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Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a prepared text I will read from. It's not usually my style. I usually speak from the hip and ad lib my speeches, but for the record, and on behalf of the Métis National Council, I will read some segments on issues that we believe may be of help to this committee and at the same time will send a message on our priorities.
Thank you for inviting us to make a presentation elaborating upon what role the federal government should play in fighting poverty in Canada. Parliament and the Government of Canada have direct, specific, and substantial responsibilities to improve socio-economic conditions for aboriginal people, including the Métis--and I emphasize “including the Métis”.
These responsibilities flow from a variety of sources, not just subsection 91(24) of the Constitution Act of 1867. There's also the responsibility to make the functioning of the Canadian economic union as successful as possible. A successful economy depends on productive, contributing Métis citizens. Canadians cannot afford, either nationally or in their regions and communities, to see Métis people lag behind. As taxpayers to both levels of government, we envisage a strong role for the federal government that goes beyond providing tax credits or reducing taxes for working class Métis Canadians.
These measures, as successful as they may be for some, do not go far enough for the Métis and the needs of the large number of Métis people who live below the poverty line. Many of the Métis people who live below the poverty line are either young families or families who have more than three children. It is interesting to note that the 20th anniversary of the unanimous all-party resolution in the House of Commons to end child poverty by 2000 has just passed. Yet according to the 2006 census, 32% of Métis children under the age of six were in low-income families, compared to 18% of non-aboriginal children. According to the 2006 census, 32% of young Métis children were living in families with three or more children, compared to 25% of non-aboriginal children. Métis children in rural areas were more likely to live in families with three or more children than Métis children in urban areas--39% versus 30%. Yet the percentage of Métis children living in low-income families was higher in urban areas than in rural areas--36% compared to 20%.
In 2005, the median income of the Métis in Canada was lower than that of the non-aboriginal population. Indeed, it was about $5,000 less than the median income of $25,955 reported for the non-aboriginal population.
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I will slow it down, Madam Chair.
Across the country, the difference in median income between the Métis and the non-aboriginal population was widest in Alberta and in the territories. In Alberta, the Métis median income at $22,839 was about $6,600 less than that of the non-aboriginal population at $29,501.
We believe the federal government must move on two fronts. First, it must continue to expand skills training and post-secondary educational support for Métis people. Second, it must expand its support for Métis families for child care and for early learning supports like Métis head starts.
Métis governments have been delivering skills training and providing educational supports for Métis for the last 10 years. We have worked with many organizations over the years, including the Canadian Council on Learning. We agree with them that education and learning make individual Canadians and communities as a whole more resilient and better equipped to adapt to economic turbulence, and I'll quote from a statement:
Evidence demonstrates that higher education and continuous skills training are protective factors during times of economic instability--such as we are experiencing today--and a competitive advantage during periods of relative stability... Conversely, less-educated Canadians are less employable. They receive less workplace training. They have lower incomes and little or no savings. They are more likely to lose their jobs and remain unemployed for longer periods of time.
Accordingly, we believe the federal government should continue to extend support for Métis governments to meet the skills training and educational needs of Métis people. This should include expanded supports for Métis with disabilities and for those persons who face multiple deficits in obtaining employment.
Métis governments should be provided with further support to assist Métis to obtain post-secondary education. As it now stands, the federal government does not cover the cost of post-secondary education for Métis students. Out of the federal aboriginal education funds, Métis students do not receive any. Métis government support for these funds is limited to providing funding for their last year of university out of our training dollars.
And what that is referencing--for people to grasp--is the aboriginal human resources development program. There is now a new program called ASEP, which has been approved by this government. In that particular program, if we meet all our targets and all of our interventions, any surplus dollars can be used in the last year of post-secondary education.
We lose too many students who cannot make it to the last year of their studies because of financial constraints. We recommend that Parliament build upon existing Métis bursaries and endowments and allocate funds so that every Métis in the country who can pursue post-secondary studies has the support he or she needs.
Our second major recommendation on the proper role of the federal government in fighting poverty focuses upon the need for the federal government to expand its support for Métis child care and early learners. It is now universally accepted that early learning supports, like Head Start, do make an enormous difference in improving educational outcomes later in life.
