Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 29th, 2010

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you very much.

When people are in the toughest and saddest situations in Canada, it's very hard to find solutions sometimes, and we've actually found a solution, as shown by the evaluation, I think we can see what the problem is when that's being closed and at least one government member is not distressed.

Related to the health centres in the member's riding, of course they're not the same as healing centres. Because we don't have time during these questions, perhaps you could write to us, if you want to, about the fact that a vast number of the centres and health offices in Mr. Rickford's riding are not doing this professional healing. They have a nurse, etc.

I also think that Mr. Rickford, Madam Crowder and you made a good point that even with this extra work you did not have enough to cover everyone, so you should actually have more funds. If you have time, could you later provide the clerk of the committee a map showing the locations of your projects, the approximate number of staff and volunteers, and the approximate number of clients? It would be a good visual for the committee.

[A voice]

Certainly.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

The question I want to ask is related to when healing goes on, when it's needed. I was a bit distressed when you and the INAC officials talked about it being a contract and a deal that ends in 2012. But healing doesn't end then. I think you gave examples. You could perhaps write down some examples for us of where some of these things occurred 20 years ago and the healing's not finished yet. INAC has said that there are thousands of people coming in the next couple of years.

That healing for these very, very serious problems goes on for a long time. When we found out that H1N1 wasn't solved halfway through, we didn't cut off the money. We kept providing more vaccines. If a bunch of people are starving and CIDA's project has run out, we don't cut off the money. We put in more money. If a child is dying and he doesn't have enough medicine, you don't stop the medicine because the contract and the dose are done. It's a success, you keep going until the job's done, and you make the arrangements there.

Perhaps you could talk about the fact that the healing does not end in 2012 for tens of thousands of people from residential schools.

[Michael DeGagné]

Do you mean in writing or do you want me to comment a little bit about that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

You have a couple of minutes.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

You can go ahead right now.

Sorry, but I'll give you one other question, and then can you put in writing for the committee what you don't get finished?

[Michael DeGagné]

Okay.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

As Health Canada has said, there are a number of services—everyone agrees they're complementary—they won't be able to provide. They're getting only 40% of the money you got. You did other stuff that they cannot provide in the future. Could you also send us in writing some of the things that your projects have done that they won't be able to do so that people understand more concretely their complementarity?

[Michael DeGagné]

Yes, I will do that.

In the minute or so that I have, I will say that the complementarity was in the statement. It's in the questions. At no time did we believe that integration of services works; there's a vast difference between a government service run by an aboriginal person and an aboriginally designed and operated program. They are night and day. We're not pretending that those two things are the same, nor are we pretending that one is any better than the other. We need both.

We have had $125 million over the last three years. That was a government obligation under the settlement agreement. We put that to use with the community side of this equation. We welcome the ramping up of individual counselling under the RHSW program, but one can't replace the other.

I'll be happy to also provide this type of research. We have a lot of it. I won't bury you with it, but it's a qualitative study exploring the impacts of this agreement on recipients. I'm sure that some of the members would find it very interesting.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

You still have 30 seconds.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Could you go on about the fact that healing is not over in 2012 for tens of thousands of...?

[Michael DeGagné]

The healing is not over in 2012, absolutely not. One of the hardest and most difficult things we have to impress upon the Canadian public is that something that happened a long time ago could still affect you today. There are a lot of people who say, “Look, I didn't have anything to do with that, I don't remember that, and I wasn't part of the residential school system, so how can I be asked to be a part of that solution?”

The fact of the matter is that we all inherit things from previous generations that we have obligations for today. One of our obligations is to heal a part of our community that has been broken.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Duncan.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

I heard a voice and thought it was the next questioner. You're sitting in a different chair now.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

It's me. You're in luck: no more questions from me.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you.

I assume you have probably either read or followed the debate we had in the House on the AHF--

[Michael DeGagné]

Exhaustively, sir.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Yes, it was exhaustively.... In any case, I have some unanswered questions.

Mr. Goodtrack, you did say that originally 134 communities were chosen, and they were proposal-driven, if I understood that right, but the question really is how we got to 134 and why were those selected?

For example, I live on Vancouver Island, an island with a population exceeding that of New Brunswick, and we had one centre there, which I now see is one of the 12 that will continue. Yet it seemed that in the north there was pretty broad general coverage.

[Michael DeGagné]

The best way to categorize how these decisions were made was that we are operated by a 17-member aboriginal board of directors taken from aboriginal citizens from across Canada--all the provinces and territories. The process they went through at the very beginning was a very difficult one, because most aboriginal communities are used to formula funding; in other words, everybody gets their share and everyone is equally unhappy.

One of the things our board decided to do was to look at an application process whereby people could prove that they have the skills and abilities to deliver a project for their fellow citizens. They made very hard choices in saying, “You get one because you can deliver a service, but you don't get one”. That didn't make them popular. It took several years to work through this strategy, but that's the way we approached it. Over the years we've funded about 1,600 different projects.

Terry will tell you a little more about the specifics around how that process works.

[Terry Goodtrack]

Thank you.

We have funded 1,662 projects in different waves, which initially started in B.C., then went into the Prairies, and then into the Inuit region. It was based on when the community was ready, as I talked about earlier. How did we get to the 134? There were 134 projects and 12 healing centres in addition to the 134. It has been a debate. There was some confusion around it, but nevertheless that's what it was.

In 2005 the reason we got the extra $40 million was to take as many of our projects as possible to March 31, 2007, to just before the settlement agreement. At that time, we even had to cut a number of very good projects. Our board didn't want to cut any, but based on the funding that was provided to us, we did, and we got down to that amount.

Then we had to make a decision in 2007 on what to do: whether to do an additional call or continue to fund the existing healing network we had. We know that it takes a year and a half to get up and running, and to build the trust between the therapists and the survivors would put us into two or two and a half years. Our board decided that if we started a new project we'd have to shut down.

The most responsible thing we could do at that time, in 2007, was to retain those 134 projects and run them to 2010. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, we had the 12 healing centres.

Again, to summarize, we had a number of projects in 2005. Because of funding limitations, we had to cut a number of them, and we based that on what we called the best projects. We retained those that were well-governed and those that provided direct therapy, one-on-one counselling, group counselling, and traditional healing. Those were the criteria we set for those 134 projects.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Also, I understand that for the funding that was supplied, the $125 million--the last big amount--there was a maximum five-year timeframe put on that, but it was up to AHF to determine the period in which that would be spent. Or am I labouring under a misconception?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Again, just give a brief response, if you can.

[Michael DeGagné]

You're labouring under a common misconception.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Okay. Well, let's clarify it then, if you would, please.

[Michael DeGagné]

We were provided with a five-year mandate but were given three years of funding. During the negotiation process for the settlement agreement, it was very clear that we could not operate on anything less than $25 million a year.

For some strange reason, we were provided with three years of funding, which was to sunset on March 31, 2010, but were given two additional years to do our wind-down strategy, which would help us to complete things like our research agenda and so on. So three years of funding was provided, with zero flexibility to extend, unless we wanted to cut a third to a half of all the projects.