[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, June 13, 1995

.1531

[Translation]

The Chairman: Good afternoon, and welcome to this meeting of the Subcommittee on Aboriginal Education. We have appearing before us today Ms Linda Burnet,

[English]

who is from the David Meekis Memorial School in northern Ontario.

You have about 50 minutes for your presentation, including questions, so you may begin whenever you're ready.

Ms Linda Burnet (David Meekis Memorial School, Deer Lake Reserve, Ontario):Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting me today.

You have Air Canada to thank for a somewhat briefer presentation than I originally planned and that may be all to the good.

I have tried to indicate why I felt our school has been successful in many ways over the past 13 years and to indicate some areas of concern we face right now and the concerns I have for the future.

We can perhaps go through my brief outline. If you have questions, will they come as I go through it or at the end?

The Chairman: At the end.

Ms Burnet: Like every other system, the education system for native students in the north is complex, varied, and continually changing. During the 13 years I've been principal, I have seen enormous changes. The student population has increased from 75 to 220. Staff numbers have increased from 8 to 24. There has been an improvement in academic standards, which has led to success at the secondary school level. Finally, local control of education funding has allowed far more flexibility and better resourcing of program initiatives.

Although in many ways we can be proud of our achievements, the school and its programs must continue to change. Change is difficult for education authorities and for staff, but it is mandated by the changing needs of our students and by the future they face, both in the workforce and in their personal lives.

There are many reasons why the school in Deer Lake has done well and now produces students with the highest academic achievement in our area. Briefly, some of them are as follows.

One reason is the stability of the staff, both native and non-native. We have staff members who have been in the school assisting our program for up to 15 years.

Also, we have high expectations for staff and students alike. We have standards of performance and achievement, and we assist the students to meet these standards.

The parents support education for their children. Daily attendance is consistently in the mid-90% range unless there is illness in the community. Parental attendance during report card evenings or other school activities varies from 75% to 100%.

Long-range planning for securing resources has been possible. Many of these resources, such as library books, computers, textbooks, laminators, photocopy machines, and sports equipment, impact directly at the classroom level.

There has been an improvement in facilities. There were a major renovation and an addition in 1984, an addition in 1990, and a new pumping system and community water pick up, but even with these the education authority has had to provide the last two classroom spaces out of program funding.

Control of education funding at the community level has accelerated improvements in some areas as a greater degree of flexibility was introduced and the education authority could spend money to meet changing needs of the school.

.1535

Students have always been made to feel the school is there for them. Staff are expected to make the students feel welcome, appreciated, and talented. Students have responded well to the imposition of rules and expectations. The school does not have a lot of rules, but those we do have are enforced consistently.

Student work is valued, and we attempt to let them know this by various means. Student work is always marked and returned, contests for art and writing are held within the school, and student work is submitted to any publication or contest requesting such submissions. Student work is also highly visible in classrooms and throughout the school.

We also have introduced different activities, most of which are not unique but had not been part of the school before 1982. They include things such as good news night, winter carnival, attendance awards, broadcasting of school activities via the television, hot dog days, June play day, graduation ceremonies, and other special event days.

The improvement in the level of English spoken by the students has also contributed to improved academic success. Until recently this did not appear to have affected the first language of the students. This is no longer the case as many of the children entering school speak English more often than they do OjiCree. The introduction of native teachers, in combination with better parental awareness, should help stop this erosion of the first language.

We introduced process writing some years ago and recently introduced MacIntosh computers and different levels of word-processing programs.

We insisted, years ago, on mastering learning at the primary level and on a structured phonics and reading program. In the past, the stress was definitely on product or skill development with less emphasis on process. Events are leading us to almost reverse this, and at some grade levels it will likely be of very great benefit.

I respectfully submit the following as areas requiring attention if our school is to continue to maintain or to exceed the standards achieved.

We need well-trained native teachers. I have no problem with lowering entry requirements, but I feel there must be exit requirements in place so children continue to receive a good education at the community level. Our school is sending seven staff members to the Lakehead University teachers' training program and they deserve to graduate as creative, competent teachers. They all have excellent work records and function well in a school environment. They like children, are willing to work outside of school hours, and have lots of classroom experience. I hope they will challenge the program to take them beyond their current level of development.

More support is needed for the native language in print, in television, and in radio. We have a full-time native language teacher and as many resources as we could find for the elementary level. These resources include a syllabics program for the computer, picture and resource books with native content, subscriptions to the WaWaTay newspaper, and video tapes of native legends and issues.

We need more television programming by and for native people. Our students are definitely part of the TV generation of the north. They need to see images of themselves and their culture on their television screens. This would improve the self-esteem of students and preserve the native language.

The right to keep and spend the so-called surpluses from the education program would help. Indian Affairs has not been able to fund new programs, new facilities, or repairs in time to meet needs. My education authorities saved $500,000 in four years by careful management, only to see the money taken by the band. The fact that Indian Affairs encouraged the band to ask for the money cannot be defended. The education authority had plans for this money, including two additional classrooms, a school warehouse, a bus garage, and an adult learning centre if possible. All of these were lost when the surplus went toward the band's deficit.

All communities need facilities such as gyms, libraries, and home economics classrooms on their reserves. We have none of those specialized spaces. Students travelling outside the community to attend school are at a real disadvantage because they have no experience in these areas.

We need better capital planning or increased funding. There must be a realization that when programs are returned to the community level we require spaces for those people and for the programs. For example, we took over financial control of a $1.4 million budget and have no office space in which to house the people responsible for controlling that funding.

.1540

By the end of this summer the education authority will have provided three classrooms and one office building from program funding. The last two classrooms paid for by Indian Affairs came with strings attached. Even though we were then entitled to the equivalent of six classrooms according to the government's own guidelines, we were told to accept two in time to meet enrolment needs or wait years for the extra space. We took the classrooms so each student could attend school full days.

Since accurate five-year projections are provided to Indian Affairs, communities wonder why something as basic as classroom space is not funded or not funded in a timely manner. Part of the problem may have been the desperate conditions of schools, teacherages, and the infrastructure in northern Ontario. Conditions were truly appalling when I arrived at Deer Lake. In the past 13 years we have made significant progress, but we have started falling behind again in the past several years.

We need better trained social counsellors to meet the new demands from students. Our students are more discriminating consumers, and they are aware of and are demanding the rights they have been told they can expect. This places social counsellors in a difficult position.

The protection of native children on reserve would benefit from additions to the list of people required by law to report suspected or known abuse. At the present time reporting is often seen as non-native interference, since most of the teachers and nurses are non-native. By extending the list to include social counsellors, community health representatives, NNADAP workers, classroom assistants, etc., dealing with this difficult issue might improve. Even when the teachers are all native there will exist a need for more accountability in assisting children in need.

The next area is in-school health programs, particularly in the area of diabetes. Education programs for adults are also critical on this issue. Schools need the facilities to teach students at the junior and senior levels how to budget and how to prepare food. The need for regular exercise for the diabetic and non-diabetic alike cannot be understated.

Funding for operation and maintenance needs to be based on the value of the school's assets. It would not be that difficult to place a dollar value on the school's assets and incorporate a percentage into the O and M budget for ongoing repairs. Too often minor repairs left unattended result in major repairs becoming necessary.

More support is needed for high school programs that have a proven track record. An example is Pelican Falls High School in Sioux Lookout. My graduates go to that school and they don't drop out. It's an excellent program.