Simply put, it provides a better foundation for children to reach their potential. The federal government recognized this in 1990 in the establishment of the off-reserve Head Start program. While this program was very much welcome, and we commend the friendship centres, it has failed to meet the needs of the vast majority of Métis children within the Métis homeland.
Program developers bypassed Métis governments and implemented the program primarily through the friendship centres, which serve only a minority of the Métis population as a result of being located largely in urban centres. Moreover, the resources are too thinly stretched to meet the needs of the Métis population as a whole. Less than 50% of Métis children under age 6 had the benefit of an early learning environment.
Moreover, Métis do not have access to a child care component within the current aboriginal human resources programming. That, again, is the new program called ASEP. There is money set aside for Inuit and first nations for child care. We don't have any. We're on our own on that issue.
Métis, who have similar family structures to those of first nations, both having large young families, are denied child care supports, thus limiting our ability to meet the needs of these young families.
In both of these areas, provinces are not meeting our needs. Accordingly, we recommend that the federal government assume the role of supporting Métis governments in meeting the needs of Métis for child care in the area of early learning.
The Métis National Council has long acknowledged the importance of aboriginal labour force development programs that are respectful of Métis Nation governance structures. We are proud of our successes and recently sought an independent review of our results and the economic impacts of the work we are doing.
We are tabling here the Centre for the Study of Living Standards report, which I believe has not yet been given. I encourage you to take this study and read it. I know it's quite lengthy, but to grasp just a segment of that report...it showcases one small investment that I'll use as an example—and I'm speaking a little out of context here because I'm finishing off.
If the Métis were to actually attain the 2001 education level of non-aboriginal Canadians today, by 2026 we'd be contributing $81.5 billion into the economy--if we were just to put that segment of investment into our kids, put them into school, and get them into post-secondary education. It would average about a $3 billion rise in tax revenue, in fact a $7.5 billion rise in GDP, if that were to happen; and by 2026, it would mean an $81 billion rise in GDP in this country.
So I hope this study will enlighten you on some of the benefiting factors that would take place if the government would actually take a Métis-specific strategy and begin to invest in our needs.
I also want to table with you Métis Works—and I brought everybody a copy. It's one of our publications from the AHRDA program that we deliver for Canada. You'll note in the document when you read it—you can skim through it—the varying fields of people we train and jobs we create for them, whether it's in the police force, or heavy equipment and construction, or even the legal profession. The people we've invested in and the success we've had in attaining full-time jobs and maintaining those full-time jobs is quite profound in the sense of the moneys it's actually contributing back into Canada.
You'll also note our investments, when you read this document. We ourselves have started to invest through this program, in partnership with the universities, particularly in Manitoba, as an example. Through this program, as I echoed earlier, if we meet all our targets and interventions, the surplus dollars can be invested in post-secondary. We started that investment eight years ago in Manitoba. Today we have $9 million in endowment funds. The university has matched me dollar for dollar for every dollar I raise. We have now given $1.5 million back to our children who are going to university. So just a small intervention such as that, a little investment like that, has truly made a remarkable change. That's only $9 million. If it could be really well planned and well thought out, imagine what the true benefits would be.
I'll end with that. I know my ten minutes are up.
I usually like to speak off the cuff. I hate reading speeches. But I'm more than willing to answer any questions and try to give you the best snapshot I can of our situation as Métis people in Canada.
If there were any recommendation I'd suggest that would result in significant change, clearly it would be investing in Métis-specific child care. That would be the first and fundamental one, to strengthen the family. It has to be Métis. I used the words “Métis-specific”. Don't use the word “aboriginal”, because then we'll probably never get it, but if you use the words “Métis-specific child care” as a direct focus, I think you will see a major change. It will help the situation as it pertains to Métis women in this country, but also give some stability to the family household.
The second recommendation I'd make, clearly, is creating an education fund. I gave the example of the endowment fund that we have been able to create by dollar-for-dollar matching with universities. We have returned $1.5 million in revenue back to our kids in post-secondary education.
