Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 15th, 2006

[Audrey Stewart]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Because we have a lot of questions, I'd ask future questioners to keep it to one as a courtesy to your other members, so we can all have an opportunity.

Who's going to handle the next question? Mr. LeBlanc.

[Paul LeBlanc]

Yes.

You had a question on family services, kinship, etc. These are important points that are raised, and I would revert to what I said earlier. It is a period of sharp focus for the department on these policy suites and on these authorities, in view of renewing them. And there are the additional resources that were made available in Budget 2005. So there is a substantive increase of $25 million annually that will go some distance to improving reach in these areas.

You mentioned another factor of whether competing priorities end up squeezing something, and you used the example of capital. It's a main feature of the department's relationship with first nations who are exercising an important amount of self-determination in self-government now; even if they're not a fully self-governing first nation in their dealings with the federal crown, through the department, they're recipients of funding with very broad programming parameters. And they leave--and they must leave--a great deal of discretion about how priorities are applied. So it's not infrequent that we'll see an immediate need, like the needs of children for care or the need for elder care, sometimes squeeze a project like a new school construction that will go a year out as opposed to a year earlier, or that may be a little smaller than it otherwise would have been had these other pressures not been there. So it's a feature of that world for sure.

[Warren Johnson]

Perhaps I could give a quick response on the question of the off-reserve band members voting. At least with respect to bands under the Indian Act, pursuant to the Corbiere decision, the Indian Act had to be adjusted to facilitate off-reserve members being able to vote. There were a number of concerns raised subsequent to that decision, about the potential impact and the demand for services. We actually haven't seen a quantum change in that, because there have been concerns about a variety of issues on and off reserve that way.

Our understanding is that the Supreme Court was talking to a model of first nations governance in that decision that distinguished between two kinds of responsibilities of a band government: on the one hand, as the government providing programs and services locally to its residents, largely band members--and our program authorities aren't exclusively status Indian-based, a lot of them have to do with residency on reserve; and on the other hand, the responsibility of a band with respect to the assets of the nation. So there are certain issues with respect to, for example, decisions to settle a claim or to dispose of a major asset, to surrender land for a certain purpose that affects the nation as a whole as opposed to those who just happen to be residing on the reserve at that point in time. We understand it was for that reason that the Supreme Court held that you couldn't exclude off-reserve members from the vote.

Since that decision, under custom, first nations do whatever they do under custom. Under the Indian Act election--which is roughly, I guess, 50% of the first nations--you now have the off-reserve members voting in that process, but recognizing those two kinds of roles of the band government and duties to two kinds of people in that respect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Ms. Crowder.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I have two questions, but they are very brief.

Just as a comment about the children in care, although $25 million is a welcome step, my understanding is that the agencies are talking about a $109 million gap. That's just a comment.

I didn't quite finish with Ms. Stewart.

You talked about 748 claims. I wonder if you could give us an idea of the backlog and the average length of time.

Before you do that, I just want to be clear that I understood what you were saying in the presentation when you were talking about land and trust services. You said the Indian Act was not in keeping with modern management of lands. I'm not really clear what you meant by that. Could clarify that? I don't know what that means in terms of policy.

[Paul LeBlanc]

One example was the gap in legislation covering reserve lands, which leaves no room for a legislative or regulatory framework for a major industrial project. A major industrial project off reserve would come under provincial legislation. It would have some health and safety regulatory frameworks and it would have environmental protection regulatory frameworks that are all worked out, that provide to the investors, that provide for the company, the investors, and the citizens, a degree of certainty that all of this is anticipated. The authorities are clear: who you apply to, what kinds of permits, what it means to be in violation of regulations, etc.

There's a void for that in the on-reserve world, and there's a void in the legal basis to proceed to fill that gap. So the first nations industrial--

[Warren Johnson]

The FNCIDA, the First Nations Commercial and Industrial Development Act.

[Paul LeBlanc]

The FNCIDA legislation fills that gap. It's a gap that's part of the lacune of legacy of the Indian Act, which really developed at a time when these factors were not even dreamed about. That's one example. There are quite a number of examples.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Sorry, I didn't quite get an answer on the backlog.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Audrey Stewart, please.

[Audrey Stewart]

“Backlog” is an interesting word, so I'm going to take a minute or two to talk about backlog in a program like specific claims. On the specific claims program or policy, there are two big questions. One, is this a subject that the federal government wishes to negotiate? That's because it's a program of redress for first nations for whom the federal government has either mismanaged the assets it holds on their behalf or hasn't fulfilled certain obligations under treaties. Presuming the answer to the first question is yes, the second question is, what is a reasonable settlement?

For both of those questions, there is a need for significant research. Because these are often claims from long ago, it's historical research, it's very complicated, and it gets tied up with some areas in which the legal principles are not well understood. That means the legal analysis, once the research is done, is also complex and takes time.

It's also a process that is back and forth between governments and first nations. It's initiated by first nations, who do some research and send it to government. We often find it is helpful to do additional research, which then goes back to the first nation for their consideration before it ever gets into a package that goes to the Department of Justice. While that's happening, those claims are all being worked on. Although it's necessarily time-consuming and detail driven, those are claims in progress.

