Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 3 - Evidence - Meeting of October 18, 2011
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 8:40 a.m. to examine the federal government's constitutional, treaty, political and legal responsibilities to First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, and on 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: First, I will introduce the senators who are with us here today. The deputy chair of the committee is Senator Dyck, from the province of Saskatchewan. Also present are: Senator Campbell, from the province of British Columbia; Senator Greene Raine, from the province of British Columbia; Senator Demers, from the province of Quebec; and Senator Patterson from Nunavut.
The subject of our study is K to 12 on reserve. We are making every attempt to establish an education structure, or to recommend one by way of a report, that would facilitate more positive outcomes for our First Nations children across this country.
This morning, we have decided to go to a round table format. We have brought in five experts. The first is Mr. Harvey McCue, with Trent University and formerly with the Cree School Board, the first Indian-controlled provincial school board in Canada. Then we have Dr. Marlene Atleo, from the Ahousaht First Nation in British Columbia. She has a Doctorate in Education and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Atleo's areas of specialization include traditional education, adult education, institutional and community development, and narrative research. She has written several publications as well. Welcome.
We then have Dr. Colin Kelly, the official trustee of the Northland School Division, which has all the powers of an elected board of trustees. He was appointed by Alberta's Minister of Education, Dave Hancock. He served as superintendent from 1990 to 2002. He most recently worked as Director of Education for Treaty 8 First Nations in Alberta.
We then have James Wilson, who, like others, has appeared before the committee. He is the current Treaty Commissioner for the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba. Prior to assuming this role, Mr. Wilson was an educator, a curriculum developer and a cultural awareness trainer. Commissioner Wilson taught kindergarten through to grade 12.
Last, but definitely not least, is Bruce Stonefish. He is a member of the Delaware First Nation, the Executive Director of the Indigenous Education Coalition, and a First Nations trustee for Lambton Kent District School Board in southwestern Ontario. Mr. Stonefish was elected as the First Nations director of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association.
Welcome. We will not ask you to make presentations but rather to respond to questions that we have prepared. I believe you have copies of the questions.
In this first segment, we are seeking your views on the appropriate roles of federal, provincial and First Nation governments in both the management and the delivery of K to 12 education on reserves.
As you may already be aware, in her 2004 audit of First Nations education, the Auditor General of Canada noted that "the parties lack a common understanding of the meaning and implications of First Nations jurisdiction over education,'' and that the "Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has not clearly defined its roles and responsibilities in this regard.''
Various perspectives concerning the appropriate roles and responsibilities of the federal, provincial and First Nations governments were provided to us. Views range from the transfer of federal jurisdiction to the provinces to full and exclusive First Nations control.
The committee is mindful that provincial governments play an important role in education and have substantial expertise in this regard. We are also aware that the Government of Canada has endorsed the principle of "Indian control of Indian education'' and that the federal government may have certain obligations beyond merely funding education.
This said, we would like your views on the following: First, given the existing jurisdictional framework, as well as the need to deliver a high quality of on-reserve education, what do you believe are the most appropriate roles and responsibilities of the federal, provincial and First Nations governments in the provision of education on reserves? Second, what should be the flow of accountability between and among the parties? Third, what are some of the key challenges you see in developing partnerships among the parties in the delivery of education?
I will take the liberty of starting on the left with Dr. Atleo, unless someone wants to lead off.
Harvey McCue, as an individual: With all due respect to yourself, to the committee members and to the expert witnesses, given the challenge that you outlined for the purpose of this session, might I suggest that we spend, as a group and as an expert panel, a brief time on segment 1 and focus most of our attention on segment 2? I think it speaks directly to the issue that you identified in your opening remarks as the purpose of this particular meeting.
I say that with all due respect to everyone here. In terms of the limited time that we have available to us today, I think that your committee and yourself are likely to get the most valuable feedback with respect to your primary objective this morning if we deal with segment 2.
The Chair: That is fine.