We need an increase in funding for smaller schools. Often they are the most isolated and as a result face even higher costs and cannot take advantage of economy of scale, which larger schools such as mine are able to do.

There should be a change in high school programming that allows students to learn skills that will lead to jobs on the reserve. While graduating grade 12 is a worthwhile accomplishment, it does not lead directly to employment. In the future some of the students may choose to go beyond grade 12, and as a result most will live and work away from home. For those students returning home, work skills should be in place.

I've added one more thing here as I sat over coffee that I think would help. That is continued training for education authorities in the areas of goal setting, managing staff, evaluating programs, and hiring the staff for their schools.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

We will now go to questions. We will start with Mr. Caron.

Mr. Caron (Jonquière): I found your presentation most interesting, and I want to thank you for it.

.1545

Obviously, your school has gone through some very interesting changes over the years and you've been successful in giving young people a better education.

I would like to start by asking you the following question. It's about this surplus of $500,000 which the education authorities had managed to put aside and had to turn over to the band which needed it to cover its deficit. Could you tell me a bit more about the school's funding mechanisms? The education authorities had managed to put that money aside over a number of years. Did that money that was put aside for future capital investments represent a significant portion of your budget at that time?

[English]

Ms Burnet: Dear Lake School is somewhat unique in that when we first became locally controlled, according to the government regulations the band did not qualify to control the school funding, so they appointed a third-party manager. That third-party manager was the northern Nishnawbe education council in Sioux Lookout, Ontario.

Over the course of the next three years they managed different amounts of our money. At first it was almost 100%, and then more and more money came to the community level directly to the education authority. The money for education in Deer Lake has never gone to the band.

So in the course of four years, by careful management and spending on what we felt we needed and knowing that capital dollars have not kept up with need, we've been saving various amounts year by year.

My understanding is that, the way the legislation reads, those surpluses belong to the band and if they ask for them they are entitled to take them back. This is in fact what occurred recently, I guess last summer. They were told that the school had a lot of money, and when they asked for it, it was turned over to them.

[Translation]

Mr. Caron: Can you tell me a bit more about the physical appearance of this school? Are there many rooms? Is it a fairly big building? You have some 200 students, and you said that the school is fairly large in comparison with other schools in native communities. So, what type of building is it? Are there many rooms in the school? Are there many facilities in the school?

[English]

Ms Burnet: We have a main school that has 10 classrooms. We have two portables and two more to be built this summer. Space is a problem. There is not space for anything extra; it's basically classrooms, a few washrooms, no library, no gymnasium, and very little storage space for janitorial staff to maintain the buildings.

Mr. Duncan (North Island - Powell River): It has been a very interesting presentation containing some very practical recommendations.

I came in a couple of minutes late, so I'll have to do a bit of catching up.

I have a few questions deriving from your presentation. You talked about financial control, and I think you mentioned that you have a $1.4-million budget.

Ms Burnet: That's the program budget.

Mr. Duncan: That's your program, but that doesn't include your operations and maintenance budget, does it?

.1550

Ms Burnet: No. That's another $365,000, and the band just turned that funding over, on April l. So now in fact we control all of the funding for school activities at the school level.

Mr. Duncan: So it went to the northern Nishnawbe educational authority managing the money, to the school authority managing the money?

Ms Burnet: Yes.

Mr. Duncan: And in between the band never managed the money.

Ms Burnet: No.

Mr. Duncan: But you're still concerned that the band can at any time grab surpluses. Is that still the case today?

Ms Burnet: Yes.

Mr. Duncan: So that leaves you in a very vulnerable position, and one in which the natural incentive would be to spend everything.

Ms Burnet: Yes.

Mr. Duncan: In your presentation you mentioned students becoming more discriminating consumers. I was just a bit unclear on what you mean by ``consumers''. Do you mean consumers of school services, or do you mean outside of the school in some fashion?

Ms Burnet: I think in both areas: their exposure to television and to print and general better education levels at home. They are demanding more of schools, and rightly so.

Mr. Duncan: So they've a better appreciation of what's available outside of their own community; they have a better appreciation of what rights and responsibilities they might have.

That follows into this whole question of reporting of inappropriate activities in the community that the staff counsellors might be aware of. Are you suggesting that there might be a way actually to legislate that? Is that what I hear, or is this just something you are thinking could be a policy?

Ms Burnet: I don't know if a policy would have enough weight behind it to accomplish what I think needs to be accomplished. By law, as a teacher and as a nurse you are required to report. There are penalties if you don't. But right now in some schools - in mine right now, before we get our native teachers on board - it almost seems as if it is a native/non-native issue rather than a child-protection issue.

Mr. Duncan: To whom does the reporting currently go? You say that you are under a legal, or ethical or whatever it is, obligation, but to report to whom?

Ms Burnet: It changes. Originally it was to report to the local child-care worker, who was an employee of Tikinagan, leading subsequently to several instances. The school was given direction to report directly to Tikinagan and Sioux Lookout and bypass the local workers and the band council.

Mr. Duncan: I am not familiar with your area. What is Tikinagan?

Ms Burnet: It is children and family services.

Mr. Duncan: Is that funded by the Department of Indian Affairs?

Ms Burnet: I honestly don't know whether it is or whether it is community and social services. I guess that it must be.

Mr. Duncan: Is it designed -

Ms Burnet: It's native.

Mr. Duncan: - just for natives?

Ms Burnet: Yes, just for native kids.

Mr. Duncan: You talked about more support for programs that have a proven track record. You mentioned those, such as yours, where you can demonstrate continued success once they go into the regular school system, I presume in grades 10 to 12.

There are other examples across the country where we don't necessarily have two adjacent schools where they end up in the public stream, and it would still be nice, even though they are within one complete system from grades 1 to 12, to have a benchmark to demonstrate the record. Do you foresee a way that could be accomplished objectively?

.1555

Ms Burnet: A benchmark for -

Mr. Duncan: A way to demonstrate that you're achieving a successful level of education. Here you have a way to do it, because you have grades 10 to 12 in a separate school. But for those jurisdictions in which you don't have that comparison, do you think there is a way to test within the school objectively?

Ms Burnet: We're probably one of the few schools up north that administer formal testing to our students from grade 3 to grade 9. While they are culturally biased, we have found over the course of time that they do show where our students operate in their second language. We look for trends. We're not worried whether it says 3.5 in the reading level and the student is in grade 4. It is whether that growth in reading is improving year by year or whether there are programs that we can plug into such as Minute Math to raise the computation skills when we notice that area of scoring coming down.

Academically, our students don't have problems continuing in the provincial system when they leave our school. In the past, the majority have been able to go out and take what were then advanced courses, certainly no lower than general courses.

I know that standardized testing is a dirty word in most schools, yet I've found it to be very useful.

Mr. Duncan: My impression is that standardized testing is great with the parents and not so great with some of the school authorities. I'm delighted to hear that you're in favour of it.

Ms Burnet: These are bright children. They really are remarkable children.

Mr. Duncan: Is the standardized testing a Canadian -

Ms Burnet: A Canadian test of basic skills.

Mr. Duncan: A Canadian test of basic skills, CTBS.

Ms Burnet: I can look at scores now, which I did just several weeks ago, and say, yes, the grade 3 children are on track, or the grade 5 kids are progressing nicely, or my goodness, look, there's a grade 12 score for somebody in grade 8. So it does allow us to look for our own benchmarks, and we may just achieve them a little bit later due to the second-language nature of our school.

Mr. Duncan: You talked about continued training for education authorities, I believe. I don't fully understand what the education authority is for your school.

