kenneth Young, was asking for an interdepartmental task force, with people from Health Canada, DIAND, CMHC, PCO, Natural Resources, HRDC, all trying to work on the same issue.

Mr. Marceau.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: I'm trying to reconcile your comments with those of John Godfrey, because I too have met with Six Nations representatives and my opinion has changed somewhat. Does this fall within the mandate of this interdepartmental task force? Can we request that other forms of ownership be explored? That would be in keeping with Pat Martin's recommendation that we must not impose—and I fully agree with him—a western or “eurocentric” form of ownership.

However, we shouldn't dismiss reject this approach automatically either, because some nations may feel that while this is not part of their ancestral traditions, they may yet be willing to entertain this option. Therefore, if we are prepared to make this suggestion as part of the process of appointing a task force, could we request that the mandate include consideration of different forms of ownership? This shouldn't be limited strictly to social housing, to government or band property.

The question should be opened up, rather than merely trying to patch things together. There is a serious, deep-seated problem, and I would even venture to say, a housing crisis. I don't like taboo subjects. We need to explore alternative ways of doing things and to specifically ask the task force to consider other options. This could tie together Keith Young's request, John Godfrey's proposal and the legitimate concerns of Pat Martin.

[English]

The Chair: Miss Hinton.

Mrs. Betty Hinton (Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, Canadian Alliance): As a relatively new member and a new MP, I maybe have a different point of view from those of you who have been around the table for a long time. My background is municipal and regional government, and when I hear the phrase task force, I relate it to the term consultant. Those are trigger words for me to say, I don't want to deal with this. So I very much like what Mr. Godfrey had to say today, and I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Elley, if there is a plan in place that already works, why try and reinvent the wheel? Let's have a look at what they've done, and then we have a strong basis to build on. If the consensus of this group after that is still that we need to have a task force put in place, or whatever other phrase you want to use, maybe we should go ahead with it at that point. But until we've actually looked at what works and seen how they've done it, I think it would be fruitless to enter into a task force.

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey

Mr. John Godfrey: I'm really sensitive to what Pat was saying about Eurocentric imposition. But I think what's interesting is that the particular conversation I had today was with a group of folks who decided to go that way. I didn't ask them to. They were there first. So what would be respectful, I think, and also would change the whole nature of the conversation, which has got this character of defeat about it, would be to go to the solutions that have been found within the aboriginal community already, where we've got success stories that address the list Nancy talked about, not simply on reserve and not just about homeownership, but also about social housing, off-reserve situations, and so on. I think it would be great to have some of these success stories, because I happen to think that success will breed success. I think it's a very respectful way of going at it.

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The difficulty I have with the task force, whose job, I think, is to make it work from a legal point of view, is that they can't think outside the box. That's not their mandate. Their mandate is to work within the existing rules. What if we say, you know what, if you change the rules, you could actually get somewhere around here? I think only a politician can say that, not a bureaucrat.

It may be that what we could say to the task force is, we've heard some really interesting things here, what would it take? What would you have to change so the Department of Justice, which, by the way, keeps thundering in on these issues—you know, you can't do that...? Even when DIAND says, gee, we'd like to try it, because it meets our objectives.... Once we want you to get more flexible and test some models, what would you have to change to allow that to go forward? That's the point for a task force, not before. By the way, all of you have to change—CMHC, you have to change this rule, because it's clearly getting in the way.

We need to hear some stories about the obstacles and the barriers, the things that have been overcome, before we can actually get to that point.

The Chair: Mr. Elley.

Mr. Reed Elley: Thank you.

I met with the native people earlier on this morning, and one of the things they said really struck me. They said would you stop thinking about us—and I think they were thinking generically “us” and “you”, not me particularly or them in particular—would you stop thinking about us as a problem? As I pondered that, I thought, yes, you know, they really have something there. They went on to share information about how there are many success stories amongst native people in all areas of life. I think it's incumbent on us as committee members, if, as Pat Martin says, we don't have the expertise, to become more familiar with the solutions that are out there among native people. It would be very educational for us. It would help us to be more understanding when we meet around this table.