We know that Statistics Canada shows that the Métis are the fastest growing aboriginal population in western Canada. The Métis are growing by leaps and bounds, based on everybody self-declaring who they are. More importantly, if Canada were to take, for example, $300 million and put it into an endowment fund, then our Métis students could tap into that through our governments. That would be a one-time contribution the government could make. It would always be something that Métis children and their families would know was resting in place, so they can pursue an education.
What we are finding, for example, is that our children are going to school and more of them are graduating from grade 12 than before, but they are stopping there. That is not what this country needs. What is triggering this and what I think we have been able to capture—though statistically we can't show this—from discussions with our communities and families is that our children are not going past the second phase because our traditional economies have fallen. With that, the parents have no money to help their kids go to university. That is another indicator that it's causing great harm.
So educational investment would be a major change to help us, because we can compete with anybody equally. Apples to apples, we'll compete with anybody; give us a chance. We just don't have the tools for our kids to finish off their education.
Other examples of things that we're doing in Manitoba, and where change can happen, are in the area of procurement. You have a procurement strategy in this country, but you're not really utilizing it to its full extent, for the economic engines to actually take heed of it and develop. In Manitoba we're pushing hard for set-asides, not procurement, which should be automatic, but set-asides, which are a different segment of procurement. I say this because if there were an aboriginal set-aside for first nations and Métis and Inuit to compete against each other...whether in the construction industry or anything else, we are doing extremely well at it. The challenge we face is that not all governments want to go down that path, yet it is such a great success.
So I would encourage you to push this type of innovative way of thinking, whereby governments create opportunities by developing set-asides.
We have our own procurement strategy—
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Those types of initiatives are great, but they are few and far between.
What we are finding now is that some of our companies that are starting to formulate themselves to become successful are being swallowed up by bigger companies. That's why they'll become the dinosaurs of the past, if there are no set-asides.
For example, a small Métis company in Manitoba started off with a truck, but the company owner can now bond up to $30 million or $35 million on hydro or construction projects. He's being swallowed up by big companies like Valard, which are undercutting him by $5 million to $7 million, and they are clearly doing it with the premise of getting rid of him. He basically came to plead with us on hydro that if it happened to him on one or two more hits, he would be finished. What is going to happen is that those little companies are all going to die out, and then Valard is going to be the only player in town, so those prices will go back up. It's like the loss leader in business.
We feel that the set-asides are protecting that, and we're pushing hydro and other institutions like them to start thinking that way.
In Manitoba we started our own procurement strategy in my own government. I pushed for it three years ago. Under it, 70% of all of my buying power has to go to Métis businesses or first nations businesses. I planted the seed. Now I can see the seeds sprouting out of the grass everywhere.
We spend millions on supplies, and yet we were going to Grand & Toy or Staples, even though they are not bringing anything back to my community. So now we have this procurement strategy in our Métis government. We are starting our own stationary company, our Métis “Staples”, if you want to call it that, and we are starting our own companies, which are starting to grow. We are pushing these types of strategic moves in our own economic engines, which although we have little of, we're seeing a dramatic turn of events taking place.
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I've been involved in politics for a long time. Sometimes there could be enough money as it now sits to actually make a big difference. The challenge we face is that it's not steered in the right direction. It got lost in a maze of end results where we don't know what the success was.
For example look at the Métis-specific reference I make, the AHRDA program. It's one of the best programs that ever came out of this country for the Métis people. That's all it is, giving us the resources to help fund and decide what training we would institute, where, and how we'd embark upon ensuring that our students are focused in the right direction.
Out of that, for example, MMF has been the lead in the top tenders. There are 80 AHRDAs in Canada. The first nations, Inuit, and Métis have AHRDAs. The Métis have five AHRDAs in five provinces. Bands are structured completely different from us.
Overall, MMF, for example, has been in the top ten in the last 10 years. We're very proud of our success. We've also employed 35,000 Métis people in the last 10 years. It's quite a dramatic opportunity for us in the sense that we now have the tools to bring in the private sector to be a partner with us.
We find most of our success in the Métis homeland is with small and medium-sized sector businesses. Yes, we get opportunities with the large enterprises--whether it's Ledcor or big companies--but it's just a hiccup, I will call it. It's like our Canadian dollar, it goes up and down--this kind of concept. But we find that our success is really balanced on the choices we can make.