Ms Burnet: The education authority consists of a chairperson, three members, and two elders. It is their job to be responsible for the operation of the school and all its programs. They delegate this responsibility to principals, finance officers, teachers, etc. They act as a school board.

Mr. Duncan: Are they appointees or are they elected by the community?

Ms Burnet: Ours were appointed. I've always had a number of people who volunteered on what we used to call school committees. When they took over the school, it became the education authority with some reimbursement, but not a great deal. Because these original volunteers put in so much time and effort on an unpaid basis, we felt that it only made sense to offer these positions to those same people. They are supposed to reappointed, and they were recently by the chief and council. So all of them are into their second term of office.

Mr. Duncan: Thank you.

Mr. Murphy (Annapolis Valley - Hants): Thank you, Ms Burnet. Your presentation was very good. If I were a student in your school, I would know I had a good advocate.

You talk about the standard of performance and achievement. Has that to do with the testing?

Ms Burnet: No, not really.

Mr. Murphy: Would you talk a bit about that?

Ms Burnet: It involves sitting down with your staff and deciding where kids need to be in the core subjects in particular - the reading, the phonics, the mathematics skills - and deciding as a staff where the children need to get to and changing teaching strategies, buying resources, spending more time, whatever is required to reach those standards.

Mr. Murphy: So it is a team approach to finding where a child's benchmarks are and where they need to go from there.

Ms Burnet: The stability of the staff and the excellent attendance records really help.

.1600

Mr. Murphy: You have been there 13 years, you said.

Ms Burnet: Yes.

Mr. Murphy: To what do you attribute your staying 13 years and having such a stable staff who stay on?

Ms Burnet: The kids. They really and truly are just wonderful kids.

Mr. Murphy: You are an isolated community?

Ms Burnet: Yes.

Mr. Murphy: I know a lot of other fly-in communities where teachers are leaving like flies. They're staying a year or two and then they're out of there. They're non-native.

Ms Burnet: I always tell my teachers that we're guests of the community and ask them to conduct themselves accordingly and to listen, because sometimes the messages are really subtle. I've missed a few.

The community supports education. They're not going to come and knock on my door or my teachers' doors and say, you do a wonderful job or that was great. But they send their children every day and that says they support the school. They really want their children to go on to secondary school. And now we're hearing, he could be a lawyer or maybe she could be a teacher. Those kinds of thoughts are being generated now and shared with children, which is really important. It is more important that parents say it than I say it.

Mr. Murphy: Do you have an orientation program for new teachers? Do new teachers come on to be oriented about practices in the community?

Ms Burnet: I normally run them through a day or so of do's and don'ts and expectations. Depending on the year, we visit each home from which that teacher would have a child enrolled in his classroom and at least make an attempt to shake hands and say hello, and see where the children live and how they live.

Mr. Murphy: I don't mean to embarrass you when I ask you this, but was this kind of stability there when you came?

Ms Burnet: I don't know whether there was stability. There didn't seem to be an awful lot going on.

I recall that on my first day in Deer Lake School a teacher - my husband, who teaches grades 7 and 8 - had warned me, Linda, you have to send out three teachers for yard duty, and I thought for 75 children it seemed a little strange. But at any rate, he had been there one year and I thought I'd listen to Darwin. At the end of the day we met - at that time five teachers were in the corridor and the children were leaving - I looked at my husband and he looked at me and I said, this is not a school, this is a joke. It was anarchy from one end of the school to the other. There were no rules. There were few supplies. It was just absolutely unbelievable.

So, again, we sat down as a staff and asked what we needed to do. We decided that first we had to establish order. We had to generate some rules here that were reasonable and that children can follow and will follow. We needed to cover all the walls and ceilings because they were awful. We had to make it an attractive learning environment for children and to smile when they come into the school. We had to turn this around.

The first year was a year of, no, we don't do that in our school. It seemed to be that we were enforcing rules more than we felt we wanted to. The second year the kids came back and we came back and it was all over. It was now we know and this is where we're all going, and it worked very well.

Mr. Murphy: How did you get them to turn the money over to the educational authority? I don't necessarily say it was you, but -

Ms Burnet: It might have been, I don't know.

Mr. Murphy: I suspect it was.

Ms Burnet: I have a reputation for being hard to get along with when the kids are getting the short end of the stick.

The rules from Indian Affairs said bands could not take over education funding if they didn't have their own books in order for current programs, and our band did not qualify under those guidelines. They wanted desperately to have our school go over to local control. They had a time line of their own. We had less than five months in which to prepare to take over the school programs.

Mr. Murphy: We didn't see many where the school trustees had the financial aspect. It was usually left with the band and you were never sure about where the funding went.

.1605

Ms Burnet: It seemed to work very well in that the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council is concerned with educating native students, and they provided an example to the education authority of how to manage money. As I said, each year we took over more and more of the spending at the community level, the last area being payroll, which went over on April 1.

Mr. Murphy: You say 75% to 100% of parents come to parent-teacher night.

Ms Burnet: Absolutely.

Mr. Murphy: How did you get that to happen?

Ms Burnet: They're good parents. They are concerned. They want to come and see what their children are doing.

Mr. Murphy: But I had an idea that they weren't doing it when you arrived.

Ms Burnet: I don't know; it was like that even the first year. Perhaps it's because we went and knocked on doors and delivered report cards one time. That may have helped. After that it became a problem of carrying all the student work to every parent to show them what they were doing. I don't know. It's continued, and it's really nice. I think one of the most enjoyable evenings in the school is when the parents come in and wander around and see what their children are achieving.

Mr. Murphy: I'll quit now, but there are some ingredients that you and your teachers and staff have brought into this system that may be intangible but that I think need to be understood, because at the end of the day we have to make some kinds of recommendations. Some of the things you've done are some of the things I would suspect we would see as good practices, obviously, in developing and working with an educational system. I think we need to pick your brains more, but I don't have time right now.

Mr. Bonin (Nickel Belt): I'll throw out some numbers, but I just went with the bit of information I have here. I calculate that you are funded at $7,000 per student per year.

Ms Burnet: It's approximately $6,820, I think.

Mr. Bonin: I'm concerned about the surplus. I know you cannot use operating funding for capital expenditures, and it struck me when you said they appointed a third party to oversee the administration of finances. Is it under that individual that you ended up with the surplus?

Ms Burnet: No, not entirely. The first year NNEC managed the school's accounts it was really for just a seven-month period. We did not receive any kind of financial reports at the community level. We didn't know if we had any money or how much money or how long it was going to last. We spent next to nothing for that first seven months.

The following year we did not add to the staffing, and in the last two years we've been understaffed in administration by two positions. There is no vice-principal and there is no education director. Our education director died unexpectedly two years ago in May and his position was never filled. So some of it is revenues realized because payroll was substantially reduced.

Mr. Bonin: Are the expenditures decided by the principal or the director of education or the school board or the education council? Who decides if you're going to provide a bus for the team to go to the other end of the town or to charter an airplane to go play hockey?

Ms Burnet: I guess it's been a joint effort between myself and Elisabeth Rae, the finance officer, who is extremely competent, and the education authority. In some ways she has had to train the education authority in the process of how our moneys are realized and in preparing draft budgets and doing a line by line based on last year's expenditures and perceived changes or needs into a new year. So far I've been part of that process.

Mr. Bonin: Can she overrule your decisions in finances?

Ms Burnet: No. She's a supervisor at the same level as I am.