I don't know if it would take a motion to get this thing settled. John, have you got some something to put on the table that could focus this, a motion of some sort?

Mr. John Godfrey: I don't have a motion. If we had a general consensus on an approach, I don't think it would need to be formalized. It can be an understanding of how we're going to proceed, and we can allow our associates, the researcher and the clerk, to help us, to keep reminding us of all the obligations we've taken on, of the stuff that's coming down at us as legislation we have to deal with. But there must be an understanding of what we're trying to get at, which is not talking about the problems, but talking about the solutions and celebrating some of the solutions that have already taken place.

The Chair: If I can add to the discussion, when we were looking at the economic development aspect of this aboriginal affairs committee last year, we came up with a recommendation also that any economic development activity in aboriginal communities have a training component, so that it becomes a community project, so that it's not just someone coming in, building, and then leaving again. It becomes a whole project in training people for different jobs and maintaining the building, so that you have a win-win situation, a partnership.

I keep going back to that. People are not asking just for a handout so they have the houses, but that it be a whole process of training with HRDC dollars and that type of opportunity, to take advantage of economic development activities. Construction is a very large economic development activity in our communities. That's why I keep going back to the more general idea of having some fund. Everyone has these great solutions for their communities, but they don't have the dollars to start with. We've heard some very sad stories also, where some company might have gone in on the assumption that they were going to get paid for their development in a community, only to find that they didn't get paid. We've heard all these sorts of stories, but again, in some way, having got out of social housing, we have to find an alternative mechanism to provide dollars for these communities to build houses.

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We don't want to rehash that whole social housing situation, but there is an opportunity to work with aboriginal communities through having some dollars, so that people can present their ideas and build houses. That's all people want in the communities. So there has to be a way for people to bring in their unique solutions. If you don't want to have just another task force, maybe you can give that task force a specific job of finding solutions that will work for the communities, trying to find a mechanism for people to do the construction in the units, for them to form these partnerships with the public sector and the government. My own territorial government keeps saying all they need is some assistance from the federal government and they'll put their own dollars in, they'll find private companies that are willing to go into those partnerships.

We can also mandate, if you want to go the task force route, that they have a specific solution-finding job. I know AFN is going to have a housing conference later on this month, so I'm sure things will be coming out of that also.

Mr. St-Julien, do you want to add to the discussion?

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi—James Bay—Nunavik, Lib.): Thank you very much.

I've been listening to the debate from the beginning. On two or three occasions, Madam Chair, you have provided a very clear explanation of the housing crisis in Canada. You have stressed that aboriginal and Inuit housing is in crisis. All members here have addressed the issue.

I understand that we are now moving in the right direction, but we need clear, relevant guidelines. We mustn't think that in several months' time, we'll be told that... As things now stand, I almost get the feeling that the government will merely shelve our reports. I wouldn't want to relive this experience and I caution you about creating a task force.

The Cree-Naskapi Commission made representations to us. We read in their report that in 1986, it experienced the following:

... when an assistant deputy minister of Indian Affairs testified before the Cree-Naskapi Commission that the government was not bound by an agreement that the minister had signed with the knowledge that officials did not approve of it.

The agreement accepted by the task force complies with 1984 Cabinet documents. And look what happened. Billy Dymond arrived on the scene and the minister signed the report to which our deputy ministers have expressed opposition.

Before seeking to strike a task force, perhaps we should ask them if they agree with the idea, further to what Chief Kenneth Young of Manitoba stated on page 7. If you want to strike a task force, we're prepared to go along with this, but we mustn't be left to think that the issue will be relegated to the sidelines in a few weeks' time and forgotten altogether after the summer recess.

