HUMA Committee Report

FIRST NATIONS CHILDREN LIVING ON RESERVE FROM THE PRENATAL PERIOD TO AGE 6

BACKGROUND

In the Throne Speech inaugurating the First Session of the 37th Parliament, the Government of Canada made substantial commitments to Aboriginal people¹ generally and their children in particular. To promote the healthy development of Aboriginal children across the country, the government announced that it would work together with First Nations to:

It also undertook to work in partnership with Aboriginal communities, provinces and territories to substantially reduce the incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Following these commitments, the members of the Sub-committee on Children and Youth at Risk decided to conduct a study of Aboriginal children in Canada, paying particular attention to federal programs and services available to them. Studies have proven the decisive importance of their early childhood in the future development and well-being of individuals.² We are also aware of the separate areas of jurisdiction of the federal, provincial and territorial governments with respect to Aboriginal people living on reserve and those who live elsewhere.³ Given the nature of these issues, we thought it appropriate to conduct this study in four phases, which will consider the prenatal period to age 12 for children living on and off reserve.

Phase 1: The condition of First Nations children from the prenatal period to age 6 living on reserve.

Phase 2: The condition of young Aboriginal children living off reserve from the prenatal period to age 6.

Phase 3: The condition of First Nations children from age 6 to 12 living on reserve.

Phase 4: The condition of Aboriginal children from age 6 to 12 living off reserve.

The Sub-committee plans to complete the four phases by the end of 2003.

We began our examination of the condition of First Nations Children in November 2001 with information meetings where we heard from representatives of various federal government departments providing programs and services to Aboriginal families and children in Canada.⁴ For the purpose of completing the first phase of the study, subsequent meetings were organized with experts in early childhood development, various stakeholders, teachers working in Aboriginal communities, community groups, native leaders, and representatives of various First Nations bands and communities.

This report marks the end of the first phase and deals with the condition of children living on reserve from the prenatal period to age 6. It summarizes our testimony and provides observations and recommendations that we hope will serve to bring about improvements in the lives of, and the opportunities available to, those young children living on reserve in Canada.

Having said this, the Sub-committee is aware of the limitations of this report. Since we have paid particular attention to the programs and services that focus on the development of young children, our recommendations are limited to this particular topic. They do not, therefore, take into consideration the full range of the issues facing members of the First Nations across the country. Though the Sub-committee understands that these issues cannot be separated from those specific to children, we nevertheless feel that ensuring that families and young children have access to a full range of opportunities for learning and development offers a good starting point in ensuring the sound development of the First Nations communities. This would be a first‑rate investment in the future of our country.

As Dr. Rose-Alma McDonald, Consultant to the Mohawk Council of Katenies and to the Assembly of First Nations pointed out:

“Children are the most precious resource of our nations. They are the link to the past generations, they are the enjoyment of the present generations, and they are our hope for the future […] Yet without healthy, socially developed children and youth, we have no future. Without them, we have no guarantees for any of them beyond today.”⁵

ABORIGINAL CHILDREN IN CANADA: OVERVIEW

In January 1993, six Innu children in Davis Inlet barricaded themselves in an unheated shack in minus forty temperatures and attempted to take their own lives. Seven years later, television cameras caught a group of children in the Innu community of Sheshatshiu unsupervised in the woods in sub-zero temperatures high on sniffing gasoline. These images gained national and international attention and imprinted themselves in our imaginations. Three years prior to the tragic events at Davis Inlet, on 28 May 1990, Canada undertook to ensure that “in all actions, the best interests of the child shall be of primary consideration” by signing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.⁶ Despite its solemn commitment, statistics reveal that Aboriginal children in this country continue to sustain a disproportionate burden of illness and confront numerous social problems.

