SCYR Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH AT RISK OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

SOUS-COMITÉ DES ENFANTS ET JEUNES À RISQUE DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, December 12, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.)): Welcome to what will be our last session this calendar year on our study of aboriginal children from zero to twelve years, focusing initially on reserve, but also understanding that, because of the nature of the study, when we're talking to departments and to other individuals we're sometimes simultaneously talking about off reserve.

Before I welcome our guests, I just want to remind them of the format and the purpose of these meetings. The format has been to try to take a horizontal look initially at what the Government of Canada has been doing for and with aboriginal children. To that end, we've been having in individual departments, such as the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Health Canada, Justice Canada, and today, Canadian Heritage.

Along the way I've attempted to take advantage of visitors who were either in the room or who were coming through town. When I learned that Charles Coffey, the executive vice-president of the Royal Bank, was here, though I realize he's not strictly in any way a government department—he might as well be—I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss, because Charles Coffey has had a unique role in the private sector, first of all, in promoting early childhood development.

He is currently co-chairing, with Margaret McCain, a commission on early learning and care for the City of Toronto.

Welcome, Mr. Coffey.

He relates to the early childhood development field from zero to six years and to our earlier work on this population, and he's also had an extensive experience with aboriginal communities on reserve and off reserve, so he brings with him not only a private sector perspective but a unique perspective that focuses both on aboriginals and on early childhood development. I just thought I might as well just grab him as he went by, and hope the committee forgives me for this impudence.

We're also delighted to have with us, from Heritage Canada, Norman Moyer, who is an assistant deputy minister with the awesome responsibility of being in charge of Canadian identity. First of all, he has to identify that, and then, if he can figure out what it is, he has to promote it, but he also comes to us with a wealth of experience. We're delighted to have such an eminent civil servant with us from the Department of Canadian Heritage to tell us about their problems.

I thought what we'd do—we're a very informal and friendly group—is start with Norman Moyer, then pass over to Charles Coffey, and then go around the room in our normal fashion.

We may have to excuse Mr. Coffey a little earlier before the end of the meeting at 5 o'clock, because he has another obligation, but we're delighted that both gentlemen are here.

We welcome you and I would ask Mr. Moyer to open up the discussion.

[Translation]

Mr. Norman Moyer (Assistant Deputy Minister, Canadian Identity, Department of Canadian Heritage): Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me here today and for having so aptly articulated the complexities and the obscure aspects of my functions at the Department of Canadian Heritage.

[English]

It's a chance for us today to look particularly at programs we have that relate to aboriginal youth. While our programs have not been designed specifically to focus on the issues of this committee, in many ways they are relevant to the issues you have decided to explore.

Our programs are in place for aboriginal youth, including youth at risk. We aim primarily at youth who are in an off-reserve situation, but as I'll point out, some of our programs are in fact just broadly available to all aboriginal youth. Our programs are pan-aboriginal. We tend to deliver programs to all groups within the aboriginal community through uniform delivery structures.

Our goal is to make it easier for aboriginal people to participate in our society on terms that recognize their own cultural strength that they bring to Canada.

Within the sector of Canadian identity, the Aboriginal Peoples' Program is responsible for 11 separate programs, some of which I will deal with in detail today. Other parts of our department also deliver programs that are of relevance to you. I'll talk about the programs we have for exchanges and the programs we have for sport a little later.

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I have left with the clerk of your committee a full list of the programs our department has for which aboriginal people are eligible and do use. The specific programs we have for aboriginal peoples have an annual budget of approximately $70 million a year.

[Translation]

These programs are directed to all aboriginal people off reserve. That is Metis, Inuit and Indians. The majority of them are directed to aboriginal people living in an urban setting. Many of these programs are community-based and are managed by aboriginal partners. My department's programs are not focussed particularly on children at risk. Rather, they are designed to meet the aspirations and the cultural and social needs of aboriginal communities.

More specifically, the goals vary from one program to the other. However, they all focus on four components: to reinforce the identity and cultural pride of our native people; to build self-esteem and confidence; to encourage practical and healthy lifestyles; and to promote a sense of belonging among these youth. According to us, these are all objectives that are vital to the social and psychological development of these young people.

[English]

Let me now talk briefly about some of the specific program elements we have. The oldest of our programs and the central one is the Aboriginal Friendship Centre program.

This program was created about 40 years ago and has existed in the major centres of Canada since then to help aboriginal peoples, as they arrive in urban environments, make that transfer from the life they've lived in rural reserve areas to living in our cities. The friendship centres are a focal point for aboriginal programming. They offer services for youth and children and for families. The services that aboriginals can find through a friendship centre include housing, education, human resources development, youth and family services, health, recreation, and culture.

There are 118 such centres in Canada. We finance them through an arrangement with the National Association of Friendship Centres. At the moment, 99 of the centres are funded and there are 18 we are trying to find ways to fund.

[Translation]

The second program has been in existence for only four years. It is the Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centres Initiative. It is a program that targets young natives living in an urban setting. The program gives funding to projects that are accessible, that are organized by young people, that are community- based, that are culturally relevant and that aim at solving practical problems for youth. This program responds to proposals that are made to us by young people living in the communities, and the services are often delivered by young people from these communities. The program helps young people by giving them the opportunity to work, but also by offering them services.

[English]

We also have the aboriginal language initiative, which has been in place for three years and through which we are broadly helping all aboriginal communities, in this case on reserve and off reserve, in the processes of language retention, preservation, development, and strengthening.

I mention it in the context of your hearings because we believe, and we are finding more and more evidence, that language, which is the core of cultural retention, is an instrument for young aboriginals to reattach themselves to their own value in society.

We are promoting the relationship between elders and young. The situation of aboriginal communities largely reflects a lost generation in the middle. The grandparents still have their original languages. The grandchildren are sometimes now able to learn them through immersion schools. Very often the parents were left out of this in that period of time when there was a consensus in our society that aboriginals should not be taught in their own language or even allowed to use their own language.

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Again, the aboriginal language initiative responds to specific proposals. It's delivered through the major representation organizations, the Inuit Tapirisat, the Métis National Council and the Assembly of First Nations, but they respond to individual applications.

I'll speak now a little bit about the area of sport.

[Translation]

I have read the transcript of the meeting between your committee and the Aboriginal Sport Circle, a group which is supported by our department.

We believe that sport is one of the ways to promote the development of pride, to promote links between various native groups as well as links between the native community and the mainstream society.

We support the Aboriginal Sport Circle, which aims at creating a generation of coaches that are capable of working in aboriginal communities. They promote the games in native communities and do some liaison work in the area of sport.

[English]

Another important element of the sport opportunities we are creating for young aboriginals is the North American Indigenous Games. These games are held every four years in Canada and, in theory at least, every four years in the United States, so these games would occur every two years. Canada has been very good at holding up its side. The Americans have been less effective in having the games on their territory.

