Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 29th, 2010

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Obviously this tells me that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was providing a very valuable service that Health Canada was not providing, particularly when you say, “Look, we want to renew close to 50% of all the work that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was doing”.

If Health Canada is taking up 50% or more of the work that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was doing, and if you agree that the services were complementary, why would we not continue with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and you continue with your good work? The work is complementary.

I don't understand what the rationale was for getting rid of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Nobody was saying it was going to be there forever. In fact, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, as you said, had anticipated in its corporate plan a sunset of their program. Of course, they wanted to extend the sunset a little longer because they wanted to match it with what was happening with the TRC.

I just fail to understand, based even on the evidence you're giving, why we would want to get rid of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. It was working, it was efficient, and it was complementing what you were doing. And now, even by your own admission, you are assuming 50% of all of the work that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was undertaking.

[Aideen Nabigon]

Mr. Chair, I would just say again that the money provided to Health Canada under the settlement agreement was not reallocated from funds intended for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The healing foundation was not intended to be permanent. The government has an obligation and recognizes that obligation to provide healing services and health support services throughout the life of the settlement agreement, and it will do so through the resolution health support program.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

I know that my time is running out, Mr. Chair, but very quickly--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It actually has run out, as a matter of fact, Mr. Russell, but thank you for reminding me.

Very good. I know the five minutes go very quickly.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Can we submit written questions to the department through the committee as part of our study?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

You can, by all means. We can do that at the end.

Let's go to Mr. Dreeshen for five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, ladies, for being here to enlighten us about the things that are happening with the program.

Last November our committee was in the north, as part of its northern economic study, and we had opportunities to go to healing ceremonies taking place there. I could see their significance. In speaking to the elders who were there, you could tell how important these ceremonies were to each of the individuals. That's where I'm coming from here.

I just wondered if perhaps you could tie in the types of ceremonies that happened there with what you see as the role of the resolution health support programs taking place in the communities, because these are also elder-driven. Could you give us more details on that?

[Kathy Langlois]

Thank you very much for the question.

Indeed, the resolution health support program is mandated to offer elder supports and traditional healing supports. These would include ceremonies, prayers, and traditional healing methods. We will be able to continue those services under this program.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much.

One of the comments presented earlier was that Health Canada wasn't particularly fulfilling its role, but I would think that there is a lot done by health care providers as well. I just wonder if you could expand on the types of opportunities these individuals have in the programs being supplied through Health Canada.

[Kathy Langlois]

As I said earlier, we offer three different kinds of services. First are the traditional professional services from psychologists and social workers--main-street types of services. Individuals can contact our regional office to receive those services. They constitute about 13% to 15% of our program.

The bulk of the program is comprised of the other two types of services. There are the services of a resolution health support worker, who is employed by a local aboriginal organization. This is an individual of aboriginal descent who speaks aboriginal languages, for the most part, and provides emotional support as the person is on their journey through the settlement agreement. Then, from contribution agreements with local aboriginal organizations, there are the services of elders around traditional healing ceremonies and prayers.

That's the array of services. When services aren't available in the local community, we provide assistance with transportation to the services.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you. That was the other question I was going to ask--how you were able to deliver the services.

To expand on what Mr. Rickford mentioned before, you were about to describe some of the best practices approaches. I wonder if you could expand on the types of things you see going forward that might work with Health Canada, but also with those particular centres that will be continuing here for the next couple of years.

[Kathy Langlois]

Again, I think the reference to best practices clearly has to do with the information and learning we've had clearly from the people we serve. They've indicated that traditional types of services and services from aboriginal mental health workers are their priority and they are the kinds of services they seek out.

So we are always looking to improve our services to ensure that we are sensitive to the needs of the clients around cultural services and cultural service providers. Indeed, in our other programs, we are increasingly bringing those elements of services to the fore.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thanks to all of you for your questions. At this point, we will take a brief recess. Then we'll begin the next hour.

Thanks to all our witnesses for coming here this afternoon and helping to inform this study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you. We're resuming consideration of the study on the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

On behalf of all members, I welcome Michael DeGagné, the executive director of the foundation. Accompanying him is Terry Goodtrack, the chief operating officer for the foundation.

Your agenda shows that the president was supposed to be with us. He was unable to come and sends his regrets.

Gentlemen, we're glad to have you here. We'll begin with the customary 10-minute presentation and then go directly to questions from members.

Mr. DeGagné.

[Michael DeGagné, Executive Director, Aboriginal Healing Foundation]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the time you've given us to make a few comments about the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and also for the opportunity to give my regrets from our chairman, Georges Erasmus, who lives in Yellowknife and was unable to attend.

Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, and members of the committee, I am pleased and honoured to have this opportunity, and I thank you for it.

As you well know, a great deal has been written and said about the government's decision to place resources for survivors from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation into Health Canada. There was a thorough debate in Parliament, which I believe represented well the arguments in favour of continued funding for community initiatives and, alternatively, for Health Canada's mental health support program.

