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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Subcommittee on Children and Youth at Risk of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Wednesday, April 9, 2003

1530

The Chair (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.))

Dr. Alan Pence (Director, Early Childhood Development Virtual University; Professor, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria)

Dr. Jessica Ball (Coordinator, First Nations Partnership Programs; Professor, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria)

1535

1540

1545

The Chair

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal (Principal, Amiskwaciy Academy)

1550

The Chair

1555

Ms. Christa Williams (Executive Director, First Nations Education Steering Committee)

1600

1605

The Chair

Mr. Larry Spencer (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, Canadian Alliance)

1610

Dr. Jessica Ball

Dr. Alan Pence

1615

Mr. Larry Spencer

Dr. Alan Pence

Mr. Larry Spencer

Dr. Jessica Ball

Mr. Larry Spencer

Dr. Jessica Ball

Mr. Larry Spencer

Dr. Jessica Ball

1620

The Chair

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal

The Chair

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal

The Chair

Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.)

Dr. Jessica Ball

1625

Mr. Alan Tonks

The Chair

Mr. Alan Tonks

1630

The Chair

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal

Mr. Alan Tonks

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal

The Chair

Ms. Christa Williams

The Chair

Dr. Jessica Ball

1635

The Chair

1640

1645

Dr. Alan Pence

The Chair

Dr. Jessica Ball

1650

The Chair

Dr. Jessica Ball

The Chair

Ms. Christa Williams

The Chair

Ms. Christa Williams

The Chair

Ms. Christa Williams

The Chair

1655

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal

1700

The Chair

CANADA

Subcommittee on Children and Youth at Risk of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

NUMBER 012

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Wednesday, April 9, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹ (1530)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order.

I welcome a group of young people from the Forum of Young Canadians. It is frequently committees like this that are below the radar. This is not a committee of vast confrontation. It's a committee really of volunteers, because we take on this task over and above our regular committee duties. What unites us is a common interest, in this case, in the lives of children, and that proves to be a far greater source of unity for us, rather than what happens with the normal divisions of partisanship. You're welcome to stay as long as you like. We'll understand if you have other engagements, but we're delighted to see you, because if a group of young people can't come to a committee on children and youth at risk, even if you're not, who could?

On that note, let's move to the witnesses. We're very lucky to have witnesses from western Canada today. From the University of Victoria we have Jessica Ball, the coordinator of the first nations partnership programs and professor in the School of Child Care and Youth Care, and Alan Pence, the director of the Early Childhood Development Virtual University and professor in the School of Child and Youth Care. Professor Pence and I are connected from a long way back, because we are both something called FOFs, Friends of Fraser Mustard. So we have crossed paths and exchanged notes, and I'm delighted to welcome all of you here, but particularly Alan.

What batting order do you have?

Dr. Alan Pence (Director, Early Childhood Development Virtual University; Professor, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria): I'll lead off. My understanding was that we'd just have a few minutes to make some opening comments, and so my comments are quite brief, and then Dr. Ball will carry it from there.

Thank you very much for the invitation to be here. My colleague Dr. Jessica Ball and I have been invited to speak to you very briefly regarding two initiatives with which we are involved. We believe both of these should be considered as a part of the strategy to better address the well-being of aboriginal children, either on or off reserve. The first nations partnership program has been in existence for 14 years and has involved education and training in over 50 aboriginal communities to date. Dr. Ball will describe aspects of that work to you. My current work addresses the need for leadership promotion, capacity building, and network enhancement on behalf of young children internationally. While that work is currently based in 10 countries in Africa and five in the Middle East and North Africa, it is conceptually derived from my work with first nations communities and the model is imminently adaptable to an aboriginal community setting in Canada.

The Early Childhood Development Virtual University, ECDVU, is currently funded by UNICEF, the World Bank, CIDA, the Aga Khan Foundation, the Bernard van Leer Foundation, and the governments of the Netherlands and Norway. And this web and face-to-face approach is bringing together ECD leaders from across Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa to co-construct with regional and international leaders programs and policies that are culturally appropriate to communities. The approach taken strengthens south-to-south exchange and promotes regional expertise and networking. Such an approach I and the aboriginal communities I work with believe is needed in Canada as well.

Thank you.

Dr. Jessica Ball (Coordinator, First Nations Partnership Programs; Professor, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria): I'd like to thank the subcommittee for the privilege of being able to address some comments to you today.

I have been working in this field since I returned to Canada in 1996, and I have been working with aboriginal communities in capacity building initiatives, as Alan mentioned, with the first nations partnership programs, a two-year program of training and early childhood care and development using a special generative curriculum model that incorporates indigenous knowledge. I've also been engaged in a series of research studies looking at ways initiated by aboriginal communities for improving developmental conditions for aboriginal children. I'd like to share with you some observations from my experience in capacity building and my research. I'd also like you to know I would defer to any aboriginal person who is commenting to this committee with regard to recommendations. One of the things that was emphasized in the eighth report of the standing committee was the importance of consulting with aboriginal people and respecting the current movement in Canada towards aboriginal self-direction and self-government.

Some of the things I'd like to say are to underscore comments that are already in the eighth report of the standing committee. One of the things noted is that aboriginal children are a demographically significant population. We know the demographics for aboriginal children and youth are very different from the demographics for the Canadian population at large. It's a rapidly growing population and one that has very significant unmet needs.

Many rural and aboriginal communities continue to experience significant deficits on nearly all indicators of individual and community well-being. Particular concerns for children from zero to twelve in both urban and rural settings are the effects of living in poverty, including overcrowded, under-heated and poorly ventilated housing and the health effects of those conditions, the effects of alcohol and other substance abuse, inaccessibility of fresh foods, and the inordinate stresses on single mothers living in poverty. Most social programs have targeted deficiencies in aboriginal communities and the health and social deficits of aboriginal children, and they have not started from the inherent strengths of indigenous communities and their well-earned reputation for resilience. I'd like to underscore for the committee the importance of acknowledging the strengths of aboriginal parents and children in communities and exploring the potential of those strengths for building capacity and improving developmental conditions.

Some aboriginal communities have made major commitments to strengthening community capacity through innovative education and training programs and are introducing promising approaches to improving developmental conditions for young children and young parents. Particularly desirable models, from the point of view of some aboriginal communities, start with early childhood care and development programs as a hook for community involvement, and subsequently as a hub for multi-sectoral integrated service delivery. These community-initiated programs, beginning with community-based education and training and incorporating cultural knowledge and goals for children, are addressing a wide range of social, cultural, and health goals defined by aboriginal people themselves. These models warrant research attention as pilot projects to document implementation processes, challenges, and opportunities, as well as program impacts on indicators of aboriginal child well-being.