More and more, young aboriginals aim to the indigenous games as a place to show off their newly acquired skills and to show their pride in what they can do. The next games are in Winnipeg next summer and will be the largest meeting of young aboriginals in the country.

You may, Mr. Chairman, want to have a delegation from your committee at the North American Indigenous Games next summer. It's an exciting opportunity to meet young people.

The Chair: As long as they don't ask us to compete against them.

Mr. Norman Moyer: If you don't want to wait until next summer, in March of next year the Arctic Games will take place in Iqaluit. The Arctic Games provide a very important forum for northern aboriginals to meet and practise the sports of the north. This year, for the first time ever, those games are being shared between Iqaluit and the capital of Greenland.

We also attempt to make very special efforts to involve aboriginal youth in our youth exchange programs, and we have done that by building specific components into the exchange program that reach out to aboriginal youth.

As a result of those specific efforts to target aboriginal and other disadvantaged youth, in our first year of the new program we had 750 aboriginal youth come and participate in those exchanges, twice as many as we had imagined would get involved. This year already, we have received three times more applications from aboriginals than we had a year ago. They're using those exchanges for exchanges between aboriginal communities, so they're getting to know each other, and for exchanges with the mainstream communities in Canada.

Although it's not your focus at the moment, we are also getting strong take-up in that group from youth with disabilities, with more than 440 of those youth participating in the program, and youth from low-income families, which are also targeted, as well as youth in rural and distant locations.

I'd like to mention as well that last year, when we in our department did extensive consultations leading up to the World Conference on Racism in Durban this summer, we found that there was a strong desire on the part of aboriginal peoples, leaders and youth, to appear in front of our group of public servants and Secretary of State Hedy Fry to talk about racism and its impact on their lives. There is a growing willingness in the aboriginal communities to talk about some of the challenges they face in our society in terms of racism. They wanted very much that we engage with them on these terms.

We should underline, even when we talk about these programs, that our programs are small in the context of the growing aboriginal population off reserve. They touch only a small part of it. They cannot be a full-service delivery.

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I've noticed in the preoccupations of your committee an interest in what provinces and municipalities do. That, for us, is an essential part of this portrait. We can only be even moderately successful when we work well with provinces, municipalities, and the private sector in providing opportunities for aboriginal young people. Our department can never have all of the solution. We can only be one contributor to it.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you very much indeed. It's very helpful.

On the point you raised about disability, I should mention that this committee, because it functions in a horizontal manner, and there is a sister committee of HRD, which deals with disability, from time to time we have had joint meetings on children with disability. And as I rediscovered yesterday, when I was in Akwesasne, there is a higher incidence of disability among aboriginals generally and aboriginal children particularly. So we have yet a third overlay, if you like. In Akwesasne, something like 33% of the population self-identify as disabled. So you were right on topic with your reference to the exchange program.

Welcome, Mr. Coffey.

Mr. Charles S. Coffey (Executive Vice-President, Government and Community Affairs, Royal Bank of Canada; Co-Chair, Commission on Early Learning and Care, City of Toronto): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon, everybody.

I want to thank you, Mr. Godfrey, for the opportunity to be here. And I'm thrilled that my member, the honourable member for Don Valley West, is chairing this committee.

The Chair: It's our dirty little secret. You weren't supposed to say that.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Charles Coffey: No, I'm very proud of the fact that I live in Don Valley West and that you represent that riding so incredibly well. I have no shame in saying that.

It's good to see some folks from Toronto.

Mr. Tonks, it's good to see you again, and my friend from Winnipeg. I haven't met the other colleagues yet, but hopefully by the end of the day I will.

I want to put very quickly into context why I, as a senior Royal Banker, have an interest in the subject of early years, and more specifically an interest in aboriginal issues, why my bank has an interest, and why it is so important that the private sector understand the issues you are grappling with.

I would start by telling you that the issues impacting aboriginal peoples of this country must be of concern to all Canadians. Very quickly, I'll tell you that in 1989 I was transferred from Toronto, where I spent 20 years downtown, on Bay Street, to Winnipeg to head the bank's operations there. And what I found there disturbed me greatly.

Within a few days I walked north on Main Street, and later on had the opportunity to visit remote communities and got to talk to a lot of people. And I said many times, as I saw the very complex socio-economic issues impacting Canada's first peoples, “This is not the Canada I know”. And I made up my mind at that time to speak up and speak out on the issues impacting first peoples.

That was on a personal basis. In a business sense, it was accelerated when we, the heads of the banks of Manitoba, had a meeting with the then Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine. And at this meeting, I said, “Mr. Fontaine, how do you view the banks?” And he said, “Oh, that's a very interesting question, Mr. Coffey”, and went on to say, “In my culture, we have a score card. You're either friend or you're foe. And I want you to know that every banker in this room and every bank you represent is on the foe side of the ledger for the way your banks have treated our people.”

Mr. Fontaine then went on to tell me, “And by the the way, we have filed 12 complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission over your hiring practices, and you need to know that there are three banks on that list, including your bank, Mr. Coffey.” Bear in mind, I'd only been in Winnipeg six or eight weeks, and I saw my career flash before my eyes with complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and so on.

So I followed up the next day with Mr. Fontaine. I said, “Look, I need to understand what's going on here”. He said okay; he'd help me with some knowledge and understanding.

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The initial focus was one of employment equity, to ensure that aboriginal peoples in our employ in Winnipeg reflected the marketplace we served. It then quickly moved on to the area of economic development, because I remain convinced, as I was at the time, that economic development is the engine that will drive the creation of wealth and well-being for aboriginal peoples.

I then intensified my discussions at the community level, meeting with the elders and the chief and council of various bands in Manitoba. I met with the urban leadership in Winnipeg to get a sense of what was really going on, and again started my trail of speaking up and speaking out to anybody who would listen on the need for improvement.

I'll fast-forward to 1997, and that was about a year following the release of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a report that was five years in the making and one of the most expensive royal commissions in the history of Canada. It was filed with the then minister, Ron Irwin, and not much was happening. There was a lot of study, of course, and more study and more study.

So then I and my colleague, John McCallum, who at that time was the chief economist of the Royal Bank of Canada and is now the honourable member for Markham, got chatting about the royal commission and the need for the private sector to speak up. So he and I combined with some folks at the CANDO organization and produced a report called The Cost of Doing Nothing, which, with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I will file with the clerk.

I asked John to look at the issues impacting aboriginal peoples through the eyes of an economist, and the charts that you will see in this report are staggering. Let me just highlight a couple of them.

Only 46% of the aboriginal population finish high school, compared to 67% of the broader population. In the 1995 statistics, the aboriginal poverty rate was 44% compared to 20% for all Canadians; 60% of aboriginal children under the age of six were in low-income families compared to a national rate of 25%. A staggering 46% of urban aboriginal children lived in a single-parent family compared to the national average of 17%.