As I am here to represent the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, I will do my best in the time allotted to speak from the perspective of community impacts.

In the short term, to be blunt, there is concern about increased suicide rates and alcohol and drug use in our community as a result of this decision. The end of funding for community-based healing programs has also resulted in higher unemployment, often in places where unemployment was high even before these recent losses.

I want to provide a quote from Annie Popert, the manager of an Inuit project in northern Quebec. She talked to us about the following, and she said:

Another important development in the region is as we gain a greater understanding of the link between trauma and the challenges we are faced with today, including childhood sexual abuse, we have begun to look at the types of programs we are going to have to access or develop in order to combat these challenges. The project--

That's our project, through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

--has provided tremendous insight and knowledge, which are the first things we must have in order to be able to empower ourselves to begin the process of taking responsibility for our lives.

Similar points have been made by other communities that write us letters as they dismantle their projects. Their shared fear is that all the learning, all the building, all the progress, and all the groundwork--the investments of money and time and labour that we have made and they have made--will quickly be lost. These are the short-term impacts we face.

Many of our funded projects have gone to government for funding. We are hearing from them that, yes, Health Canada is funding counsellors in the community, but there will be no support for the really innovative transformational work that communities have been developing through their community projects.

Here I'll quote George Dunkerly, of Rankin Inlet, in Nunavut. He said:

Youth are a prime concern here in our area. Many youth, and lots of older people, have issues that they refuse to deal with openly. Our projects division gave them something to draw them in.

This is the division of their program that deals specifically with our projects.

Once in an activity with other people, they were encouraged in an indirect way to participate in discussions regarding their issues. What made the Kivalliq Outreach Program work so well was the combination of counselling and projects. The projects division allowed people to come to the program and drew them into counselling services when needed or requested. Our staff team was also well known in our district, so we had projects that were fun to join, with people they knew and trusted that just happened to be professional counsellors. Under Health Canada, we will have “support workers”, but counsellors will be brought in from the south when required. This is not an ideal situation, as our clients will not know or trust the counsellors brought in for short periods of time. But it's what we have to work with, as [we have found] the parameters of the Health Canada funding to be very rigid.

We have long known that these community-based projects are drawing in people who have never participated in healing before, and I find this, frankly, surprising. Many of the traumas people have experienced through residential schools happened decades and decades ago, and yet this is the first time in their lives they feel safe enough, and that the trust is high enough, to come forward to deal with some of their issues.

Perhaps most importantly, I'd like you to hear this point that I'm about to make: that this leads us to the longer-term impacts, the principal one being that we are now once again on a road that is leading in the direction of dependency for aboriginal people.

Instead of moving toward empowered communities that take control of their well-being, government has chosen to put its resources into a government service delivery model. This of course is their prerogative, but there are impacts to this decision that I hope we can impress upon you.

All of the research and anecdotal evidence from the communities was showing that the two together--government services working in partnership with community expertise--were getting the best results. Just last month we released a study on the common experience process, which I have with me and which makes this very point.

The loss of these community projects is a blow to the communities and to the government as well. They will have a harder time now delivering services on the ground. The model of transferring, cultivating, and enhancing community capacity is a model that has proven to be successful.

In the longer term, communities are expressing their concern that the legacy of residential schools will remain unresolved. There is a concern that this decision will disempower aboriginal people, leading to greater desperation. We at the Aboriginal Healing Foundation share this concern, and I can tell you, if we can't resolve the residential school experience, what will we do with the “sixties scoop” and those experiences that will soon be before us all as Canadians?

We believe the residential school system deprived us of the means to sustain our communities in a healthy manner. That's why our vision statement at the healing foundation speaks about addressing unresolved trauma in a comprehensive and meaningful way, putting to an end the intergenerational cycles of abuse, achieving reconciliation in the full range of relationships, and enhancing their capacity as individuals, families, communities, nations, and peoples, to sustain their well-being.

Our goal as an agency is to help create, reinforce, and sustain conditions conducive to healing, reconciliation, and, ultimately and perhaps most importantly, self-determination. We're committed to addressing the legacy of abuse in all its forms and manifestations, direct, indirect, and intergenerational, and we do this by building on the strengths and resilience of our own people. This vision, this goal, is built into every one of the projects and has been since the day we began.

There's a vast longer-term difference between this holistic model of community development and the government's model of service delivery. I want to emphasize this: this is not to say that the government's model is wrong or bad. I worked for Health Canada. I worked with these models. As an aboriginal person, I worked with a government service delivery model, but I never for a moment thought I was delivering a native program.

These are simply different things. That is why they're complementary to one another. There is a place for both of these service delivery models.

On the horizon, of course, we have the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Over the next few years, many survivors will be telling their stories of abuse for the first time--and I emphasize again--after many, many decades of silence. These traumatized individuals will not be prepared in many instances for what happens when you open up publicly, often for the first time, and you tell strangers your innermost secrets of pain, shame, and suffering as a child. There's no way a person can know this.