¹ (1535)

In my experience working with communities and looking at the communities that have implemented significant training programs in early childhood care and development, some of these communities have mounted impressive multi-sectoral service delivery programs that the Canadian population as a whole has a lot to learn from. The eighth report of the standing committee recommends extended funding for a pilot project, so that we can see the full long-term impact of these initiatives, and that's a recommendation I would certainly support.

In our work with aboriginal communities aboriginal leaders have identified several significant challenges to successful implementation of integrated programs of development, early intervention, and family support. These include insufficient funding for laddered community-relevant education and training; fragmentation of services across disciplines and jurisdictions; overwhelming requirements for pre-existing capacity in order to secure funds. This is something I'd really like to underscore, because in our work we do interact with some very small communities that have very little existing capacity to be able to, for example, write grants and apply successfully for funds, to show that they have all the infrastructure to engage in the extensive reporting and accountability requirements attendant upon receiving funding. So these small and less able communities remain in a position of entrenched incapacity. Overwhelming accountability requirements are well known. Then there are insufficient program implementation timeframes, instability of funds, premature cessation of funding support for pilot projects, and the problem of per capita funding allocations that make it impossible for very small communities to mount significant initiatives in support of their young children.

There's been a convergence of reports in the last couple of years with several common themes: consolidation, or if not consolidation, then at least very close collaboration among funding agencies; interjurisdictional coordination, enabling multi-sectoral service delivery; streamlined funding procedures; streamlined monitoring and accountability; flexible requirements to enable community-specific program models; a priority on capacity building for community development and service delivery; and a priority on the health and well-being of young children.

I've noted in some materials I've distributed to the committee a program of research in which I'm engaged to look at the long-term impacts of the capacity building initiatives my colleague Alan Pence and I have engaged in through partnerships with several aboriginal communities in western Canada. What we're looking at is, three years or more after a cohort of people in the community have been trained to the diploma level in early childhood care and development, what kinds of programs they have mounted, what their experiences have been in seeking funding and mounting programs, and what impacts we can see on children's well-being. Preliminary findings of this program of research are showing promising practices involving implementation of early childhood care and development programs as a community-based hub around which many other human service programs, cultural programs, and social support activities are thriving.

Some of the aboriginal community members have noted that a multi-sectoral service delivery program mounted in an urban setting can also benefit children living in rural remote settings, because of the very high mobility of aboriginal children and families between urban and rural settings. However, the benefit would depend on an increase in flexibility with regard to eligibility criteria for these services. For example, in Fort St. James in north-central British Columbia some families have moved on reserve in order to secure certain services for their young children. Some families have moved off reserve in order to secure services that are available in the urban setting. When they move back and forth, they become eligible and ineligible for services, depending on where they happen to be living at the time. If there were a more common set of eligibility requirements for services, multi-sectoral service centres in smaller and larger urban centres could also benefit the more remote communities.

¹ (1540)

Also, in the standing committee report and in other reports there's been an increasing emphasis on the need for transparency and accountability and for evaluation of outcomes of program initiatives in aboriginal communities, and I'd like to comment on that. I think it's very important for us to pay attention to what specific aboriginal communities are seeking in outcomes for their young children. The priorities different communities have for their children are variable. Some communities are better off in developmental conditions for children than others. So I think we need to be very flexible in the kinds of outcomes we suggest as part of accountability requirements and allow communities to define for themselves the outcomes they consider to be top priorities and indicators they think are culturally and situationally relevant for assessing them. For example, in some reserve communities just having an early childhood centre is seen as a priority, because of the safety that program can provide during the day for young children, and having a lower rate of childhood injuries would be a very desirable outcome. Other communities would say safety isn't really an issue in their community, but cognitive development and preschool readiness are high priorities. Some communities have said early childhood programs provide an opportunity for early identification of language problems and the facilitation of English language proficiency before children are of school age, whereas other communities have said English language proficiency is of secondary importance and heritage language proficiency is the first priority. So I think we need to leave room for communities to identify for themselves the culturally relevant outcomes for which they'd like to be accountable.

Those are a few key points, and I'd be happy to respond to any questions about the training program and our experience with capacity building if the committee wishes.

¹ (1545)

The Chair: Thank you very much.

I'm sure we're bursting with questions, but our normal routine is that we ask all the witnesses to present first and then get into it. So I'm going to move along to Ms. Cardinal from Alberta. We're delighted to welcome you here, and we invite you to make your opening remarks.

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal (Principal, Amiskwaciy Academy): I too am honoured to come and present to you.

I believe I come from a different perspective, in that I've lived most of my life on the reserve and just recently took a position with a school board in Edmonton. I did so for a number of reasons, but particularly looking at the education of aboriginal children. I tackled the challenge of providing a program for aboriginal youth at the high school level. Children of any age come with very similar, if not the same, types of challenges as their older siblings would come with.

At our school in the city of Edmonton we're dealing with families and family issues, regardless of the age they come in at, whether they're at the high school level, at the elementary, or early childhood. They face severe housing concerns. They also face institutionalized racism and discrimination. In addition to that, one of the biggest concerns we face is the portability of treaty rights. These children I primarily serve are first nations children. In my school there are approximately 85% who are first nations, and the number is growing. With that come the concerns about whether or not they can pay their school fees, afford bus passes, find a place to live, or where they are going to get their next meal. Education itself, through history and through their own experiences, has a lack of meaning and importance for them. How do we motivate and design a system that creates that importance and excitement about getting an education?

I looked at your letter, and the second of three areas was service. In our school and within the district the issue is trying to provide a consistent service for these young people, including a compassionate and nurturing environment. From my experience as a teacher who has been trained in a university, that doesn't teach you nurturing and compassion. You have to live and breathe it. Being able to touch these children's lives is important. How do we do that? It's through the work that we've done with our elders.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about my school, because that's what it was based on, working with our elders within the community. We did it with three guiding principles. We did it with collaboration, working with all elements of the community, the business world, governments, federal, provincial, municipal, and our families. Also, we looked at vision. Our people need vision, they need an end result they're leading to, and they need to have it with an aboriginal perspective.