Do any other members of the panel have an opinion on this? Is everyone happy?
Colin Kelly, as an individual: Yes. I have no difficulties with that.
The Chair: As I have asked the first question in segment 1, would you like to make a brief comment on this? Since you have started, Mr. McCue, we will go with you and then move on to segment 2 as quickly as possible.
Mr. McCue: I will be as brief as I can to justify my initial remark.
First, there is no existing jurisdictional framework. That is exactly what is required. In terms of appropriate roles and responsibilities, I would identify the First Nation, whether it is governments or another institution that is identified for educational purposes, as having the primary responsibility for the provision of education on reserves. I see the two other levels of government, namely provincial and federal, as playing subsidiary roles to the primary role of the First Nations institution in that jurisdictional framework. When I use the term "accountability,'' I mean educational accountability. I know that accountability tends to be connected with financial accountability.
Frankly, financial accountability is less important to me at this particular time in the history of our country with respect to First Nations education than is educational accountability. The reality is, as your committee knows all too well, that there has been little, if any, educational accountability in this country with respect to Aboriginal education. I would suggest that the primary responsibility in that jurisdictional framework rests with the Aboriginal First Nations government or education institutions.
Jamie B. Wilson, as an individual: I see the roles federally and provincially as enabling and the responsibility for education to lie at the First Nations level — not only First Nations control of First Nations education but also First Nations responsibility for First Nations education. I also see the role of First Nations as a means to assert jurisdictional control over education through delegating authority to some kind of system or framework. The First Nations level can delegate to this larger system.
Mr. Kelly: I thank Mr. McCue for getting us focused. There is no doubt that segment 2 will garner a lot more discussion about the real question that you are asking here today.
Talking about roles and responsibilities, there is no doubt that the role of the federal government has to be an enabling role. My experience in First Nations education has been that First Nations have never shied away from accountability and have never shied away from wanting to take full responsibility for the delivery of education services within their nations. It just was not possible given the existing frameworks, the legislation, funding and the paternalist attitudes that have been prevalent over the centuries. The role of the federal government has to be one that is enabling.
With any kind of structure or framework put in place, there will always need to be an ability for individual First Nations to enter into a partnership with any school jurisdiction, whether federal or provincial. That is essential. The determining factors and direction of education must rest with the First Nations.
Marlene Atleo, as an individual: I concur. As you were opening, I was remembering swabbing the floors of the school where I first taught on reserve in our community. I was thinking about what kind of expertise I have in terms of First Nations education.
One of the things that I do now is teach teachers. One issue is that, for all intents and purposes, the little red school house model and the development of those systems that most non-Aboriginals have in mind has not been allowed to happen in First Nations communities because of the Indian Act and the bureaucracy that has imposed itself between First Nations and the larger society. With all due respect to Dr. McCue, who has been in this business for a long time, we have not really dealt with that area at all. The assumption of all of you in this room, the people who will write papers on this, is that Aboriginal people have not been permitted to develop and articulate their own moral relationships socially. It is one of the underlying rationales for the kinds of things that Mr. Wilson and Mr. McCue have said. The moral responsibility still rests in the Aboriginal community. The intergenerational piece is critical. We despair about disease, mental illness and addictions in the communities, but if we continue to mess with people's heads at the federal and the provincial levels, these problems will only continue and grow because there is no reason for it. I see that while there is a strong focus here, an important part is that the supporting roles need to be examined so that they support and do not subvert.
Bruce Stonefish, as an individual: Good morning. I think about the word "enabling.'' The Indigenous Education Coalition is a second level service provider. We work with curriculum development, teacher professional development and networking. In our current work, we have an assessment project. We have a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to do culturally appropriate assessment. When we tried to develop assessment tools, we had to figure out what we were trying to assess because assessment is about jurisdiction. If you have the right to determine whether your students are successful and you develop those tools, then you are determining what student success is. We had to take two steps back and figure out the definition of "First Nation student success.''