As a result of complex historical and contemporary dynamics, Aboriginal people in Canada face a number of disadvantages. Taken together, the adverse socio-economic conditions facing Aboriginal people have negative effects on the developmental outcomes of their children. Time and time again, members of the Sub-committee were reminded of the disparities in the health and well-being of First Nations children and their non‑Aboriginal counterparts. “By every measure, the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society told the Sub-committee, Aboriginal children in Canada are doing poorly and their families face many different challenges, including poverty, welfare dependency, illiteracy, and family distress.”⁷ Indeed, social and economic indicators reveal high rates of birth, unemployment, poor housing conditions, low education levels and other environmental factors that aggravate the health risks for children and youth. ⁸

In 1996, an estimate placed almost 60 per cent of First Nations children under the age of six below Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off rates. This exposure to poverty and its deleterious effects can be traumatic, especially among children who continually live with these powerful stresses. Poor housing and crowded living conditions on reserve are factors in the higher rates of respiratory problems and other infectious diseases among Aboriginal children. Additionally, compared with non-Aboriginal children, they suffer higher rates of unintentional injuries and early deaths and are more likely than other children to begin smoking, drinking and drug abuse at a younger age.⁹

Other social indicators for First Nations children found that:¹⁰

These social and economic challenges confronting many First Nations children become even more troubling when one considers the current and projected demographic trends. Fully one-third of the population is under 14 years of age. According to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development’s Basic Departmental Data 2000, approximately 50 per cent of the Registered Indian population is under the age of 25. Moreover, due to the number of young First Nations people in Canada and the current fertility rate, these figures are projected to increase. The Sub-committee heard that “children under the age of six represent 16 per cent of the [Aboriginal] population, whereas in the general Canadian population children represent approximately 8 per cent.”¹¹ In other words, Aboriginal children are a demographically significant group. This reality presents serious policy implications for both federal and Aboriginal governments. The BC Aboriginal Child Care Society articulated this concern to the Sub‑committee when they told us that:

[I]n future, while most of Canada will be preoccupied with providing services for its growing number of senior citizens, on-reserve communities will face the challenge of providing development, education and employment opportunities for its young people. ¹²

Members of the Sub-committee recognize that a sustained, integrated and culturally‑sensitive approach to addressing these inequities is urgently required if the lives of First Nations children are not to be characterized by a downward cycle of despair. As one witness cautioned the members of the Sub-committee:

Aboriginal participation will be critical for Canada’s economic growth and social cohesion … we estimate that Aboriginal people will make up 33% of the labour force in the province of Saskatchewan in 2025. Given these figures,… it is very important for the government to introduce new measures and to continue those which have already been undertaken.¹³

PROGRAMS AND SERVICES: WHAT WE HEARD

Even though programs and services designed to promote the development of pre‑school children do not alone provide a response to all the socio-economic problems facing First Nations communities across the country, our witnesses spoke about their importance for their children, families and communities.

On the subject of childcare and early childhood development programs, Robert Lagacé, Director of the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society, pointed out that:

[They] have become critically important for the children themselves, for their parents, and for the entire community. These programs give infants and children a safe, stimulating, and nurturing environment in which to develop physically, socially, mentally, and spiritually.… [They] give parents the opportunity to finish their schooling and to upgrade their skills so they can work and become self-sufficient, contribute to their community.… [They] can address many of the problems evident in our communities today.¹⁴

During the hearings of the Sub-committee, many witnesses also took great care to point out the positive impact made by some of the programs and services that focus on the development of young children in their community. Some of the comments we heard on this subject are:

MOVING FORWARD

Obviously, this testimony supports the Sub-committee's decision to evaluate the programs and services in order to promote early childhood development for young First Nations children. Having said this, the information we were given during our meetings also brought to light many shortcomings with respect to these programs and services for families and young children living on reserve.

We believe action can address a number of those shortcomings, and make it possible to accommodate more effectively the special needs of First Nations communities all over the country. The Sub-committee particularly believes that programs and services can be improved in order to give First Nations children a better future.