Historically, when we look at what has happened to us as aboriginal people, we see the long-term effects of colonization and all those buzz words. However, I believe the time is now, and our elders give us that direction, to look at the notion of accountability, being able to take responsibility for our own lives and teaching our young people that particular aspect, because it is engrained in our natural laws, in who we are as a people.

¹ (1550)

What are some of the things we've done? We've done some innovative programming that includes an aboriginal perspective. We've done it in consultation and collaboration with all parties that are involved. We have worked towards an assurance of appropriate funding. That has been somewhat sketchy, because of the jurisdictional issues as between federal, provincial, and municipal. And these young people come with those inherited types of concerns that are somewhat, I believe, a hindrance. When they feel they can't pay their school fees or they can't pay for a bus pass, it's often a deterrent for them, and it's a huge concern, not only within my school, but I believe in large urban centres.

We have also worked towards providing support for these young people leading to graduation, from the early years into high school, and that would include appropriate career counselling. It would involve inclusion of the elders as they walk through the school years and inclusion of cultural programming. Language was certainly a high priority, according to the elders. And there was the retraining of the teachers, so that they'd know how to build relationships and there isn't an institutionalized type of framework to the school.

One of the other things we involve our kids in is being active in their own education. The Rotary Club and other service clubs have partnered with us, and it's something that's constant and growing, providing leadership and understanding of what true cultural aboriginal leadership is all about, not in the structural type of hierarchy, but in a flattened organization. And it has been through the elders that everybody is a piece to the puzzle--we are not part of the problem, but part of the solution.

I'll leave it at that.

The Chair: That's great. I must say it's nice to hear the common theme of focusing on the strengths and not the deficits. It seems to me that gives you a very different perspective.

And now the patient Ms. Williams, who's been sitting at the other end of the line there. I am told that your video line is a bit shaky. This does not reflect on your personality in any way; it may reflect on ours. If, for whatever reason, because we get too excited or whatever, the video line fails, I gather we have a back-up, which is a teleconference. But let's take advantage of the video, welcome you, and invite you to make some opening comments.

¹ (1555)

Ms. Christa Williams (Executive Director, First Nations Education Steering Committee): Good afternoon. I also would like to thank you for the opportunity to present to you this afternoon. My six-year-old son and I would like to thank you especially for the opportunity to present via video conference, rather than by making the trip to Ottawa.

I'm currently the executive director with the B.C. First Nations Education Steering Committee. I'm also a member of the Lytton First Nation, which is located about 3 hours north of Vancouver along the Fraser Valley. I've been working for FNESC for about nine years. It was organized in May 1992 at a provincial conference of first nations people from around British Columbia, education technicians. They wanted to organize themselves to create an informed first nations voice, both at the provincial and national level, with respect to B.C. first nations education. Currently, we have 55 directors appointed by their communities sitting on the FNESC board. We're committed to supporting first nations in their effort to promote quality education for all first nations learners. FNESC is directed by first nations communities, and it works at the provincial level to provide services in the area of research, communications, information dissemination, and networking. We also work to collect and share up-to-date information about available programs, government policies and initiatives, and local, provincial, and national education issues that affect first nations learners in B.C.

In British Columbia one-third of the aboriginal student population attends schools on reserve, in their own communities, and two-thirds attend in the provincial education system. While FNESC works to support students in both systems, for the purpose of today's discussion, I'll focus on the work that deals primarily with the provincial education system. I have to apologize at the outset, because working in education, we believe education is, generally, the centre of the universe and we really support the idea that success in education correlates with improved health and general well-being. So that's the bias that I bring to the table this afternoon.

I note that you're seeking information regarding the strengths, challenges, and needs of off-reserve aboriginal children. I actually had on my invitation “from ages 6 to 12”, so I focused on that age group, having read your report on the prenatal period to six. I hope I haven't missed anything too great there.

On the first phase of your study, dealing with the condition of children living on-reserve from the prenatal age period to age six, I very much concur with the results. I would also attest that there are many similarities regarding jurisdictional challenges, which Ms. Cardinal has referred to, the lack of coordination between departments in providing programming and the need to involve aboriginal people in the development of comprehensive strategies for quality programming with respect to the age group in question.

For years we have known anecdotally that aboriginal youth have not been experiencing success in education, and in 1998 the Ministry of Education began to publish data that confirmed our assumptions and made these available to the general population in British Columbia. This has been the single most significant effort that has served to draw attention to the challenges facing urban and rural youth. Most of the data have focused on the end products, graduation rates, but we're now looking at indicators much earlier, to see when and where results for aboriginal learners begin to peter out.

At this time our most revealing data are available through the B.C. Ministry of Education foundation skills assessment tests administered annually at grades 4, 7, and 10. I've included in the documentation we forwarded to you for your reference the results from 1999 through 2002, so that you can draw year-by-year comparisons. At this time I would just like to highlight the results in reading at grades 4 and 7, ages 9 and 12. In 2002 only 53% of aboriginal learners in grade 4 met the expectations in reading, and only 48% in grade 7. Almost half of the grade 4 and 7 students do not meet expectations with respect to reading. A couple of months ago I did a television interview with a reporter, and he asked me what the most telling statistic was out of all the data we've collected so far, and I said I thought these statistics on the grade 4 lack of success in reading were the most telling, as they are the predictors of the graduation rates we see five to eight years later. Currently the graduation rate in British Columbia for aboriginal learners is 42%, compared to a 78% graduation rate for non-aboriginal learners in British Columbia. So we have a huge disparity that we're trying to address. We also know that without a strong foundation in reading, learners can not experience success in school in any fashion.

º (1600)

For urban aboriginal learners there are many factors contributing to the lack of success in school. The following are demographics that are typical of inner-city schools in Vancouver, as found by Fillipoff in his study of 2001. Over 80% of the students and their families live in poverty--you've heard some of this already through Dr. Ball and Phyllis Cardinal. Most children live in single-parent families. Some 40% of the children have special needs, and 30% of the children live in foster care. This is an area we are becoming increasingly concerned about. There are too many aboriginal children in care, where their first concern is primarily with safety, rather than education. So we're looking at ways to support the foster care system and to provide better support for school to children in care. There are also children with fetal alcohol or narcotic syndrome, who make up 8% of the population. The schools have a high absentee and transience rate, with a stable population of only 30%. Again, that evidences the great mobility that was referred to by earlier speakers. And 52% of the children in the Vancouver inner-city schools are of aboriginal ancestry.