Our concern—and you've explained this clearly on three occasions—is that the situation is very serious at the present time. In fact, we have a crisis on our hands. Agreements in the millions are signed for agriculture, for culture and for the arts. That's all well and good, but before setting up a task force, we should have an idea how our officials and our senior and assistant deputy ministers feel about this political decision, so that we know if we are all moving in the right direction.

My concern at this time is that if we create a task force, it will merely be relegated to the back burner, especially after listening to Peter Saunders relate to the committee his experience with one such task force relegated to virtual oblivion. I don't want to think that this issue will be shelved in a few months' time. We need to move in the right direction, as you so aptly explained to us, Madam Chair and help Canada's aboriginals and Inuit find real solutions in short order.

Thank you.

• 1200

[English]

The Chair: First of all, if I can go back to the committee again, is there consensus that we don't want to create a report but more maybe a letter requesting that the Minister of Indian Affairs, the Minister of Public Works, or the Minister of Finance address this housing issue?

I'm asking people who have a little more experience than I how we can flag this as a national crisis. It has been flagged by different organizations and reports and commissions, but it's getting to a point now where if we don't address it it's going to become very much a national disaster. That's my opinion.

Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: The problem is that with the limited information I have—and I want to emphasize that's why I want to hear more before I would task a task force—my impression is it's not about money. It's partly about money, but it's not about money. It's about a whole bunch of other things, and you've raised some of them: the ability to come up with creative solutions on the ground that fit the circumstances, but within a set of guidelines that make everybody feel comfortable. Right?

It may speak to the fact that some of us are new and not feeling comfortable coming up with back-of-the-envelope solutions based on one meeting with people, but I would feel in a better position to task a task force, issue a letter, do a report, or whatever we do, if we could have come to us, if that's going to work—or we could go there—some of the actual communities that, maybe by even breaking the rules, have fought outside the box and have actually gone ahead.

I've just mentioned one of them because they happened to come and see me, but that's anecdotal. I'd like some folks from the cities, too. I'd like to find places where they've really done some very neat things, where the question is, can these be generalized, or how do we get to a position so people don't have to ask forgiveness?

If we could try to match up the various elements that are going to be required for success—because there's not just one on-reserve solution for private home ownership, there has to be social housing on and off reserve—with genuine examples of success that are not totally fluky, where you can really say it was only because they were able to do this, not because they're wildly oil-rich or some other sort of thing, I think we'd feel more comfortable about the direction in which we're moving.

I think we feel comfortable with trusting you that greater flexibility and a greater acknowledgement of innovation would be a good idea, but we'd like to hear more about some of that in the detail. I'm not ready to turn over that task to others, because I don't understand enough myself, and that's probably my fault.

The Chair: Mr. Elley.

Mr. Reed Elley: I understand what Guy is saying, because you can very easily lose track of this thing. You go into the summer and it can be gone.

It looks like somebody is going to have to do something here to bring this to a head, so I'm going to make a motion, if I might, Madam Chair, that we ask our research department to look at some models of success in terms of aboriginal housing and to come back to us with a way in which we can access that information, in whatever way that may be, so that we will feel comfortable moving on to the next phase of our committee work in this area.

Ms. Betty Hinton: I second that.

The Chair: Is there any discussion?

Ms. Hinton.

Ms. Betty Hinton: I've listened with great interest today and heard a lot of different points of view. I agree with you: we cannot shelve this; we have to have some sort of solution. But I also agree with what Mr. Godfrey and Mr. Elley have said. I think there are innovative solutions out there, and one of the things I see that would tie in with what you've been talking about yourself, Madam Chair, is the teaching aspect of it.

• 1205

I belong to an organization called Habitat for Humanity, and obviously that doesn't apply in this case, but part of the component of Habitat is that the homeowner puts in sweat equity, has some pride of ownership, and learns something in the process. That could be applied to a broader base of people. They could learn the construction skills that you're talking about, and there would actually be a double benefit to this: we would house people, and we would teach people at the very same time.

I think it's important that we find out all this information and look for different solutions to the problem. So I'm very much in favour of this motion.