To go on, here is something that really floored me. The incidence of TB and diabetes among aboriginal peoples is respectively 17 and three times that of the broader population. For Inuit people, as you may know, particularly in northern Quebec, it is a staggering 21 times. The statistics indicated that 65% of on-reserve households and 49% of off-reserve aboriginal households are substandard. Incarceration rates are very high. The suicide rate among youth in particular was between four and six times the national average.

So as we sat around talking about the statistics, we decided to take this message to corporate Canada and we launched a series of three symposiums, the first with a particular focus on first nations people. We then did one focused specifically on Métis issues, and that was done at a Métis rights conference in Winnipeg in late 1997. Then in 1998 we teamed up with the Inuit Tapirisat organization to focus on the issues of the Inuit of Labrador and northern Quebec, Nunavut, and the western Arctic.

With a few exceptions, I will tell you the response from the corporate sector on these issues we raised was deafening in its silence. It's a social issue. It's a government issue. Why should the private sector care?

We went back again and said that the private sector should care for the following reasons. First, the growth rate among aboriginal peoples—you've seen the statistics—of the children in that community is huge. From our point of view, they are a potential source of employees, and, looking at it in an enlightened, self-interested way, customers. Land claims, and significant land claims, are putting significant economic power in the hands of first peoples, and the response of the Government of Canada to the royal commission has helped immensely in repositioning certain issues that need to be dealt with.

But even with that work, we still have, in my view, far too few private sector senior people taking ownership of this issue and taking very concrete steps to help. How would they be encouraged to do more? I can tell you that we at the Royal Bank of Canada will continue to speak out on their behalf. The Conference Board of Canada has a committee dealing with this issue. I know John Kim Bell will be hosting a one-day symposium in Calgary on February 6, 2002—to be co-chaired by Paul Tellier of CN, John Hunkin of CIBC, and Mr. George of Suncor—to deal with issues impacting aboriginal youth.

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The economics of ensuring a better focus on aboriginal Canadians should not and must not be lost in the private sector. I can tell you with some pride that I've been able to make the connection between a focus on this community and shareholder value enhancement.

People will say, “What does all this work that's going on mean to the shareholder?”, because at the end of the day, that's what I get paid to do. What it has meant in our case is significant increased business opportunities. It has resulted in a significant number of very talented people of aboriginal descent wanting to work in our bank, and so on. So the economic argument can be made, but much more has to be done.

We need secondly to focus on role models within the community, ranging from Ted Nolan, the former head coach of the Buffalo Sabres—if you haven't had the chance to speak with him yet, I would encourage you to do so, because he's an incredible role model, from my point of view—to the recent Inuk, Tattoo, who was drafted by the NHL, the first to be so drafted. He presently plays for the Brandon Wheat Kings.

Locally there is a facility some of you know called the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health. It is led by Allison Fisher, who is the executive director. It is a very special and a very unique facility. It is a culturally sensitive, community-based health care facility located at 299 Montreal Road. Last year they had a 45% increase in caseload, and 44% of their clientele are youth dealing with everything from education on STDs and AIDS awareness to workshops on health issues generally. From my point of view, Mr. President, these are the hidden gems that must be highlighted more and more, and celebrated.

Where am I going with all of this? It would suggest to me that your committee needs to further engage the private sector in challenging the CEOs, if I may be so blunt, on what it is they are doing with the aboriginal community, with a particular focus on the zero to twelve, or even the zero to eighteen, age category.

I have one brief anecdote with regard to some people who were in to see me last week. At the Curve Lake First Nation just north of Peterborough, there's no local high school. They attend high school in Lakefield. The local community leaders were witnessing a significant dropout rate, and they started an alternate, experiential high school program to ensure these kids at least got a high school diploma. A lady by the name of Shelly Fife is the director of education there.

They have 10 youths who had dropped out of the traditional high school. This is the second group they have been working on, and every few months they come to Toronto and visit various places, including my office. They're quite a handful, and I say that with great respect.

One chap said he needed a smoke and he wanted to go up to the roof on the 40th floor of the bank building. I said he couldn't smoke here and I couldn't get on the roof. He said he wanted to go upstairs. I said okay. The 40th floor of the Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto is our boardroom area. So I took them up. There's a large table, about four times the size of this office, and they sat around and had a great chat. But what struck me was that one 18-year-old, who had dropped out of school in grade 10, said, with tears in her eyes, “Mr. Coffey, one day I'm going to sit at this table and tell you what to do”.

I've told that story to a number of private sector people, and they ask me how they can get engaged in helping kids like that. It doesn't take too much, but someone needs to lead the way.

I'm telling you probably far more stories than you want to hear here. This is an issue of importance to our country. I will tell you that there is a cost to doing nothing, which we used for the title of our symposium report, but there's also a cost to not doing enough.

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I'll close on two points. The importance of sports cannot be overstated in the context of aboriginal peoples. Some of you may know about some of the games that my colleague, Mr. Moyer, mentioned. I'm part of a committee to raise money for the Innu healing foundation. We're raising money to build a recreational facility for the Inuit of Labrador, to deal with the issues that were front-page news and on Newsworld and CBC not too many months ago.

Sports play such an important role. We have been a sponsor of the Indigenous Games from the beginning, and we'll continue to be a sponsor. I will be going to Iqaluit on March 16 to participate in the opening of the Arctic Winter Games. I commend the Government of Canada for its focus on ensuring that programs and funding are available for sports facilities for aboriginal peoples. The work that John Kim Bell is doing is certainly noteworthy.

Finally, as we look at these things on the urban aboriginal, the friendship centre movement plays a strategically important role, and that was mentioned. There are 117 across the country. Five years ago, my bank entered into a strategic partnership with a friendship centre to provide support for the youth programs and to ensure that employees and supporters of the friendship centre movement had a special reception when they went into any Royal Bank branch in the country.

Mr. Chairman, perhaps I'll stop there. I've said a great deal about a whole bunch of things. Perhaps your colleagues and others around the room want to challenge me on some of those things or get further information. I will leave this information with the committee. While it was done two or three years ago, it is still quite relevant.

Let me simply say that I will continue to support you and your efforts in dealing with this issue, as will my organization.

The Chair: Thank you very much. It's great to have this extra dimension to our work. In fact, we took advantage of Rick Brant's presence when he was in the room. He didn't know he was going to be a witness. He was with the Aboriginal Sport Circle. So everything does come around in a great circle fashion in this committee, as if we actually knew what we were doing.

I'm going to ask Carol Skelton to start off, if she'd like to.

Ms. Carol Skelton (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, Canadian Alliance): First of all, thank you very much for coming today. I'm very sorry I was late, but I went up to meet with our first lady minister from Afghanistan for a few minutes. I apologize for being late, because you are very important to me, and these presentations are very important.

To Mr. Coffey, how many first nations people do you have working for the Royal Bank?

Mr. Charles Coffey: Not enough.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Do you have a number?

Mr. Charles Coffey: Nine hundred....

Ms. Carol Skelton: Just roughly.