Researchers have found that many of the challenges facing inner-city school students and parents, particularly aboriginal students and families living in urban areas, can be at least party addressed through added resources so schools can provide additional programs and services. Wang and Kovach in 1996 stated that there are many untapped resources in the urban community that, if harnessed, could significantly improve the delivery of education services in urban centres. The authors also report that through their extensive research, they can clearly see that a key requirement for reducing the achievement gap in urban schools is the “forging of greater school connections with families and the community to support resilience development and student learning”. I was excited to hear Ms. Ball refer to resilience, because that's something I'd like to talk about next.

So often we focus on the negatives in the lives of first nations people and disregard the positives. I also concur that one of the greatest strengths in our communities, both urban and rural, is our resilience as first nations people, the ability to embrace the belief that we are first peoples in this land with distinct rights and a unique relationship with other Canadians, despite the legislation, policies, and practices that have served to diminish our identities. This resilience is a strength that needs to be nurtured and channelled towards efforts to address the many challenges that seek to rid us of our identity.

One mechanism to capitalize on this resilience is to invite first nations in the urban setting to sit with policy-makers to develop programs and services that best meet the needs of their particular community. At present this is very difficult, as underfunding, excessive paperwork, and the heavy focus on reporting requirements and accountability frameworks, along with entrenched attitudes that equity in programming means uniformity of programming, serve as barriers to creativity. What I mean by this is that we can work within fixed parameters to come up with new and innovative approaches. We can also be very accountable for the dollars that are provided, but there needs to be room to have creative solutions, so that the solutions for the Vancouver area are not the same as the ones for the Prince George area or for the Prince Rupert area or for other urban settings in British Columbia.

I'm also happy to say that despite all these barriers and challenges, there are many examples of ingenuity in the urban environment. We've looked at the school Phyllis Cardinal works at as a very apt model we would like to be able to explore for aspects we may be able to translate into similar kinds of schools in British Columbia. One movement that's gaining considerable attention and support is that to developing community schools. Community schools include significant emphasis on family support, assisting with parenting information, employment, housing and health services, school meal programs, and adult education. By incorporating such support mechanisms and opportunities for shared school decision-making, parents and schools can, along with the service providers, feel more ownership of their school.

º (1605)

Currently, there is a significant amount of programming that exists to support children aged zero to six, Headstart, Brighter Futures, the National Child Benefit Strategy, and they're multi-departmental. At age six that support seems to drop off. So in some cases we've been carefully supporting these children so they can be ready for school. We've been supporting their parents and providing opportunities to draw them into the school environment, but at age six, grade 1 and going into grade 2, that support seems to drop off. That's why we're suggesting that community schools may serve to fill that void if we put together that coordinated effort. In British Columbia we have some hope, as we feel we're positioned to support community schools, as we have current positive working relationships with all the education partner groups in British Columbia. These include the B.C. Teachers Federation, the School Trustees Association, principals, vice-principals, the College of Teachers, and the B.C. Schools Superintendents Association, as well as the Ministry of Education and the Department of Indian Affairs. We're very proud of the working relationship we've created. It has taken us three or four years to get to the point where we have the action agenda we're currently working on.

Currently, the three areas of focus we've agreed to work on jointly are developing strategies to increase the number of aboriginal teachers in the system, addressing systemic racism, and implementing employment equity policies in the system that would serve to increase the number of aboriginal role models in schools. What is needed now is a sustained effort and support from all the membership of the education partner groups. We're pleased to say that we signed a memorandum of understanding in February 1999, which was only two lines long, and it said basically that the signatories acknowledge the lack of success of aboriginal learners in the education systems and commit themselves collectively and within individual organizations to working together to improve success for aboriginal learners. It has the signatures of the presidents of each of the organizations, but the only person who's still within the working group, because the presidents have changed in all the other organizations, is Chief Nathan Matthew, who signed on behalf of the First Nations Education Steering Committee. While all of those have changed, and some of them two and three times since the signing in 1999, the commitment of those organizations remains, they still sit at the table. We see that as a symbol of success.

I certainly appreciate the challenge you have in front of you to gather this information and produce a complete and balanced report. If we can provide any further information or support you further as you undertake this great challenge, please do not hesitate to contact our office.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much. I must say, we always learn so much from our witnesses. We're focusing clearly today. There's an additional element on education.

We're saying goodbye to the Forum for Young Canadians. I hope you've enjoyed it. Thank you. Take care.

As we're moving towards consideration and drafting of a report, I want, while the thought is fresh in my mind, to underline the obvious, that even though we're going to be doing but one report, we have a very different situation in the ages zero to six world, essentially preschool, which has got one set of institutions, and the ages six to twelve world, the educational world, which is inconveniently, from a constitutional point of view, not supposed to be the government's, except on reserve. So in our report we will have to deal with that reality and take advantage of the assets we have and not get bogged down in the deficits. I think it'll mean structurally a rather different set of recommendations in some cases with ages zero to six and ages six to twelve.

On that note, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Spencer.

Mr. Larry Spencer (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is always a very complicated issue, there are many areas to look into. You'll excuse us if we focus on what you maybe hoped we wouldn't. Sometimes we don't know exactly where to go.

Ms. Ball mentioned that community commitment to educational and training programs was extremely important. I take it that you're speaking of the aboriginal or the first nations community itself, members of the first nations community. How are these training programs promoted in that community? How do they get knowledge of them and so forth?

º (1610)

Dr. Jessica Ball: This is a program that began with a request from Meadow Lake Tribal Council. Supporting early childhood development is a key component of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council vision for overall community development. The curriculum was developed, the generative model approach that involves incorporation of indigenous knowledge was articulated. Subsequently, we have enjoyed partnerships with 10 other on-reserve community groups. Each of these groups has initiated contact with us and asked if we would be interested in exploring a partnership for delivery of the curriculum in their community. They've heard about the program through various channels. A lot of it has been through word of mouth; at least with the first five partnerships, one community would tell another community about it.

After the first five partnerships, some communities contacted us and said, you need to develop a real program promotional package, because lots of first nations communities might like to know about this program. Following their directive, we applied for and received funding from the Vancouver Foundation and the Lawson Foundation to create a package of materials that describes the program and to make five video documentaries that illustrate different components of the program, such as the community of learners approach, the incorporation of indigenous knowledge through elder co-instruction, and so on. So we had this package of materials and the video documentaries, which, in partnership with members of the communities that had already delivered the program, we have since presented at many first nations education conferences, child care conferences, health conferences, and so on.