THE NEED FOR THE FEDERAL FAMILY TO WORK TOGETHER

Several federal departments share responsibility for providing support services and mechanisms to First Nations children and families living on reserve in Canada: Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Health Canada, Department of Human Resources Development, Justice, Solicitor General, Canadian Heritage, etc. Through these departments, the federal government makes available to First Nations children and families a spectrum of services and community action programs in a number of areas: for example, culture and language, education, nutrition, health promotion, prevention, parenting training, social support programs, etc.¹⁹

Given the multidimensional, all-encompassing nature of issues involving children and the family, the involvement of a number of departments is inevitable. This alone should not pose problems, but sharing these responsibilities demands close collaboration among the departments in order to ensure that their individual efforts are coordinated, and to produce the best results. As the Auditor General explained in his report on Managing Departments for Results and Managing Horizontal Issues for Results:

When a policy issue spans departmental mandates, no one department has all the levers, resources and expertise to manage it adequately. Departments must work together toward an overall objective and adopt a common vision for success. They must effectively manage the resources dedicated to the horizontal issue and consider collectively how to fill gaps in service and eliminate duplication. They must be able to demonstrate accomplishments and learn from their present performance in order to make progress toward the expected results.²⁰

Ever since it’s establishment, our Sub-committee has been working to make the government think more horizontally about issues that do not lend themselves to vertical analysis: children, families, persons with disabilities, family violence, etc. We wanted this study on the condition of Aboriginal children, to determine how existing programs and services, whatever their source, work together, both within the departments and within the communities where the children and their parents live.²¹

“WORKING TOGETHER TOWARD AN OVERALL OBJECTIVE AND ADOPTING A COMMON VISION FOR SUCCESS”²²

Despite many attempts by federal departments to increase their ability to intervene horizontally in order to improve the coordination — and thus the outcomes — of programs and services for First Nations families and children, we found in the course of our hearings that the support offered by the departments to the communities remains fragmented. In the opinion of a number of our witnesses from departments and First Nations, federal departments are far from functioning in unison. This is definitely causing problems for the communities in dealing with issues related to children.

Because of this lack of coordination, some communities are having trouble finding their way through the maze of available services and programs. As a result, they are deprived of support and services considered essential to the development of their children.²³ For other communities, which are confronted by a myriad of programs and services with overlapping mandates, this lack of coordination has undermined more effective service delivery. Funding for a series of fragmentary programs creates pointless divisions within the communities, and does not allow them to derive the maximum benefit from the various programs and services available.

Given the walls between departments, it was also impossible for us to get an overall view of what the government is doing to encourage healthy development of young First Nations children. The documents we analyzed throughout our study are based on departmental structures and perpetuate the existence of departmental divisions. We find this troubling because, in the case of First Nations children, no single department is responsible for the government’s actions as a whole. What is more, we found that the people responsible for programs and services are not accountable “for their failure to coordinate their activities to achieve cross-departmental outcomes”.²⁴

In order to bring about real change in the lives of First Nations' children, the departments must, in the opinion of the Sub-committee, minimize the divisions among them and work together to define a strategy to meet this vital objective. To this end, they will have to take stock of existing programs and services in order to fill the gaps and eliminate redundancy and develop “a common vision of outcomes, objectives and lines of accountability.”²⁵

That said, like a number of witnesses, we consider that improvement of programs and services within the community is contingent on the federal government’s adopting an integrated policy framework for early Aboriginal childhood development. In our view, this framework must be developed from a horizontal management model that will permit the achievement of the federal government’s objectives with respect to First Nations’ children. It must consequently include the set of elements the Auditor General considered essential for good co-ordination structures.²⁶ Moreover, the advice and experience of the First Nations must, in our view, be utilized in the creation of this plan.

RECOMMENDATION ONE

The Sub-committee recommends that all federal departments with programs for First Nations families and young children living on Canada's reserves join together to create an integrated policy framework for the development of young First Nations children from 0 to 6. This framework should include a common vision of the results desired, the objectives sought and the lines of accountability.

