Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 2 - Evidence - Meeting of October 4, 2011
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 9:30 a.m. to examine the federal government's constitutional, treaty, political and legal responsibilities to First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, and other matters generally relating to the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada (topic: Issues concerning First Nations Education).
Senator Gerry St. Germain (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning. I would like to welcome all honourable senators and members of the public who are watching this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples either on CPAC or the web. I am Gerry St. Germain from British Columbia and I have the honour of chairing this committee.
The mandate of this committee is to examine legislation in matters generally relating to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. Given this mandate, the committee has undertaken a study to examine possible strategies for reform concerning First Nations primary and secondary education, with a view to improving outcomes. Among other things, the study is focused on the following: Tripartite education agreements, governance and delivery structures and possible legislative frameworks.
This morning we will hear from four witnesses, the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians, the First Nation Education Initiative Inc., the Prince Albert Grand Council and the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba.
[Translation]
Before hearing the witnesses, I wish to introduce the Committee's members we have here with us this morning.
[English]
We have Senator Moore from Nova Scotia, Senator Dyck from Saskatchewan who is the deputy chair of this committee, Senator Sibbeston from the Northwest Territories, Senator Lovelace Nicholas from New Brunswick, Senator Brazeau from Quebec, Senator Meredith from Ontario and last but not least is Senator Raine from British Columbia.
Members of the committee, please help me in welcoming our witnesses. From the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians, we have Acting Grand Chief Denise Stonefish and Education Coordinator Gina McGahey, Mr. Bob Atwin from First Nation Education Initiative Inc., Assistant Director of Education Keith Frame from the Prince Albert Grand Council and, Treaty Commissioner of Manitoba James B. Wilson from Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba. I should also point out that prior to assuming his role as commissioner, Mr. Wilson was the director of education for Opasquiak Education Authority.
Witnesses, we are nearing the end of this study, but every piece of evidence that is presented to the committee is important. I would like you to keep your presentations as short and tight as possible — I think the clerk made that request of you — so that senators can ask you questions. As we go forward we will try to craft a report that will hopefully have some significant impact on the decisions of government. I will start with the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians. Is it you, Ms. Stonefish, that will make the presentation?
Denise Stonefish, Acting Grand Chief, Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians: Yes, sir. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity. We will try to be very brief, because I believe that we sent in a report that outlines a number of the concerns that you are talking about.
Under AIAI's overview, we represent eight First Nations that are geographically diverse. We have communities that are in southern, eastern and northern Ontario. Even though we are just eight member nations, we are also very diverse in who we are. We are comprised of Mohawks, Delawares, Potawatomi, Oneidas and Ojibways. Each of us has our own different cultures, traditions and ways of doing things. However, that is not to say that we do not have some commonalities on certain issues. The Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians advocates the political interests of our member nations and one of them is education.
As I mentioned earlier, our governance structures are also very diverse. We have communities that are bilaterally managed jointly with INAC, or our community has an elected education board, an education committee or the council itself oversees education. Even our service deliveries are very diverse. Some communities have First Nations schools and some have their children bused into the provincial system or private schools.
We are here on behalf of the association and the member nations to put out our position which affirms First Nations jurisdiction over their education systems. We believe that they should be student-based and community centred.
The reason I say that is because traditionally and culturally, it is not just one segment that looks after educating our children. It is each and every one of us that live in a community, from grandparents to parents to aunties and uncles. That is why we are saying that it should be student-based and community centred.
The service delivery should include support for lifelong learning, community support systems to meet student and parent needs, community recognition of success, support and advocacy to assist transition to the different schools.
We also feel that the governance structure must allow diversity which is controlled and driven by First Nations. We feel that it would empower First Nations to develop its own laws and policies, manage schools, have partnership agreements, advocate, have parental engagement strategies, local curriculum development, language and cultural initiatives.
We believe that reforming education must originate and empower the people at the grassroots level, who must have the right to make choices, make decisions to meet the needs and to develop principles to strive for. We believe that this is an inherent right, and this empowerment in education reform is at the grassroots level.
Under tripartite education agreements, AIAI member nations' position supports partnership agreements as long as they do not interfere with First Nations jurisdiction. Because we are diverse, the agreements should be diverse, including informal and formal Partnership agreements, informal second level services with the Indian education coalition — which our members nations being to — and we should be looking at a formal tuition agreement.
Right now, AIAI is attempting to develop a partnership with the Ministry of Education and INAC on the regional student achievement strategy.
AIAI member nations do agree on partnership agreements with a clear understanding of jurisdiction, roles, responsibilities, expectations and accountability.
We do stress accountability components of the partnership agreements and a statement on First Nations jurisdiction to include laws and policies pertaining to First Nations governance and service delivery. Again, the second level support service partnerships are to provide indirect services to First Nations and the bilateral or the tripartite regional partnerships with collective guiding principles to address issues at a broader level. The agreement should be based on relationship and trust. The elements could include equal consultation, communication, recognizing successes, accountability and common goals.
We believe accountability must be a shared partnership, and we are willing to assist in improving the accountability of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. It is certainly difficult when you are so used to saying INAC. Aboriginal Affairs must be open and transparent with First Nations in the initial development and design of any partnership agreement.
Under the legislation piece, we feel that it should not include a national or provincial education act or any type of legislation that would interfere with First Nations jurisdiction. It should not include a transfer of federal responsibility to the province.
We would like to see the components of any legislation include: the affirming of treaty rights on education; the affirming of federal government funding responsibilities; an exclusive agreement for First Nations to have the power to enact education laws and policies and to enter into partnership agreements when requested; the recognition of a student-centred and lifelong learning vision; and guiding principles to allow for continued diversity and the recognition of tribal, cultural and language education.
There should be transparent roles and responsibilities for Aboriginal Affairs. There should be transparent accountability to all parties, and an appeal process should be included. There should be a conflict resolution process and, finally, an equitable and comparable funding commitment similar to the province.
First Nations consultation on legislation must begin at the design stage and must not be presented with a draft. We feel that we should be at every step of the process in order to have our needs met. Time and time again we have had things presented to us after the fact and it does not work. We always have to veer around or make adjustments to that. I think that if we are there on the ground floor, it will work much better. We can sit down, talk together and hash these things out so we come to an agreement as a partnership or as a group.
Under underfunding, students need tools to learn and funding is a tool for students to learn. Inadequate funding leads to a limited learning environment, and this limited learning environment leads to students being unsuccessful.
Again, AIAI's position at the end of this study is that the federal government should commit increased funding to ensure more equitable and comparable education, similar to what all Canadian children are guaranteed — not another report to be shelved.
Some of our First Nations — especially ours — are very committed to education to the point where they are adamant that they have a 100 per cent graduation rate from high school. We feel that our students, which are the fastest growing demographic across the country, could become contributing members to Canadian society. We believe this is a must and that any benefits you can provide to First Nations children will be a benefit to the rest of Canada.
We do need to improve the current First Nations' secondary graduation rate of 36 per cent. This forward thinking is our member nations' desire to assist students in reaching their potential. We have had a number of documents and reports that were filed, such as the ``Indian Control of Indian Education document.'' That document's vision talks about all that children need to know in order to live a good life: they need to have pride in themselves; they need to understand their fellow man; and they need to live in harmony with nature.
This is the 21st century and the children need to be proud of who they are, to be recognized and encouraged in their gifts and skills and to be productive members of Mother Earth.