The AHRDA program that I will emphasize here is being renegotiated in a sense. It's called ASEP now. What concerns me the most right now with the bureaucracy is that they are trying to micromanage it. From my perspective, if the wheel is not broken and we're successful, why change it? We're pushing very, very hard to convince the minister--who we just had a good meeting with--to move ahead in this ongoing direction.
You can measure that Métis guidance. You can know that the Canadian tax dollars, including the Métis tax dollars, that we collect are actually benefiting not only the Métis but Canada as a whole, because there are targets and there are ways to measure that success.
Clearly that's the path, and we should use that model as the example. It would make such a significant difference in the way we do it. If we take all of the aboriginal funding that we have in this country and we start dividing it Métis-specific, first nations, and Inuit-specific, and then put targets and measures, I think you'll see a massive change. It might not even require an investment of new dollars.
I'd like to thank the committee for the invitation to come and speak on this very important issue of poverty in Canada and what the federal response can and maybe should be. It's part of the work that we do every day, so it's a great honour to come and share some of those perspectives that we may have on it.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we meet here today on the Algonquin territories, and I thank them for allowing us to gather on their territories. I'm an Ojibway from Curve Lake First Nation in central Ontario, but in my day job I'm the executive director of the National Association of Friendship Centres. I'm joined by our policy director, Conrad Saulis, who will help me answer all your difficult questions when they arise.
The National Association of Friendship Centres is the national organization representing the concerns and interests of 120 local friendship centres across the country. We're the national office, and we deliver programs to those local centres through our office, and in addition, we support the work they do on the ground.
I think I said today that there are 120 friendship centres across Canada from coast to coast to coast, and last year they provided over $114 million in programs and services directly on the ground to urban aboriginal people. Friendship centres have long been engaged in the issue of poverty reduction, and in fact some may argue that our original purpose was around poverty reduction.
Our provincial office in Ontario in the year 2000 actually conducted a study on urban aboriginal child poverty in Ontario, and I think they found things that would not be surprising to this committee; for instance, child and family poverty in Canada is rooted in cultural fragmentation and the multi-generational effects of things such as residential schools, wardship to the child welfare system, and broader socio-economic marginalization. Recent studies have indicated that aboriginal people are four times more likely to report experiencing hunger than any other group in Canada.
If there is one thing to take away from my presentation today, I hope it is this, that Canada's aboriginal population is urban.
In the 2006 census, 54% of all aboriginal peoples lived in cities and towns across Canada. That offers an incredible policy challenge, and when we're asking what should the federal government's response be to poverty--in this instance, aboriginal poverty--I think we need to look in the cities and towns where these people are living.
This is a growth from 1996, when 47% lived in urban areas, all the way to 54% ten years later in 2006. The other important issue is that half of our population is under the age of 25. If you think about it, we're a very young and urban population struggling to cope in cities all across this country.
There are a number of tremendous challenges. Our people are not graduating high school at the same rates as the rest of Canadian society. I often wonder if half of the students in Rosedale in Toronto, or in the Glebe here in Ottawa, or Westmount in Montreal weren't graduating from high school, what would be the outcry? What would be the study that's happening here today? Where are the royal commissions that would be championing...? Which provinces would be clamouring at the doors? Which political parties would be championing these issues?
It's the exact same issue that exists in the aboriginal community, with half of our kids not graduating from high school, and frankly, it's a national disgrace. There's a bit of irony, though. Despite the fact that our people are not graduating high school, our people are participating in labour market activities at a higher rate than general Canadian society. In urban communities across Canada, 68% of aboriginal people participate in the labour force. The non-aboriginal rate is 67%. Despite the barriers in education and cultural reintegration in societies, our people are trying to be engaged in the economy; they're trying to work. They are becoming more and more disenfranchised, however, because they're not finding success.
We have twice the unemployment rate as our brothers and sisters in the exact same neighbourhoods who aren't aboriginal. Our incomes are way lower. In fact, 29% of aboriginal families in cities and towns across this country live in poverty, as articulated by the low-income cut-off, versus 13% of their neighbours. It's a tremendous disparity that exists. Of single people, 53% of aboriginal people who are single in cities and towns across this country live in poverty, below the low-income cut-off, versus 38% for the non-aboriginal population. When we look to more marginalized groups, we're seeing the greater kind of stratification occur in areas of poverty.