Dr. Alan Pence: When Meadow Lake Tribal Council first contacted me back in 1989-1990, their vision held early childhood caregiving as central to their cultural and economic development. They could not see having healthy communities without having healthy children. So they were making that tie between the economic well-being and the cultural well-being. They had approached a number of institutions asking for a training program that would reflect where their communities were coming from. What they found with those institutions that did have a training program was that there would be a general smattering of aboriginalness, a little bit of Cree, a little bit of Mi'kmaq, a little bit of Salish, and when they looked at that material, they came to the conclusion that this wasn't them, not their community. Their communities are Cree and Dene communities, and they're not in that training program.

The cooperative partnership that evolved then, this generative curriculum model, is one that brings in directly the community voices, the community knowledge, the elders and the others who are respected for having appropriate knowledge. What we have is a co-constructed curriculum. It contains western notions of development and community-specific notions of what is important for healthy children. They're treated as equally important in that context.

Let me skip ahead just briefly on that. Ten years later, when we went to look at the effectiveness of this program across seven different tribal organizations that used the generative model, not only did we find there was increased community involvement and elder involvement in the broad life of the communities through their being brought into this educational process, but participants were graduating at a percentage that's phenomenal for first nations. Some 86% of the 120 people who took the program completed the first certificate year, 77% completed the first two full years--it's a two-year program. That is more than double what the statistics are for most post-secondary education with aboriginal peoples on reserve.

Where my piece fits into this, the Africa work and the rest of it, is that I feel post-secondary education has not been nearly creative enough in its approach to issues of capacity building. In fact, post-secondary education has been a part of the capacity erosion, capacity depletion of communities as often as not. You may have people completing degrees, but they're taken out of community. They don't come back to community. They aren't supported by community when they do. It's very important, I feel, if post-secondary education is going to be a part of the solution, rather than a part of the problem, that we, as universities and colleges, become much more creative in our way of working with aboriginal and other communities around the world. The problem is the same in Africa. Some of the greatest minds of Africa are not in Africa, they're in Europe, they're in North America, they're not building Africa. The approach has been a process of capacity depletion, not of capacity building.

This applies not only to on-reserve communities, but also to off-reserve communities. Until the voices of the community and the knowledge of the community are brought in and respected, we aren't going to see the kinds of completion rates that are critical if we're actually going to support capacity building.

º (1615)

Mr. Larry Spencer: I take it, then, that you're not a proponent of Shakespeare out in these programs and a few other things that are non-relevant, things I used to think were non-relevant when I was in school, and probably were.

Dr. Alan Pence: I don't want you to think it's only community, it's western as well. We have some Shakespeare.

Mr. Larry Spencer: But you're focusing on the needs of that community rather than just an educational program that's been canned and promoted for years and years. I think that's very important.

You mentioned giving the communities a vision. I first thought we were talking about government programs, and I realize now it's an initiative of one university we're talking about. Am I correct?

Dr. Jessica Ball: One university and ten groups of first nations communities. Actually, they raised the funds for all these programs.

Mr. Larry Spencer: There was no government money, other than indirectly through that--

Dr. Jessica Ball: They may have secured government money on their own as a way of funding the programs.

Mr. Larry Spencer: But it's not on our list of programs this government has been funding. That's good, that's interesting. It is possible some other way, isn't it?

When you are dealing with a community, thinking about a partnership and involvement in this program, what do you paint for them as what they would gain, or do you let them paint the vision?

Dr. Jessica Ball: I'd like to defer to Phyllis, because she did mention vision building as an important process within a first nations community. It is not something we would want to paint for a community. Our programs are all done in response to a community overture that grows out of their own vision for their community's development. Communities that have partnered with us have done so for different reasons. Some have said they would like the training program because they really wanted to improve developmental conditions for young children and young children's health; well-being was their priority. Other communities have said they really wanted the program because education, training, and opportunities for healing the adults in the community were their priority, and in order for adults in their community to continue their education and training and engage in healing processes and so on, they needed a safe place for their children. Cultural revitalization was very important in Meadow Lake. Different communities have initiated partnership in training with different visions.

º (1620)

The Chair: Dr. Cardinal, would you like to comment?

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal: I will speak from the experience of putting the high school together. My high school was called Amiskwaciy Academy.

The Chair: Is it a physical high school or a virtual high school?

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal: It's a physical high school. If you're familiar with Edmonton and the old municipal airport, the airport where you came in for landing, that's where we are. We renovated the whole school, and it is now operating in its third year.

When we began to explore the idea of putting the school together, it was done on those three guiding principles I spoke of. The first was to look at and gather the aboriginal community for their thoughts and ideas as to what they would like for their young people. Having done that, and because I was working with different parties at that time, not the federal government, but the provincial government, the City of Edmonton, our communities, our elders, and the trustees of Edmonton Public School Board, I went through the exercise of bringing people together to talk about vision and programming. We then went the next step, and through our protocols of addressing elders, we got their feedback and saw what they wanted for the young people. Ultimately, it went back to the trustees for their stamp of approval. That's how it was formulated. It was done in parts, but the end result was a collaborative effort.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Tonks.

Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.): Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I'm glad Phyllis clarified what's at 1 Airport Road. When I was in Edmonton, the airport was there, and I guess you renovated the old terminal building.

I noticed in Dr. Ball's written presentation that 98% of the students involved in the partnership program were women, ranging in age from 18 to 55. And I'm certainly not questioning the fact that women are attracted and being empowered to participate in their community, I think that is extremely commendable and admirable, but what about the men? I think we would generally say, while the primary objective, if it is a primary objective, is to empower women, it also should be generally accepted that we're empowering the whole community, including men, to participate in the kind of educational outreach Alan has referred to. Could you give us the background on that?

Dr. Jessica Ball: It is an interesting phenomenon that 98% of our students have indeed been women. With all due respect, we are not in a position to empower anybody. The communities have power already, and these are communities that are exercising their power. The communities arrive at a cohort of students for these programs, and we discuss the cohort with the community, everybody wanting to be sure these are candidates who are likely to succeed, because nobody wants to add to the litany of failures with regard to education in first nations communities. Beyond that, we don't vet who the community puts forward to be students in the program.