The Chair: Mr. Martin.

Mr. Pat Martin: The only problem I have with the motion that Mr. Elley moved is that you've just now charged the staff, or the research person, with doing a comprehensive nationwide study on aboriginal housing in this country. If you want the information that's out there on best practices, who's doing things right, where the real problems lie...you've just asked our research staff to undertake that for us. That's exactly what was contemplated that this task force would do.

I'd still be a lot more comfortable going with the task force, even if we want to tighten up their timeframe and give them two months to do their overview, because these are the experts in the field. The reason Ken Young identified these different agencies that he wanted to link together is because all of them have some role in aboriginal housing.

I was just looking at some of the delivery sources here. DIAND does about $93 million per year. CMHC does about $85 million per year. Then you get $45 million from local band supports, $88 million that offsets the interest on subsidized loans from CMHC, and DIAND's social budget. All these are different revenue streams. Then there's the rural and native housing program, the rural residential rehabilitation program that gets involved, the emergency repair program, the urban native housing program.

So there are bureaucrats in all these agencies that are doing something to deliver housing programs. We don't really know if they're acting in isolation. Do they ever talk? This is why the AFN, who arguably are the experts in the field, who deal with this every day, are recommending that we pull these bureaucrats together into one room, charge them with the mandate of finding best practices, and throw together some recommendations so that we as legislators can act on them.

I think it's asking far too much to ask our research person, with limited resources, to do that job for us at this time. So I'll speak against the motion, and at a later point I will move a motion that we do strike this task force.

The Chair: Mr. Marceau.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Madam Chair, we need to come to a decision shortly, because we've already been at it for one hour and ten minutes. I have to wonder if the approaches advocated by Mr. Elley and Mr. Martin are in fact contradictory.

According to Mr. Elley, certain existing initiatives work well, should be recognized and eventually applied elsewhere.

Mr. Martin, on the other hand, seems to be saying that the committee staff, namely our researchers, aren't capable of doing such important work, because this would entail a considerable amount of travel and so forth. Mr. Elley is concerned that things would drag on for too long.

Clémenceau once said that if you want to do something, do it, otherwise strike a committee. I was wondering if perhaps we could combine both approaches and set up a task force to study, from now until October, those initiatives that have proven successful. In any event, we are not here over the summer.

By the fall, the experts will have considered this issue, thus addressing Mr. Martin's concerns. They will also have reviewed successful approaches, thereby addressing the concerns expressed by Mr. Elley and Mr. Godfrey. We would then be in a position by the fall to proceed to the next step.

As I see it, we can reconcile the two approaches. Let's assign to those who are qualified the responsibility of conducting a study and let's give them a mandate to think “outside the box”, as John was saying. Give them a clear mandate, and a specific time frame for action so that we can get the answers we want. Then, we'll have in hand a study done by experts containing answers to our questions.

• 1210

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you. I appreciate these sound comments. I wouldn't want September to roll around and for all progress to have been lost, particularly given the knowledge gained over the years by all of the task forces that have examined housing in Canada and given all of the studies conducted by standing committees. We need to lay the groundwork for September. We're better off giving ourselves three months and making the right decision. I don't want to be criticized for the fact that our deputy ministers, the bureaucrats and senior officials disagree, following the intervention of the Cree-Naskapi Commission. Giving ourselves three and a half or four months is the right approach. Perhaps four months would be ideal in order to do things properly and not act in haste.

Mr. Richard Marceau: Madam Chair, I would like to move a motion.

Mr. John Godfrey: There is already a motion on the table.

Mr. Richard Marceau: I see. Fine then.

[English]

The Chair: We didn't get Mr. Marceau's comment because the microphone wasn't on.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Fine. Then, I would like to move an amendment to Mr. Elley's motion, calling for...

[English]

The Chair: Perhaps we can keep the discussion on the motion. I'll add a few clarifications, because the researcher has already stated that she doesn't—

Mr. John Godfrey: She's quitting. She's tendering her resignation.