PROMOTING INTEGRATION OF PROGRAMS AND SERVICES

The Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador noted in its brief that “most of the work to avoid duplication, to increase cost-effectiveness and optimize results are achieved locally.²⁷” The concept of integration is very attractive to many communities. Community-wide integration permits, among other things, the resolution of problems of redundancy, the saving of resources and the expansion of the scope of programs and services. Currently, however, communities wanting to integrate their programs and services are running into major administrative obstacles. We noted, during the course of our hearings, that some communities have succeeded in integrating programs and services within the community and thus have lowered administrative costs and improved the delivery of their services. These success stories are compromised, however, as the communities are finding themselves obliged to produce separate reports for each of the departments that provide funding. Obviously, this situation creates a significant administrative burden for the communities, which often have to assign a staff member to draft all these reports. In our opinion, this paper burden diverts resources from where they are needed most and constitutes an obstacle to improving services.

In addition, witnesses indicated that in many instances, existing funding arrangements do not allow communities to redirect resources. This restricts their ability to respond effectively to the needs and priorities of their members. In this regard, several witnesses emphasized that greater flexibility in funding arrangements, where available, has had a positive impact on the development of internal capacity of communities to manage their own affairs and to work more effectively with other governments and stakeholders. One such example is the Health Canada's Health Services Transfer Agreement which provides for greater authority and control over health resources by First Nations. These types of funding arrangements have the benefit of allowing First Nations to move resources between program areas in order to address community priorities.²⁸ These agreements also give First Nations more say over how programs are delivered. We have heard, however, that they do not sufficiently reduce the duplication of reporting requirements nor provide the desired flexibility to pool funding received from various departments and allocate those resources to local areas of priority. Indeed, under many funding arrangements, First Nations are constrained to respond to departmental priorities ahead of their own. In our opinion, this situation too is an obstacle to improved services: administrative requirements should never take precedence over child and family needs.

The Sub-committee does not wish to diminish the critical importance of funding issues surrounding programs and services in First Nations communities. In this first report on First Nations children, we have chosen, however, to emphasize the establishment of a model for the more efficient use of resources as a first step toward a solution.

For all these reasons, members of the Sub-committee feel that it is worthwhile to implement a series of pilot projects in selected demonstration communities across the country, which would, in a concrete and practical way, deal with several concerns articulated by witnesses. The pilot projects should address issues surrounding the shortfalls of the current service delivery model in First Nations communities, limited program coverage, the need for greater resources and more flexible transfer arrangements, the burdens of “program shopping” as well as onerous administrative and reporting requirements. Following this, an evaluation would determine the cost savings to First Nations communities by streamlining administrative reporting systems and harmonizing existing programs.

The implementation of culturally appropriate pilot projects at the community level will enable federal, territorial, provincial and Aboriginal governments to harmonize their services by using early childhood development programs as a starting point. They will then be in a position to evaluate and monitor which mechanisms are needed to ensure that such integration functions effectively and meets the needs of the various stakeholders. Further, the implementation of this delivery model in the communities chosen as pilots should take into account the capacity of these communities to participate in this initiative as well as their willingness to do so. The selection of participating First Nations communities must occur in consultation with the First Nations themselves.

Furthermore, the Sub-committee firmly believes that in order for the pilot projects to be implemented successfully, they must be properly funded. This consolidated funding should not be diverted from programs directed toward the well being of children.

Moreover, witnesses have told the Sub-committee of their frustration with successful pilot projects being discontinued in the past. Members of the Sub-committee strongly encourage all participants to make a firm commitment to following through on the pilot projects. We can then properly evaluate what works best, and why. It is our hope that lessons learned and best practices issuing from the pilot projects would be applied to the delivery of services to all First Nations across the country.

RECOMMENDATION TWO

The Sub-committee recommends that the Government of Canada:

CONCLUSION

Throughout its examination, the Sub-committee heard troubling testimony on the situation of young children living on reserve, across the country. We could not escape the conclusion that First Nations children and families face many challenges, which seem, at times, overpowering and insoluble. We hope the observations and recommendations in this report will contribute to some extent to the vital process of finding solutions. That said, we firmly believe that the First Nations communities are in the best position to define the need for intervention and the priorities for action. The complex needs and problems of the children and families will be better handled through programs and services that focus on the specific needs of the individual communities. Our recommendations in this report are founded on this premise.