In conclusion, the children must be immersed in their cultural identity, along with funding and the tools and the support systems to be successful.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Stonefish.
Bob Atwin, Executive Director, First Nation Education Initiative Inc.: Honourable chair, senators and members of the committee, it is my honour to be here with you today to speak about the issues addressing the gap that exists in the achievement and graduation rates between First Nations people and our fellow comrades in terms of First Nations throughout the country.
I will start out in my presentation with a quote from Chief Dan George, very much in keeping with the spirit of today's thinking. These words will always be relevant. Indeed, I can say without hesitation, there continues to be ``a longing in the heart of my people,'' the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet parents, teachers and children of New Brunswick, ``to reach out and grasp what is needed for their survival,'' which is education.
There is longing among youth of my nation to secure for themselves and their people the skills that will provide them with a sense of worth and purpose.
The role education plays in satisfying this longing has never been overestimated.
I give thanks to many for my ability to continue my lifelong work in support of improving education for First Nations children in New Brunswick. Mostly I give thanks to my mother and father, whose drive, wisdom, determination and inextinguishable spirit shepherded me through my years of doubt and uncertainty. With the courage they instilled in me, I was able to draw on skills to manoeuvre through high school, university and graduate school, always seeking to improve the education opportunities for my people.
First Nation Education Initiative Inc. is a regional management organization that includes seven Mi'kmaq First Nations and five Maliseet First Nations in New Brunswick. Four of these communities have band-operated schools. The children from eight other communities participate in a K4 program in their home communities and attend provincial schools up to Grade 12.
I do not want to dwell on the atrocities that have confronted the First Nations people in Canada over time. These experiences will be documented elsewhere.
Instead, I want to get off script here. When we were asked to do a presentation regarding gaps for our people, my presentation was a bit more global than the focus of the work of the Senate committee now. In terms of addressing concerns relating to the gap issue, I can speak to that without following the script.
In New Brunswick, we have an MOU that has brought the province of New Brunswick, the First Nations people in the province and the Department of Indian Affairs together to collectively look at addressing the gap in First Nations education.
The Auditor General's report of 2004 clearly articulates the gaps that exist in terms of our situation. The MOU that was signed was a conscious effort by all three parties, including 15 First Nations in the province, to address those issues. It clearly showed a commitment on the part of everyone who was a signatory to the agreement and demonstrated a strong will to address the gap that exists in the province of New Brunswick.
It has been a long struggle for us to get to this place in terms of understanding that we, as First Nations people, have the power to look at addressing our concerns in a very conscious effort. At the same time, we are of the conviction and, certainly, of the belief that we have the capacity to address our own concerns. We need partners to move our agendas along. We are dealing with systems that are necessarily in our power to deal with. Our concerns about our organization are to build capacity within our own organization and support the development of strategic initiatives that are presently being administered through the Education Partnerships Program, EPP, and the First Nation Student Success Program, FNSSP. Those initiatives have been successful to some degree because we have taken a serious look at the magnitude of what we want to do in the long term.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of partnership in respect to moving ahead. Our agreements in New Brunswick clearly state that the province, as the main provider of education, has a responsibility not just to First Nations people but also to the population as a whole. Through our agreements, we have what I consider to be a strong accountability measure in that superintendents, through agreements, plans or design, district by district, have to report to the cabinet once a year about what the reinvestment, which resulted from the MOU, has created in educational outcomes for our First Nations people in the province.
It is a work-in-progress, I think, in terms of looking at legislation. It is very clear in the province of New Brunswick that the First Nations leadership has signed on to and is looking at putting together a tripartite agreement that will cover all elements, including education. There is a strong indication that legislation is really a First Nations community right, and it is not a right of the federal government or provincial government to be dictating or working along to try to solve what I consider to be the problems of the day. This idea of prescription in regard to dealing with First Nations people has to end. My colleagues and I honestly feel that the days of being prescribed to have come and gone. I honestly feel that we now have a pool of First Nations people who have a vision, a passion and, certainly, a will to want to make an impact with their populations. At the end of the day, I feel that years and generations of neglect, abuse and all the things we have had to deal with over time are changing.
I provided you with some statistics in my presentation that clearly state we are making improvements. This year, which I have not been able to produce as part of the presentation, out of the four First Nations schools that we represent and support, resources that have been provided in numeracy and literacy have clearly made some significant impacts. Of the four schools we have, 90 per cent of our children now are attaining scores in literacy and numeracy results that exceed the provincial average. We are very proud of that.
As for moving ahead, it is clear that we have taken the next steps in regard to renewal. I think renewal in regard to an MOU and enhancement agreement that will support the reinvestment of money, and, more important, will support the business of making all parties accountable, is critical to the success of everyone all the way around.
With that, Mr. Chair, I will close. I would love to go on, but I think you do not want to hear me for an hour and a half, so I thank you.
The Chair: You delivered well, sir. We will definitely be asking you some questions.
Now I will go to Mr. Keith Frame, from the Prince Albert Grand Council.
Keith Frame, Assistant Director of Education, Prince Albert Grand Council: Thank you for the invite. When I received it, I asked what the topic of the day was — the challenges in First Nations education — and how to address it. Having worked in both provincial communities, primarily First Nations communities, I have been involved in education for First Nations for 25 years. It is a daunting topic to discuss in five minutes, but I will try to go from an outward focus to a narrow focus at the community level.
My colleagues have already talked about some of the issues of education in First Nations communities. In 2002 and 2004, the Auditor General described the broad context of underfunded programs and the challenges of delivering equal education concerning the issues of community and of geography in respect to small schools in isolated communities, and even the chronic health problems that have an influence on the attainment of education and attendance in communities. We are all well aware of many of the economic circumstances that challenge our communities.
There have been a great many academic reports outlining the challenges of funding, even from your Auditor General in 2002, who said that the development of the formula for funding is 15 years old. There are internal documents that talk about the funding formula for education being archaic, right down to academics in the last couple of years who discussed that there will be a $1.2 billion shortfall in the funding of youth education in First Nation schools in the next five years. Many of these documents are well known. I have supplied the USB key for you and your colleagues to look at further. One of the biggest challenges with regard to all of these documents is that for a significant period of time we are still asking the same questions.
I will go closer down to the community level and talk about some of the issues we have as a Grand Council. In the Grand Council, there are probably about 35,000 members. We have 28 schools, 6,500 students and we offer second level services. It is a big organization, but it does have a lot of challenges, many of them long-standing. Some of them are new, but we have seen them before, as some of my colleagues can talk about, for example, New Paths, Gathering Strength and all the programs that have come and gone. One of the issues we have now is there was some talk about partnership when I talked with your colleagues who invited me here. At the Prince Albert Grand Council, we are very cautious about partnerships. My leadership says we do not say ``tripartite.'' We do not talk about partnerships. We have a partnership with the federal government, with education, and in that partnership, there still remains a long- standing challenge to fulfill that partnership. Education is a treaty right.
We provide second level services to our 28 schools. Our First Nations are memberships. The 12 First Nations that we represent believe in Indian control of Indian education. To be a partner means one third of a representative group. We are already working with the federal government, and those challenges and that treaty right have not been fulfilled.
Right now, it is well documented that provincial schools — certainly in Saskatchewan — face challenges educating First Nations students in their systems. It is very perplexing as to how they are determined to be the experts of educating First Nations youth when they are having troubles. They have had a couple hundred years to figure it out. Most of our communities have been working on it for 30 or 35 years.