Mr. Bonin: Who can overrule whom on decisions on expenditures?

Ms Burnet: The education authority.

Mr. Bonin: That is composed of three, four, five people?

Ms Burnet: The chairperson and three or four members and two elders.

Mr. Bonin: I'll tell you why I'm concerned. With a saving of about 8% or 9%, either the funding is too high, which nobody will say, or that money should have been spent on the kids. I'm concerned that whenever you provide operating funds and they're not spent, it's the kids' money that is not spent.

.1610

I'm saying this because I see a number of places where they save money on operating, hoping to have a gymnasium or a library, but that's not what it's for. So you can end up with a library of no books. That was the situation somewhere else.

You can't fund capital expenditures with operating funds.

I see that it's being generalized that we're doing this, hoping to get a gymnasium or other things that are crucial, that are important. Don't you feel as if we're cheating the kids when we do that?

Ms Burnet: In some ways, but I have 37 kindergarten 4 children enrolling in September and I don't have a classroom for them.

Mr. Bonin: You still have portables, though.

Ms Burnet: The education authority is building and paying for them.

Mr. Bonin: But they always provide portables. You don't go without a classroom.

Ms Burnet: Oh yes. You do.

Mr. Bonin: What do you do? Do you tell the kids to stay home?

Ms Burnet: Yes.

Mr. Bonin: Has that happened?

Ms Burnet: We've been very close to having the program for half days.

Mr. Bonin: But do we know of an instance in which students were told to stay home because there was no classroom?

Ms Burnet: Not yet, but we've provided the last three - ``we'' meaning the education authority. The community has provided the last three. We've had students in other communities, and for a while my students were housed in the basement of a church in appalling conditions, because, again, the space has not kept up with programs.

We're encouraged to meet the provincial standards. When they added grade 9 and K4, the program dollars were there to buy books and pay for heat and light, but in the north buildings are at a premium. There just isn't extra space to rent.

Mr. Bonin: Yes, you're right.

Ms Burnet: So we see this as money being spent on and for the children.

Mr. Bonin: At $7,000, it's sufficient funding. I know about education. I know that's enough money.

Do you...? I was going to ask if you agree, but I'm not convinced that I'm right. I think I am. Do you agree that we would be better to have less funding for operating and have that saving go directly from the ministry to capital expenditures? Could you operate with less than $7,000 for operating?

Ms Burnet: It would depend on a couple of things. One, I'm a person who plans ahead. I have a kind of five-year plan upstairs, and having been there for 13 years, I was able to resource programs very well. I don't think there's another school in the north that can compare in terms of computers or audio-visual or textbooks or thesauruses. You name it, and we've done extremely well. But it has been a very planned progression of acquiring these kinds of resources.

Also, when we were originally asked to consider taking over the school, I advised the band not to do so, because the condition of the buildings was not up to par. So we had a major renovation. The building was brought up to par and classroom space added. Teacherages were also renovated at the same time. They had an asset to take over that was worth something, so at that point we did.

Mr. Bonin: How do you plan -

The Chairman: If we want to get everybody in and give them the same amount of time, I'm going to have to say ``Thank you very much.''

If you could just sit there, we'll ask Chief Matthew to give his presentation, and if there are more questions for you, Ms Burnet, we could come back to you. How would that be?

Ms Burnet: Sure.

The Chairman: Chief Matthew, you may start whenever you're ready.

Chief Nathan Matthew (First Nations Education Secretariat, B.C. Summit): Good afternoon. I'm quite pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this committee.

.1615

My name is Nathan Matthew. I'm a Secwepemc person, a Shuswap Nation individual, and I'm from the Simpcw area, the people north of Kamloops, up in the North Thompson valley.

As a youngster I was educated in the public school system. I lived on the reserve, but I went to the public school system. I went through that system and ended up in university. I now have a bachelor of education and a master of education in curriculum instruction.

I've been a principal of a first nations school, the Alkali Lake school, and I've also been an administrator of an Indian residential school. I've been a band planner and a consultant for our resource people in the education field for first nations communities for the last 10 or so years.

Currently and for the last several years, I've been chief of my community, the North Thompson Band. For the last three years, I've been the tribal chief of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council, which takes care of the political administration needs in the Southern Shuswap Nation.

I am currently part of the B.C. Chiefs' Action Committee on Education through the Chiefs' Summit in British Columbia and have been quite active for several years in discussions between the province and the federal government in the area of the master tuition agreement, and currently, the tuition discussions with both the province and federal government.

On the professional side, I have done probably a dozen or so evaluations of first nations schools in the province of British Columbia. So I have a background in first nations education that's quite useful and have some opinions.

That's who I am. I'm just wondering who you are. I'm not sure.

Mr. Murphy: I'm John Murphy, a member of Parliament from the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. I'm on the subcommittee here.

Mr. Bonin: I'm Ray Bonin, a member of Parliament for Nickel Belt, which is a belt around the city of Sudbury.

Ms Jane Allain (Committee Researcher): I'm Jane Allain. I'm one of the committee researchers.

Ms Jill Wherreth (Committee Researcher): I'm Jill Wherreth and I'm also a researcher.

The Chairman: I'm Robert Bertrand, MP for Pontiac - Gatineau - Labelle, and I'm the chairperson.

The Clerk of the Committee: I'm Susan Baldwin. I think I introduced myself earlier as the clerk.

[Translation]

Mr. Caron: I am André Caron, a member of Parliament for Jonquière, a city located approximately 200 km north of Quebec City.

[English]

Mr. Duncan: I'm John Duncan, MP for North Island - Powell River, and I live in Campbell River.

You make a very good point. Did we not at one point have name tags on the tables? Do we not do that any more?

Ms Allain: Not generally. That was more to familiarize all the members with each other. But we could.

Mr. Duncan: It would be good for our guests.

The Chairman: Duly noted.

Chief Matthew: About how long do I have for the presentation?

The Chairman: You have 20 minutes.

Chief Matthew: Where to start is always a problem.

One of the reasons I'm here, as I understand, is that the Parliament of Canada has something to do with first nations people and that there is a duty that Parliament has as the Government of Canada to take care of the best interests of first nations people across Canada, status people particularly. That is somehow bound up in the notion of a fiduciary duty that I understand to be real and legally enforceable through the Supreme Court decisions.

So there's quite a strong relationship and certainly we have a historical relationship. For first nations people, it has not been very healthy.

The relationship started and certainly the policy that governed our relationship was based on attitudes of superiority, or inferiority, depending on which side you were on, and the first nations or the laws through the Indian Act and the policies enacted by Parliament and the Department of Indian Affairs have tended to be very paternalistic in that there was some higher order giving to some lower order.

.1620

The major issue was to have first nations people more or less conform to non-native society, to the broader Canadian society, and perhaps the best strategy was to educate, Christianize, civilize, and all those kinds of things that I think you're probably aware of. We come from that history, and it hasn't been a very positive one. As a result of it, certainly in the education area, there was a removal of our children from families and communities for extended periods of time in their life cycle and through the community cycle.

In my community from the early 1900s until the 1970s, large numbers of young children left every year for periods of up to 10 months and stayed away from their homes for not just one generation, but two generations and sometimes three. As a result there has been a fragmentation of the family structure and the community structure. A lot of our people have not had the opportunity to look after their own children and provide parental support and those kinds of things that really are a part of what we believe now to be a healthy family unit, and certainly part of being a healthy community.

