:
Thank you, and good morning to you all.
As has been said, my name is Mary Polak. I am British Colombia's Minister of Children and Family Development and Minister Responsible for Child Care.
I want to say I'm very honoured to be here today to make this presentation to the standing committee and to carry forward what I think are some very important words from not only the Province of British Columbia but also from its first citizens.
British Columbia is a province that is shaped and enriched by the presence, the words, and the wisdom of our first nations. We pride ourselves on being a land of wealth and opportunity, but we know this opportunity does not extend to everyone. It has its limits, and those limits are too often defined by the lines that separate reserve land.
We can never right the wrongs of the past, but we stand united in our commitment to establishing a new relationship with first nations, one rooted firmly in respect, recognition, and reconciliation. We are committed to supporting first nations as they strive to create better, stronger, healthier futures for their children and their youth.
British Columbia is home to the second-largest aboriginal population in the country, fully 5% of our province's total population, and that rate is growing at almost three times the rate of non-aboriginal peoples. Almost 40% of that population is under the age of 19. Our province includes 203 first nations communities--one-third of all first nations communities across Canada--and about 38% of those live on reserve. These communities differ greatly from those of our prairie neighbours, not just in numbers but, importantly, in size, the communities averaging fewer than 300 people on reserve.
In addition, many of our first nations communities, while possessed of extraordinary beauty, are isolated and remote, and that's an environment that adds to the challenge of accessing adequate resources and support for their people, particularly those who are most vulnerable.
We are, as a province, faced with unique challenges. We know that a one-size-fits-all approach simply will not work for our first nations. We are committed to working together with our federal and first nations partners to find the kinds of unique solutions needed in British Columbia, both now and for the long term.
I'm proud of some of the successes our province has seen in forging a new relationship with our first nations and aboriginal people. That path has not always been smooth and we are, in many respects, still finding our way, but we have continued to move forward. November 2005 saw a big step forward with the creation of the Transformative Change Accord, signed by the Government of Canada, British Columbia, and the First Nations Leadership Council, representing all 203 first nations in British Columbia. The accord, which still guides us today, aims to close the socio-economic gaps between first nations in British Columbia and other British Columbians by 2015, by focusing on key areas, including health, education, housing and infrastructure, economic conditions, and the relationship between aboriginal people and the crown.
It was and is an ambitious plan, and real progress has been made in achieving the goals laid out within it. Perhaps more than anything the accord has strengthened our partnership with first nations leaders and paved the way to a more focused approach to addressing social and economic gaps.
We have moved forward. Achievements have been realized in negotiating health and education agreements, including first nations education jurisdiction agreements, which lay the groundwork for first nations decision-making about the K to 12 education of their children on reserve. The tripartite first nations health plan and proposed first nations health authority sets the stage for the transfer of federal first nations health programs to B.C. first nations. So, yes, we have moved forward, but we have a long way still to go.
That is why I'm here today. In the last 20 years, B.C. first nations have been working hard to develop their own child and family services agencies, and in the past decade governments and ministries have come a long way in recognizing the authority and jurisdiction of first nations over their own communities and their own people, specifically their own children.
We've come a long way from the colonial mentality that resulted in the devastation wrought by residential schools and the sixties scoop. We recognize that while residential schools closed in the 1980s, their devastating effects are ongoing and intergenerational, profoundly affecting the children of today. For these children, historically overrepresented in our province's child welfare system and underrepresented in our colleges and universities, we can and must do better.
I come to you to speak about not only the unique challenges that must be addressed to truly support B.C.'s aboriginal children and youth, but most importantly the ways in which we must continue to work together to address these challenges and move forward.
We are presently involved with more than 100 first nations communities, as well as many urban and Métis communities, each of which is working to develop child and family service approaches based on its unique indigenous identity that will better serve the children and families in its community. For example, I recently participated in the signing of a partnership memorandum that brought together for the first time the first nations communities of the Stikine to design and develop their own model of care for their children.
As a ministry, we have committed to respecting and upholding the first nations right to jurisdiction over their children and families, and thus to services that support their children. We fully support Jordan's Principle and are committed to its implementation. We know that aboriginal children and youth make up more than half of all children in care, and we know that real, long-term, effective solutions lie with first nations themselves, with adequate resources from respective governments.