Mr. Charles Coffey: I'll come back to the committee with the exact amount rather than guessing.

Ms. Carol Skelton: It doesn't matter, just a rough idea.

The Chair: An order of magnitude.

Mr. Charles Coffey: Domestic, I would say 930, give or take. I would tell you on that point that we do not have an issue in attracting employees of aboriginal descent. The challenge is retention. That's a huge challenge, which led us to programs such as a mentoring program, one on one, and quarterly sessions to get to understand the issues.

I know from my experience in Winnipeg that some of our employees simply found it necessary to leave work and go home, unannounced in some cases. I said to our people, “We need to understand why that's happening. If that's viewed as failure, they must be allowed to fail two, three, four, or five times.”

So we had to apply a non-traditional model to help with the transition. Some banks can be intimidating for any Canadian, but we needed to develop certain programs to help. Related to that, we launched an aboriginal stay in school program, all designed to position my employer as someone who understands and would be a welcoming environment.

On the numbers side, I'm going to take that number, and I will come back to you, Mr. President, with a very specific number, broken down by province. It is not broken down by the three groups.

This is a rambling answer here. Self-identification remains a challenge for us.

Ms. Carol Skelton: My husband and I and our family all deal with Royal Bank.

Mr. Charles Coffey: Thank you for that.

Ms. Carol Skelton: We're from Saskatchewan, but I must say, I have never seen a first nations person in any of the Royal Banks I've been to in Saskatchewan. So I'll be looking. I'll be checking.

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Mr. Charles Coffey: And I'll provide the information when I'm back in Toronto tomorrow.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

As well, do you have any banks on reserves?

Mr. Charles Coffey: Yes, we have seven. The first full-service Royal Bank was at Ohsweken on the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario. We opened branches at the Peguis First Nation and at Cross Lake, and we have a couple in B.C. We have a branch in each of the territories of Nunavut.

Where we are headed now...and in fact the first one was on Manitoulin Island, where we're actually—if I can use this expression—“franchising” our bank to a local facility. It uses our processes and our systems, but it is run by someone in the community. It's all our infrastructure in the background, and it'll have Royal Bank identification. The deposits are insured and all that sort of stuff. It's not a franchise in the pure sense, but it's an agency operation of the bank.

Ms. Carol Skelton: But it's run by the band council?

Mr. Charles Coffey: We provide the management, the governance, and the infrastructure, but it's all locally managed and run.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Thank you.

Mr. Moyer, your programs are carried out in coordination with the provinces. Has this coordination between yourselves and the provinces worked very well, and are there ways it can be improved?

Mr. Norman Moyer: Cooperation with the provinces varies, and it's built from the bottom up as opposed from the top down. We don't have a structure of cooperation agreements with the provinces that precede putting our programs in place. We will support a friendship centre, and that friendship centre will be the group that in fact works out relationships with the municipality and the province. In some cases it works very well. In other cases it's much less effective.

The same thing is true of the Urban Multi-Purpose Aboriginal Youth Centres initiative. There are historical reasons why provinces and the federal government haven't gotten it right in terms of dividing up the responsibility and setting out a cooperative framework for this. We find that when we work it the way we're working it through centres, there's in fact a much better chance for cooperation than if we try to go in government-to-government and organize a broad umbrella agreement.

Ms. Carol Skelton: What concrete measures do you have to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs targeted to the youth?

Mr. Norman Moyer: We have a plan of evaluation in place for both the programs I outlined—all three of them, actually, including the language one. The friendship centres are going through a two-phase evaluation. We first of all evaluated the relationship we have with the National Association of Friendship Centres to see if this was a good mechanism for delivery. We completed the evaluation, supporting by and large that method—that is, delivering the program through the National Association of Friendship Centres.

We are now doing an impact assessment where we will look at the community-level impact of specific friendship centres, and we expect to have that impact assessment done during 2002. It will allow us to answer some of the questions we have in mind about why, as we know, some centres are much more effective than others. We want to see some results-based information that will help us on that. The National Association of Friendship Centres wants to see it because they want to work to take good ideas from one centre to another, and they can do that more effectively if they see results.

For the program we call UMAYC, the Urban Multi-Purpose Aboriginal Youth Centre program, we have a process of evaluation that will also be undertaken next year and that will produce an evaluation based on the results of that program, working with young people in specific communities. The same thing is true for the languages initiative, where we are now, after three years of experience in delivering the language initiative, beginning a process of developing policy recommendations for the government on where we should go more broadly with language.

Ms. Carol Skelton: I have one last thing, Mr. Coffey. Do you have copies of the study for all of us or do you have just one?

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Mr. Charles Coffey: I will file this with the clerk. I can have copies couriered to your office tomorrow, if you wish. I'll get the list of members of the committee and have them sent.

Ms. Carol Skelton: I'd appreciate that.

The Chair: That would be great. Do you have them in French as well?

Mr. Charles Coffey: Yes.

The Chair: Great. Thank you.

[Translation]

Ms. Guay.

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I welcome you to this committee. Up to now, we have met with several departments, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Indian Affairs ans several others. At one point, we realized that there was some duplication between departments and that some adjustments had to be made to various programs. Have you had the same experience, Mr. Moyer?

Mr. Norman Moyer: First of all, between hour department and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, there is the problem of a population which is in transition. Who is responsible for that population and when? These young people do not always stay at the same place. They do not live permanently in an urban setting. Their situation vary. We try to work with the department, but because there is some rigidity in the system, especially in the way that we are working with First Nations, it is very difficult for us to ensure that the people can easily make the transition from one situation to the other.

Our program, which aims specifically at urban youth, obviously has some links with several Department of Justice programs. They were invited to take part in these activities by the friendship centres, which are managing these centres. The coordination is ensured at that level, within the communities. Not only the Department of Justice or the Solicitor General of Canada, but also the local police and the provincial authorities must be involved. The way we are organized, with a local board of directors, allows that cooperation to take place at ground level. We are working together with some groups here, but I find it much more practical when we are doing it over there.

Ms. Monique Guay: At ground level. That's understandable. You must deal with several jurisdictions. You are talking about municipal police forces and off-reserve native people. Who is responsible for what? That can complicate the situation somewhat. In Quebec, in some reserves, the native people have their own police system, which often facilitates things.

I have a final question for Mr. Moyer and after that I will have several for Mr. Coffey.

What specific programs do you have for children from 0 to 12? As we know, it is at that age that we are giving children the basis that will sustain them during their whole life. It is crucial. Do you have specific programs for these children at the cultural level or in another field? I note that you focus a lot on culture and sports. Do you have very specific programs targeting children from 0 to 12?

Mr. Norman Moyer: No. I can tell you that we do not have a single program that targets specifically that age group. These children are sometimes directly affected by some of our programs in the area of languages, in the friendship centres in the cities, where they have groups working with young mothers who are often single parents, but we do not have any program that targets specifically these young children.