We are also concerned that the funding may be a symptom of a way to integrate into the provincial schools. Every time we talk about funding and the challenges we have in our schools, there is always a relation to the province. Our schools do not want to be provincial schools, so that is the challenge and why we will not discuss partnerships or tripartite agreements and definitely not legislation.
In terms of proposal-driven programs such as the First Nation Student Success Program, it is really a way to recognize the lack of A-base funding at the community level to support education. The trouble with proposal-driven programs is that first you have to be a very articulate proposal writer. If you are not, the committee might not recognize you or your proposal and need for funding, which is very interesting considering it is called the First Nation Student Success Program. If you do not write well, your students will not get an opportunity to experience that success.
In my province, some of our First Nations schools received funding, and 20 minutes down the road they did not. Why are some children deserving and some not? I asked that and could not get an answer.
In our organization, $2 million of funding was arbitrarily removed and no one explained why. We have asked and still have no answer. The FNSSP is ongoing, but every three years you have to apply. At the application stage, you are not guaranteed that your children can have access to that success money.
Right now, the success money we do have is very short. Some is taken away to drive other programs. The Education Information System that is anticipated must get set up and be put into operation. They are looking for money, so they will take it out of the student success program.
Therefore, it is extremely difficult for First Nations to develop long-term education programs and to promote student success on proposal-driven, underfunded, non-guaranteed, participatory programs. How do you plan for three years if you do not know what you have? How do you plan for three years if it can be taken away without anyone explaining why? I have been in schools as a teacher and a principal; I do not know how you do that. I would like someone to show that to me; I would be interested to know.
The federal government will be spending $27 million over the next couple of years to bring out the Education Information System in September 2012. Most of that system is punitive in nature; you either get involved or you do not get the money. Much like the student success plan, which dangled the resources, the money, in front of schools, they had to take it. They were underfunded. What do you do?
With respect to the system that will be developed, the Auditor General even stated that INAC could not implement appropriate performance and results indicators and that in the absence of meaningful indicators, the department was not in a position to assess the report on performance and results of education.
In 2003, the Prince Albert Grand Council completed ``indicators'' reports. I have both on a USB key for you. They are on K-12 education. Those documents drove policy, initiatives and student programming at the community level. They produced distance education, a revamping of our libraries and the re-establishment of a regional management organization, or RMO, around special education. These were works that did not require punitive measures on $27 million. These were programs that could be done at the community level. As one of my colleagues explained, there are lots of experts at the community level who work there, who live there and who know what must happen. It is not necessary for someone from Regina or Ottawa to say, ``Let me tell you what is best for your community in Cumberland House.''
Although a data system is being developed at the federal level, it still cannot be explained in its entirety. I have asked many times, because I have sat on that committee for last two years, ``Could you please explain what you will do with the education information once you have it?'' Let me be more specific. ``Once you gather all the Grade 4 marks and aggregate them together for Saskatchewan or Canada, what could you possibly do with that number in terms of student programming to have student success?'' I cannot get an answer.
In terms of strategies at the community level, in the last two years we have been working on research in understanding the early years. These are programs that have been done across Canada with early development instruments. In the Grand Council, we have found that 50 per cent of our children coming into kindergarten will be vulnerable compared to the 25 per cent Canada-wide.
As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, with the Auditor General and that wide focus on all those attributes that affect communities at the grassroots level, we can start to see the effects prior to students coming into underfunded proposal-driven programs.
Thank you for letting me respond to that question about challenges and reforms. I think we all know what the challenges are; we have known them for many years. I would ask for some acknowledgement that, as my colleague says, we have experts at the community level who have been in education for a long time and who have a BEd, a masters or a doctorate. They work in the programs and know the communities, the children, moms and dads. It is not a matter of a new textbook and desk; it is a matter of saying, ``Here are the resources that you need'' because that need has been well documented over many years.
Again, having worked in that system for 25 years and having worked over June and July and to suddenly get a letter saying, ``Sorry, your success plan has been cut back,'' how do you do that? Think about that. You set up a program and call it Student Success. You provide an underfunded school system the money to meet success, if they write the proposal correctly, but then you take away one third of the proposal resources and say, ``Get some student success.''
The other thing I strongly want to convey is this: Stop thinking dollars. When you talk about $200, that is a computer for an elementary classroom. When you talk about $200,000, those are school libraries. Many times when I talk to my colleagues about money, this and that amount, let us change the word ``money'' to ``resources.'' These are the resources that are being taken directly out of the classrooms, adult decisions on the backs of children.
James B. Wilson, Treaty Commissioner of Manitoba, Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba: Honourable senators, thank you for allowing me to testify at this committee.
To add briefly to my bio, I have approximately 13 years experience as an educator in the public system, the on- reserve system and in a charter school system in the United States, as teacher and administrator. Some of what you hear you will have already heard, no doubt.
There are two major issues facing education on reserves in Canada: funding and accountability. If these issues are tackled in a manner that respects the treaty relationship first established when Canada was in its formative years, Canadians can make major progress in tackling our greatest social crises.
Education in Canada generally falls into the jurisdiction of the provinces. It accepts students on reserve, which are the responsibility of the federal government. Using Manitoba as an example, students are governed by the Public Schools Act. In Manitoba, there are the Public Schools Act and the Education Administration Act. This is a copy of the relevant acts in Manitoba, 150 plus pages. This is only the English version.
Students on reserve in Manitoba are governed by the Indian Act. We have three pages on the relevant sections of the Indian Act. I think that is the beginning of the inequity right there.
Current educational outcomes on reserves are far below Canadian standards, with no laws governing on-reserve education, vast funding and support inequities, infrastructure deficits and no common measurements of success. The resulting graduation rates in some provinces are as low as 29 per cent.
First Nations education systems on reserve in Canada receive anywhere from $2,000 to $9,000 less funding per student than their provincial counterparts. If we look at the report entitled Financial Reporting and Accounting in Manitoba Education, the FRAME report, the discrepancy between the public school divisions that deliver education to similar populations as on-reserve schools is actually closer to $9,000 difference between the public system and the on- reserve system. I will provide that report to the clerk later.
This discrepancy leads to higher teacher-to-student ratios, fewer course offerings, lower paid teachers and less ability for school systems to stay up-to-date with current events and curriculum advances. Exacerbating this funding problem is a lack of laws governing education on reserve. Education in Canada again falls under the jurisdiction of the provinces, except on reserves, which remain under federal jurisdiction.
All students in Canada, except First Nations students, fall under the governance of the provincial Public Schools Act which determines, among other things, minimum number of teaching days, teacher certification and school board governance. Everything is covered under the Public Schools Act, as well as criteria for special needs and resources.
Again, First Nations school systems have no such laws. Instead, they are governed only by the eight sections of the Indian Act. These sections need to be replaced by education-specific legislation. The manner in which this is done needs to respect the relationship established through the treaties and acknowledge that First Nations leaders wanted access to equal opportunity for their descendents when they exchanged rights for access to the lands.
Some may claim that this process undermines the treaty right to education, and there has been some talk about the national panel and the whole treaty right to education. While critics are right to hold the importance of treaties as sacred, the fear stems from confusing the Indian Act with treaties.
Numerous treaties were signed between First Nations and the government, over 70 treaties in total all across Canada. The Indian Act was created in part as an attempt to create a regime under which certain treaty obligations could be implemented. In other words, the Indian Act is in part a result of the treaties and not vice versa. Repealing the Indian Act or sections of it would not diminish the treaties as they preceded the act. Again, the treaties are partnerships that were created and negotiated in a mutual way. The Indian Act is something that was very one-sided; it came from the government and was essentially pushed down.