It just is a fact that even in the non-aboriginal world at large, early childhood education, child care, and education are dominated by females, so that's also true in aboriginal communities. Also, internationally and nationally, females have a higher rate of completion of education, they tend to be more persistent students in general, and that, I think, is also something we're seeing in the aboriginal communities. More women are signing up for this training program, more women are completing education in general. We also know there's a rising cadre of women in leadership in these communities, and this early childhood care and development training program is certainly an avenue by which aboriginal women are achieving leadership in their communities and being instrumental in stewarding conditions for the next generation.

Some communities have been concerned that when they bring in the training program, it seems that the community is making a lot of investment in advancing women's education. For example, Tl'azt'en Nation, foresaw a difficulty and mounted a cabinet-making training program that attracted almost exclusively men. So the two training programs were going on at the same time. Mount Currie First Nation mounted a forestry training program with another college at the same time as they started this training program, so that there was a sense of balance in the community, that investments were equally distributed across genders. But it is very difficult to attract men into early childhood and other educational and developmental kinds of training programs.

º (1625)

Mr. Alan Tonks: I was going to ask if you found that problematic. Your response has accommodated that.

I'm a teacher by background. I started off in the elementary system. I can reflect on the days when the same thing existed, where male teachers were not available to teach in the primary grades. There was a sort of stigma attached to it. It took a lot of work, professional and community, to change that. The system generally concluded that it was, for various reasons, desirable to have men involved in, if not early childhood education, certainly primary education. My observation would be that it would be problematic, but I think, for obvious reasons, men should be part of that stream, they have something to contribute in any community involved in the education of its little ones.

The second question I have--and perhaps all of our guests could address this-- is with respect to the eight pilot projects the committee recommended. These are going to be in towns and cities across--

The Chair: This is the urban aboriginal strategy and the $17 million over two years.

Mr. Alan Tonks: Yes.

Have you had any opportunity to lock into those pilot programs? Do you have any comments to make with respect to what would round out those programs, recognizing that they're an attempt to muster municipal, community-based organizations, specific aboriginal organizations, such as friendship centres? They're an attempt to create a more holistic, broadly established, and integrated support system. Do you have suggestions with respect to what the educational component should be in those pilot projects and how we should evaluate their effectiveness?

º (1630)

The Chair: Dr. Cardinal.

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal: It has been my experience with any kind of program that has come out for aboriginal children or for aboriginal people that by and large, they have been short-term programs and work in isolation of the actual need. In this case it is the needs of these young people. I speak to any of those organizations, and I'm not suggesting that they don't provide service, but by and large, the service is not connected directly to an education system, for example. If they are dealing with food, housing, or whatever issues, it's often in isolation, and the links to the schools don't necessarily occur. So that would be a recommendation from me, when I think of those young people who don't have access to the programs that are out there, for whatever reason, whether it's mobility, lack of information, or unawareness of what's available to them.

Mr. Alan Tonks: Have you been invited to participate in these eight pilots?

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal: No.

The Chair: Ms. Williams, have you anything in response? Have you heard about these famous urban aboriginal strategy pilot communities? What is your reaction to them? Have you been asked to participate?

Ms. Christa Williams: I haven't actually heard of them. I read about the suggestion in your report. There has not been an invitation to participate. I would also echo some of Dr. Cardinal's cautions. When you have pilot projects, some of the institutional barriers are removed, because people are saying it's just a pilot, and just in this one case we can be creative and do things outside the box, as people like to say. They will go along doing that, and then the program stops and you haven't institutionalized the thinking that other programs can also do the same kinds of things. So we certainly wish to be careful when we're looking at pilot projects.

Over the last couple of years in British Columbia we've held two integration of services conferences, where we've invited health care workers, social workers, educators, and child care workers to come together and talk about how at the community level we can start collaborating a lot better horizontally within our own communities. We're hopeful that some of this information will flow back to the departmental groups that are involved. We have established with each of the departments, HRDC, Indian Affairs, Health Canada, an intergovernmental working group that includes the regional directors general of each of those organizations, and they've agreed philosophically with the idea of integration of services in, let's say, the school system. Unfortunately, when we walk away from the table where the regional directors general sit, we find the direction has not reached the program delivery people, the people who provide the funding directly to the communities, and so they very much continue to operate within stovepipes, not wanting to integrate and cooperate with their colleagues in other departments.

Right now we feel we've got the support from the community level, we have the support at the senior officials level, but we're missing the people in-between who could actually make this happen. And so I would recommend that we look at institutionalizing creativity.

The Chair: Boy, that applies to an awful lot of things, starting maybe with Parliament.

Dr. Ball.

Dr. Jessica Ball: I support what my colleagues have said, and I would also like to underscore a few other points. I think, in the words of somebody from Meadow Lake, it's important for projects to be community-based and community-paced; the community should arrive at its own vision and go at its own pace with what it's able and wanting to support. I think, keeping that in mind, the programs need to be very flexible as to what they're going to look like and should build on strengths rather than deficits. Our experience is that curriculum is more useful if it very consciously has a way of incorporating cultural knowledge into it and is deliberately multidisciplinary, so that people are becoming prepared for a range of approaches to community development.

I think it's important for training that would support the pilot programs to include avenues for network enhancement, for example, multidisciplinary practica co-op kinds of experiences, where people are able to invite a range of community resource people in and also go out and look at different kinds of program models and build connections.

It's important also that these programs not be overwhelming in their reporting requirements and that there be lots of points where program successes can be celebrated, so that there's a feeling of meta-system support as the program develops.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that aboriginal communities are very ready to mobilize around the well-being of children from zero to 12 years old. Their programs that focus on children's well-being are effective hubs for multisectoral service delivery. Early childhood care programs, such as Aboriginal Headstart, are good core elements, and the community schools model is brilliant at the six- to 12-year-old level, and beyond, in mobilizing community involvement. I think strategies to mobilize community involvement are crucial.

º (1635)

The Chair: Let me jump in at this point, if I may.

As I say, we get to this point of our hearings and start to develop a number of hypotheses. It's great to have witnesses with your background, education, and experience who can react to the hypotheses, because that helps us shape it as we move along.

In our previous report, which dealt with on-reserve zero to six, there were a number of principles. One was that we only made recommendations to people we thought we had some sway over, notably federal departments. So our recommendations were not directed into outer space, they were telling other people how they ought to run their affairs, certainly not directed to telling first nations communities what they ought to do. What we essentially said was, in those communities where the federal government has a pretty big role, through Health Canada, through HRDC, through DIAND, it's not asking too much that at the Ottawa end they get their act together and, instead of using separate silos, coordinate their efforts, and they ought to do so equally at the community level, instead of the tripling of the burden of reporting, for example, where an HRDC aboriginal child care program hits the ground with one set of criteria and the Health Canada aboriginal head start program hits the same community with another set of criteria--same parents, same kids, totally different requirements, a nightmare to administer, from everybody's point of view. We felt we could do that.

