:
Thank you for inviting my colleagues and I to appear before your committee, Mr. Chair. We have come here today to bring your members up to date on our continuing efforts to improve First Nations Child and Family Services on reserve.
The Auditor General's report of May 2008 raised many serious matters concerning the management of First Nations Child and Family Services and we developed an Action Plan to respond to the Auditor General's recommendations.
[English]
In addition, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts made seven recommendations. The first recommendation was to provide the public accounts committee with a detailed action plan on the implementation of the Auditor General's recommendations. In a letter to the committee dated April 30, 2009, Deputy Minister Wernick provided the public accounts committee with the update on implementation we completed on March 31, 2009. The Government of Canada tabled its response to the report of the public accounts committee on August 19, 2009, which indicated that our department had responded to a number of the public accounts committee's recommendations, while others remained under review and analysis.
I can assure committee members that we recognize the seriousness of the matters raised in these reports, and that we are committed to building healthier, stronger first nation families and communities. We are particularly concerned with the safety and well being of first nations children.
[Translation]
I would now like to briefly talk about the partners involved in funding First Nations Child and Family Services and update the committee on what the Department has been doing to address the findings of the Office of the Auditor General's Report recommendations as well as those of the Public Accounts committee.
[English]
We do not work alone in supporting the first nations child and family services program. Three parties are involved. Provinces have jurisdiction over child welfare both on and off reserve, and where appropriate they delegate this authority to first nations child and family service agencies and first nations staff.
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada provide funding to first nations, their first nations child and family services agencies, and the provinces to support the delivery of culturally appropriate child welfare services on reserve, including costs related to children brought into care.
INAC is in the process of reforming its first nations child and family services program by implementing an enhanced prevention-focused approach on a province-by-province basis. This new approach provides first nations child and family services agencies with improved capacity to provide prevention-focused services to on-reserve first nation children, and is consistent with the findings in academic literature and with provinces that have largely refocused their child welfare programs from protection to prevention. Studies have shown that early intervention improves family cohesion and stability, leading to better life outcomes for children and families. INAC has made progress in this area through tripartite frameworks in five provinces.
Budget 2006 marked the beginning of the transition of the first nations child and family service program to an enhanced prevention-focused approach with a financial commitment of $98 million over five years for Alberta first nations child and family service agencies. With the new funding for Alberta, reports indicate that there is already a shift in caseloads, an increase in families accessing prevention programming, and a rise in permanent placements. INAC is currently in the early stages of conducting a formative evaluation of the enhanced prevention-focused approach in Alberta, which will be done in collaboration with the Province of Alberta and Alberta first nations.
Budget 2008 provided an additional $115 million over five years to implement the new approach in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan, and Canada's economic action plan provided an additional $20 million over two years to transition both Quebec and Prince Edward Island to move to the enhanced prevention-focused approach. Total program expenditures are expected to be $560 million in 2009-10, which equates to a funding increase of 190% since 1996-97.
With five provinces under the new approach, 45% of first nation children living on reserve are or will be receiving expanded services. We continue to work with remaining jurisdictions to transition to a prevention-focused and culturally appropriate approach to child welfare on reserve, and the objective is that all will be ready by 2013.
[Translation]
While work is under way on program renovation and the shift to the Enhanced Prevention Focused Approach, we are also working to strengthen program management and accountability to ensure that the funding is leading to improved results for First Nation children and families.
[English]
With respect to the Office of the Auditor General report, INAC is now preparing its September 30, 2009 update on progress, which will go to INAC's audit committee on December 8, 2009. The Auditor General made ten recommendations and the department is taking steps to address them all. We have updated the program authorities, introduced new reporting requirements, articulated a guiding principle on culturally appropriate services, worked closely with provinces to ensure agencies are meeting provincial legislation, and increased compliance activities.
As well, we have had a preliminary meeting with our first nation partners to discuss program performance indicators, and preliminary work is under way to develop a national data management system. We are also making progress in implementing Jordan's Principle along with Health Canada. That department has clarified the availability of non-insured health benefits to eligible first nations children in INAC-funded care.
In terms of the seven recommendations of the public accounts committee, we have responded to or addressed three recommendations. As mentioned, we have provided the public accounts committee with an update on implementation of our action plan in response to the Auditor General and have addressed two other recommendations, which are similar to those in the Auditor General's report and relate to culturally appropriate services and the development of performance measures.
Recommendation 2 calls for the department to conduct a comprehensive comparison of its funding to provincial funding by December 31, 2009. The Government of Canada agrees with this recommendation. However, as indicated in our government response, it will be conducted on a phase basis. The first phase will consist of a comparison of jurisdictions that are already under the enhanced prevention-focused approach. The second phase will consist of jurisdictions that have not yet transitioned to the new approach and will require a substantial amount of time and work with the provinces and first nations. This phase is expected to be completed by 2012.