Health Canada will have to step into this very difficult situation where there is, as a result of this funding decision, less trust than there was before. Health Canada simply does not have the capacity or expertise to do this. This is not criticism; it's a fact. They shouldn't be expected to have this kind of expertise. No one, except for the community itself, except for aboriginal people themselves, has been directly engaged in this work to this extent. This is new territory, but now this nationwide network will not be there.

Granted, we were not present in every community--far from it. We had 134 projects on the ground, with most recently dismantled, but we were providing valuable experience-based lessons across the country, some of which took the better part of a decade to learn and to perfect.

With this loss of service, community trust is going to be a serious long-term impact. There is no substitute for the difficult work of trust building. Without trust, no program or service can work.

But let's assume the best of all possible outcomes. Even if the mental health services prevent suicides and reduce rates of addiction, violence, and unemployment, at the end of this road, we will be no further ahead on the way to community building.

What we're hearing is that communities that had an Aboriginal Healing Foundation project were making progress with their young people as well. Now, particularly in the north and in remote areas, the projects have had to close their doors and youth have nowhere to go. Anyone who has travelled to the north knows that there are not alternative resources around every corner. This represents our future. This is the long term. These are the youth who got a taste of hope and who have now seen it disappear.

We were moving along a path where the active principle driving our journey was that aboriginal people can take control of their destinies, that they can create a better future for themselves if they have support. Today, that seems far less certain across this country, and the mood out there is very sombre, but our people are resilient, as they always have been, and they have not given up on us.

Let me conclude by saying that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was never intended to last forever, absolutely not, and that was an understanding we all had, but it was our hope that it would last at least through this critical time in our history. We are grateful for what we've been able to do, we acknowledge Canadians who provided these funds, and we acknowledge especially aboriginal communities who worked so diligently to provide support to one another.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. DeGagné.

We'll now go to questions from members.

We'll begin with Ms. Neville, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for being here.

You said the mood is very sombre. I would say it's very sombre in here as well. The mood is one of concern.

I have here a comment from the 2009 evaluation of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which concluded that “there is presently no equivalent alternative that could achieve the desired outcomes with the rate of success the [Aboriginal Healing Foundation] has achieved”.

When that evaluation came out, did you have discussions with the minister on the efficacy and the role of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation? If so, can you tell us a little bit about it?

[Michael DeGagné]

Is the evaluation you're quoting the one that was most recently released, done by the Government of Canada?

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

It's from 2009.

[Michael DeGagné]

That's the one. We have not ever had a discussion with the minister specifically about that evaluation.

The evaluation was requested by the minister and conducted by the department, but it was finished in draft in November and released early in March. We never had a discussion on the specifics, but the specifics, I would believe, are well known to the department given that it had been there for three months.

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

You acknowledged that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was time defined. I've held public office long enough to know that time-defined projects and such are frequently put in place. But I also know that there is flexibility when a project is achieving or exceeding the objectives and expectations as originally set out.

I'm struck by the fact that you have produced an Aboriginal Healing Foundation corporate plan for five years hence. Did you have any indication that there might be some opportunity to continue with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation?

[Michael DeGagné]

What was clear to us was that there was no promise that we would continue as of March 31 of this year when we were looking for another infusion of cash, but what was clear was that we began in 1998 with $350 million. We were given an additional amount of money, $40 million, and then additional money that was court-ordered within the settlement agreement, $125 million.

We were under the impression, I think as most people would be, that the better you perform. the greater the likelihood of being refunded, and the evaluations we had were outstanding. Our corporate plans of course refer to a winding-down strategy, but corporate plans—that one is templated by the Auditor General—are required to show wind-down strategies. It's not something that we had actually anticipated.

So we had never received a promise, but at the end of the day, we were still surprised.

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

There are two areas I quickly want to go to.

I sit on another committee that is currently looking into the whole issue of violence against aboriginal women. I've heard from a number of organizations that have been funded under the Aboriginal Healing Foundation to deal with violence against aboriginal women, either in total or in part. Is there any sense...and my other comment is that those I've spoken to--and I wish I had the opportunity to ask the previous presenters--have had no representation from government in terms of how they're going to survive, what they're going to do, and how they're going to deliver service.

Can you comment on that particular aspect of it? We're talking about missing and murdered aboriginal women, and we're talking about violence against women, and yet it's like one doesn't know what the other is doing.

[Michael DeGagné]

I guess the comment I would make is that you get a sense of the gravity of these things. This isn't the closing of a building. This is the closing of programs that serve human beings who are often in violent situations or have experienced severe traumas. I think it gives you some sense of the gravity here.

The real impact of this will be how quickly this happened and with little lead-up. We have been talking about renewing this fund for the better part of a year now. All we asked was that we be given proper notice so that our projects would have a responsible amount of time to deal with clients, and that wasn't provided.

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

I have one quick question. I don't know how my time is. Is there much program or dollar slippage that you're aware of? If so, is it being reinvested or is it going back into general government coffers?