Would the removal of the Indian Act affect the federal government's relationship and shared responsibilities with First Nations as defined by the treaties? Absolutely not. The removal of the relevant or, more precisely, irrelevant sections of the Indian Act would mean an increase in the practical application of the treaty relationship and a move towards greater self-reliance for First Nations.
The Indian Act is merely a piece of legislation. By their nature, parliamentary acts can be amended or abolished; they are not intended to last forever. The treaties, however, are solemn agreements between First Nations and the Crown, intended by both sides to last forever. They provide terms under which certain First Nations entered Confederation. Significantly, the treaties also have constitutional protection — sections 25 and 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act — while the Indian Act does not.
What might take the place of the Indian Act, if it is dismantled, while still honouring the treaty right to education?
Manitoba First Nations have created an alternative that meets the administrative needs of Canada and moves towards greater self-reliance. Over 10,000 people were consulted in creating a template for a First Nations education system in Manitoba. The education framework agreement from 1990 to 1994 started to remove Manitoba First Nations from AANDC control at that time, INAC presently. Between 1994 and 2000, this agreement was amalgamated into the Framework Agreement Initiative. The education model was amalgamated into a system-wide reform strategy.
The move to such an amalgamated province-wide First Nations education system in Manitoba involves implementing the laws needed to guarantee success in education and doing so in terms that assert First Nations' control of First Nations education. By standardizing and amalgamating such systems as human resources, curriculum development and assessment, First Nations can also move towards schools that reflect cultural and linguistic relevance while meeting the modern needs for transferability. This would allow First Nations to move beyond the standards sets by the provinces.
As an example, most provinces have roughly minimum teaching days of around 195 or 196. By creating our own laws, our own systems of governance for education, First Nation schools could move to 225 or 250 teaching days a year. There is nothing stopping First Nations schools from far exceeding the provincial standards and creating programs that take advantage of our unique relationship with the lands.
It is time to move from control of education to taking responsibility for education. The goal of improving education on reserves must include reversing the dependency inherently built into the Indian Act, to ensure the long-term self- reliance that the treaties were based upon and to balance the relationship between First Nations and Canada. A properly resourced First Nations-run education system could pave the way towards the academic rigour and cultural renewal necessary to lead First Nations out of AANDC dependency and return to the full partnership that the treaties guarantee.
The Chair: Thank you.
Correct me if I am wrong, but some of you have spoken in favour of a tripartite agreement working with the provinces. I think it was you, Mr. Atwin. It has been proven in Nova Scotia wherein an agreement has been made with the Mi'kmaq. However, others of you are very reticent with regard to tripartite agreements involving the provinces. Is this because you feel that the federal government is trying to remove themselves from their fiduciary responsibility, or is it driven by treaty agreements that you feel are more dominant? The thing is that at the present time, INAC, by their own admission, are merely funders. Mr. Wilson, I think you said there are eight sections of the Indian Act, 114 to 122, that cover education, and the Manitoba education act is a volume of pages.
The fact is that in some of the areas, such as in the province I am from, British Columbia, there are First Nations who are trying to work with the province. The provinces are the people responsible for education, and they have the infrastructure and the necessary tools to provide education for others. There seems to be a great hesitancy on the part of many of our First Nations people to even think of going in that direction, of working with the provinces and using the facilities and the expertise they have.
I am not saying we should give up the cultural or linguistic rights or anything, but somewhere along the line I would like to better understand — and I think the committee would too — why there is this great hesitancy. Is it because you think the feds are trying to opt out of their fiduciary responsibility, or are they afraid they will be undermining their treaty rights? Could you comment on that?
Mr. Wilson: I will try to answer that. Strictly speaking, Manitoba does have a tripartite agreement between the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the province and the federal government. I was the Education Director of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation when that agreement came into effect and I saw the immediate results. Before the agreement, the province would not set foot on reserve. We would ask the province for an assessment specialist and they said, ``Well we cannot do any training on reserve.'' We would go around that by talking to the public school near us. They would request it and we would send our teachers there.
After the agreement came into effect, we requested assessment specialists, and right away they flew them up and spent two days on reserve in our community. It was the same with special education specialists. There was an agreement in Manitoba, and as education director I saw the immediate positive benefits of that.
At the same time, the agreement had to recognize the jurisdictional politics that involved who controls education on reserve.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: I have many questions, but I know we do not have a lot of time. I have a question for Ms. Stonefish and Mr. Atwin. Is there a cap on education funding for the communities?
Ms. Stonefish: I will refer your question to Ms. McGahey.
Gina McGahey, Education Coordinator, Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians: Yes, there is a gap in regard to funding with education.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Is there a ``cap'' on funding?
Ms. McGahey: As a former educator and after a number of years working with the formula, I would probably say yes. That cap has been there for over 15 years. We have not seen any increases in the band-operated formula, special education, maintenance or upkeep of First Nations schools. Yes, the reality is that there is a cap. If you have not seen any increases, then you are trying to function with the current economics and an increase in enrolment.
I want to make this point clear. When we talk about the cap, the saddest part is that the people most affected are the students. I really appeal on behalf of special education students who do not see any increases coming and First Nations that have to prioritize who will get funded. We should not do that with special education students. They are the most vulnerable and we need to meet their needs.
Mr. Atwin: In response to the question, there definitely is a gap and has been since 1989. As an example, the band operated funding formula, or BOFF, has essentially not increased. What we receive on an annual basis is less than 2 per cent. The funding ranges from $5,400 to $5,900 per student throughout the province and Atlantic Canada. Comparatively speaking, we are looking at between $1,700 and $7,700, which is not a present tuition rate in regard to looking at the province.
There are certain difficulties created because of that situation. Much of it has to do with fact that we, as First Nation people, cannot effectively recruit and retain qualified First Nation and non-First Nation teaching personnel. We cannot offer pension plans that are in keeping with collective agreement rates. We cannot compete. We have noticed — in respect of looking at the whole thing — that it is systemic. It is a situation that we need to address. It is one of the underlying factors that we, as First Nation people, need to bring forward to the Senate, to the houses of Parliament in respect of realizing that we have some very serious funding deficits.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Is there adequate funding for special needs students in the communities as well as the outside communities that some students go to?
Mr. Atwin: I can address that from our perspective. One of the things that we did prior to looking at taking over the management of the high cost special education program in the province was a formal assessment with regard to how many kids were out there in the system. We identified 343 kids that were in need of services based on the seven elements that they use to establish priorities in the provincial system. Of those 343 kids, 89 were funded. Of the 89 that were funded, 88 were funded by First Nations, meaning that the province kicked in to support one child for one year. That really was, and is still, an issue. In many ways that is what drove us to look at addressing our enhancement agreement to make people and systems much more accountable. We are counted in as part of a provincial allocation and $485 per child is returned back to the districts. Our kids are counted as part of that distribution model for districts, and depending on the size of the Aboriginal population in the districts, resources support certain intervention strategies.
That being said, I think that in response to your question, I go back in time and this dates me a little bit. In 2003 and 2004 when the federal government was on the verge of announcing the high cost special education program, working with the CCOE, NIEC and AFN, we put together a business plan supporting what I considered to be the real cost of providing service to our kids. In New Brunswick alone we came up with a figure of $13.1 million to look at supporting children in need, in both band operated and provincial school systems. Our present budget to support that population is $1.7 million, so there are definitely gaps and deficiencies. We are doing the best we can given what we have. With our EPP program, we are addressing very strategic moves to make the province more accountable, meaning that they are now attending to systems that are under your jurisdiction. ``I have the band operator and you have the provincial schools, so why are you not addressing the needs of our children?''