The National Council on Welfare reported in 2007 that there were 637,000 children under the age of 18 living in poverty in Canada, and at that time it was an all-time low. When we cut into the data, 28% of aboriginal children living in urban areas grow up in poverty versus 13% in mainstream society.
A lot of times, people will say there are no opportunities in first nations communities, or, as you heard from our previous speaker, in Métis hamlets, so come to the cities and you'll have a better quality of life and better chances. In fact, urban aboriginal residents are not finding that. They're finding the same barriers and the same challenges, while they are surrounded by prosperity.
In part, frustrated by the lack of information and the lack of real data on urban aboriginal people, we commissioned our own research on the 2006 and 2001 census surveys. We looked at every community across Canada that had more than 400 aboriginal people and was not a reserve. We wanted to run a host of socio-demographic statistics to find out what was happening in cities and towns across Canada. If you ask Statistics Canada for the latest reports on aboriginal people, you're going to get 13 CMAs at best, if you're lucky. You'll probably get six. You won't get what's happening up north. You won't get what's happening in the rural hinterlands. We wanted to find out what was happening all across Canada.
In fact, if you're curious, there are 304 communities across Canada that have more than 400 aboriginal people and are not reserves.
We have a whole host of data. One of the really interesting things we did was to utilize the community well-being index, which was generated by Indian and Northern Affairs to understand what was happening on reserves and what their development was like. It's a proxy for the human development index. The problem in Canada is that we don't capture life expectancy for aboriginal people, so we can't actually apply the HDI measure, which is used internationally, to aboriginal people in Canada.
Statistics Canada applied this new measure, called the community well-being Index, and we applied it to cities and towns across Canada. Over half of all the aboriginal people in these cities and towns lived at what's called very low or low levels of community well-being. Their total combination of housing, education, labour force, and income resulted in their having either low or very low levels of community well-being. No non-aboriginal communities--zero--had low or very low levels of community well-being. And there were no aboriginal communities in cities and towns across this country that had very high levels of community well-being.
The vast majority of non-aboriginal communities--82.2%--were in the high category, meaning they had very high levels of community well-being. You can think of Toronto and Sault Ste. Marie and other areas that have wonderful development. Aboriginal people living in the exact same communities beside all that prosperity have low levels of community well-being.
It's a real challenge we have, and it's something that, as a service provider to aboriginal people in this country, we're challenged with. How do we provide services to these people, and frankly, how do we deal with poverty reduction strategies day to day?
The National Council of Welfare, in its recent pre-budget submission, was very clear as to what needs to be done to have poverty reduction in this country. They said there are five areas we need to focus on: child care, affordable housing, education, health care, and employment. Maybe we'll get into some of these interventions as there is the opportunity to talk.
Across the board, aboriginal access to these programs and services is diminished. Child care is a great example. We have some programs across the country. But there is very little happening in a systemic way that is going to help a single aboriginal woman in downtown Winnipeg put her kid in child care--safe, effective, affordable child care--so that she can finish school, go to work, and have a higher quality of life. It doesn't exist today, and it's a challenge we have day to day.
With respect to affordable housing programs, there was $300 illion in off-reserve housing programs not too long ago. It went to the provinces. That rollout has stalled dramatically and is not having an impact in the communities where it needs to.
Education, I submit, is clearly a provincial responsibility, but the federal government can lead. It can lead in post-secondary institutions or it can lead by piloting exciting initiatives to help aboriginal people finish high school, which is the single greatest thing we can do to alleviate poverty among people living in these communities.
Health care interventions in areas like diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and alcohol-related birth defects and related syndromes are critical to having urban-specific interventions for aboriginal people that will have a long-term impact.
Finally, employment. The federal government's flagship aboriginal employment program, the aboriginal human resources development strategy, has only a toehold in urban areas. The policy focus is on and the vast majority of the agreement holders have a first nation or Métis or Inuit perspective, as opposed to serving people where they live in cities and towns across the country.