The Chair: —have the expertise to take on that kind of large undertaking, and it would be a very large undertaking. So I'm asking for your amendment. Or do we just vote on this and—

Mr. Reed Elley: I haven't spoken to my motion. Mr. Godfrey would like to.

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: We want to get to a consensus and then we'll draft a motion around it.

The Chair: We do have a motion for it.

Mr. John Godfrey: I realize that. But if we can work out informally what we're going to do, then we don't have to go through amendments and votes and all that sort of stuff.

I think it's not useful to draft this as a committee of the whole, because we need to have something in front of us. The advantage of what Mr. Marceau is proposing is that from a practical point of view in terms of what we can get done over the course of the summer, we don't have a lot of time. So even to set up one or two of the best practices.... And by the way, I don't think it has to be an exhaustive survey. I think we want a sort of sampling, right?

We're going to lose a lot of time, and in order for us to get going we should come up with a mandate for this task force that has enough of the elements the chair has mentioned, that covers off these various situations so that it's very much focused on existing solutions from within—we want to maybe not limit it exclusively to that, because it wouldn't necessarily cover things like Habitat for Humanity—with a primary emphasis on creative solutions that have both been taken within the existing structure and that in some cases have broken the rules. I think it's really important that we understand where somebody has actually creatively done what the Six Nations did back 30 years ago: broke the rules and got the job done.

We want to review these. What we would like from them are both some of the success stories, and we may want to have some of those folks come in and tell us about it, because they will have done the work in winnowing out some of the success stories, and for them to identify the impediments that get in the way of those being generalized, or where there were impediments that even worked against them working those innovations in the first place. What are the impediments to innovation and flexibility? That's the kind of stuff we're looking for.

If they can come with a report that both identifies the good news and tells us the problems and identifies the barriers and obstacles that we can actually get at, then that would be very useful, because they would do the pre-study and it would still come back to us for consideration. We would then want to hear witnesses to get a real sense of it. What I'm missing is an on-the-ground sense of how this actually works at the community level. I don't think we're going to lose anything if we can get these guys and gals to do it for us over the summer when we're not going to be here anyway. Is that clear?

• 1215

Mr. Reed Elley: I think there was some misunderstanding about what I was proposing. I was not proposing that this be some huge exhaustive study. I thought it was a relatively simple matter to ask our research people to contact these departments and ask, do you know what the success stories are?

Mr. John Godfrey: As well as the AFN, presumably.

Mr. Reed Elley: Yes. They would ask, do you know what the success stories are, and if you do will you please let us know, because we as a committee need to be educated about those. We miss the component of self-education in what Mr. Marceau has said.

I think part of what I'm trying to get at here is that if you task a committee to go out and do this again, the task force, beyond this.... In some ways we've abdicated our responsibility in this if we don't have some kind of mechanism to have it come back, you see.

So what I was suggesting was very simple: that somehow we find out what the success stories are, and we then do the next stage to bring those success stories here to us so that we understand what this is.

I don't personally think you need to set up a huge task force for this. Why does it need a huge task force to get government departments together to talk to each other with the AFN?

Mr. John Godfrey: I think we're very close to a solution.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau: Further to what Mr. Elley said, the educational element that would be lost supposedly with the task force would still be lost if our researchers were to do the work and come back to the committee with their findings.

Let's have the experts do some quick studies and bring them here to present their findings to us, the people who pass legislation, and tell us what works and what doesn't work. Mary may not have the necessary resources to do all of this. Experts could be called in to explain the situation to us. We don't necessarily need a huge task force. A small committee might suffice. However, let's ask the experts to do this and then get back to us. After all, it is our responsibility. From what I can see, we could arrive at some kind of valid consensus.

[English]

The Chair: Excuse me, Ms. Hinton.