Similarly, regarding negotiations, you have to get negotiating teams together. They have to have mandates. You have to figure out how to negotiate, because each negotiation is an individual negotiation. You have to do studies to evaluate the losses and damages. And then you have to negotiate. Once you get to an agreement, you have to draw up a formal agreement. The ratification of that generally requires a vote from the first nation, which can take six months. It sometimes requires ratification by the province, should they be involved, and also by the federal government.

It takes a lot of time, but as long as a claim is being worked on, either by the federal government, by the first nation, or together, that's not quite a backlog.

I'd like to distinguish those from a number of claims that are not being worked on because the federal government lacks capacity. I think that's the core of what people really mean when they talk about a backlog, but I would point out that it doesn't apply to every claim in the inventory.

With that long preamble, I'll say we have about 250 claims that are not being worked on because the federal government lacks capacity at this point. We have just finished a re-engineering process, which has helped us to identify where the gaps are, where additional resources may be helpful, and where we can be more efficient--but that's the present circumstance.

To move to the second question, looking at both the nature of the process, which is information driven and requires negotiation and consensus to be developed, and the fact that there is a lack of federal capacity in some areas, it can take perhaps between seven and ten years to resolve claims.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Thank you.

Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you again for the presentation.

One of the comments that has come up relates to the education and plan of action. You identified the gap that exists, and I think we're all aware of that.

On page 5 you mention the support for elementary and secondary education, and I think I heard you say it's about $1.2 billion per year. Do we have any way of comparing that to what the average cost would be for a non-aboriginal person? I know that across Canada the cost per pupil will vary from province to province and region to region, but do we have any handle on what the comparison might be?

[Paul LeBlanc]

We have some data in this regard. What we're able to compare, when we take a province like Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, or B.C. and we look at their figures and we look at our investments in a first nations indication...we get varying outcomes. You'll find that the numbers per student are by and large fairly close. In some jurisdictions you'll find that the provincial jurisdiction is investing a little more, in some they're just about bang on, and in some the federal jurisdiction seems to be investing a little more.

However, you have to look beyond the surface numbers and ask about the most salient attributes of the two worlds that we're comparing. When we look at the aboriginal first nation education and where we get our numbers from, there is a very high incidence of small schools, a very high incidence of rural locations, and not only rural but rural remote locations--there is a very high incidence of these factors. These factors impact on attraction and retention of teachers. They drive you to diseconomies of scale, obviously, and so on and so forth.

In the few areas that we've been able to make a comparison with provincial world rural remote cost, and there's very little available.... We had figures last year from Saskatchewan, as a matter of fact. Then you get a very different comparison. The comparison is that our costs are much more strenuous, they're more demanding, so we tend to show that we're struggling to keep pace with a similar kind of challenge in the provincial world.

We see this express itself as well when the 40% of on-reserve students wander down the road to a provincial school and the band and the department pays the tuition bill. We see these tuition bills rise. These tuition bills are rising at a rate in many jurisdictions higher than our tuition investments on reserve. It's another indication of the....

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Madam Neville.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you for giving me another opportunity. I tried to do it at the beginning.

I wonder if you could speak to the role of the federal interlocutor for Métis and non-status Indians and whether the role or mandate for the minister or the department has changed. I've had the opportunity to look at the estimates and I see a very substantial increase in the estimates for the office of the federal interlocutor, both in terms of their operating expenditures and contributions. So I'm just curious to know what's shifting, what's happening.

As a tag-on to that, does the urban aboriginal strategy still come out of the Privy Council Office, or has that been shifted, and what dollars are allocated to that?

[Allan MacDonald]

Thank you. I'll take that question, Ms. Neville.

Just to answer the last one first, the office of the federal interlocutor moved from the Privy Council Office over to the Department of Indian Affairs in July 2004. So we took our mandate and our policies with us at that time, and that included, of course, the urban aboriginal strategy. So the resources we had at Privy Council Office also moved over to the Department of Indian Affairs at the same time, just about two years ago.

In terms of whether things have changed in terms of our mandate, they haven't changed; we still have the same mandate we had when we left Privy Council Office to go over to the Department of Indian Affairs. There has been an increase in our budget over the past three or four years, I think in response to acquiring the authorities to manage and implement the urban aboriginal strategy and acquiring authorities to manage the government's response to the Pawley decision from 2003. So I think that's why you've seen an increase in the estimates over the past couple of years.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

If I could follow up on that, Mr. Chairman, I see an increase for this upcoming year in terms of contributions, which is double, and for operating, which is not quite double, and I don't know why. I'm just wondering again whether it's mandate, priorities, or what's happening there.

[Allan MacDonald]

Again, I would need to have a look at the estimates year over year, but it seems to me that the budget we've carried over from Privy Council is pretty much the one we've had, adjusted accordingly as we've acquired new authorities in the past couple of years, but nothing in the past year, I don't think.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Mr. Lévesque or Mr. Lemay, do you have any questions? You don't have to have a question.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

No, we were discussing things. We have 64 questions, and we could keep you here all week.

I want to understand. The current government has just earmarked $400 million in its budget for reserves. I want to come back to the communities mentioned on page 5, since the second paragraph on that page is still not very clear to me. Then I add page 8, which shows the total departmental spending for 2006-2007 to be $6.271 billion. What proportion of that goes to administration?

[Paul LeBlanc]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will begin with your last point. Of the $6.271 billion, approximately $320 million goes to administrative costs to manage various slices of this pie.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

That leaves nearly $6 billion.