B.C.'s initial first-nations-delegated agency was established in 1986 under the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations Tribal Council. We now have 24 delegated agencies throughout our province, and others are actively working toward delegation.
As you are aware, the model of funding for first nations child welfare, known as 20-1, is not helpful in our province. As a result, we have been working together to build a new framework.
As a province, we want to address these historical inequities, particularly in the area of child welfare. The B.C. first nations enhanced prevention services and accountability framework is a key part of the solution.
Created by British Columbia's first nations, the provincial government, and INAC, it establishes a funding framework that both reflects and addresses the complexities of our delegated agencies on reserve. It offers a new funding model that recognizes that operational costs and the delivery of prevention and early intervention services must be considered in any funding agreement in order to have viable and sustainable child welfare services. This framework, brought to Ottawa in September 2008, has the full support of British Columbia provincial first nations leadership.
It carves out a path in which British Columbia first nations can move forward in creating healthier, stronger communities for their children and youth. It recognizes the value and importance of prevention, early intervention, and family support rooted in traditional culture and practice. It builds on the important work done by all three partners over the past decade to improve outcomes for first nations and will offer them an opportunity to leverage this funding to create a holistic, culturally appropriate, on-reserve child, youth, and family support system.
At the end of the day, this tripartite framework makes it abundantly clear that we recognize and value all first nations children and youth, not just those who are in government care.
Each of us here today is committed to forging a new path with our country's first nations. We have had great success in working together, in acknowledging and respecting our differences, and in understanding the importance of supporting rather than leading on this long journey.
I look forward to your continued partnership as we move forward, and I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
I'm going to speak about my agency, because I think we are a pretty good example of what can be done when a community puts its mind to the care of its children and, above all, is given resources in fact to do that.
In 1985, for those of you who don't know, who are not from this province, the provincial legislation was amended to allow aboriginal communities and agencies to develop their own child and family services. Many people didn't think about the Toronto community as an aboriginal community, and it is probably not thought to be so right around this country, but indeed, we have the third largest aboriginal child population in the country. We suffered from the same social and economic conditions affecting other native communities, and like those communities, our rates of children in the care of the state were far too high and the outcomes for those kids in care were very poor.
Our community felt we could do much better and that a community-controlled and culture-based approach would result in the outcomes we wanted to achieve. By better outcomes, I should say, we meant fewer kids in care of the state, but it also meant that where they had to be in care, their placements were within their community, either within their extended families or with their community of origin.
We felt that children who grow up in their family of heritage will have a strong identity and can, with support—and often supports are needed—have natural and caring relationships with their community and families, relationships that most Canadians take for granted, but not relationships that can necessarily be taken for granted by aboriginal people.
In 1988 we developed our own service model, and it was a far different approach from conventional child welfare. In Ontario we still have an import from Britain called “the society”. These are chartered societies; indeed my agency is in fact a children's aid society under a charter with the province.
The society status allows you some flexibility, and we developed a service model that was a little different from conventional children's aid societies. It came from extensive consultation with communities, with elders, with stakeholders, if you will, including government officials, and we were given some pretty clear marching orders associated with doing something different. One was that our society, our child welfare response, had to have some level of accountability to the community we served.
The second was that they wanted us to address the circumstances that might lead to the apprehension of children, which is very different from a conventional children's aid society that focuses on investigations of child maltreatment.
The third was to wrap this all up in a culture-based approach, which is not easy when you're talking about culture in the context of provincial legislation, so we were very challenged in those days.
The accountability part was the easy part. We developed very quickly a conventional, non-profit charity with a representative board of directors of all native people, all professionals in their fields, to oversee our work. We hired an executive director. That was me.
The second was to create an agency that was not just a business plan for protecting kids but a business plan that would go beyond that. Quality of life for children goes beyond simply their protection. It is also the nurturing of those children so that they can live decent, productive lives as good citizens of their first nations and of Canada as a whole. We had lofty ambitions.
We say we are a full service agency that does child welfare instead of a child welfare agency. When you approach it that way, you leave the door open for all kinds of innovative servicing. Between 1988 and 2004, we developed over $8 million worth of services that were not child welfare-related. These were Head Start programs, dedicated day care spaces, and extensive youth programs, including transitional housing for kids on the street. We run a high school, and we have a number of services that relate to their particular needs.