The other part of the relationship is the predominant place of the Department of Indian Affairs in our decision-making in our communities. It's only been in the last half of my lifetime; 1972 was the first time that there was such a thing as a band office in my community, a local office where the chief and council actually could hire their own administrator to handle the affairs of the community.

Before that it was simply a matter of the Indian agent coming up and having band council resolutions already prepared, signed, delivered. All of the land transactions, all of the education, all of the social help - the whole community structure was decided on by the Department of Indian Affairs system. So it's been really quite recently that we've been afforded the opportunity of looking after our own interests.

When we come to talk about education, it's only been quite recently as well that we've been more involved in our own educational well-being and had the means by which to really affect the quality of education of our own children. We continue to have issues in that area.

One of the things we're finding is that some of the things we're trying to do nowadays are confounded by what happened before when we didn't have the capacity or we were purposely excluded from the decisions around developing our own kind of system. That included predominantly the residential school system and the truly paternalistic nature of the decision-making with respect to Indian Affairs and band governance in general. So we have that to deal with.

We still have some very clear residual effects from the residential school, even this entrenched dependence. In some cases, those of us who would tend to be very individual in approach to certain issues tend to look to the government for some sort of solution when in fact that's not where the solution is.

What's important, certainly in terms of quality of education, which I'd like to focus on, is the development of a culturally appropriate knowledge, skills, and attitude that we can provide to our younger people and ourselves. That would lead us to meeting the challenges of modern-day life and also to reinforcing ourselves in the values we have as a cultural group and to maintaining the uniqueness and the clear value we see in just being ourselves as whatever culture we belong to.

I think what's at the base of education is being able to control that or develop it yourself, to be responsible for it and be accountable for it and to be able to see a part of our own lived experience within whatever educational system we set up.

We're seeing that the strategy with formal education is to create a situation that is relatively artificial, that we've put our kids into.

That's supposed to be the incubation area where we develop the skills and the attitudes that are supposed to be useful out in the real world.

.1625

We're finding that there are a lot of confounding things in trying to do that. Number one is our own culture. We're having a difficult time in putting elements of our culture, our values, into the school system that would in turn, when those students develop skills and attitudes and whatever and come back into our community, reinforce it so that, like all cultures, we'll continue to thrive and be strong. That's one of the key elements of education.

Certainly there are the other elements of maintaining an up-to-date knowledge or skills base that would allow our young people, and older people too, really to contribute to their own well-being and to participate in the modern world in terms of technology, the economy, politics, and so on.

There are all kinds of challenges, but the key element, as I see it, is having the right to do that and having a clear right that is seen by everyone to be all right and to be legitimate.

Given that, coupled with the fiduciary relationship, the strong relationship that we have with the federal government, there should be some sort of planning, some - I hate to say consultation - communication between first nations and the federal government about what is real and good in this world and worth really striving for and how the federal government is going to maintain and meet its duty to first nations people.

So what's the problem?

I feel that a lot of situations are being handled quite well by first nations communities, where, in terms of education, the culture is getting into the school, where there are qualified educators who know how to work in that artificial environment, to reinforce and to have children get involved, to motivate them to participate in the learning experience and relate quite well to the community.

There are communities in which there are individual people within the community who are very motivated to maintain a formal educational structure within their community, and they do that. There are politicians who support high-quality education, and they do that.

There is no question about money going under the table, around the back, paying for deficits out of education funds. There are cases in which there are such questions.

So there is a back and forth; there are positive and negative sides to development in all areas of the country.

As I see it, the main issue seems to be the relationship between the federal government and first nations. To me, that has never been adequately described. The closest we get to it is when we get into the Supreme Court of Canada with the Sparrow case or some other big case where they do some sort of analysis of the relationship and finally you say, ``Oh, that's what it's all about. That's what the government is supposed to do. That's what the first nations are and that's the kind of relationship we should have.''

But, at least at the administrative level, or even at the higher bureaucratic levels, that's hardly ever talked about. We tend to get down to policy around fiscal management, with everybody trying to hold on to their own piece of policy or position or job. I don't know, but there seems to be a lack of understanding about the nature of the relationship.

One of the other key elements is the notion that the federal government seems to feel that it has satisfied its mandate and obligation to first nations people with respect to education if it provides an education that is close to a public school education within the province or territory in which those students live, if the federal government can say, ``Well, we've taken care of our obligation to make sure that these first nations people are educated if we buy them a seat in, let's say, a public school system, or even a private school system, and that's the standard. Once we've bought that seat, we don't even have to think about it any more, because we know that the standard is being met because that provincial system meets the standard.''

That forms the basis of a lot of assumptions around what quality education is and the amount of money or the kinds of resources that should be made available for education.

.1630

In B.C. we have perhaps 50 medium-sized programs. Generally, they're even smaller, with perhaps 50 to 200 students. We have quite a few smaller ones where they're just kindergarten or first year or second year primary. There might be 100 to 150 programs throughout the province. They're very small. In most cases they have absolutely no economies of scale.

We're supposed to meet a quality of education. We're funded on the assumption that a similar amount of money provided for first nations education with 50 kids in a system can provide a level of quality of education similar to a system that might have 5,000.

In the case of British Columbia, I don't know how many kids there are, but their system is unitary. It has one school act. It has authority levels that go right from the minister of education down to the principals, teachers, teachers' aids, and janitors. It's a unitary system. They have centralized control. Because of their broad base and their size, if they take one percent off the top of something they can afford to provide a whole range of services for everyone.

In special education they have whole departments dedicated to curriculum development and to developing a new curriculum with their own standards in mind. The teachers have teacher development programs and professional development. New school trustees are given a week's training to become informed on what their roles and responsibilities are. You have a cohesiveness within that system.

If they have a child who is blind or handicapped, they can provide them with a full-time care attendant. There is no problem because their system can accommodate that. And it's all built into the formula they have.

That's one of the big problems with resources in first nations schools. We have no economy of scale. If you have one of these kids who is FAS - fetal alcohol syndrome - or blind or handicapped in some way, and you have 50 kids in your school, it normally takes up to $35,000 to provide for that one child. You will not be able to provide a service to that child in the same way that they can 10 or 50 kilometres down the road in the public school. There is an issue of equivalency. Even though you can say we're taking the money the way the public school does, and we're handling it in the same way, the effect is entirely different because we have such a small-scale operation.

That seems to be a big problem in our region in terms of the approach Indian Affairs has taken towards giving resources to first nations schools. A few years ago, there was a push to have special needs recognized within a formula, and that was done.

This year they've reversed that. They've thrown the special needs back into the general pot and you're supposed to pull the money for special needs out of whatever you get. That's fine for schools with no special needs children, but what if you have three or four in a small school? That is the case in a lot of our schools where our special needs are very high.

When we talk about curriculum development and aboriginal language development our needs are very great. We have many different aboriginal languages that are fairly distinct or very distinct from one other. Within those language families we also have dialects that are almost distinct in the way words are pronounced and in the kinds of endings you put on words. The pronunciations and endings make a difference. It's very complex. The need to have aboriginal language teachers trained and qualified to teach is a real issue.

.1635

I heard capital items mentioned. The situation is absolutely appalling, with respect to first nations buildings in B.C. If your building is starting to fall apart now and you can demonstrate you need a building quite quickly, you're put on a waiting list. The last time the wait was about 11 years. Our community was on a list and had 10 years to go before our number came up. That number kept being pushed ahead too. It never reduced. It kept being pushed into the future.