I know I'm running out of time.
I bring greetings, Peter, from Megan and Jean, who were happy to see you are coming before the committee today, because they, of course, have a great amount of respect for the work you do out there. Certainly, I do as well.
We have an Indian friendship centre in our own community, as you know, in Sault Ste. Marie, and it's doing a phenomenal job with very little, providing in so many ways and trying their best, from child care to health services to counselling for young people particularly struggling with addictions and that kind of thing, and certainly dealing with the poverty issues in Sault Ste. Marie: housing, income security, food security, and that kind of thing.
I heard you talk a lot about some of the challenges confronting urban aboriginal people. I guess you've heard we're trying to put together a report for the government that would indicate very clearly the role the federal government should play. This is your chance to share with us.
Are there one, two, or three specific things or priorities that you think the federal government should get at right away, to address and to relieve poverty in your community?
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I think the single biggest barrier we've had to really effective and multi-faceted programs has been this jurisdictional conflict that exists in this federation between the roles of the provinces and of the federal government with respect to aboriginal peoples.
Section 91.24, as you know, has responsibility for Indians and land reserved for Indians, and the provincial division of powers is allowed in social programs that take place. As a result, when an aboriginal person moves to a city, the debate rages. Who's responsible for that intervention? Is it the federal government? The federal government, in fear of actually showing they have responsibility, tinkers on the edge of the program they should provide.
Our program is a notable exception. We've been around since 1972. There are others.
If half of all aboriginal people live in cities, and we're spending one-tenth of the total envelope for urban aboriginal issues, you know something is happening. They're not reaching people where they live.
The provinces aren't picking up that slack. The provinces remain wary of acknowledging jurisdictional responsibility for those populations. As a result, we continue to tinker on the margins of what needs to get done. We don't have a strong or effective strategy reaching people across the country.
I appreciate that this is a pretty big issue for this committee, talking about tackling poverty. If you think about the impacts on the ground of service providers trying to coordinate responses and to have access to resources, this always remains an issue. If you have a favourable government in Ontario, we'll have tons of programs in Ontario; if we have an unfavourable government in Saskatchewan this year, we'll have very little happening because of the lack of provincial engagement in Saskatchewan. Across the federation, it really becomes difficult to have real, systemic approaches to poverty reduction.
I think that would be the biggest thing. If I had a wish list and if I was in your moccasins, that would be an incredible contribution that could be made. More practically, and on the ground, I think you need to make sure the existing programs are reaching people where they live. The aboriginal human resource development strategy, now called ASEP, is not going to reach the majority of people living in urban areas, because you continue to flow the funds through a first nation and Métis settlement model solely. I'm not saying it's not appropriate to partner with them. Absolutely, it is, but you need to make sure interventions are reaching people where they live in the cities and towns across this country.
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Well, today I had the privilege of being with the Minister of Indian Affairs at a reception to mark the 50th anniversary of the change in the Elections Act for aboriginal people to vote in this country. Now think about that. When my father was born he couldn't vote in this country.
We're not that far from the Government of Canada, in these buildings, talking about how to kill the Indian in the child. We're not that far from residential school attempts... We're not that far from where people were not able to go to universities, or to hire a lawyer to fight their claims. In all honesty, we have about 50-some years of freedom from direct assimilation attempts.
I'm not much of an activist, but I think after any cursory review of Canada's history you have to come to that conclusion. It wasn't until the Indian Act amendments of 1951, a little bit later in the fifties, where these direct assimilation attempts stopped. Then there was a passive kind of assimilation. There wasn't much of a... You weren't trying to help us succeed, but you also weren't doing much to stop what was occurring in the past. The last residential school didn't close, of course, until the 1980s, I think, although most of the worst of them had been done by then.
But it wasn't until the 1980s that something began to switch. It was a constitutional conversation--of course, you could talk about the white paper of Jean Chrétien and others--which really began to raise a new political consciousness and passive support came. They really didn't want to be helpful, but somehow with the constitutional amendment, subsection 35(1), of course--existing aboriginal treaty rights are hereby recognized and affirmed--with the Penner report, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, there is momentum all of a sudden. There also was the apology and even the alleged endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
All of this is a shift. Kelowna was a shift. Kelowna couldn't have happened 15 years ago. The mentality wasn't there. So I think this country is making a shift. And it's a very short window we've had. We've had about 10 years of active support. It's going to take more time.