Ms. Monique Guay: Would it be advisable to have such programs?

Mr. Norman Moyer: For my part, I find that there are problems related to that age group. Should it be the Government of Canada, through our department, that should be targeting specifically that age group? I would prefer to have some initiatives created and managed for these people within the various cities. Perhaps we could contribute to them within a more global formula.

Ms. Monique Guay: Perhaps there already is such a formula that you could improve upon to reach these targets.

Mr. Norman Moyer: The friendship centres have the necessary contacts to become a network in that area.

Ms. Monique Guay: I agree with you entirely.

• 1615

Mr. Coffey, it is rather impressive to see some banks being involved socially and giving support to aboriginals. It is ironic that you would be here today, because the main committee of Human Resources Development, on which I sit, is presently reviewing the whole area of employment equity. We are discussing the presence of women, visible minority groups, etc. in businesses. So it is timely that we are discussing these matters. According to statistics contained in reports that were given to us by Statistics Canada, the aboriginals suffer from an enormous gap and there is a lot of catching up to do to increase their numbers in businesses. Mr. Tonks could attest to that.

You said that there were some 900 aboriginals working for the Royal Bank. Could you give us later on a breakdown by provinces? It would be interesting for us to have that in our files.

Are banks supporting specific programs? In Quebec, the Caisses populaires often support specific social activities, at the local, regional or even national level. Do you have such programs for aboriginals, among others?

[English]

Mr. Charles Coffey: With your permission, I'll respond in English.

Programs ranging from sponsorships to philanthropy to stay-in-school programs to scholarships.... We've had since 1993 an aboriginal scholarship program, where every year we select five students and they receive up to $4,000 per year for four years of university training.

Our focus is broad, targeting youth by working with third parties—for example, the friendship centre movement. A particular group I'm very proud to be associated with is based in Quebec City. It's the First Peoples' Business Association of Quebec, whose executive director is Johanne Robertson, from the Pointe Bleue First Nation near Roberval. We've worked with them over the last five or six years to help deliver some programs, again focused on youth.

So it ranges across a wide spectrum of initiatives at the local level, and it is done in consultation with communities.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: Here is my last question, Mr. Chairman. We may have another round later on.

There is another problem. At the Royal Bank, when you hire people from visible minorities or other groups, or aboriginal people, do you give them a specific training to help them succeed in their integration? Did the bank make an effort on that level?

[English]

Mr. Charles Coffey: The focus is on managers, and we have extensive cultural awareness training, as I would describe it. We are very aware, obviously, as a federally incorporated organization, of the requirements to ensure that the people we hire reflect the marketplace we serve, including aboriginal people, people with disabilities, visible minorities, and women.

Again, once they come into the organization, there are two things. One is for them to understand our organization, and we have specific training programs for that, both in the technical sense and for management practices. We spend a lot of time ensuring that all our managers understand the cultural issues, whether we're dealing with first nations communities....

I don't think this is a digression, but we also ensure they understand the importance of a smudge ceremony, and the inability to have such ceremonies in buildings where no smoke is allowed. I would tell you that in some cases we simply had to override the bylaw to ensure that cultural sensitivity is respected, and ensure that the drum, as the heartbeat of the nation, is understood by our people. It's more than “heya, heya, heya”. There's an important meaning there our managers need to understand, and it's not only with aboriginal peoples. It's also if you're dealing with other ethnic groups.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: To each his or her own culture. We have to respect everyone and every environment. The native people have their own ceremonies and it is not always easy for others to understand everything. So there is a lot of education and awareness work to be done.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

• 1620

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Guay.

[English]

Anita Neville, then Mr. Tonks.

Ms. Anita Neville (Winnipeg South Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you both for attending today.

I apologize, Mr. Moyer, for arriving late. I was, along with Mrs. Skelton, meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister.

I don't want to embarrass Mr. Coffey, but I do want to, first of all, thank him for coming. I've had experience with him in Winnipeg, and I advise the committee that we are really looking at and meeting with one of the groundbreakers in the corporate world and otherwise in terms of dealing with the first nations people in this country.

I was intimately involved with the Winnipeg school division and the Winnipeg core area initiative employment and training program at the same time that Mr. Coffey was in Winnipeg. I can tell you that the legacy he left in Winnipeg, and probably ultimately for Canada, is profound and will be profound, because he was a significant catalyst for change in our community and, I expect, throughout Canada. I do want to acknowledge that here today.

One of the overriding issues facing urban communities is the jurisdictional issue. There are jurisdictional issues of off reserve when they come into the urban setting. There are policies of other departments of government that impact the movement of first nations people. There are policies of provincial governments that have an impact. It's a broad question, but I'm just wondering what thoughts you have on the difficulties on the jurisdictional issues and the holistic approach.

It's not a five-minute answer, but on the jurisdictional issues and the need for a holistic approach to first nations communities as it relates to health, transportation, culture, sports, and education, are there any comments from either of you?

Mr. Charles Coffey: I think that issue is at the crux of the issue. In my view, at the federal level—let's start there—it is the need for a pan-government, pan-aboriginal ministry, if you will.

Ms. Anita Neville: I agree.

Mr. Charles Coffey: It's not for me to tell the Prime Minister or others what to do, but personally I would like to see a secretary of state or a minister responsible for aboriginal peoples of Canada, whether they be on reserve, Métis, Inuit, urban, or whatever.

I think the whole situation has been politicized beyond—in my personal case—belief. I would suggest that people are suffering as a result of these jurisdictional debates. If there was ever a time for leadership at the political level, federally, provincially, and municipally, it is, in my view, around the issue of aboriginal peoples and with a particular subset focus on zero to 12.

I relate this to the issue I'm dealing with now as a commissioner for the City of Toronto's early years child care commission, this whole issue of the relationship between the municipality and the feds. Why can't the feds flow money to the City of Toronto for child care? Because Queen's Park won't let them. Why not? It's a constitutional issue.

There are 17,000 kids waiting in the city of Toronto for subsidized child care, and we debate the issues of why the ECD money is not flowing into child care. I don't want to go there; that's a 50-hour discussion. I'll deal with that in our report in February.

As it relates to your question on aboriginal peoples, I believe time is short. Again, as I said, there is a cost to doing nothing and a cost to not doing enough. Again, on the private sector side, organizations such as the Royal Bank, Syncrude, and the First Peoples' Business Association in Quebec City, and the Crees of Quebec, will continue to drive this agenda and continue to lobby hard for a different model.

The Chair: I think Mr. Moyer wanted to add something.

Mr. Norman Moyer: Sometimes the best way to solve these issues is not in a grand resolution of the jurisdictional issues around them, but pragmatically, community by community.

• 1625

Because there was a conjuncture and a willingness to do it, we have been able to create for the lower Vancouver east side an umbrella agreement with the municipality, the province, and the federal government, one where we work together on the issues around what is the poorest urban area in Canada. It involves aboriginals but includes many people from other cultures in Canada.