If I can go back to what I had said in the beginning on why we didn't want to do a big study, if you go through the 1992 housing report it talks about all the stuff we're talking about now. I won't read the recommendations word for word, but two of them are an immediate conclusion and present recommendations on a new on-reserve housing policy and that we deliver all of its funding through one department for aboriginal housing; and that in consultation with aboriginal people sufficient resources be given for community control over development and delivery of housing programs.

Those are all the things we're talking about right now, and I very much want this to be a proactive type of initiative.

I've also been told that the committee can't create a task force. We can define a mandate and request a specific minister to create a task force. Those are the limitations of the committee. I just throw that out to you.

[Translation]

Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau: We cannot set up a committee, but pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we have a duty to study...

Since we've been talking for months, we need to assume some responsibility where this issue is concerned. There are a number of things that we can do. We can decide not to set up a task force, but we can propose some solutions. The purpose of a committee is to make recommendations. We can issue a single recommendation calling for a task force to be struck on a given date with a mandate to accomplish a particular task and to report back by a certain date. We're not creating the task force, but merely recommending its creation. That's an entirely different matter.

• 1220

In light of the comments made by Guy, John, Reed, Pat and myself, I think we have something that resembles a consensus. Therefore, we're not striking a task force, but merely recommending that one be set up. Our job is to issue recommendations and that's what we have done here. I believe we have arrived at a consensus of sorts. I may be wrong, but I believe we're calling for the creation of an interdepartmental task force which would report back to us by September.

[English]

The Chair: Okay.

I'll give opportunity for Ms. Hinton, but again I remind the committee we have a motion on the floor asking the researcher to do a specific thing. And unless you want to deal with this motion, and then go on to the other actions we want to deal with—

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: If that's how you wish to proceed, Madam Chair, then I would like to move an amendment calling for this to be done by an interdepartmental task force. This motion is fairly similar to Reed's but I'm calling for a task force which would report back by October.

We'll sit down in committee and you can recommend a mandate for us, one that will encourage us to think outside the box, as John suggested.

[English]

The Chair: Ms. Hinton.

Ms. Betty Hinton: The amendment you're suggesting, though, is not a friendly one, and it does change it, because you're asking for a task force. The whole gist of it was there would not be a task force.

I'm going to suggest something—probably it's going to make everybody gasp. You're right, there is a summer coming up. There are a number of members on this board. Why can't members of this board make some trips during the summer to have a look at these specific places that have come up with wonderful resolutions? Then we could hear back from the experts in the different fields in September and actually make a hands-on decision.

It would be rather unique for a governmental committee to take a hands-on approach to one of these problems, and I think that's the way we should go. I'm going to support the motion as it stands, because there's an understanding from the discussion that this is not to be some monumental task; it is to be a gathering of information. We should move forward.

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: We all know what we want to do. I'm now persuaded we can come to the same result by this route, which does return the problem to us. It also defines and refines some of the witnesses we want to have come in, starting with officials who would be doing the preparatory work, in effect, and then interviewing specific folks from specific communities.

I sympathize with the idea of us going out there collectively in the summer, and of course we should be doing this at some point. I suspect the problem is very practical, in terms of getting a critical mass of folks. You would be astonished at how difficult this is with the commitments people have already made, but maybe.... I'm not ruling it out, but from a procedural point of view, if we wanted to go the Marceau route, Mr. Elley can either withdraw or not, and we can vote on it.

What we've been doing is effectively making a report to the House, right—

The Chair: Excuse me, we have a motion on the floor and I've just lost quorum.

Mr. John Godfrey: Oh, God. Come back, quorum!

All I was saying was before we could pass that as a report to the House, I think we would want to review the mandate part, because.... In other words, we can't vote today on something we're not going to feel comfortable with until we've seen all the elements.

The Chair: Plus you don't have 48-hour notice on your motion.

Mr. Reed Elley: I'll withdraw my motion and perhaps we could agree—in consultation with our research people and the chair and vice-chairs—to come up with a way we can make sure we're consulting with the departments Kenneth Young mentioned in his suggestion. Perhaps we could agree that this consultation—call it a “consultation” rather than a task force—then be charged to bring back to us some recommendations, particularly about success stories, that we can as a committee pursue in the fall.