I don't think all Canadians are ready to support aboriginal issues and programs. I think there's a lot of racism, a lack of understanding in this country still.
Chair, I'm answering too long. I apologize.
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Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'll make a comment and then ask a question.
You talk about the urban population. I have no official aboriginal populations in my riding, but I do have a huge urban population in the city of Lethbridge. Some say it's as high as 6,000, 7,000, or 8,000. I have always encouraged them, and if they would get together, they could elect the mayor, if they wanted to, and run the place, but we have a little trouble getting them to do that.
I mentioned to you earlier, when I shook your hand, that the friendship centre in Lethbridge is a real model of success. It's brought the community together in a way that I haven't seen very often with other organizations. The business community, the college, the university, the municipal government--everybody's involved.
They came to see me recently, and their issue was student housing. The University of Lethbridge and the college have quite a few aboriginal students. The university, of course, has a Native American studies program that's very highly regarded. They indicated to me that the students will come, whether from the city or from the two large reserves next to the city, start university, and then just quit. They come and then they don't last very long. It doesn't take very long: by Christmastime, sometimes, they're gone. They think that if there were housing for them so that they could use public transit and other things, this dropout rate would improve.
Across Canada, is this a theme that you see or can comment on ?
Thank you very much for coming today.
I listened to you list your priorities. I have a fair number of aboriginal people in my riding, although I'm not in the downtown core. But the city of Toronto, as you know, has a very large population of aboriginals. The friendship centre there is very good, but at the same time it is just overwhelmed, from what I can see.
So housing, child care, education, employment assistance, they're all part of the same parcel really, and I don't think you can do one without the other. You just said something that I thought was very interesting: let's stop talking about nations and serve the people in urban centres.
We spend so much time figuring out this nation thing, nation to nation, which is fine. I won't even go there. I know there are reasons we ignore one another. My sense is that urban aboriginal people are being lost in the shuffle, in the struggle between federal and provincial jurisdictions.
You mentioned the Kelowna accord earlier, and I'm not going there because it was something our former government signed, but with something of that nature, how would you break this ridiculous constant whereby provinces want to look after urban and the federal government the other? That to me is an artificial discussion. We should all be responsible to make sure it happens, since we have a very large number of young people who are the future of this country.
What parts of the Kelowna accord would you recommend this group look at and revive so we can move on? I just want to see us move beyond the constant discussion we have.
I appreciate your being here today, Peter.
My question picks up on some of the secondary and post-secondary education issues, and I appreciate your honesty with us. As committee members, we've asked frank questions of you.
I have a couple of reserves in my riding, and I'm connected with lots of others, as I did serve for a time on the aboriginal affairs committee, too. I hear from time to time--this is at the secondary level before we get to the post-secondary level, and this is from first nations people--that they felt, as you said, somewhat ill-prepared and not fully prepared in terms of the standard, if you will, at the university or the college where they went thereafter.
Some of it seems to get back, as best as I can then gather or determine from them...they felt that the bar was set lower on those reserve schools, or wherever they were, and sometimes there's a variety of reasons that this may have been. They seem to be quite concerned now about that having happened. Maybe at that time it seemed to be a good thing, with some of the affirmative action in hiring and so on, but particularly that was a problem at the secondary level.
I will get into post-secondary education. I've often had some of these first nations kids express concern. They're urban Indians now, if you will, but connected to a particular reserve. They don't get the funding for their post-secondary education.
I know some will say that it's because there isn't a big enough sum of dollars, period. In other cases, they will tell me it's because those dollars were used for health or for housing or for infrastructure or whatever. In some cases, they also allege other inappropriate spending.
Some of them have suggested to me that if they can access that money directly from the federal government, or in some fashion like that, rather than through the reserve, then there wouldn't be these accusations of favouritism, or that chief's family or that particular family on council gets it and they don't.
I guess those are the two questions: lowering the bar, and the issue of how you get the funding and ensuring that it gets to the students, the good students who need it.