There's no reason why such a model shouldn't be transferred elsewhere. It's very difficult for any of the three levels of government to propose it because of all the rigidities you talked about, but a Charles Coffey, as the head of the bank in Winnipeg, could embarrass all of us, probably—

Ms. Anita Neville: And did.

Mr. Norman Moyer: —if he were there, by inviting us to a meeting and putting the problem on the table. So to find pragmatic solutions.... I think we'd waste a lot of time in trying to find a true jurisdictional resolution of this stuff, but let's find places where there is a willingness and an opportunity to move ahead and do it. I think certainly we in our department are looking for opportunities to do that type of thing.

Mr. Charles Coffey: Mr. Chairman, could I just add one point?

At the risk of getting way out on thin ice, I will simply table this for further discussion at your convenience, and that is the need within the aboriginal community to—let me phrase it this way—listen to the voice of the indigenous woman.

Ms. Monique Guay: Absolument.

Mr. Charles Coffey: I'll leave it at that.

The Chair: That is a remark rich in implications.

Ms. Anita Neville: And consequence.

The Chair: Mr. Tonks, did you want to begin?

Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.): As my colleague, Ms. Guay, has indicated, this is the fourth or fifth delegation or deputation. We've covered the justice department and the Human Rights Commission. In the latest, we had the division dealing with employment equity, matching employment equity registered plans with targeted groups. If we added up the various programs, including your $74 million, the first nations initiative as part of Indian Affairs for urban strategies, and the early childhood component, Head Start, we're talking about many programs, many silos of activity.

It just befuddles me. You'll have to appreciate my frustration; and I haven't been a part of this as long as Anita and Charles and others have. In 1998 there was a major federal initiative, a strategic plan aimed at filling the gaps in all of the services related to both on reservation and urban aboriginals. It was the Gathering Strength report. Out of that, the aboriginal strategy emerged.

And here we are in 2001. I have two questions.

One is, how do you fit in, Mr. Moyer, from the heritage department perspective? What niche do you have within the strategic plan? What part of the tactical plan are you in terms of friendship centres and so on?

The second is, what evaluation do we have in 2001 that will lead us into the next phase of this strategic initiative? I guess that would give us a better sense that we're heading in the right direction, because, let me tell you, the indicators we have received are that we are not making much progress. That's underscoring my sense of frustration.

I echo that, I'm sure, on behalf of you, Charlie, and on behalf of any who have been involved in this for many decades.

These are my two basic questions. What is the friendship centre with respect to the strategic initiative? Do you have any suggestions as to how we can do better? Second, what is the evaluation and where does it take us from here on in?

Mr. Norman Moyer: Friendship centres do two really important things.

Let me take a step back. You asked about the place of Canadian Heritage in this galaxy of services. Basically, in the context we're talking about, the urban aboriginal is largely our focus.

• 1630

The friendship centres are our primary partners and primary instruments for doing two really important things. First, they give aboriginals living off reserve a voice in the communities they're in. Friendship centres, when they're running well—and they are mostly running well—are important institutions that speak up on behalf of aboriginal peoples in their communities. That's one of the things we explicitly fund them to do.

The second thing they do well is act as a focus for specialized service delivery, sometimes in partnership with municipalities, provinces, and other federal departments. They provide a safe place for aboriginals to come and either directly get access to service, or be referred to services that are elsewhere.

We are in that business because of the history of first nations bands not being willing to see the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development actually deal with aboriginals who are not living on reserve. This is an issue of politics between the traditional leadership in aboriginal communities and the federal government. That's why there has always been a separate department of government—originally the secretary of state and now our department—dealing with service delivery issues.

One area of our program I didn't talk about, but Mr. Coffey has inspired me to talk about, is that we also support aboriginal representative groups to broadly give aboriginals in the nation a voice. So we work and provide support to the councils.

We found some years ago that women were coming to us saying that those groups were not giving them a place within their own representative groups to be heard. So we split the program and created the aboriginal women's program, so women's groups within aboriginal communities would have a separate funding base, a separate organizational base to be heard.

When we're working on initiatives now like language, I don't think there's any progress that can be made in the area of language unless we engage the women elders in communities in that process.

Mr. Alan Tonks: On accountability, where are we, in terms of taking a measure of what friendship centres and the other programs are accomplishing? Are we in a review mode?

Mr. Norman Moyer: Yes. For friendship centres, we're halfway through the process. We've reviewed the administrative component of it. Does the overall contract we have with the National Association of Friendship Centres work? That evaluation is complete and available. It essentially made a few recommendations but said, yes, this delivery through the National Association of Friendship Centres is a good model.

We're now in the second phase of evaluation, which is to look at, on a centre-by-centre basis, what kind of results we are getting in communities. Obviously, this is the bigger challenge—to get that kind of information on real change within communities we're working in through the National Association of Friendship Centres. We expect, later in 2002, to have results from that impact assessment we're doing.

Mr. Charles Coffey: Mr. Chairman, with your permission, could I just add to that question?

You mentioned Gathering Strength—Canada's Aboriginal Action Plan. On January 7, 1998, the then Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Jane Stewart, announced the government's response to that royal commission and the funding of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The establishment of the Healing Foundation was a hugely important event, because I firmly believe we cannot move forward unless there's this period of healing. That is happening. From what I know of what the Healing Foundation has done, there have been measurable results there.

About your question on accountability, just two weeks ago the 79 agreement-holders under the Aboriginal Human Resource Development Council gathered here in Ottawa. My message to the 500 people gathered there was this: You need to measure and produce evidence of this money being spent wisely, because in my business in the private sector, what gets measured improves and what gets measured gets attention.

That's a nice thing to say. Afterwards, some said, “Help us with these measurement tools”. So the issue that I think the private sector can help with, Mr. Tonks, is knowledge transfer on how you actually measure some social programs. There are models to do exactly that.

• 1635

My understanding is there is a huge focus by this government on accountability. I don't want to use the word “governance”, because that seems to cover everything from jaywalking to financial management in certain communities. But this issue of producing a report and showing tangible evidence that this money has been wisely spent and has produced results is front and centre. From a private sector perspective, I think it is hugely important. And there's much more to be done.

Mr. Alan Tonks: I appreciate those comments very much. They're very insightful. Thank you.

The Chair: Do you have a question, Mr. Tirabassi?

Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.): No, Mr. Chairman. I'd just like to thank the witnesses for appearing and to offer my apologies for being so late. I had a previous meeting. I have no questions.

The Chair: We're delighted to have people here, despite all the distractions out there.

I have a couple of questions, and if we have time we might ask a few more.

Mr. Coffey, if you have to leave we'll understand.