That is the basic essence of our agreements.
The Chair: I do not think there is any dispute with the fact that there is underfunding. I use the analogy of developing a vehicle. The gas for the vehicle would be the money later, but the object of our study is to try to determine whether we can craft a vehicle that will deliver proper K to grade 12 education to Aboriginal or First Nations children. As Mr. Wilson points out, we have eight sections in the Indian Act and the people from INAC themselves have said that they do not have the expertise or the wherewithal to provide that.
I do not think this is fair. You can ask whatever you want, but we are in the final stages of trying to draft a report and we need the information as to how to design this vehicle to take us from A to B, from where we are with First Nations education to a better level and a higher success rate.
Many of our witnesses have clearly stated that we do need something. Do we need legislation? Possibly not, but we have to craft something. We cannot just go to the government and say we want more money and leave the system the way it is. The system is broken; it is not working. The only way we are going to do this is to make a recommendation to government to provide a system that hopefully will work.
Senator Dyck: I would like to thank the witnesses for their testimony this morning. It is a very big topic and you have done an excellent job of putting your points forward.
I will let you think about my first question a bit, which is: If you were to make one or possibly two recommendations to the committee, what would you consider to be the most likely change to the system that would improve student success or graduation rates from high school? If you were to choose from what you have said, what would be your top one or two recommendations?
Second, our chairman said that INAC, now called Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, AANDC, are merely funders that do not have expertise in education. I think I heard this morning that they are not really just funders; it sounds like they have a lot of control. They make decisions about how the funding goes. They appear to make decisions about cutting off funding that seem to be somewhat arbitrary.
Do you see the department as merely funders, and would there be any changes that you would like to see in the way funding decisions are made? Is there some fundamental flaw with the relationship between Aboriginal Affairs and whatever authority is controlling education on reserve?
Could we have people from each group take that on?
Mr. Atwin: I would like to comment. First, in respect to looking at the money issue, I think we have beaten that issue all over the place in looking at its place now and moving ahead on this. However, it is my contention and our experience that good teachers in a classroom will make a lot of difference in regard to educational outcomes for kids in the classroom.
We are definitely affected by the fact that we cannot recruit, we cannot retain, and we cannot compete with the outside system in getting those people into our own system, because we cannot offer what I consider to be the going rate. We cannot offer pension plans. We cannot offer those types of things in competition with school districts down the road.
Good teachers are certainly going to create a nurturing environment. Good leadership in regard to looking at what is depicted by the teachers and what is supported by administration is critical to that success.
Funding is one of these things that probably will never be fixed in our lifetime. I honestly feel that we need look at enhancement agreements where there is a reinvestment of paid tuition. We get back money that is reinvested in the system, more than $6 million annually, and that does not even count what normally comes into the system in regard to the FFNSP, the EPP and all those other resources that support First Nations.
There is some value in looking at taking resources wherever we can get them. First Nations people are very resourceful, as you well know, and there are lots of ways to skin a muskrat. When you look at the whole thing, it is all about getting the job done. We have been forced to do those types of things, given the fact that we have limited resources, but we have been resourceful enough to make things work. That has been the strength in our ability to be able to respond and be reactive to what we have in our agreements.
There is a serious feeling that there are faults in regard to the agreements. The funding issues need to be brought up to speed because they are dated, and we need to address equity issues in regard to what is being done now in support of band-operated school systems compared to provincial schools. There is a big gap, a big equity issue in how those systems are being supported. I think it is something that should be addressed if it can be changed.
Mr. Wilson: Harvard University has an ongoing project called the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Some of the lessons from that project are relevant to education.
They looked at businesses on reserves, mainly in the United States and a few in Canada. They found that two key factors significantly impacted the success of businesses on reserves. The first was that politics was removed from the day-to-day operation of the business. The second was that there were independent dispute resolution mechanisms in place. If the communities had those two things in place, their businesses were four times more likely to succeed.
Having been an education director and a teacher on reserve, I think it is very important for the politics to be removed from the day-to-day operations of the schools. It used to be that band education authorities could incorporate and they would get money directly from INAC. After the mid-1990s, with the whole push toward self- government, the funding now goes through chief and council, which is another level of funding. Then it goes to the education authorities.
Speaking as an educator, I would support that education money be targeted from kindergarten to grade 12 and post-secondary — that 100 per cent of education funding be spent strictly on education. I am not sure if that was an answer to your first or second question or both.
Ms. Stonefish: In regard to INAC being merely funders, it can be viewed that there is a lot of control there, but I think that part of it has to do with the legislative interpretation by some of the policy-makers or the bureaucrats. It is clear that some of the policies that are developed do not meet the needs of the First Nations. Sometimes the criteria for the programs that come down through those legislative pieces or through programs being developed by INAC do not meet the First Nations needs and, for lack of better wording, we have to be creative in order to get our needs addressed through those criteria.
One of the things that might help in that area is for Aboriginal Affairs representation to make visits to the First Nations to see exactly what is going on in the schools or the classrooms and see exactly what we are talking about. Hopefully, with that type of consultation, they will come to realize that we can sit back and jointly develop programs or come up with ideas on how we can move forward to more successful graduation rates.
As for improvement in student success, I will let Ms. McGahey answer that.
Ms. McGahey: In regard to student success, I try to think of the holistic child. As a former teacher, I have seen that we do need parent engagement for success; that is ultimately the most important thing. When you get parents involved, they make changes within their child, their home and in support, but at the same time, as a teacher, there is also the cultural and the language infusion. Any time you bring that into the classroom, the children have some sense of ownership. They feel like they belong to something, and that has to be built, so the curriculum needs to be built along with the learning styles.
If there were any improvements to make for students' success, those would be the ones.
Mr. Frame: In response to your first question about initiatives, I would strongly suggest UEY or K4/K5 education. It has been long researched and documented, namely, the opportunity that awaits young children when they get a very good start prior to getting into Grade 1 and the challenges that exist if they do not have it. Those are already well documented.
On the second question about the present program, as you mentioned, the federal government is designing a car that someone else has to drive. Instead of prescribing what a system should be, let the First Nations describe it. They know the needs. All the experts are out in those fields. It is very difficult to describe a program that someone has to fulfill.
Senator Sibbeston: Our Senate committee is sincerely interested in finding solutions or in some way contributing through the report that we will be making about First Nations education in Canada. We have had an opportunity to tour and visit some areas of our country. We were down in the Maritimes and we were in the Prairies. I do not know whether we saw just the successful places or we did not visit the outer, more remote places where they are having a lot of difficulty. At the schools we went to, we saw some very successful programs and very successful schools.
It seems that the element of Aboriginal First Nations education success is their involvement and control, the required money, and the initiatives. Everywhere we went where there was real success, there were initiatives by the First Nations in terms of either the programs or infusing their own money because they just could not wait or there just was no federal money.
As an example, on a reserve in Alberta, the reserve put in millions of dollars to build its own school so they could have a Cree language total immersion school for their children. It was very encouraging to see.
Are we at the point in our country where we have to recognize that we are not going to get any help from the federal government? They do not have any education expertise. They are the funders, but, in the end, First Nations are the ones that need to do the job and eventually be successful.