Recommendations 4, 5, and 6 generally concern provincial comparability and funding. The committee recommends revising the funding formula for those first nation agencies or first nations who have not yet transitioned to the new approach, basing the funding formulas on need and fully costing the funding model. With respect to recommendation 4, the revision of funding formula directive 20-1, the department recognizes that there is a greater need for prevention-focused services, and we are exploring options with respect to the funding formula for those jurisdictions that have not yet transitioned to the new approach.
In terms of recommendation 5, on ensuring the funding formula is based on needs, the enhanced prevention-focused approach ensures needs are met by providing stable funding for both protection and prevention services. Also, as outlined in our government response, the direct costs of maintaining children in care out of the parental home are based upon need and not on an assumed percentage of children in care.
With respect to recommendation 6, fully costing the program, this analysis is done on a province-by-province basis as the program is reformed, by taking into account the related costs in caseload ratios in the provinces.
Another issue of concern to the Auditor General and this committee is Jordan's Principle. As you will recall, Jean Crowder's motion on Jordan's Principle was adopted by the House of Commons in December 2007, with the support of all parties. The federal government has defined Jordan's Principle as a child-first approach for children with multiple disabilities in need of multiple service providers. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and Health Canada are working with provinces to implement Jordan's Principle so that the care of children with multiple disabilities will continue, even if there is a dispute between governments concerning responsibility and payment of service.
In Saskatchewan and Manitoba first nations are actively involved in discussions to implement Jordan's Principle. On September 5, 2008, the Province of Manitoba announced it had reached an agreement with the Government of Canada to implement Jordan's Principle. As part of the agreement, a joint Manitoba and Canada steering committee is working on an implementation framework for Jordan's Principle. This committee has participated in case conferencing for several disabled first nations children and developed both a dispute resolution report and a report on services available to first nations children. They are now actively pursuing engagement with first nations.
On September 16, 2009, Canada, the Province of Saskatchewan, and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations announced their tripartite document entitled Interim Implementation of Jordan's Principle in Saskatchewan, which sets out the parameters to develop, over the immediate term, a dispute resolution process, and over the longer term to examine broader issues that could have an impact on first nations children with disabilities. Canada is continuing to engage with the remaining provinces in implementing Jordan's Principle.
[Translation]
Only by taking a partnership approach can INAC support services that are provincially comparable and culturally appropriate, in keeping with the needs of communities.
My colleagues and I will do our best to answer any questions about what we have done and our next steps as we move forward.
Thank you very much.
:
Thanks for the question.
When we looked at how the federal government could go about implementing Jordan's Principle in working with provinces, what we found was that the service provision issues that were coming were related to children with multiple disabilities needing multiple service providers. The problem was how to organize all of those service providers to provide the services to that child.
Jordan himself had multiple disabilities, and the challenge was that the family, as I understand it, wanted Jordan to be able to return to his community. He was in hospital. Because all of the parties couldn't get together and agree on how that could be done and how they could provide the services, and who would pay for them, Jordan remained in hospital and died there.
So in looking at the spirit of the Jordan principle and how we'd go about implementing it, we had to agree on how we would approach it. So in working with the other partners and provinces, we came up with the issue of children who had multiple disabilities and needed multiple service providers. The issue then was how you could you make that provision of services happen for them.
In the two agreements we have reached with Manitoba and Saskatchewan, they've agreed to phase things so that the first phase focuses on those children with multiple disabilities and requiring multiple service providers—because they are most in need—and then looking in a second phase at the gaps related to other children.
Thanks for coming and updating the committee.
I want to make a quick comment on Jordan's Principle. Of course, I know you're well aware that the motion passed in the House was not limited to complex medical disabilities. That was never the intention of the motion. It was to put first nations children first, so that they were treated on an equitable basis, as children off reserve are treated. I just wanted to put that out there. It is great to see some progress, even though it's narrowed the scope of Jordan's Principle, that at least some of the provinces are coming to the table and discussing it.
In the Auditor General's report, in exhibit 4.1, she outlined that there are a number of challenges facing first nations children. They include socio-economic conditions, jurisdiction, legislation, program design, access to and availability of services, and emerging issues. And in the past year we've had a number of cases where children were apprehended because of severe mouldy conditions in homes. There was a group in Mr. Duncan's riding. A significant number of children were apprehended because of the conditions in the homes.