We have culture-based healing and therapy programs for adults and children. We have family violence programs. We have a stand-alone addictions clinic and we do summer and recreational programs. In fact, if you were to ask the kids who are engaged with Native Child what their favourite program is, they'll tell you it's our summer camp. That's kind of moving into the normative expectation with respect to what many Canadian children have taken for granted but aboriginal kids certainly haven't.
The cultural base issue is handled by having an elders council. It has no authority under formal rules but in fact has tremendous and powerful authority from the cultural place. They guide us in our training and they help us provide our ceremonies—and we have extensive ceremonies.
You wouldn't know this, but at College and Yonge there are two things today that weren't in existence a few years ago. One is a fully functioning sweat lodge on the fourth floor of our building, and the other is an Algonquin teaching lodge that is built in the atrium of our new building. Both of these, for your information, have won design awards, including one of the most prestigious of all design awards by the art design institute in the U.S., who publish the large journal related to that.
So we do more than spend time on child protection, although we take that seriously. We do cultural enhancement and enrichment, and we try to do what the elders call showing the things that glitter: show that aboriginal people are not just people who receive services and have problems, that there is, with the appropriate nurturing, an opportunity to do much more. My agency is a good sign of that.
I think we have done very successful work. Our agency is holistic in its orientation. It tends to the life-cycle needs of kids and families, and not just, as I've said, as part of the immediate and difficult realities of child maltreatment.
We have close to 200 staff, multiple locations, and an operating budget of $24 million. On average, we interface with 1,200 aboriginal people a day.
We have more than 70 funding agreements, very few with the federal government, and of course we have a tremendous administrative burden as a result. It's interesting to note that not one of these agreements comes from INAC. In fact, I cannot recall a single dollar ever being directly funded to this agency by the federal government through INAC, although 70% of our clients are status Indians and the other 30% would be Métis, Inuit, and self-declared aboriginal people.
After 20 years of service provision to our community, we have made some huge differences in some areas and very little difference in others. Our best results, our pride, is in our work with kids who have become permanent wards of the state.
Previous to the emergence of Native Child and other organizations like us, native children were apprehended by the state and quite often—and this is a tragedy—simply disappeared to non-native places, often not just in the immediate area but out of province, and sometimes out of the country, and sometimes internationally.
We have stopped this culturally genocidal behaviour. Kids not only do not disappear; they stay within their community, many within their extended families, both on and off reserve.
We are proud that close to 90% of our long-term placements are with native families. Evidence is mounting that says that this will produce better overall outcomes for the kids involved. They are mostly doing well in our care; some are doing very well. We are having kids, for the first time, graduate from universities and colleges. Most of our kids were dropouts from the high school system. The kids we bring into our care tend to do a lot better.
The area in which we have not been successful is in handling and making a difference in the circumstances that lead to the apprehension of children. In fact we are apprehending more kids than ever, and this is a phenomenon right across the country. In Toronto, almost 10% of the children in care are aboriginal, and we represent less than 1% of the population. We have to ask ourselves why this is so. Why, after so much effort on the part of the community and an investment of close to $24 million annually, are these kids still coming into care?
I believe you know the answer. This is a committee that has heard from many. It has to do with a legacy of colonialism, the residential schools, and the disenfranchisement of aboriginal people from living a life that would normally be expected to be lived by any Canadian. That history has probably been articulated to you, so I will not go into it, but that history is experienced in the everyday life of the caseloads at Native Child and Family Services.
We have an overrepresentation among the families we work with of families who are in poverty. They are plagued by violence, have addictions, and are alienated from themselves and everything around them.
As you know—and I hope this would be a wake-up call for any concerned citizen—the migration to the city is accelerating rapidly. If you consult with StatsCan, you'll see that in Toronto alone, every census shows a 20% increase in aboriginal children. Thankfully, agencies such as Native Child and Family Services, and a similar initiative referenced here in Vancouver, have developed to receive this migration. I think we are developing an expertise and securing the resources and doing all things necessary to create agencies that will assist these kids in making a healthy transition. But there's lots of work to do, and while I was not asked, I can't help but make a few recommendations. They will be short and sweet.