The other reality is that provinces, because they have a jurisdiction over education, are the ones that are experts in education. They are the ones in our country that are creating the educated masses of people. I think we cannot help but recognize that and use some of that skill. I do not think it is the answer to just siege and be separate from the very successful element in our society.
As First Nations leaders that are involved in education, do you agree that you are the answers? You have to do it; no one will do it for you. Secondly, in the end, you may have to infuse your own money into programs. You keep asking for money from the federal government, you are being funded at a lesser amount than the provinces are, and that is not likely to change. Do you have to find your own ways to provide adequate funding and, in that way, raise the level of education amongst First Nations in our country? If I can get a response from you, that will help us.
Mr. Wilson: To question one, I would say definitely yes, that the answers will come from our communities. That is my perspective, but, again, while acknowledging that we will look to best practices globally, whether it is the indigenous community globally or just education globally, adopt best practices and bring those into the community. One example is the Kamehameha schools in Hawaii that have done extensive studies on language and culture programs and their effects on standardized high stakes state assessments. They are finding that native Hawaiian children that get access to more culture and language programs are doing better on state assessments than their counterparts who do not. They are scoring higher in science, literacy and numeracy.
As for one source revenue, I can only speak as a former education director, so I will speak from that perspective. In our community, at one point, we were going to ratify the Public Schools Act. We were going to call this the Opaskwayak Cree Nation Education Act, which would have allowed our school board to levy some sort of internal taxes within the community. In our community, that is something we have been working on over the long term. I think many community members would see that as one part in the long-term challenges. However, I can speak only from that perspective, from our community.
Senator Sibbeston: I have another short question that might trigger some reaction. Is the idea of First Nations education to create a Brown man that is educated, can function very well in English, and can get a job anywhere; or is it the idea that the Brown man also speaks his language and knows the culture, in addition to all of the English qualifications that are needed in our society?
Mr. Wilson: Definitely, it would be.
Senator Sibbeston: I mean men and women.
Ms. McGahey: I have a comment. My comment is in regard to the ``Brown man.'' What came to me is the term ``White man.'' The White man has the culture, the language, the teachings and everything, but at the same time, the Brown man does not. It is important. It is a part of who you are as an identity, as a citizen of this country. As a citizen of Canada and as a citizen of this country, we should have the same opportunities.
The Chair: Senator Sibbeston, we found this out, whether it was Onion Lake with Chief Wallace Fox or in the Navajo Nation when we travelled there.
Senator Sibbeston: Yes.
Senator Patterson: I was intrigued by what I thought was Mr. Frame's practical advice. If I understand it correctly, you are saying the Education Information System, if I am describing it right, an initiative of INAC to improve accountability, is expensive, a hassle, will not make a difference, will not be read and is a waste of money. I think you said the student success program, after dealing with A-based shortfalls, is promising but proposal-driven and it is benefiting only the ones who can write proposals.
Do I understand you to be saying the Education Information System is money poorly spent and the student success program is a good investment and should be more accessible, more permanent and more universal?
Mr. Frame: Sitting on the EIS joint committee, I do not have a lot of confidence in it at all, mostly because it is often described as a work-in-progress. Its sole purpose cannot be defined. It is an open system of data collection with no oversight. With respect to the student success plan, I interpret it myself as a way to try to address the lack of A-based funding, but that is proposal money that cannot be guaranteed past a three-year period.
Senator Patterson: If you overcame those issues of it being proposal-driven and the limits, is it going in the right direction? Is it something we should consider applying and adding to the design of this new vehicle we are trying to envision?
Mr. Frame: As your colleague mentioned, when they went to Alberta, they saw good and successful things taking place in schools. They will continue to take place even with underfunding because good teachers will do good work. These success plans, the New Paths, Gathering Strength, whatever you want to call it, they will change within the next couple of years. They will be used in good ways, the best possible ways they can by good teachers, but the reality of it is in four or five years, I do not know if they will be there. Therefore, it is very difficult to say, ``Let us build strong schools. Let us talk about five years. Let us talk about 10 years. Let us talk about 15 years.'' How do you do that when you do not know what you have?
The Education Information System is an example of designing that car and asking someone else to drive it, when we already designed that car in 2003 and we drove it successfully. It is that whole idea where the question was about having the answers and who will do it for you. You do not need to prescribe it. Let the systems describe what it is. What is the purpose of language and culture in our schools, and how does that relate to student retention?
When there is K4 and K5 funding for children who live in communities that are challenged, what does that mean when they get to Grade 1? There was discussion about developing a tax. How do you develop a tax with a mom and dad on social assistance? What will you tax?
With respect to the EIS, I do not have confidence in it. I have confidence in the one my colleagues and others have developed and it worked, with redundancy at $27 million. With the student success plan, there are ways to patch up a lack of A-based funding. It will change in a couple of years; they will call it something else. I do not mean to be pessimistic, but after 25 years you see a pattern of precedent.
Senator Patterson: We heard pretty clearly this morning from a number of the witnesses on legislation: Mr. Frame, no legislation, no tripartite agreement; Ms. Stonefish, do not present us with a fait accompli on legislation; Mr. Atwin, do not give us prescriptions. As Mr. Wilson said, the present legislation is ancient, inadequate and it is really embarrassing in the Indian Act. We have a mandate to look at legislation.
I would like to ask you to help us here. You are not really saying, ``Stick with the status quo,'' the eight sections our chair mentioned. I think you are telling us that our recommendations on legislation, and I think we must make them, should be that legislation be permissive, that it recommend diverse approaches throughout the country and that it allow the possibility of agreements with provinces because some First Nations are doing well with those and have told us so. In addition, we cannot ignore the point you all made about the need for First Nations to have jurisdiction and that treaties must not be overridden.
Do you understand that we will have to do something about legislation? I think what you are really saying is, ``Be flexible and make it permissive rather than prescriptive.'' I guess I would like to ask some of you who feel strongly and strongly said ``no legislation,'' if we move in that direction, are we respecting your strong views?
Ms. Stonefish: I guess that is basically what we are saying, that we do not like the current legislation, we do not like the way it is going and we feel that we cannot move forward in addressing strong, successful graduation rates. Yes, to be flexible; the legislation should be flexible because we are diverse across the country. Each and every one of us has different needs, and we all have different ways of looking at things.
Yes, first and foremost, the treaties should not be overwritten. We maintain that because we believe that those are agreements that were made. Even though they were made a long time ago, they are still standing agreements between the governments, and they still should be respected and honoured in the spirit and intent in which they were written.
I believe I said earlier as well that if there will be legislation drafted, we certainly would like to be a part of that.
We feel that at this particular point in time we could be contributors to the drafting of legislation that would certainly benefit us in the long run.
Senator Brazeau: I have a loaded question. Many of you talked about First Nations jurisdiction over First Nations education. While I do not dispute the fact, or that statement, because the way I interpret it may be my own, can you please elaborate on what you mean by that? Let me try to bring some added context.
The reality is that we live in a country where there are jurisdictional disputes between federal and provincial governments, and there have been 100-year-old disputes between those two levels of government. When we talk about First Nations education, we have the federal government who has jurisdiction for Aboriginal people or First Nations people who live on reserve. The provincial governments deliver education for non-Aboriginal students and for Aboriginal students who live off reserve.
Having said that, the issue at hand is that while it may sound nice and catchy to say, yes, First Nations people should have jurisdiction over their education, at some point it will be up to First Nations people to convince the decision makers that their system, or whatever they will develop, will be better than what is there in the provincial systems. Have any of you, in the work you have done in the past, ever developed such a framework to attempt to come to the federal government and say, ``Look, we have a system where our expectations and our standards would exceed provincial standards''? If you are at a point where you can convince the decision makers that your system would be better, then it is hard for the decision makers so say no. Have you developed anything in your experiences?