In 1972 we had Indian control of Indian education. For my doctorate, I reviewed 45 papers written over the last 39 years. I have said before that the four important things are culturally appropriate curriculum, teaching practices, language inclusion and jurisdiction. Of those four things, we have started a project to define First Nations education standards, what we teach, which is curriculum development, how we teach it, which is teacher certification, and whether we have the ability or the means to decide if our students are successful by our definition.
Regarding our aspirations and our work, we bang heads with Ontario curriculum guidelines, literacy and numeracy assessments and teacher certification. We are all the product of the same public school education system that has taught us nothing about First Nations people, yet the Aboriginal framework in Ontario put 14 different native studies programs in our school board with no teachers to teach them. There is no certification to teach native studies or to teach native students about the whole cultural sensitivity. There is unawareness and lack of experience and knowledge on the part of the provincial and federal governments about First Nations peoples and their aspirations for education. The only way that this will work is if the government takes an enabling role to let us speak and do what we feel is necessary in education.
The Chair: We would like clarification. In what way can the federal government enable? Can you be more specific about enabling and supporting roles?
Ms. Atleo: I could probably start with examples from the curriculum. I will use the area of health education, but it applies to other areas of curriculum.
Over the years, the community health worker program would debrief community health care workers on all aspects of health. Then the federal level would reinterpret that information in a variety of ways. We now have the medicine wheel all across Canada, whereas the medicine wheel on the West Coast does not say anything. We spent a lot of money developing general strategies that might sound good at the federal level, but they do not work well on the ground.
The Canadian education system has developed from the bottom up. Historically, this has been a top-down process for Indian education through INAC and has worked in similar ways. Therefore we have the imposition of certain strategies and even educators. In the time I spent at home I gained most of my teaching time because people were there for six weeks and then left because they could not handle it or could not stand it. As a result, you get this revolving door of people from outside the community as opposed to community members, and the curriculum is totally foreign. You then get a situation that is problematic, where it does not help to reproduce the health and well-being of the community through curriculum. It does not allow people to create transitions because the curriculum level is so alien. It cannot be brokered into the community because the lack of fit is just incredible.
At that level there is a real problem. It is the kind of problem that can create mental illness because you have oppressive systems. It is not surprising. For example, there was a research project in the early 1990s. Grade 3 and 4 Aboriginal children had great aspirations, but as soon as they hit pre-latency, they began to see that opportunities were just not there; they got the reality check from the context in which they lived. They started off well but increasingly saw that opportunities were not there for them; the context was not right.
You get these misfits at the curriculum level between what is brought in from the outside and through the teacher education programs, and the provincial curriculum, which is mandatory in order to receive funding. You have an incredible misfit that is jurisdictionally required at the federal and provincial levels wreaking havoc in the communities.
Mr. Wilson: With regard to your question about enabling, when I testified previously, I talked about the 150-plus pages of Manitoba's Education Administration Act versus the 3 pages of the Indian Act that govern education on reserve. My view is that if there is federal legislation, it not be a federal version of provincial public school acts, which contain regulations, but rather something that enables First Nations to create their own education acts on a nation-to- nation basis or in a collective way; not having bureaucratic regulations at the federal level. Bureaucracy at the federal level, as opposed to the ground level, should be avoided.
Mr. Kelly: I want to add something in relation to your question about enabling. That is a huge question. For me, enabling is the removal of any kind of systemic or legislative barriers that would inhibit a First Nation from developing an educational system that will meet the end result that that particular nation wishes to achieve.
Enabling also means ensuring the necessary resources are there, whether they are financial or human resources, so that when you are looking at developing or offering education everyone is basically on the same level playing field.
I have had the opportunity to have experience in both the provincial and the band-operated school systems, and there are huge frustrations and inequities that exist between the two systems. Working in the band-operated system, there is everything from teacher retention, curriculum development, anything related to the transfer of indigenous knowledge, the number of reports required, the amount you are understaffed, the difference in the federal and provincial funding levels so that you are able to offer an educational program. There is a significant difference even in the physical resources available within the communities.