One is investment in native children. There's lots of investment dealing with the problems of native kids. I can get more money to support a kid I've apprehended than I can ever get for a kid who's actually in the community. I don't think anybody would see that as a good, no matter what end of the political spectrum you might be on. We need to get at some of these fundamentals: investment in the Head Start program—and by the way, it has been an excellent program that has made a dramatic difference in the lives of some of our kids—day cares, which we have taken on; early education, zero to six. All of those investments, I think, pay off tremendously.
I don't know what the formula is, whether a buck invested saves...but I will tell you that I have kids in care, because they have not had investments in their lives, sitting in foster homes and group homes that are costing over $200 a day. So just the business side would tell you that these investments are good.
The other is, treat kids fairly. That has been articulated in Jordan's Principle very well, and I think you've heard it before. No matter who they are or where they live, and whether they're aboriginal or not, kids should have equal services in a country such as ours. This is fundamental, I think, to our values as Canadians, whether we're native or non-native.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning to our witnesses.
In a previous life, I was a high school teacher, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. A relationship was established between the French Canadian school and the Joe Duquette School, in view of cultural exchanges between youngsters from both schools, Métis and Franco-Saskatchewanian, in order for them to get to know each other better.
Ms. Polak, you are from British Columbia, and you, Mr. Richard, are from Toronto. As we saw, the perception was tangible with regard to the poverty issue, the difficulty of the situation of one versus the other. It is a concern.
Before being a teacher, I was an educator in youth centres in Quebec and, as educator, I was responsible for the young people who came to us from Rapid Lake and Maniwaki, in Quebec. These were juvenile delinquents subject to judicial control. I did the follow-up because I spoke better English than my colleagues, in particular, and because I had been trained as an educationist. The work was very difficult. It is difficult at the outset when dealing with delinquents. Despite their small number, they unfortunately account for a good proportion of the residents of our social transition institutions.
I would like to ask a perhaps somewhat more targeted question pertaining to persistence in school and drop-outs. What are you doing, both in British Columbia and in the Greater Toronto, to motivate these young people to pursue their education? We know that there is the issue of the education scheme per se. Who teaches? How is it done? Is it in the city or on reserve? Indeed, these are two different worlds.
I will invite you to respond, Madam Polak.
Thank you to the witnesses, Minister Polak and Mr. Richard.
I have some degree of familiarity, coming from the great Kenora riding out in northwestern Ontario. I appreciate your coming so far to speak with us today.
I did a bachelor's degree at the University of Victoria in nursing and worked at the Arbutus Society for Children, and subsequently in Klemtu, B.C., as an outpost nurse. It's beautiful country out there, and I'm well aware of some of the challenges you face in these regards, and certainly the broader perspective with a health and legal background working in these capacities.
I want to talk to you first, Minister, for just a couple of minutes, about the enhanced prevention-focused approach and the difficulties you alluded to in your speech with respect to 20-1, I guess we'll call it. Just briefly, by way of review, we have the 20-1 model, we have the enhanced prevention-focused approach, and we have the 1965 welfare agreement. The objective of the federal government, of course, is to have, by 2013, all jurisdictions participating in one funding model that obviously puts its focus on prevention.
In my own briefings and my own understanding of it, certainly from working in health as well, when we start to transition into prevention, we do see a little bit of a spike in the need for services, because, similar to health, we're involved in a more robust process of identification of some of the challenges and issues we face.
As a federal government, we take a look at a broader set of statistics. In fairness to my colleagues in the official opposition, over the past 10 years, the federal government has doubled its investment in this area. The only quantifiable statistic, I think, that we can gain some measure of hope from is that 5.3% of children are in care on reserve. That statistic has stayed steady for the past four years, and I think you said you've actually seen a little bit of a dip in British Columbia.
That should never make us very comfortable. That statistic is still too high. But it suggests as well that at least it's not growing.
From an investment perspective into this agency, I guess we concern ourselves with the idea that it may not just be a question of resources. I know that Grand Chief Atleo applauded the investment, and we've heard testimony from other witnesses this fall, as I understand it, that looked at some of the structural challenges agencies face at the community level with respect to the provincial government and the federal government.