Our experience, of course, in the past has been that often departments end up working in silos, even silos within departments. So in the enhancement provisions, are you looking more broadly at housing, education, water, all of the other impacts on the liveability of homes for first nations children on-reserve?
:
Thank you for the question.
The government, with the Government of Alberta and the first nations in Alberta, started implementing the enhanced prevention model in 2007. We work on a province by province basis because, as you mentioned, the provinces are different and their legislation is different. As for the first nation agencies, there are 108 of them now, but there were not so many years ago. There was nowhere near that number.
So we're dealing in a three-party situation because there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Since 2007 to August past, the government has announced five jurisdictions where the prevention model is in place.
We need the province at the table because the province has jurisdiction for child welfare. It's the province that delegates its authorities to first nation child and family service agencies and the province is accountable for compliance in that regard. The federal government funds the operation and provides, under the enhanced model, for the maintenance and prevention services that the agencies offer, so we're there as the funder. The first nations themselves are there, of course, as they run the agencies in a culturally appropriate manner that's designed to best meet the outcomes of children and families.
It is something we're doing on a province-by-province basis. It's a challenging area of public policy and risk management for the workers involved in it. If we can continue along the path we've started, we are hopeful that by 2013 we will have gotten the five remaining provinces to implement this approach.
:
That's absolutely correct. Some time ago, the provinces started moving to a prevention model. That's where the best lessons learned, the best practices, were presented to us, starting with the Province of Alberta. Even though there was quite a shift some years ago to prevention, I'd say that in the last two years many of the provinces have adjusted their legislation as well.
New Brunswick, for example, introduced new legislation about a year ago. Also, not so many months ago, New Brunswick announced that Bernard Richard, their child advocate, is doing a review of aspects of child and family services. There could be new legislation after that, too.
When the funding is provided to the provinces for the enhanced model, it's on a five-year basis. Towards that time when the end is in sight, we'll sit down again to see what the situation is. But because there are the three parties, the three parties meet two or three times a year to see what's going on and to see if there are issues.
For example, in Quebec and in Prince Edward Island, where the funding was announced in August, those three-party tables, as we call them, will be important in the regularity of the meetings over the next year, because workers need to be hired, the capacity needs to be there, and dollars need to get out the door. Bringing the three parties together is a way of keeping up with the momentum and seeing what the changes and the issues are. It's very much an opportunity for dialogue and monitoring.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses today.
By way of background, I'm the son of a family of more than 250 children, actually, from my family's years of being involved with the Children's Aid Society and foster parents. Subsequent to that I was a nurse in isolated first nations communities across the country, primarily in the great Kenora riding, and have a lot of experience dealing with some of the great agencies that work under some difficult circumstances from time to time, so being involved in the coordinating of care for children under those circumstances is well known to me.
My background goes to Health Canada. In their new model that was implemented under Minister Clement, they developed clusters. The great thing about those clusters is that they allow programs within a certain cluster to give communities the chance to identify certain priorities and perhaps shift funding from one program to another because elements of a program could fit into something else. Aboriginal head start and various prenatal programs are good examples of that.
My understanding of some of the key features of the enhanced prevention-focused approach is that there are indeed streams of funding. As I understand it, they would be operations, prevention, and maintenance, and there appears to be that similar type of flexibility to shift funds from one stream to another.
For the benefit of this committee, could you take the rest of my time to make a brief statement about those three streams, and then describe or expound, if you will, on what it means to be able to shift funds from those and how that affects, I'm sure positively, the priorities of the stakeholders who are involved in the process?
Thank you.
:
Thank you for the question.
What we have are these three funding streams. One is for prevention activities, to try to keep families together and children in the home. Then we have operations funding, which is to support the operations of the agencies. That includes rent and other expenses such as directors' salaries. Then we have maintenance costs, which are specifically to pay for the costs of children in care.
When we developed this process, we had asked that they develop, first of all, a framework that would guide the overall objectives in moving forward on prevention in a particular province where this is happening. Those frameworks closely model what the province is doing, but they also take into account the aspect of cultural appropriateness and what is important to be done in the first nations communities.
When we get funding, they then take that and develop business plans. The business plans have to be appropriate for what is needed in the communities served by those agencies. We provide the funding to them and we look at the maintenance costs that they've funded. For example, in Quebec we will look at the maintenance costs that they incurred in the last fiscal year. That will go into the agreement, on top of the additional funding for operations and maintenance. Then, as they go through the year, they have the flexibility to move funds within those three streams, which is not something that has happened before.