Enabling is a very large question from the point of view that, as Mr. Wilson said, it must be legislative, not restrictive. It must ensure that the necessary resources are there to make sure that First Nations will be successful. That will vary from nation to nation and it will definitely vary from province to province.
Mr. Stonefish: There are two different ways of enabling. One of them is defining success. You will hear me say this over and over again: There is administering your school and then there is what you teach, which is curriculum guidelines. There must be enabling curriculum guidelines so we teach the content that we feel is important to us.
Through our EPP, the funding from the federal government, we did community consultations and came up with about 350 different subjects that are not in the Ontario curriculum that our First Nations communities thought should be. We asked the question, "What should you learn by the time you get to grade 8?'' These different things dealt mostly with cultural identity and cultural revitalization. They were leaning more toward what Dr. Atleo was saying about education being a healing process for First Nations students and communities.
Outside of that, there is the issue of how we teach and teacher certification. Then there is the jurisdiction of assessment: How do we know that our students are successful and how do we determine the tests that define whether they are successful?
The other part is building capacity. I work with a number of First Nations schools, and even our organization is chronically underfunded. First Nations schools are expected to do things that the public school boards do, but we have such limited funding. A lot of capacity needs to be built. We do not have funding. Our First Nations schools exist outside of school boards, so they exist outside of superintendents who look after curriculum, principals and all of the supervisor/officer responsibilities. We do not have that level of accountability or expertise in our schools. In some cases, our principals do not have certifications, yet they are principals in our schools.
With respect to educational resources and developing curriculum standards and assessment tools, when we got First Nation student success funding from INAC — I cannot even remember the new acronym now. Is it AANDC? When we said we would develop assessment tools, they said, "You have to take it out of your students' success plan because we are not funding you to develop assessment tools. Assessment tools are about jurisdiction.''
We look at Ontario curriculum guidelines when we want to talk about culturally based education, oral tradition and the different things we want to bring into the curriculum. Ontario curriculum guidelines leave us no room in the day for our teachers to fit those in. We have Mickey Mouse add-on courses to try and bring culture into our classrooms because Ontario curriculum guidelines just flood our day and do not allow us to add curriculum content.
As far as enabling goes, a lot of capacity needs to be built. We have to have the authority to definition student success.
Senator Dyck: Mr. Wilson, you were saying that you thought there should be federal legislation to allow First Nations to create their own provincial education acts. In terms of impediments to this, some First Nations already think they have the authority to have control over their own education.
How can we have federal legislation that recognizes First Nation control over education so that there is a process in place that is not so much a colonial approach as a bottom-up approach? I believe you were advocating that First Nations should be involved intimately in setting up their own legislation. How do we balance federal authority versus First Nation authority?
Mr. Wilson: That is a tough question. That is why we are here, right?
Ms. Atleo: I think the issue has to do with the funding and the tie-in to provincial curriculum. If First Nations communities could rid themselves of that requirement then they could do that, but funding is contingent upon that requirement. By policy you have those requirements. You are right. To have legislation there would be that problem. In British Columbia for example, that would raise a major problem where there is felt jurisdiction and the federal government would then contradict that.
The Chair: We will be dealing with legislation on the third question.
Colleagues, let us go to segment 2. In this segment, we are seeking the views of the experts on the desirability and feasibility of establishing consolidated education structures.
It has been suggested to us that it is not realistic to expect 630 First Nations, most with less than 1,000 residents and situated in rural and remote locations, to effectively manage an educational program with limited resources.
Several witnesses have suggested to us that individual First Nations may need to join together in order to deliver second-level services in a cost-effective manner and establish regional or national education governance structures similar to provincial school boards and ministries of education if the education achievement gap is to be meaningfully addressed.
We have also been told that consolidation could be challenging as First Nations may be reluctant to transfer or cede authority to school boards and/or regional or national education governing authorities.