To my question, you mentioned that 20-1 was not helpful for the strategic objectives of the province. I'm sure resources may be part of your concern, but I'd be interested in your discussing a little bit more your involvement in the tripartite discussions and perhaps how they look at two things: one, the broad question of resources; and two, a concern that I hope to get to Mr. Richard about, that I'm not always convinced it's a question of resources from the outset when our departments do so many different things and make investments in so many things. They're just not sufficiently integrated. As federal departments, we don't look closely enough at our superordinate goals.
Can you speak to those two ideas? I appreciate that they are difficult and different ideas. Maybe you could speak to that for a couple of minutes.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Forgive me for being late. We should go on strike, on Parliament Hill, in order to obtain adequate transportation services.
I live in an area where First Nations account for a third of the population. We have a vision in Quebec. I represent the riding of Abitibi— Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, that extends all the way to Labrador. My riding neighbours on that of my colleague, Todd. We have aboriginal populations that are rich. However, there is something of a vicious circle. We invest money and we see the department realize that the fact that it put money in did not make things move forward. The situation remained the same and the provinces are practically accused of having intervened in such a way that the money served to increase costs rather than direct services to children.
In our neck of the woods, in rich communities, at 4:30 or 5 o'clock, we see young people with a beer bottle in their hand and a joint between their lips. We ask them what they are doing there, we tell them that they will not be able to go to school like that, and their response is to ask us why they would bother going there.
I am talking about a vicious circle. It is fine to hand out money, but are we creating a vision for the future for these children? We have to begin with the parents. We have to give them a job, create industries in their communities. They need a model, because they have none. In Quebec, it is difficult to talk on behalf of the other provinces, because our model is that of integration, compared with the model in the rest of Canada, which is one of multiculturalism. To my mind, that makes a difference.
For example, we have native friendship centres. There are day-care centres and we decided to integrate First Nations children with non-Aboriginal children, and the result is unbelievable. However, there still remains the problem of a vision for the future for young people.
Ms. Polak, I would like you to explain to me the cost increase for your province. You probably encountered that as well. Mr. Richard, you mentioned the follow-up to funding for children. I would invite you to explain that, afterwards.
:
Chair, I have a couple of comments. One is that there are some really great examples out there of universities that are doing very wonderful work around first nations. I have to mention Vancouver Island University. They've got the first nations child and youth care program, and they integrate. They've got elders in residence, and the University of Victoria does as well, and I know the minister would be well aware of that. I just wanted to be on record that there are universities out there doing fine work.
The second comment I have to make is on something that I know you as witnesses are really well aware of but people who may be listening to this may not be. There's a very real consequence for us not dealing with the issues around child welfare.
I'm just going to read one stat here. It's a Manitoba stat, but I'm sure B.C. has something similar. In Manitoba, for example, aboriginal youth represented 23% of the provincial population, aged 12 to 17 in 2006, but 84% of youth in sentence custody. This is out of the report from the Canadian Council of Provincial Child and Youth Advocates. But we also know, and Mr. Richards referenced it, about underachievement in education, we know there's a direct impact on health, and sadly, there's also a direct impact on violence against aboriginal women. Although this may have nothing to do with the child welfare system, of course, we had a young woman in Cowichan murdered a week ago, an 18-year-old girl, and the community is still in shock. But there's also that whole problem that Cowichan and I know other places have with youth gang violence. So there's a real cost for us in not doing this. It's a loss for generations.
I want to just come back to Jordan's Principle for a moment. I, of course, was the mover of that motion, working closely with Norway House Cree Nation, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, and many others when I brought the motion forward. And in Ted Hughes' report of April 2006, he specifically referenced the jurisdictional issues causing unnecessary problems, and he talked about how an inordinate amount of a small agency's time and energy can be taken up with dealing with gaps and overlaps.
I just want to clarify this, Minister. I understood you to say that Premier Campbell, shortly after Jordan's Principle was announced, endorsed it in principle, but to my knowledge no agreement has yet been signed with the federal government around the implementation of Jordan's Principle. In Manitoba there was a very narrowly defined implementation agreement. In Saskatchewan there is an interim agreement with the first nations in Saskatchewan. In British Columbia...I understood you to say two things: you have endorsed the principle, and if there are jurisdictional disputes, the province will take the lead and argue about the money later.
Have I got that correct?