We did urge, with this thought in mind, the creation of certain pilot projects, but we also said those pilot projects ought to have legs, they ought to have enough funding over time that we could at least institutionalize the creativity, if I may lift the phrase from Ms. Williams; we ought to go with strength and build on those places that had capacity. The model, of course, is to allow people to make their own decisions and to allocate according to their own needs and their own cultural necessities, but in a way we can learn from. It's not just turning the money over; we did expect a kind of learning quid pro quo. We didn't actually say this in the report, but I suppose our notion was that rather than imposing from on high a model, as in the First Nations Governance Act--oh, who said that?--what we ought to do is work the other way around and build on strength, and then try to figure out ways of exporting that strength to other communities, so that this capacity could be, in some sense, institutionalized and conveyed to others and we could learn about best practices. I think that's more or less the model I'm hearing.

Our challenge with the current report is that we control fewer believers. That's the opening challenge. Second, we're dealing, as I picked up earlier in the meeting, with two distinct pools of kids, the zero to six crowd and the six to twelve crowd, and we have different notional hubs, if you like, even different notional hooks, when it comes down to that--I like the hooks and the hubs, by the way. We really can't boss other people about, that's the first order of business. Nobody takes kindly to that, whether they're first nation communities, provincial governments, or municipal governments, where Mr. Tonks had such a distinguished career. But we're also faced with this utter void of leadership in the urban setting, where everybody's buck-passing. We have somebody called the federal interlocutor, who is Minister Goodale. The feds say, we only do on-reserve; that's why we have provinces, they do this. The provinces say, no, no, no. There's a lot of coming and going, so if you want to make a hash of things, it's quite easy to. We've had people who have to go off reserve to get care, because they can't get the services for their disabled child--this absurd, obscene distortion, where nobody is willing to take moral leadership. Never mind if it's constitutional. Someone has at least to call a meeting and say, look, we all have to put some resources into this, we have to get out of this business.

º (1640)

I guess what we were toying with as an idea--this is pretty nervy of us, but we're that kind of committee--is taking advantage of the fact that there is a fund of money, referred to in the last budget, of $17 million for over two years for this urban aboriginal strategy. We know the communities that have been chosen. We know education is part of the theme of this. We need to get more information on where the early thinking is and whether, if the pattern isn't set, we can capture something here, actually take advantage of it.

I'm impressed by the fact that whether you start in the early childhood setting or go up and start in the school setting, if you put at the centre--and I think this is the way your presentations began, Dr. Pence and Dr. Ball--as our challenge a family-enabling society, understanding that no child functions alone and there is a surround, and that surround is not simply the birth parents, it is the uncles, the grandparents, the cousins, and if we use that as our measure of how well we're doing as a society--and I think it was useful to remind ourselves that what's at stake here is not simply the well-being of children, but the well-being of our economy--then we can reach out into other areas that help enable families, housing or getting jobs or getting people training or education or whatever else. If we ask ourselves how a family will function better so that, for example, fewer kids have to go into care, that is a measurable outcome, it seems to me. It is mostly a failure of the system when kids have to go to care. It's second best. That starts to give us a clue as to how we can mobilize all those jurisdictional bits and pieces. I am a big fan of using the school as a way of reaching out. The school has the advantage of reaching into the preschool, because you can house preschool in school and get kids used to the idea of getting to school and get the parents used to the idea of getting to school.

After this ramble, what I'd like to do is ask for your help. If we were able to capture some of these aid pilot projects, about which we know too little, and understand that we can't narrowly focus on kids, but have to use kids as the hook and the hub, whether they're zero to six or six to twelve, Dr. Pence and Dr. Ball, are any of the communities you've dealt with actually not first nations in that sense, but aboriginal urban communities? That seems to me to be a different set of challenges, but that's what our mandate is now.

Second, we're just a little subcommittee, we cannot solve the problem of all urban aboriginals, obviously, but we're trying to figure out how to get some successes. We know, for example, on reserve there have been tremendous collateral benefits from the aboriginal head start program that have accrued to women, child care workers or whoever else, and that has a huge spin-off effect we can't ignore. It puts the kids at the centre, but it just keeps building success. Have you done any work in Canada's cities?

Perhaps more broadly, would people just react to the way in which I hope the report can move forward?

º (1645)

Dr. Alan Pence: The short and quick answer is probably no, not quite in the way you're talking about, but one of the communities is very much an embedded and flowing-through community, Cowichan tribes in Duncan. The way that played out, we were talking about a Duncan impact as well as a Cowichan impact. That's a smaller city, with real integration. The campus that was used for the education training was Malaspina. It sits on Cowichan land, so you have a lot of crossover taking place there and a lot of interaction on the practica and other ways. That was probably as close as we've come to more of an urban experience.

We've also had discussions over the years with a number of urban aboriginal organizations that have wanted to proceed along this line. Winnipeg would be one where discussions went quite far. Using the native friendship centre as a point was the focus of discussion there.

The Chair: Dr. Ball, do you think we're going in a direction that intuitively sounds right--if you can find a direction in what I've just said?

Dr. Jessica Ball: It sounds right more than intuitively. One of the communities I'd like to mention is Mount Currie First Nation. That is not an urban setting, but it definitely has started with their ECD program as the hub and has added to it parenting programs, prenatal care programs, language enhancement programs, dental caries, well baby, and they're just beginning with social service programs and hope to add some alcohol and other substance treatment programs. What we've been able to see in the research I'm doing is that some of the children who might have gone into child protection services and been moved off-reserve into foster homes temporarily or indefinitely have been able to stay in the community because of the ladder of services available through the elaboration of an ECD-as-hub model. So the children can stay in the ECD program, or they can be in school and stay in the after-school program. The parent or parents can secure a number of services and family supports through this multisectoral service that's evolving in that community. It's such a spectacular model that I think all of Canada can benefit from studying that community.

º (1650)

The Chair: Could you send us some stuff on that? Is it on your website?

Dr. Jessica Ball: Mount Currie itself has a website, and we're just beginning to document this. I'll write up this model and make sure your committee gets it.