Do you believe there is a need to move away from band-operated schools toward larger education systems? If you feel that such reform is required, what model or models would you propose and why?
How do we get beyond the challenges of consolidation? What concrete actions would you propose to help address these challenges and achieve these reforms?
Do you see a role for a national educational commission in addition to possible regional education authorities? If so, what would be the specific functions of this body relative to other components of the system? That is a huge question.
I will go to you, Mr. McCue. I made a mistake in your introduction when I said that you were still at Trent University. You have worked with Trent, but you are no longer with them.
Mr. McCue: To amend the correction, I am presently on the board of governors at Trent.
The Chair: You are moving up the ladder.
Mr. McCue: If I live another 10 years, I might actually get into an executive position there.
It is a very important question. I believe with as much conviction as I can muster that there is a vital need to move beyond the band-operated school toward the creation of an actual First Nations education system.
I would like to make an editorial comment. Quite often people use the term "education system'' with respect to First Nations education. In reality there is no system in place, and the absence of anything resembling a system has led us to this difficult situation with respect to the deplorable state of First Nations education in this country. We need to seriously consider the creation of an education system for First Nations young people.
As part of that system, we need to go beyond the band-operated school to establish regional educational structures that are commonly referred to in the provincial system as school boards. Typically, school boards in every province and territory in this country provide what is commonly known as second-level education services. I will not go into any detail as to what second-level services consist of, but essentially they are to support the first level of the education system which consists of the school. I think most people are more or less familiar with what school boards do in the provincial and territorial system. We do not have any second-level institutions providing board-level type services to First Nations schools. That level is desperately needed.
The third level in an education system are institutions that provide what is commonly referred to as third-level education services. Typically, the institutions that provide the third level of services are ministries or departments of education. They provide the overview and research. I will not go into a whole lot of detail because what ministries and departments of education do is quite profound. These ministries and departments make up what is referred to as a third-level education service in an education system. There is no institution or organization in First Nations education that plays or has played that role. I will go into detail at a later point in this segment as to what that third level First Nations education institution might look like.
In my opinion, that is what we need to do. We need to create a bare essential system that includes the schools as the first level of education system. We need a second level which is comparable to school boards that provide second-level education services and a third level institution or body that compares or is parallel to a ministry or department of education. I am prepared to accept that it will require considerable time to do that. Unfortunately it is not the sort of thing that can be done overnight. It would be nice because I think improvements and changes would flow from it faster. Having said that, I think it is important to have that design in our minds as objectives to strive toward.
Mr. Wilson: In Manitoba, the First Nations education directors have a working group called the Education System Working Group. I forwarded a copy of the last paper that is going to the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to be ratified.
Essentially, the proposal that is being put forward is based on the premise that to move away from the dependence created under the Indian Act, you first become independent. This is the stage we are in right now in Manitoba. You have 56 independent schools. The next stage is interdependence. There are a number of First Nations moving toward this interdependent model in which we are starting to say we can share resources, curriculum tools, assessment tools, HR, et cetera.
As Mr. McCue said, we have individual band schools that amalgamate, in some sense, in regional areas. They would have a regional committee or board that feeds into a larger province-wide super-board. The province-wide board would have representatives from each region within the province. Then you have a province-wide chief superintendent and regional superintendents.
The approach that the Manitoba First Nations educational leaders are taking is that the authority would come from the communities themselves. The communities are delegating their authority to this system. To me, that is a critical component. The system is not getting its authority delegated through the federal government; it is coming from the ground up.
The Chair: Are you speaking of four levels or three levels, like Mr. McCue?
Mr. Wilson: Two levels, for sure. It would be three in a sense that the province-wide board would take on a lot of the responsibilities of the Department of Education in the province. Funding is a separate thing that I think we will be talking about later.
The Chair: That is right.
Mr. Stonefish: Yes, I agree with the idea of First Nations school authorities. I think it makes financial sense and also provides the opportunity for capacity-building standards.