If in fact they are doing much better on the prevention side, they will still have the maintenance dollars to assist them to do extra activities on prevention, if you will. If, however, they're seeing a little bit of an increase on the maintenance side, they have the flexibility to move. They have to adapt based on what's happening in each of the communities, and the expectation is that our regional people, in conjunction with the provinces, will meet with them on a regular basis--at least three times throughout the year--to review the progress against those business plans, and they can discuss any shifts that need to occur.
:
Thank you for your questions, Mr. Bouchard.
The program is in transition, so to speak. We have talked a lot about the prevention focused approach and about the funding announced in the budgets. The formula used applies to five provinces. However, the old formula, if you will, is still in place and funding is provided for operations and for protection services. However, it does not leave much room for prevention services. Our objective, therefore, is to work with the provinces in which that formula is already in place, in the hopes that they will integrate the new system when funding becomes available.
The funding in question is referred to as Directive 20-1. When we use that formula, we calculate certain things, such as the cost of an agency's resources, that is to say the compensation paid to a director, to lawyers on occasion, to persons in charge of human resources and to individuals working with the children. We take into account the number of children under the age of 18 years. Our calculations are based on the number of First Nation members in a province. We also take location into account. In other words, we consider whether the agencies are located in a remote area. This is one aspect of the formula.
Another consideration is the cost of providing protection. This does not involve many calculations. We receive the bills and we pay them. It's really very simple.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming here today and taking the time out of their busy schedules to appear before the committee.
On this issue with family services, I'm very interested in hearing some of your statements today. I started out in the RCMP in 1990, and I lived and worked on first nations reserves and also in the non-aboriginal communities. I had first-hand dealings with provincial family services and also with first nations family services.
Unfortunately, I had to do quite a few apprehensions. I got to see the worst of the worst. At times, I had to take it upon myself to make the call to do an apprehension. I saw the frustration, not only from the provincial system but also from the first nations family services, because I saw them first start out: the people working with first nations family services didn't have the resources, didn't have the manpower, and weren't readily available because of the funding.
My colleague mentioned the increase in funding. I'm looking over some of the numbers here. I'm just hoping you're going to be able to clarify this, because what I've seen is almost a catch-up. At times, just what can you do to catch up except fund the program?
So can you break down for us the funding formula for first nations family services? As well, can you explain what the funding allotment is right now?
:
I think I did, in my speaking notes, talk about how much we expect to provide this year, and that's $500-and-some million.
I would say our problem is that we're funding the wrong things. Most of the 190% increase in funding is related to taking children into care for their protection. What we have to do is spend way less on protection and way more on prevention. In order to do that, you have to start putting incremental resources into prevention so that those prevention services can start being provided, and then less children are taken into care.
So our challenge, and what we're trying to do, is to change the incentives. Right now an agency can get any amount of money they need for protection because when they make a decision to take a child into care, we pay the bill. That's why the dollars have been going up and up.
In fairness to them, they haven't been able to start investing in prevention. They are making, as you know from your job, some of the most, if not the most, difficult decisions on a daily basis--namely, whether or not to take a child into care. They have to do that on the basis of the safety that child.
So I have the utmost admiration for what they do on a day-to-day basis. What we want to do is equip them with the tools to be able to provide those prevention services and work with the families so that the children can stay with their families. We want to see, over time, a real shift so that the investments that now are put into protection are put into prevention. Those business plans that are being negotiated under the enhanced prevention model permit that shifting. We would hope that when we go and look at those, say, five years from now, we'll have seen a real shift in those resources and how they're spent.
:
Thank you, Mr. Lévesque.
On behalf of the members, I want to thank you for your presentations to the committee today.
[English]
We're going to go into some committee business now, so you can take your leave, and we'll continue. It's very informative, and I think you have noted some of the follow-up items, which we appreciate, I must say. All the members do appreciate it when you get back to us on those items. Merci beaucoup.
Members, we've got one notice of motion in front of us for committee business. As is customary in discussions of committee business involving notices of motion, we stay in public. Before we begin, though, I would like to advise members with regard to our travel dates for the study on northern economic development. This of course has been approved by the House liaison committee and the House, so the travel dates will be Monday, November 16, to Friday, November 20; that will be the trip to Whitehorse and Yellowknife. In the week immediately following will be the trip to Iqaluit.
[Translation]
It will take place from November 23 to November 25.
[English]
So you can put those on your calendars. As soon as we have the detailed itinerary from the logistics officer, we'll get that out to you.
This is the final note. Continuing this week we have our first meeting on the study of northern economic development, on Thursday morning at 11 o'clock. We begin with and representatives from CanNor, the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. That will be a televised meeting, we believe--that has yet to be confirmed.
There being no other questions, let's proceed to the notice of motion. I invite Madam Crowder to speak to the motion, and then we'll proceed from there.