As it turns out, one of my aboriginal graduate students in child and youth care at the University of Victoria is spearheading an early childhood care-as-hub model in downtown Victoria, and it's housed at the native friendship centre. It's called the “Surrounded by Cedars Program”, and it's starting with a very small child care component, but a number of other family-enabling support programs, vocational, employment, training, alcohol and drug treatment, financial services, and so on. So that might be an exciting model to look at.

I'm also including in a program of research I'm doing with SSHRCC funding a look at the aboriginal head start program in Comox on Vancouver Island, which is a small urban setting. That was definitely conceived as a multisectoral ECD-as-hub-model. That could be another exciting one to look at.

Longitudinally, there's an aboriginal head start program starting in Terrace called Kermode, which is being conceived from the very beginning as a multisectoral ECD-as-hub program. That might provide an opportunity to look longitudinally at the development of one of these kinds of programs.

The Chair: Gosh, it's exciting to hear about all these things. They're very useful bits of information.

What I think I'd like to do is move along and think in a similar vein. Our other guests, perhaps starting with Ms. Williams, might like to think a bit about school-as-hub as a way for us, understanding that the federal government always has an issue, in that it can't actually do schools directly, but we sure would like to be able to take advantage of their existence in ways that are constitutionally appropriate.

Ms. Williams, you can react in any way and shoot down this theory I have advanced if you'd like to.

Ms. Christa Williams: No, I certainly would support it. That's generally what we were recommending with a community school model that would include embracing early childhood education as well as elementary-secondary programming, and wrapping services around the early childhood and the K to12 system, bringing in health and the dental stuff that was mentioned, as well as social services, trying to deal with issues before they blow up, so that you can intervene before things have gone too far and end up in family breakdown. So we're certainly in support of what you're putting forward, and we recognize the challenges.

As I said, we'd bring together our education partners, the Ministry of Education, all the off-reserve institutions, the College of Teachers, the Teachers Federation, school trustees, etc.. We experience a lot of interjurisdictional difficulties as we do that, but we've been able to put a lot of that aside because of the will to make it happen. I think that's what needs to be generated, a positive partnership between the federal departments that are involved, as well as the ministries that are involved. At our table with the regional directors general we also include the Ministry of Children and Families and the Ministry of Aboriginal Children and Women, I think they're called--they all have new names in British Columbia--as well as the Ministry of Health.

The Chair: My understanding is that they have new names and less money. Is that the general picture?

Ms. Christa Williams: Yes, that's generally what's going on here.

The Chair: They use the name instead of the money somehow, I guess.

Ms. Christa Williams: They needed new business cards, I guess, or new letterhead or something, so they took away some of the money.

There needs to be improved communication there. I think one of the barriers is, again, people having that attitudinal problem, not being able to look and say, we can work together, with the idea that one is not trying to impose something on the other. That's what we're trying to clear up at the table. That's been our first area of discussion. We're not asking people to take on more responsibility than they have within their mandate through jurisdiction or to do anything new, we're just asking them to do the things they're doing differently: try differently, not harder. It's taking time, but I think it's going to happen.

So bringing all of those services together and supporting families, as opposed to making children shop around for the various services, is definitely a really positive way to go.

The Chair: Thank you very much. That's encouraging. I think we're moving in the same direction.

Perhaps we'll give the last word to Dr. Cardinal, because you actually have a geographically based, real live “at the old airport” centre, a community-based hub.

º (1655)

Dr. Phyllis Cardinal: I've been asked many times about our population at Amiskwaciy Academy. In Alberta we have 44 first nations, and in my school there are represented 42 of them. In addition, there are eight Métis settlements, and we have representatives of six. Furthermore, we do have students as far away as Labrador. So it is many nations within one setting. When I think of my school as providing service for those young people, it is done in a manner that is respectful to all.

When Edmonton took on this venture and asked me to be a part of it, I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, in particular meeting those young people from all walks of life. As I grew to know them and to know the system and to understand what these kids were dealing with, I also understood that many of them came to us with huge problems, in particular literacy problems. So even as they walked in the door, they were destined to fail, according to statistics: if they've come at least two grades behind, they're not going to complete their high school program. I venture to say that despite that, it's not going to happen. In the first year of operation--and we're in our third--we had 72% of our grade 12s graduate. Last year we had 100%, and this year I expect the same. It has been difficult trying to gather the supports, whether it's at the federal or the provincial or the municipal level, assistance in helping these young people.

Last fall I was asked to sit on a working group by one of your colleagues, Minister Nault, and when we first met, he asked us to think about how we could be innovative in helping our young people across Canada. We gave him a preliminary report, and he said, yes, it's not bad, but we want you to think outside the box. One of the strong recommendations that came out of that report was consideration of status Indians who live off-reserve. In fact, he had suggested strongly that this be a big part of our report, because of the movement of our people into large urban centres.

Most recently I've been asked to look at providing programming prior to high school, ultimately into elementary. So the face of Amiskwaciy Academy will change within the next year or so to address those concerns and to bring about a program that's going to enhance these kids and actually have parents who are going to want to be in the school. It really caught me what one parent had to say. One of my colleagues, a non-aboriginal, asked her why she didn't you come to school, and her response was, what happens when a fly hits heat? He didn't understand where she was coming from. Well, they stick to the wall: when I come into this school, that's how I feel, like a fly that has hit heat, and I stick to the wall, where I'm not welcome. So that was the premise, working with parents and trying to make them feel welcome and invited and to move away from the institutionalized attitude that is something we struggle with.

If I were to suggest anything, I would say, give me the money, I'll do it. But I know there are so many good things across Canada, and they need to be highlighted and supported, both federally and provincially. I know the federal government can only do it constitutionally. In that working group report it was suggested that constitutionally, there is the idea of portability of treaty rights, and these young people deserve the same kinds of things off-reserve as they do on-reserve, and many of them don't get them. At the school we bear the brunt of it. I don't want to see children being refused or feeling they are not part of a school system because they lack the resourcing to help them through that.

» (1700)

So with any aboriginal projects out there, I believe the dollars and the projects should be an arm of a school, should be connected with these children, because they are the ones who are the focus.

The Chair: On that note, which was entirely appropriate, I want to thank all of you for helping us bring another dimension to our study, reacting to our initial thoughts on the report, filling out the picture, and giving us some constructs to develop further. It's been a very rich and rewarding afternoon for all of us here, and I thank you for taking time out to visit us.

This meeting is adjourned.