There seems to be a current running through the room that we need to get on with it. What we're looking at is,

[Translation]

in French, one would say a society project,

[English]

and in English, perhaps, a national project of some kind, where we say, “Look, this thing is so darned important and crucial, we need to enlist everybody”. By “everybody” we're not just talking about governments, but the private sector and civil society. Yet it seems to me one of the challenges is that the federal government is kind of ill-positioned to even participate or issue the challenge, because we seem to operate in these silos, where we have all these different regimes. We're kind of living proof of it in this committee, because we have people in on a sort of portfolio-departmental basis. We understand there are higher-order meetings convoked by Mr. Dion, but I'm not quite sure where that's going.

The reality on the ground, whether we're on a reserve or in a city, is that it's not very easy, if you're the people we're trying to help, to figure out the array of programs and the hundreds of things we do. How do you access them in a friendly way? If you go to a friendship centre, will it have all of the federal government programs people can access, let alone the provincial ones, let alone what there might be out there in the private sector?

One of the things that is characteristic of this committee is that we try to focus on horizontality. We know there's sort of support for that from agencies, such as the Auditor General's office, that see the importance of us acting in this fashion. It also raises important issues of not only cooperating with the provinces but also measuring the results, so we can really see that we are making progress. I think the outcome issue is hugely important.

I don't mean to ambush Mr. Moyer, and I doubt I could do it even if I tried, but I would like him to reflect a little on how, in the 21st century, government will have to get better. It will have to sort itself out on these horizontal files, because poverty and early childhood development are not departmental issues, and they're not constitutional issues, at one level of government or another. They're not even private sector/public sector issues. They're just great big challenges to us.

At the risk of you risking your career—and I don't mean to do that—I'd like you to speculate a little, as somebody who's been in the government and involved with it for a long while, on how we can help. Where is this going? How can we help the process? How can we respond to the challenge Mr. Coffey has thrown out to us on this file, or indeed on others of a similar sort?

Mr. Norman Moyer: First of all, the experiment the government has put in place with the reference group of ministers, chaired by Mr. Dion, and the repercussions it has within the public service is a good and creative thing. It puts a group of deputy ministers, with responsibility for different aspects of the aboriginal file, and assistant deputy ministers together around the same table. It should be pushed, and should be pushed by your committee.

It's exactly a response to the same perception that we can't deal with aboriginal health and not be aware of what's happening on reserve or in urban centres. We can't deal with the problem of our prisons filling up with aboriginal people without understanding the health situation and others.

• 1640

Based on a career in public service, I am not sanguine about big machinery changes, where we all of a sudden create a single department that would do everything for aboriginal people no matter what it is. Those things rarely work, and it's very difficult to ever convince the government to do it—and for quite good reasons.

If we pulled out all the chunks, the chunk of health, the chunk of Solicitor General, and the chunk from my department, and put it all in this super-department, you'd have other discontinuities that would be just as difficult to manage. So the instinct of the government currently to build this structure is a good one. How successful it can be is being tested at the moment.

The other way to build this is, in the conversation we had earlier, to build it from the community level, to go in and find that there is a consensus in the Saskatchewan community that, because of the dimensions of the problem in Saskatchewan, we're going to turn this into a pilot of all the creativity that we can devote to this issue. That consensus doesn't exist today, but it should be a priority for everybody, because with the demographics in Saskatchewan, both the problems and the opportunities are so enormous that this is where we can probably get creative. Maybe it will be Winnipeg, or maybe it will be Saskatoon or Regina, but it will be somewhere like that, where all of a sudden we won't be able to avoid it any more.

The Chair: Thank you.

I'm going to make one comment and then go to Madame Guay. After my visit to Akwesasne yesterday, I've decided that, if you could do it in Akwesasne, you can do it anywhere, because you have two countries, two provinces, one state, and several different Mohawk governments, all on a very small territory. If we can solve that on the disability front, we should be able to handle anything.

[Translation]

Ms. Guay.

Ms. Monique Guay: Mr. Chairman, I believe that we cannot do wall to wall programming. I find it somewhat unfortunate, ever since we have started our series of meetings with various witnesses, that we are not able to distinguish between what works and what does not, what is effective and what is not. I do not want to be nasty, but every department has its own turf. There are programs on this side and you have your own programs for their reserves.

I feel somewhat overwhelmed by all that has been presented to us. I believe that it is quite clear that it is impossible to cover everything. It all depends on the province in which the native communities are and it depends on the existing services. In Quebec, through the local community service centres, native people benefit from many services that are specifically targeting them in some areas. We know that some native communities have specific needs in the area of services: prenatal care for expecting mothers, preventive services for early childhood, and so on.

In our province, there may be services that are existing and that are being utilized because they are offered. We are not quibbling as to whether it is provincial or federal. A mother is a mother and she is entitled to all services, whether she is native or from any other community. So it is impossible to cover everything wall to wall because in other provinces, you will not have that same service. It will be different or it will be designed for another culture, another way of life.

The aboriginals do not share the same perspective and the same vision, it varies according to the region and according to the specific way of life in each reserve. In some reserves, there are women who have a lot of power and in other reserves, women are completely left aside. We must try and implement all of this concretely on the community level.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to understand all of this a little bit more clearly, because I am somewhat overwhelmed by everything that is being presented to us, by the various programs. They talk about millions here, millions there, and more millions elsewhere. I want the whole system to work better. I see children, situations and statistics that tell me that we are not going anywhere. The situation of children is getting worst and worst. There are many young natives in prison. It is unbelievable, the number of young natives that are in prison. There is the suicide rate among youth, the alcohol abuse rate, the drug abuse, and so on. We must find a way to do things differently.

I believe that we must break new ground and I would really like to have a report on all of this at some point. We will call on our researcher for this task. We must have specific recommendations. If there are improvements to be made, we must make them. We will also call on you, Mr. Moyer, to help us, as well as all others, and we will also call on your experience, Mr. Coffey, since you are working in another sector.

• 1645

That was my comments, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: I don't know whether there are any answers.

[English]

Mr. Charles Coffey: I have a couple of observations, and I share your concern about the numbers of programs. The solutions must be community based, absolutely.

In terms of this cultural issue, as you were chatting I was thinking of some of the people from northern Quebec going to Montreal, or Quebec City as well. I think we need to understand—and I said this in Winnipeg—they may travel a hundred miles, but in reality, they're going a hundred years forward, going from a seasonal clock to a time clock, going—and I say this with great respect—from a pre-industrial environment to an information age. How do you assist in the transition? I don't believe in throwing more money at the problem.

I think there is this need for more community-based involvement. We do have leadership organizations, whether it be the AFN, the Inuit Tapirisat, or the Métis Nation of Canada. They are the political organizations, and I think they should remain political organizations and not necessarily be involved in a personal view in program delivery. They have to be anchored at the community level.

I don't have an answer to this, but I struggle with the need to provide hope, to restore self-esteem and self-confidence in first peoples as Canadians or as Quebeckers or maritimers or prairie people. I know of a few things that need to be done, and this issue of role models is hugely important to me, again, but at a community level.

So I'm sympathizing with you—

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: We will try to find solutions in this committee.

The Chair: I entirely agree.