Mr. Atwin: In response to the question of jurisdiction over legislation, we have to respect the fact that leadership, especially in my part of the country, honestly feels that it is a community right. It is one of the things that, as a First Nation, they own and fess up to the fact that they have a responsibility on delivering.
The manner by which that is done in lots of ways takes many different forms. Whether it is through a committee, whether it is designated to council members, whether it is done by council and committee, the bottom line is that the outcomes and looking at identifying the performance indicators and looking at indicators of success is something that is in the mind of every person who has been involved in regard to this task.
In the agreements that we signed, clause 5 clearly states that parties agree to work together to develop and implement appropriate performance criteria and indicators to measure improved educational outcomes for First Nation kids in New Brunswick and to monitor the effectiveness of this memorandum of understanding.
It is very clear in our minds that we are brokering and we want to make all parties accountable to the actions that we have signed off on. It is clear that the First Nations do want to have their autonomy safeguarded. I do not think they want to get into situations where outside agencies would have an effect on looking at the design of what that could be, whether it is locally based, whether it is school based or, at the same time, things we deal with in regard to districts, in regard to district councils, those type of things, but it is something that is in the offing.
Respecting that there is a place for legislation, I really think that the MK model, and looking at the work done by FNESC in B.C., some very good work has been done; some solid foundational work that has evolved from their own ranks and that cannot be overlooked.
I really feel that legislation that is laid at our feet without having input is a big mistake. I honestly feel that success comes from having buy-in. If we do not have buy-in we will not get people embracing the notion of what this is all about. The second level of service delivery is recognition of the fact there has to be a mechanism that overlooks, supervises and delivers on programs that First Nations want, drawing upon the expertise that exists within their own regions. It is critical to that success.
It is a balance in respect of understanding that if you look into developing legislation you involve the partners. I do not think legislation should come from bodies that do not understand. We are all partners in this in regard to looking and understanding that we all want what everyone wants. We want our kids to be successful. We want to eliminate the gap. I would like to see everyone achieve a Ph.D. and become contributing members of society, but that is not going to happen. You take the next best thing, and whatever the next best thing is we have to come to the understanding of what that reality is.
Mr. Wilson: In regard to the programs, I will talk about Opaskwayak Cree Nation. The community of Opaskwayak Cree Nation recognizes that the provincial assessments, which were being done at Grades 3, middle years and Grade 12, were not giving them enough data on the students. What happened in the Opaskwayak Cree Nation is the education authority developed assessments from grade 1 right to grade 6. That data then fed the school improvement planning process. OCN has a Cree immersion program. Many of the parents wanted to know how the program was affecting their performance in other subjects. Before this assessment started we had no data to give them, other than anecdotal data. This allowed us to say our kids that are in Cree immersion are scoring higher on English language arts than their English only counterparts. It was a real benefit to the Cree immersion program.
Also at Opaskwayak Cree Nation, the provincial standard for teaching minutes per week is around 1,500 minutes per week, 196 days per year. Opaskwayak Cree Nation went to 1,700 minutes a week and 206, I believe, teaching days last year. They were the first school open in the province of Manitoba. That is one thing. These three pages of the Indian Act, if you are a libertarian it is good, right, because you have the flexibility to do that. A public school would not have been able to do that. You would have got right away into issues with collective bargaining with the Manitoba teachers society and all that.
It is a Catch-22 I suppose, in that the lack of laws are a negative thing but it allows First Nation schools right now to take that extra step to push way beyond the provincial standards. That is one example I can give.
Mr. Frame: To respond to that question, you made mention of provinces and doing it better. You really have to check into who the provinces are educating. Look at the education rates of Aboriginal First Nations students. Look at the rates of children who live in parts of communities that have social economic issues. It is really important we do not confuse the culture of poverty with the culture of First Nations because they are two very different things.
Senator Brazeau: I understand your point, but the question was if any of you had worked on developing a framework that would exceed provincial standards.
Mr. Frame: With the students that we educate?
Senator Brazeau: Yes.
Mr. Frame: I believe we have very strong systems. I would challenge you. Could you show me a provincial one that will educate our students better than we can do? Which province; which city?
It is a two-way street. I will take your question if you will take my question.
Senator Brazeau: Perhaps we are confusing the point. In the provincial system individuals attend from different ethnicities, different backgrounds and different countries. They all have different needs, but they have to achieve a standard in order to graduate.
Has anyone, including yourselves, worked on developing a framework that you can show the federal government, who you have to convince at the end of the day, whether you agree with it or like it or not, that is better or will exceed the provincial system?
Mr. Frame: We follow all the provincial curricula. Most of our teachers follow the best practices that most provincial teachers use. Some provinces have run their systems for hundreds of years. In many of our communities, the federal system was removed and mom and dad got control of local education, inherent treaty right, and they have been running the schools for 25 or 30 years.
I will challenge you. How do you compare a system that has been going on for 200 years and is having challenges educating First Nation students with a system that has been going for perhaps 30 years and ask that it do one better? In our schools we integrate language and culture with the resources we have. You have to compare two of the same things. I can see many flaws in your logic. You are thinking school-school, but the attributes on each side of the scale are not the same.
The Chair: If I understand correctly, I do not think Senator Brazeau is asking that. He is asking if you have developed a system that would be better than the systems that are presently in place provincially. I think of some systems such as Onion Lake, Saskatchewan.
Senator Brazeau is fully qualified to defend himself, but in the spirit of getting on with it, the question is whether you have developed a vehicle that is better than the vehicles that are there.
Mr. Frame: I think there are some. I think there are.
The Chair: Would you mind sending something to the committee on that? This is what we are interested in. We are looking for solutions. We are trying to make a difference. This committee has made a difference on economic development, under the leadership of Senator Sibbeston, and on specific claims. This is a challenging issue, there is to question. Education is one of the toughest files that we will have to deal with. We are not looking to minimize the importance of what is going on; we are trying to find a solution what works.
Ms. Stonefish: In answer to the question, no, we have not developed a framework that exceeds the provincial system standards. However, that is not to say that we have not had a hand in developing programs and working with the more progressive local school boards that are open to working with First Nations. You must keep in mind that they are far and few between that would allow us to introduce programs into the provincial system that would assist our students.
As for an overall framework, we have not had time to develop that type of framework. We are struggling now to develop a framework for child welfare, and that is a big issue too.
Senator Raine: I would like to thank you all for coming. This has been a very good session. Most of what I was going to ask has already been asked.
We all know that good teachers will produce good students, and we know the struggle that First Nations have, especially in the remote areas, of attracting good teachers and keeping them.
If you had legislation that prescribed a teachers' pay scale and legislation stating that the federal government would have to fund to that level, would that be useful?
The pay scale of the RCMP, for instance, is the average of the top three police forces in the country. That is what you have to pay an RCMP officer, even if he is delivering his services in a remote community. That does not always go down well with the local mayors because they think the salary is out of whack with the pay scale in the region. However, you do attract good people.
Mr. Wilson: I will use again the Opaskwayak Cree Nation as an example. OCN is right across the Saskatchewan River from the town of The Pas, which is Kelsey School Division. There, a Class 5 teacher with 10 years of experience probably makes about $10,000 more than a teacher on reserve, and I think that would be quite common throughout Manitoba.