The provincial government just made an announcement that it's putting $100 million into new technology in pubic schools. It would be nice to be able to say that our first nations schools were receiving some kind of dollars to meet the new challenges around technology requirements. The whole thing is exploding, and if you're in a first nations school you're really scratching hard to provide even the very basics in technological equipment, training of teachers, and that sort of thing.

I think the last time the Auditor General slapped the hands of Indian Affairs was 1986. It couldn't justify the way it was spending money because evaluations weren't being done appropriately. There was a big scramble to put evaluations into place. There was a pot of money for evaluations, but this year there isn't. It's just being thrown into the pot and somehow, depending on the size of your school I guess, you will have to try to get some evaluation money out. Because of demands in other areas, it's quite possible that in some areas evaluations won't be done. I know another question by the Auditor General in a couple of years will probably be: What's happening with the quality of education in first nations schools? Oh, I don't know...well, we'll see.

I think the net effect is that we are having a difficult time putting together enough dollars for supervision, assessments, second-level services, and associations of all kinds. Our teachers have a difficult time forming associations, and board members have a difficult time getting associations going of their own.

Although we share similar kinds of situations and conditions, we have a difficult time communicating between schools. There's very little training being done in any area where you might identify training needs in the school system.

Even if I were on a reserve today and wanted to start a band school, I would not be encouraged to do that. There's nothing within the department policy - that I'm aware of - that supports the creation and maintenance of a first nations school in your community. There is nothing. It's discouraged. There are disincentives for doing that.

I just want to touch on a couple of other areas. I think you probably know more about post-secondary issues than you want to, but in our area the post-secondary institutions are under incredible stress. They're meeting some very real needs, but at the same time they're sort of like first nations schools. They have an economy of scale that just doesn't allow them to develop like the University of B.C. or any of the major colleges. So they need support in some way.

Within the post-secondary system, I think there should be some way of maintaining a post-secondary program within our communities. There should be some sort of packaged support deal for that, because we have found in our communities and other communities that if you can keep the parents home, or the adult learners home if they happen to have families, there's a cost saving in total program costs. But there are also real advantages in maintaining family and community cohesion by having the parents and the kids stay together within the community. There are other kinds of community sports that can be utilized within the communities.

We're now into some detailed discussions in B.C. about tuition agreements between first nations and public schools, and federal dollars. It may suffice to say that the situation just hasn't changed in the last 20 years or so. No matter what we do, we are just conduits or pipelines for federal money to the province or to public school boards.

.1640

The federal government will give us only the amount that they know the service is going to cost. We're like the kids going to the grocery store; you give them only as much as you know it's going to cost them for whatever they're going to buy. So one of the points there is that we have no negotiating power.

I don't know what's going to happen with regard to self-governance, but there has to be a strategy developed that sees that first nations have sufficient dollars in their hands to negotiate for a service, that it's not just from one pocket to the other and everybody just wipes their hands and says great, except first nations people. In B.C. we've never really been able to get around the notion of where taxation fits into education funding.

There was some notion about accountability, and I know who should be accountable for the funds and for the educational enterprise within the first nations community. I have the opinion that it is the duly constituted political body within the community; most often it is the band council.

I also believe there should be some constraints put on the transfer of funds. If there have been problems in the past with regard to the handling of funds, that's just to protect the education that is necessary within those communities and to ensure that somehow young people and older people get educated with the full utilization of the dollars that are made available for that purpose.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

What we're going to do now is start off with the government side. I would like to remind everybody that each party has 10 minutes.

Mr. Bonin: In a number of places we went to I presented the situation of a school administration - we call them school boards - elected by the people of the community who are autonomous. Most if not all of them favoured that. Whose initiative should it be if this is good? Should we start saying we'll put the funding through? It's not our mandate to start telling the communities how to do it, but they're telling us this is what they want. The chiefs aren't saying that. How do we make this happen?

The other question will be on curriculum. I know that for one school in Red Lake to develop curriculum is very expensive, and each community is different so each school needs a curriculum that reflects that community. But I'm convinced that there has to be some stuff that we can do across the country that the communities could adapt to their own situation.

For example, OISE in Ontario was developing curriculum. They were doing a good job. Nobody was using it so now they've cut the funding for that. I don't think they're doing it any more. It's sad that the government was putting money into curriculum and rather than have that one, there's none in some situations.

I think we're not serving the kids well if we don't have the right curriculum, and we're not serving the children well if we don't have satisfactory professional developments. Those two go hand in hand and are mandatory to a good system.

So how can we help to at least provide nationally? What could help?

The other question is on the elected school board.

Chief Matthew: In the reviews and the work I did with a dozen or so committees, that was one of the key issues that came up in a number of those areas where there was a split in opinion between the elected band council and the school board. It seemed to revolve around money. People have a fascination with handling money. I don't know what it is.

Mr. Bonin: It's priorities.

Chief Matthew: Yes, sometimes it was a result of priorities where they saw the possibility of using educational funds for capital or, more typically, for economic development. But I think one of the questions around the council board issues is that, whatever happens, it should be by some kind of agreement by the council that this happens. It should be at the onset; there should be a clear kind of agreement about the relationship they have with the board at the beginning.

.1645

A lot of times, things sort of evolve. It's interesting the way things happen in our communities. Suddenly you have a board and a council, and they don't have a real relationship.

I think that's something that could be presented more broadly in terms of a strategy. There could be an agreement between the band and the board about how they're going to manage their distinct areas of responsibility.

In our community, we do that. We have a small school. The only people who have anything to say about anything that happens in our school are the parents who send their kids there. The band council has nothing to say. We just provide them with an agreement, by letter, that says we'll handle that. We present them with a budget every year and they initial it. That's all that it takes. We administer the funds, but we have no interest in messing with the school system.

The main concern is how we support it. How do we say the right thing at the right time to have them know for sure that whatever they're doing is supported by the community and by the band council? But I think that's more of an example of a good relationship than anything else. Those kinds of good relationships, I think, could be brought out.

One of the recommendations I had was to sponsor more research in this area. There is no place you can go to get a good idea of where the good examples are.

There was some research done on the AFN study. This was their report on education. There are some good models there.

It would be interesting to continue to build up a body of evidence to show that, in a lot of different areas in Canada, there are positive things happening.

I think this is one of the ways perhaps we should do it. We should just make sure that first nations schools have access to this kind of information to show where it works and to challenge.

I would not hesitate in my community - I can't speak for anybody else - to challenge the band council. Why are you folks so fascinated by that money that's there for the education of your kids? Leave it.

The other thing was curriculum development. I think the government, in the past, has provided quite a few bits and pieces of parcels of money for curriculum development, and has gone out there. What did happen was that there was no follow-up to the usefulness of that particular expenditure in curriculum development. I think that's one of the problems with what's been happening of late anyway, although there has been a scramble for funds.

I think there should be some accountability as to how you actually utilize the funds and there should be some kind of hook put into the grants, or whatever they are, to ensure that they are usable, practical, and educationally defensible and that subsequent funding is based on some kind of follow-up that shows that the previous dollars were handled usefully.

That's because there were probably quite a few instances in which either the time went by and the usefulness of the development was limited or it wasn't designed to have any lasting benefit. But I know that if you're going to provide funds for curriculum development, there has to be some mechanism for following up.

Mr. Murphy: Thank you, Chief. It may be candid to say that when you began answering the questions, you turned some of my thinking around. In the beginning, I was wondering if you were finding much good in the school systems. I know that's how you came across to me, I've got to tell you that. But I see now that, from when you started answering questions, indeed, that's so.