• 1225

A voice: And build on.

Mr. Reed Elley: And build on, yes.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. John Godfrey: Mary, do you have enough to go on there?

The Chair: Mr. Elley has withdrawn his motion. That's generally the way that....

Mr. Mark Eyking (Sydney—Victoria, Lib.): By unanimous consent.

The Chair: Is that by unanimous consent? Okay.

That's the way this committee is more likely to come to some conclusion on this, by general consensus, so thank you, Mr. Eyking.

Okay. Before I lose the whole crowd, the consensus is we would ask the researcher to give a summary of what we've talked about, and she'll pass on a recommendation or a letter on what's come out of the discussion here.

Mr. Marceau?

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Madam Chair, I suggest that Reed's proposal be discussed at a subsequent meeting. I don't have a problem with his proposal that mandates be clearly defined, along with the concerns you expressed. Then we would have everything clearly spelled out. We don't need a four-page summary. We need to state clearly what exactly it is we want.

Mr. John Godfrey: Something that we could present in the form of a committee report to the House.

Mr. Richard Marceau: That's right.

Mr. John Godfrey: I believe that's the final detail.

Mr. Richard Marceau: Correct.

[English]

The Chair: I understand we're very much looking at a way of getting at the best practices out there in the communities and also of bringing forth their ideas.

Mr. John Godfrey: And also simply identifying problems that seem to be getting in the way of innovation and flexibility and positive solutions.

The Chair: Funding.

Mr. John Godfrey: It's not only money. It's got to be more than money.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: At the same time, the different nations must have an opportunity to develop housing as they see fit. If one nation has some sound ideas and cannot carry them out because of red tape, then that's makes no sense at all.

[English]

The Chair: Okay. The researcher would like clarification as to whether you want a report or a recommendation next meeting.

Mr. John Godfrey: We're actually making a request of the minister. Of course we're just dying to get along very well with the minister.

It would be useful to, in your capacity as parliamentary secretary....

The Chair: The researcher only wants clarification on how you want her to bring her findings to the committee at the next opportunity.

Remember, we have Minister Ralph Goodale coming at the next meeting. He's not coming until noon, so we have an opportunity between eleven and twelve, if you want to do a three-hour session then, because the minister can only come from twelve o'clock until two, which is cutting very close to question period. The next opportunity we have is a minister coming before us for the main estimates of the Department of Natural Resources.

Should the researcher give a letter or a report? She wants to know before she leaves today how we're going to address this mandate.

Mr. John Godfrey: May I make a suggestion?

• 1230

In our attempt to work in a cordial fashion with the minister—since we're into the letter mode these days, as of today, you'll be glad to know—the person we would want to ask is Minister Nault. Isn't that right? We want him to get into action. We should do it in letter format. You should warn the minister this is coming down and perhaps find out what it is that's coming down. It's friendly.

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): My spies are here.

Mr. John Godfrey: Yes, okay. I'm sure he will be agreeable. If we do it in letter format, it's more informal, but it should have all the elements in it, and we should review it on Thursday at eleven o'clock before Mr. Goodale comes. Then we'll be in a position to send it off.

Mr. Reed Elley: Madam Chair, I don't think the minister requires a lot of research from our research people.

It was merely to make sure that you, as chair—and the vice-chairs if they need to be consulted—work with the research person to make sure that when we come back next meeting we do have a recommendation and a course of action to follow on the discussion we've had here today, which would include certain elements. We don't have to go through it again.

Mr. John Godfrey: We don't need a résumé of the conversation. You only want the letter, and if there are options or uncertainties, you want to be able to identify those, and we'll try to sort those out in the first hour.

The Chair: Okay. Do I have an understanding then that we will come here at eleven on Thursday to go over the letter before the noon meeting with Minister Goodale on the estimates? Okay. Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.