[English]

Carol Skelton.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Mr. Moyer, I'd be very interested in having a breakdown of where the friendship centres are and where you provide services across Canada.

And Mr. Coffey, when can we bring you to Saskatchewan?

Mr. Charles Coffey: All I need is an invitation and I can be there, any time.

The Chair: Those are fatal words.

Mr. Charles Coffey: Seriously, if you wanted me to speak to someone in Saskatchewan or to a group, I would be delighted to do so.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. My riding is the Riversdale area, the downtown area. We have great problems. It is a beautiful area of the city, but we do have problems there. My heart breaks for the young people we have in the area. So thank you very much.

Mr. Charles Coffey: I will send you tomorrow a speech I gave at Waskesiu to the Law Society of Saskatchewan on this whole issue of diversity, and more specifically as it relates to aboriginal peoples and women.

Mr. Chairman, if I may—you may be interested in this—next Thursday, Gord Martineau of City-TV in Toronto will have another hour on what will make Toronto a more liveable city. I've been asked to go there and talk about that, and what I have chosen to speak on is the issue of the urban aboriginal.

So we will be going out on the streets during the night with a camera crew to talk about some of these issues and about what role the private sector may play. It could be on the streets of Chicoutimi, for that matter, or Rivière-du-Loup, or Regina, or Saskatoon. This just happens to be Toronto, which is the largest reserve in the country, as you know. That's for your information.

The Chair: Could you send us a copy?

Mr. Charles Coffey: Yes. When the tape is done, I certainly will.

Mr. Chairman, I'm going to take this back with me, and I'm going to make sure your committee members get a copy of this.

The Chair: Great—in two languages.

Mr. Charles Coffey: There is English, French, and Inuktitut.

The Chair: I think we're okay for that right here.

Mr. Tirabassi, would you like it in Inuktitut?

Mr. Tony Tirabassi: No.

The Chair: Just a thought. I want to be sensitive here.

Mr. Charles Coffey: I will send the report to the constituency offices, with your permission.

The Chair: Perfect.

Mr. Moyer.

Mr. Norman Moyer: I just want to check whether we have with us today a list of where our friendship centres are.

We'll have to get back to you.

Ms. Monique Guay: Get back through the clerk.

Mr. Norman Moyer: We'll send a copy of the addresses of all 117 friendship centres, where they are. That'll give you a sense of where our primary points of contact are with the communities.

• 1650

Ms. Monique Guay: Thank you.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Thank you very much.

The Chair: I think what I'm going to do, if there are no more comments, is wind up by making a summary, which I hope will help our researchers during the time away. I'm very much struck by what Madame Guay said about our taking all of this huge amount of information and organizing it in a fashion we can find helpful for moving ahead.

Actually, the remarks of our two guests have been a bit helpful. I'm just throwing these ideas out so that perhaps the researcher can play with them a little and come back to us when we first meet in the new year with some position of where we are and future directions; we're not going to write the report over the holiday because we haven't come to any conclusions. But it seems to me that one of the themes, which certainly comes through, is the whole concept of transitions.

If you take the human development story, all the programs we looked at and will be looking at deal with the whole period of transition—transition to life, when we look at fetal alcohol and FAS/FAE and all of those sorts of things; transition to school; transition to adolescence; transition to the workplace. According to our friends Mustard and McCain, these transition periods are particularly crucial, and we need to know how well we're doing.

That's one screen we can apply—to see how effective we are in helping aboriginal children and youth make those transitions. How many of them are we covering? Who's being left out? That's one screen.

There's also the sort of transition the friendship centres deal with and Mr. Coffey referred to, which is the “hundred miles, hundred years”—the transition to the city, the transition into the work life, the transition into education, and all of those transitions people find challenging beyond the normal human development cycle. I think maybe that's another way of trying to understand how we do all of this together.

Then there are the issues of the overlap—we hope they're not duplication, necessarily—the way in which.... I am going to go back a bit and say that what I think we found in our work, before we focused on aboriginal children and youth, and that's has been reinforced by everything said today, is that these stories, although they're in a country, are lived out at the community level.

The best way of mobilizing resources—you gave the example of the lower east side in Vancouver, where we actually get down to cases, or in Winnipeg—while we have to be aware of national, provincial, and municipal systems, is where the quality of life and where what really happens to children and families occurs: in the neighbourhood, in the community. That's where the parks are. That's where you make your friends. That's where there is support or respect or whatever else we need to thrive as human beings.

So I think the community has to be a focal point in terms of measuring how we're doing and how we can make progress, while we remind ourselves that the aggregate of all of those communities is both a province and a country and that our national systems, whether they're of income support or the support of services, have to be adequately flexible

[Translation]

so that it will not be wall to wall, because that really does not work. But total chaos would not be desirable either.

[English]

It has to be national systems that support on the ground the community cohesion, the social cohesion, the sense of attachment, the sense of validation, the sense of culture that really allow all of us to thrive, whether we're aboriginals or not.

It's a complex series of relationships, and we haven't been coming at it on that basis. We've been coming at it through the silos. The challenge for this committee, as one dedicated to a certain understanding of human development and a certain belief about the importance of community, is to deconstruct the silos or reorder them, and also finally to be able to measure how effective we are in promoting the kinds of outcomes we want, so that we understand both the mechanisms of development—community development, individual development, cultural development—and have some way of doing the kind of accounting and measuring that would be absolutely crucial in business and should be crucial in government, where we're measuring for “horizontal results”, as the Auditor General puts it.

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I always think the work of this committee is important not only for the actual subject matter, which is, in this case, a better future for aboriginal children, but also for the way in which we do our business. The approach we take has wider implications for government, because if we can come at one of the thorniest of social cultural problems in the country and actually come forward with some recommendations that move things forward, then it has implications for other files, which are perhaps less challenging—maybe equally so.

I hope, with that rambling conclusion, I've empowered our researcher: So just do it.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Charles Coffey: Mr. Chairman, not to take the last word here, I must tell you I am incredibly encouraged with what I heard here this afternoon from the elected representatives. My adrenalin level is up now; I'm leaving incredibly excited about what is happening here.

I would close, though, by reminding you time is of the essence. We need to have collectively a sense of urgency around these issues. The youth in the aboriginal communities will not be as patient as their mothers and fathers and grandparents were. They are looking for and demanding change, and if they don't get it soon, I worry they will take matters into their own hands in some fashion, and I don't think we need that. I think there is an expectation on their part, when they look at leaders around this table and elsewhere, for action.

My last comment is, if you talk about those 10 or 100 silos, they all come together at the community. If you talk about information overload, how does a local community...?

Anyway, I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman; you have the last word. I will shut up.

The Chair: No, that was the appropriate coda.

With that, thank you very much.

[Translation]

Happy Holidays and see you soon.

Ms. Monique Guay: Merry Christmas.

The Chair: Merry Christmas to all.

[English]

The meeting is adjourned to the call of the chair.