One of the things that I kept hearing from you - I'm not sure if this is what you meant - was about evaluation and quality of education. I'm not sure if you were saying that this should be with the federal government. In what you were saying there was a hint that some of that responsibility lies with the federal government. Or were you saying that the federal government has a responsibility to make funding available so that first nations can do their evaluations and can do their quality education?

.1650

Chief Matthew: I believe that the federal government should provide adequate funding and get out of the road.

I do not believe that the federal government is providing adequate funds to fund quality first nations education. We're far from it. We're now in a fiscal restraint mode and the first nations are feeling the pinch, and you're not going to get the results you want in that kind of practice. That strategy is not going to work.

I believe that more funding has to be put out, in different ways.

Mr. Murphy: But, as I understood what you were saying to Ray, you see that money as being tied to and evaluated by the federal government, to say, ``Was that spent on evaluation? Was that spent on curriculum development?''

Chief Matthew: Yes. I don't mind being accountable. There's no problem there. What we need are adequate resources to do that and a really clear discussion about that accountability beforehand. But right now there's not enough money. We're really falling behind, and it's a tragedy.

Mr. Murphy: You mentioned something a while ago in answering Ray's question that we actually heard in a number of places. It is the whole clearing-house concept, where you find best practices and how we can get that material. That's something we certainly heard, and I think we will be reacting to it.

The other thing I heard you talk about was the disincentives that the federal government put in the way of moving in developing, expanding, or starting school systems. What are some of those impediments? What are some of those disincentives?

Chief Matthew: From time to time I get calls from bands about people wanting to start schools. The first thing you're told is that the fiscal year ended in March and if your kids have been in public school in April, May, and June, then a quarter of the funding has already been spent. So in order to start your school you're going to get only seven-tenths. So that's a real disincentive to start with.

The other thing is that there are no start-up costs. There's no way to buy books; there's no way to hook up your electrical power and do renovations to the basement, or whatever. Usually that's where you're starting. You don't start with a facility.

When we started our school, the parents had to go in with saws and get an old administration double-wide trailer and punch holes and wash it up and make our own bookshelves and that sort of thing. It was a really positive experience for everybody, but I wouldn't want to say that everybody has to do that. There was nothing to support us. To start even a modest library, with a modest amount of learning equipment, takes considerable funds. There were none - and there are none. There's nothing within the federal policy that supports first nations schools. I challenge you to find that anywhere.

Mr. Murphy: That what?

Chief Matthew: That supports first nations schools development. There is nothing there. It's as if they prefer that there would not be first nations schools, because, like it or not, I can put my kid down on the road...and most kids in our part of the world can be picked up by a bus and be taken to a public school system and have their entire needs taken care of educationally.

If we decide to take on the challenge of providing for those needs ourselves, then we find it extremely difficult. There's nobody to talk to. There are no manuals, no little video tape on how to start a band school in 10 easy steps - not even that. So it's a challenge and it's uphill all the way.

I guess that those who start band schools end up being tough for that reason.

.1655

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you very much. We will now go to the Official Opposition. Mr. Caron.

Mr. Caron: I would like to pursue this issue. You say that if you want to send your children to public school, you get school bus service, at least in some communities. The kids go to public school, like you did.

If you want to set up a band school in your community, the department is not providing any program to start that school, nothing for the infrastructure, the library, these kinds of things. So, how is it funded? With band subsidies? It may be simple that there is some operating fund, but I find it hard to understand how you can set up a school in a community without start-up funds. How do you go about starting a school?

[English]

Chief Matthew: I just have our own case, and it's similar in other areas.

When we made the decision to have the school, the parents volunteered. We have an old building, and we went in there and renovated it so that there would be spaces for the kids to actually sit in classrooms. We knocked out walls and put in windows, and stuff like that.

There wasn't enough for transportation, so someone like myself...I volunteered to be the driver for the first four months at no charge to the school.

There was math, P.E., language, and culture. Those program elements were taken care of by volunteer work. We paid our teachers more than $10,000 less than they would make if they were teaching anywhere else with a standardized teacher scale.

By looking at all of that, we did piece together enough. Then the next year we got ten-tenths of our funding, which was a little bit better, I guess. Over time we scrimped and saved and put together enough resources to have a modest kind of system.

Even today we don't pay our teachers to scale. We pay them probably 20% less than what they'd receive anywhere else. We don't pay our drivers. If our drivers went and drove for the public school system, they'd be really happy with their pay, and the same with the rest of our staff. We don't pay as much. Our costs for administration and such are very, very small. The teachers pitch in and everybody helps one another. We've evolved into that kind of a system, and it's very useful to us in terms of maintaining stability.

We're now all right, but I had that really negative feeling as we were doing it. I still do when people call me and ask: ``How do we start our school? We've got everything together, everybody's motivated how do we start?''

I say the first thing you have to do is disregard anything Indian Affairs says and just do it, because you're not going to get any help from anyone in that department. You'll be just told: ``You don't have schools, you don't have transportation, you don't have a quarter of your funding for the first year, and you don't have equipment, so if you can't accommodate that yourself, forget it.''

[Translation]

Mr. Caron: But the fact is that some parents and the community decided at one point to start a school. It means that there was a need for that school, as Ms Burnet pointed out earlier. Parents choose the school where they want their children to go. They do so, as shown by the fact that their children attend that school. According to a report, the attendance rate in her school was quite exceptional. So, there is a need for this. Can you tell me why the department refuses to fund your school?

Is it because you can go to public school? You are about in the same situation as other communities. We see the same thing in Quebec. Smaller communities realize that their school is about to close. The school board decides to close the school, because there is not enough school children and it costs too much.

.1700

The children have to take the bus to the next town. Usually, these communities - and I am talking about non-native communities - decide that they want to keep the kids in their own school. So, they start a school in the church basement. They hire people at a somewhat lower salary, a little like you do, and then they challenge the Department of Education. They say: "You have to fund our school, because it meets a need in our community." Following numerous protests, five or six months later, the department decides to fund the school.

I realize that this type of funding is used in various communities. I would expect the department to have some type of start-up funds. If they recognize that band schools are needed, they must have some type of start-up funds and the teachers in these schools should be paid about the same thing as public school teachers.

In fact, I realize that there is no standard policy for non-native and native communities who want to start a school. In non-native communities - and I am going to talk about what is being done in Quebec, although that may not be an example to follow - teachers in accredited schools have the same salary whether they work in Gaspé, Montreal or Quebec City. As far as I can see, things are not the same in your community.

[English]

Chief Matthew: We're not Quebec, and we have a relationship with the federal government that's unique. It is very frustrating for me as a political representative to see the federal government not even taking its responsibilities seriously.

On one hand, the federal government says they're moving towards self-governance. A self-governing society must maintain its own public institutions, must have education for sure, and must have a few other things as well - political institutions.

But education seems to be one of those key areas that should be supported, and ultimately it becomes a driving, positive force in the development and maintenance of a quality of life for the people it serves.

We haven't reached that point, and I'm saying that we're being stymied and we're being stalled by the federal government because it has embarked on a policy of fiscal restraint, and that restraint in itself is having very negative effects on the development of first nations people. There's a lot of frustration out there just because of that.

We are not able to maintain quality of life within our communities. That's all we want in this area, and it seems that the federal government is intent on continuing to diminish the amount of resources that are available. I just see that as unacceptable politically, but as well, constitutionally and for all of those other reasons.