Some Manitoba First Nations are talking about amalgamation. Instead of having 55 independent schools in Manitoba on reserve, we are talking about working together to unify HR and cooperate on curriculum development, land-based education programs and all of that. In the HR area, it would be hugely beneficial if the pay scales reflected the provincial averages or were indexed in some way against something.
It may be relevant that students of military personnel in Canada are another federal responsibility. Other than First Nations, they are the only students that are. Most bases have agreements with the surrounding public school divisions. If they do not, the military funds the students indexed on the Ottawa-Carleton school division.
As long as the pay scales were at par, that alone would have a huge impact, because teachers get experience and training, and then the public school system steals them from the First Nations schools.
Senator Raine: You are asking them to have additional knowledge of culture and language, so the skills required are higher.
I would be interested to hear the comments of our other witnesses.
Ms. McGahey: AIAI's member nations probably would like to see a teachers' pay scale, but that is only part of the pie. It is not only teachers. What about EAs, janitors and principals? All of them need to be looked at as well.
Something that is important and is not recognized too much is the qualifications of native language teachers. They need to be recognized as fluent teachers, not by the paper that the ministry of the province comes down with but by the fact that they are elders in our communities who know the language and can teach the language. They have never had the luxury of having a teacher pay scale to reflect that.
Senator Moore: Mr. Atwin, I read your brief last evening. You say:
In New Brunswick, four-year-old Maliseet and Mi'kmaq children enter K4 or kindergarten, whether in Band- operated or provincial school, with excitement and self-determination, along with the hopes and dreams that are normal to their age group. . . . In their backpacks, they are carrying a symbolic burden. . . . The students themselves are not yet aware of this accumulated collective yoke, as they enter the school building. They are all carrying a national and collective educational deficit.
I find this very sad in a country as rich as Canada; to use Senator Patterson's words, I find it embarrassing. I do not know why, in all these years, we have not been able to come up with a system whereby a native child can have the same opportunity and not have that glimmer of hope taken out of his or her eye.
Throughout your brief you talked about the importance of training educators and administrators through an early intervention with professionals who are about to enter the education system. With these changes, the challenges can be overcome.
How would these educators and administrators, and I expect they would be native or non-native, be educated? How would they be trained? Who would do that? How do you see that happening?
Mr. Atwin: We have a very comprehensive strategy in regard to looking at addressing what I consider to be the target areas very systematically. We have a zero to three initiative where we are trying to build on language and culture, and looking at establishing innovative services for the benefit of the children to look at supporting families, supporting services of early identification so that we can respond to the medical needs or whatever needs the child may have as to what we identify as impediments to their growth, whether socially, mentally or whatever.
In addition to that, we have a very formal K4 program that is in existence that is now being modelled by the province of New Brunswick. In these programs we have funding support that is somewhat challenging in regard to meeting those challenges, but I will just give the example of the success of early intervention, looking at the value of school readiness. This year, the kids who had entered K4 three years ago wrote their most recent Grade 2 examinations. In all the schools, 90 per cent of the kids exceeded the provincial testing results. That is a direct reflection upon a very well thought through strategy that our partners — I am talking about ourselves as second level service deliverers; I am talking about chiefs and councils; I am talking about education directors that we deal with; I am talking about the actual staff that deliver these programs — see the purpose of why we need to strengthen the foundations.
Further to that, if you look at targeting some of the things that we have officially looked at, it is all based on data. It is all based on collectively going back and seeing where the problem areas were, taking resources and targeting the resources, training individuals so that they can better service the interests of those populations, working with our partners to collectively address those concerns, identify the problems and find solutions.
The partnership in New Brunswick is a successful one in the context of the fact that we realize that we have capacities within our community; that people do not have the will, do not have the ambition somewhat, is clouded by the fact that money is an issue. Right across the street there is a person making $13,000 more. Give me a break. That is an issue.
However, we have been lucky. We have been able to encourage and retain people who are there because they care about the kids.
Senator Moore: Do you mean the educators?
Mr. Atwin: Exactly.
Senator Moore: You have had input into the design of the system in New Brunswick, which is fundamental to your wishes and to the success of your system. It also sounds like you have had the buy-in of the parents, which I think is critical.
Mr. Atwin: It is targeted, and the thing we found out in New Brunswick is that we listen.
Senator Moore: You are being listened to?
Mr. Atwin: We listen to people who are being affected and the ones who will make the difference. Parents, kids, it is all about empowerment of those individuals. If we are told that we have to go home at five o'clock, maybe many of us would be home at five o'clock, but if we are told that because of this, this and this, if you are stubborn as I am, you probably would not do it.
In terms of the approach that we have taken in the province, we have allowed people to come forward with suggestions in regard to how we can best support them. Essentially, that has been the strategy that has worked very effectively — buy-in by communities, buy-in by leadership, buy-in by staff involving them in their own professional development. I am talking about professionalism with regard to looking at doing that. It is working well. We are starting to achieve the results that we want to get because we do not go in there with the attitude that we know. As my dad would say, you learn to use this.
Senator Moore: This coming December or January there is a summit between the First Nations, Assembly of First Nations and the federal government. Grand Chief Shawn Atleo has made an education focus one of his missions in his term in office, which I think he is right on. He wants to break the cycle of spotty education and he will be, apparently, seeking funding to close the gap and to bring funding up to par with other Canadian children — the number is around $2 billion — and also to build 40 new schools at a cost of $12.5 million each.
I know it is not just about asking for money but I assume there has been some talk within the Assembly of First Nations as to what the structure would be if you got the funding and how you would ensure it got down to the various reserves and the people so that the right thing was done and the children do have the hope and opportunity that the non-native kids do.
Have any of you been involved in that or do you tend to be in Ottawa when these talks take place?
The Chair: I guess not, not to date. Possibly some of the regional chiefs have.
Senator McCoy: Although new to the committee, I am not new to the issue because I led the evaluation that you referred to in your testimony, Ms. Stonefish, which was a Canada-wide formal program evaluation of the BOFF system.
At that time there was some talk about having school boards on reserve as an institutional change on some reserves and not others. I have a very quick question going just across the table. Mr. Wilson says he has one in his area. I did not hear whether the others had. The other piece of that question would be, is it still controversial? Not everyone supported that idea.
Mr. Frame: At the community level, we have school committees or school boards. They are made up by parents.
Ms. McGahey: In AIAI's members, ours is also diverse. We do have elected school boards. We have committees under council or we have councils that deal directly with education, but that is not the only limiting one. There are other ways to look at this. If you look at the Iroquois or the Ojibwa, you could do it on the basis of a clan system. I know that has worked in the past as well. There are different ways that are part of the First Nations that they would implement.
The Chair: I want to thank all of you for your presentations and for answering the questions in the manner in which you did. This is a tough subject. It is tough on us, too, because this is one of the most challenging areas in dealing with First Nations or Aboriginal issues.
If anyone has any suggestions after this meeting as to how we design this vehicle, we would gladly accept them. I realize there is huge frustration over funding, but that is the fuel. We have to have a vehicle that is applicable to the problem; then I would definitely go after the government or any government to provide the fuel so that the vehicle can operate equitably for First Nations children the same as other children in this country.
Mr. Frame: I suggest designing that vehicle in cooperation. Have the people who know at that table.
The Chair: That is a good suggestion. Again, I thank all of you. I thank the senators who were here. Thank you, Senator Moore, for coming as well.
(The committee adjourned.)