If the government has a responsibility, then live up to that responsibility.

Mr. Duncan: There's a fundamental problem here in that education for everyone else is a provincial responsibility. A federal responsibility in this area does create a unique circumstance. There are problems associated with that, and there are also opportunities associated with that.

We were in Sechelt, and they're considering their own school. I know in the non-native community there's a very high degree of dissatisfaction with the public school system. I'm still not exactly sure what motivated your community to go out of their way to leave the public school system, but you're not unique in choosing that path.

.1705

Because of all the difficulties, I'd be interested in knowing what was your community's rationale, what was their great unhappiness with the public school system.

Chief Matthew: In some respects we had a fair degree of success within the public school system. We had students graduating and such. But when we looked at our own development, in our case the people in the North Thompson area, we really wanted to be able to support our own reality, our own perspective on living, our own history, and our own culture. We didn't see anything within the public school system that really provided that perspective. We didn't really see it as the responsibility of the public school system to provide a Shuswap language program, a comprehensive cultural program for first nations people, or anything like that. We knew that it was important that it be in their system, they should know about us, but ultimately we should be educating our own kids in the way that we saw fit.

So although we didn't have a huge problem with the public school system, we saw that it was absolutely essential that we provide our own perspective to our own kids. Just transferring knowledge is one thing, but there's also community dynamics, where you get the elders and you get the politicians, you get the parents, you get the kids, you get everyone contributing to this feeling of recognition that we're together in this development. It wasn't just the school, it was other kinds of things as well: the economic development, the political development, the social and health development.

We see ourselves as being ultimately responsible for it. If we're going to be self-governing we can't depend on anyone else to make those decisions. We can't depend on anyone to do it for us, because ultimately we saw that the assumptions and the jurisdictions the public schools are based on were in actual fact quite different from the kind of basic assumptions we had in regard to what we saw our place in society as being.

Mr. Duncan: If band members living on reserve want to still send their children to the public school, is that an option for them?

Chief Matthew: That's an absolute choice.

Mr. Duncan: So basically you're in a competitive environment.

Chief Matthew: Virtually everybody in B.C. is in a competitive environment, because it gets down to things such as the public school having a basketball team, a gymnasium, all the extracurricular sports, computers, and qualified teachers. A lot of the things happen through there. So it's a truly competitive area.

Mr. Duncan: Is there any financial disincentive either way for parents? In other words, would they have to pay for busing, would they have to pay for school books or anything like that?

Chief Matthew: No, it's the same. You just send your kid out to the road and say go that way, and they go to our place. It's just that in our case if they go to our school they're automatically put on this list of people on the management committee, and they are responsible for that school.

Mr. Duncan: Okay. That concludes my questions. Thanks a lot.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. This brings to an end the official question and answer period. Does anybody else have any additional questions for either Ms Burnet or Chief Matthew?

Mr. Duncan: I thought I had one outstanding question for Ms Burnet, but it might take me a couple of seconds.

Chief Matthew: I had a comment with regard to consultation. On Friday I got the latest Indian Affairs funding manual, or their package of funding things. On it was stamped April 25, the last fiscal year. It indicated all of the different funding criteria for our school. I got it on Friday and I thought that I got it a couple of months late, inadvertently. What I found is that everybody got it on Friday, last week. There was no consultation, there was no discussion by Indian Affairs about the kind of changes we had.

.1710

We had already planned this year's funding budget. We had $16,000. We have three children who are educationally handicapped in some way, with special needs. We had them all assessed appropriately, and they were falling under the criteria for last year's funding. We had $16,000 each already budgeted and had the people organized, and we had to pull together three or four different people to get this program going. When we got this budget, it was just like a thud on the top of the head. There was no special education money.

We're anticipating having an increase in enrolment, but it said there's going to be an automatic 5% increase in funding for tuition, and that's it. It didn't say if there was the ability to increase it. What if our enrolment was halved? Would we have an incredible surplus?

There didn't seem to be any consultation on those issues.

It's bad enough and tough enough to be running a small system if you're well funded, because of the revolving door in the teacherage or the principalship or whatever; but not to have any time to plan makes it very difficult. It's a real problem.

The communities that were planning on a capital expansion and were halfway through their capital plans and had budgeted something like $16 a square metre for the building found that the new standard that has been applied is for portables, for modular units, and that the cost is only $8 per square metre. Their architect had already drawn up plans according to one assumption, but suddenly, in mid-stride, without consultation, everything had changed.

So it became very difficult for several communities to carry on planning. Suddenly they had half as many resources for capital as they thought they had.

Mr. Duncan: This is probably more along the lines of a comment than a question. I think if you were to look through the Department of Indian Affairs estimates under capital spending for schools, you'd be very surprised at what you would see in terms of the amount of building that is actually going on, albeit that for the most part it's not in British Columbia.

The whole sense of priority may be quite skewed. If you have successful schools that are underresourced, you have successful arrangements now in communities where both the native and non-native communities are supporting one school. Some of these projects seem not to be community driven. I'm getting a very mixed set of signals in terms of this whole educational area, in terms of what the department's doing and why they're doing it.

I'm puzzled by it. But, on the other hand, my look is somewhat superficial at this point.

Chief Matthew: Our community had to go out and borrow money. We looked at the timeframe for capital. We weren't going to stay in that little trailer or double-wides or portables forever. We couldn't. We didn't want to, because our parents were looking at that situation. It is sort of nice - it's sort of unique that you're educating your kids in these funny little places - but when they looked at the school down the road, the public school, suddenly they were making that choice. We had to have a school that is a quality physical structure, so we had to forgo a nice school perhaps 12 years down the road for going out and borrowing some money and taking a lesser amount.

That's really a problem, but I just don't have the answer, other than to continue to identify the need clearly.

What seems to be a problem now is that the Department of Indian Affairs is moving toward a per capita formula of construction or a formula-driven funding arrangement, rather than doing it on a need basis, and that ultimately we see our total cost shrinking. That's undeniable. They can say, well, we have only this much, but I think when you construct those estimates, where do you consult with first nations people? I've never been involved in that.

.1715

Mr. Bonin: Well, I think we do hope...but there are so many groups, and we all know that all the groups don't get along even among themselves.

Chief Matthew: We get along. We don't have problems.

Mr. Bonin: In all fairness, I know that they are consulting. Maybe they're not consulting with the right people, but they are consulting. Tell us how it should be done.

Ms Burnet: Well, the formulas don't work. If they define that a bus will last seven years on paved highway, try driving it on the roads in my community.

Mr. Bonin: But all the boards of education in this country work on formulas, because it's the only fair way that you can put out the money. Otherwise, you're just dishing it out and you don't know where it's going. It's political if you don't do it by formula.

Chief Matthew: We had tried to get together in B.C. and do reviews on transportation, special needs, and that sort or thing. We provide the government with evidence to show that there is a specific need in special education. What happens? The funding gets cut.

We demonstrate that transportation is more costly than the funding we have access to, and what happens? Nothing. We just give this information to somebody and it sounds like they're given the orders cut back or hold the line, and that's what they do. They reach a goal in a few of their different areas, and we end up not having as much as we had before.

It's very difficult to get to the place where decisions are made, even if you can represent a sizeable proportion of number of first nations.

Mr. Bonin: I can see that being a problem.

The Chairman: I'd like to thank you very much for taking the time to come to have a good and frank discussion with us. I'm sure it'll help us bring some recommendations to the House of Commons.

Chief Matthew: Thank you.

Ms Burnet: Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]