If you have school authorities then, like provincial school systems, there are standards of infrastructure as far as school conditions or what have you. There are no schools that are dilapidated in the provincial school system. They make sure those schools are fixed and that there is funding for them. They go to the province and get extra funding for those schools. We have nowhere to go, as First Nations, with our own little schools.
The other part of that is the human resource structure, the expertise and experience that exists in school boards because of the number of educators, the superintendents, and curriculum teams. Those are minimum requirements for offering different programs in different schools, whether it is an art school, a trade school or whatever. There are minimum expectations for human resources in those schools.
The other issue is resource sharing, as far as curriculum and teaching excellence. There are curriculum teams that exist in school boards. There are professional learning communities for teachers. There are specialists that they send into schools for new teachers. There are new teacher inductee programs. Those types of resources do not exist for First Nations.
There is also pay equity, employment stability and opportunity. First Nations schools are a stepping-stone for teachers to get into the public system. We lose probably two to three teachers per year in our schools down in southwestern Ontario.
The public school system is not open for new teachers, but they do open it and let in First Nation teachers because they have a huge First Nations focus. Thus, we lose a lot of our teachers. The teachers we get are the ones that are not allowed into the public school system. They do not make it, so they come to our schools. There is no commitment. This is partly because there is no real advancement since budgets are set for administering our schools. We have a lot of problems keeping our teachers.
Another issue is educational research and development. They have educational research programs, such as data systems. They look at data and develop teaching strategies for their First Nations schools. We do not have that. If you exist as an independent school, you do not have those resources, educators or psychologists that a school authority would have available.
The Haudenosaunee community, one of the members of the Indigenous Education Coalition, has a concept called "raising a chief.'' These people are picked to be chiefs when they are young. Throughout their lives, they are put with the appropriate people to learn what they need to be leaders. When they go through that process, the people selected are given every opportunity for improvement, training, advancement and knowledge-building so that they can take on those leadership roles. At First Nations schools, we cannot raise an educator because we cannot get our educators to stay. We do not have pay for them to come and stay in our schools. If we wanted to raise an educator like they do in the public system, people would start as a teacher. If you are good as a teacher, you get to be vice-principal. If you are a good vice-principal, you can jump to principal. If you are a good principal, they might put you on a special project for curriculum or teacher training. From there you can become a superintendent or education director. You do not become education director just because you apply and have a BA. I have education directors in our First Nations schools who do not have any educational background at all. They have never had that opportunity to work up to that place in leadership.
When you think about school authorities and the systems, or the opportunities, that exist through sharing resources, there are a whole lot of things our First Nations school miss out on.
The Chair: Do you believe there is a need to move away from band-operated schools? Is consolidation a reality or a pipe dream?
Mr. Kelly: There is no doubt in my mind that we need to move away from the individually funded, individually run band-operated school. Within the Northlands School Division, we occupy the same territory as the traditional territory of the treaty and First Nations. We are in many of the same communities and educating the same students. The disparity between the resources available to our schools and to band-operated schools is really quite mind-boggling.
As the superintendent of a jurisdiction, what I had access to and what our First Nation counterparts have access to, educating the same children in the same communities, is rather disturbing.
What Mr. Stonefish is telling you about the availability of second-level services, the kinds of inequities that exist in salaries, et cetera, is all very true.
Based on that, there is no doubt in my mind that you have to look at some form of consolidation of band-operated schools. However, I would caution that the aggregates we hear Indian and Northern Affairs Canada talking about cannot be something that will come down from Ottawa or from a regional office of AADC. I know there are many First Nations that are concerned because they have been asking questions. For a number of years now, INAC has been talking about forming aggregates. They will take a number of band-operated schools and say "this will be a regional jurisdiction'' or "in order to receive funding, you will have to come together as an aggregate.''
There are two things I would caution you about in any kind of consolidation. First, the aggregates or regions or whatever nomenclature you put on it should be determined by the First Nations in the area. The other thing I suggest is that you not look at a provincial school board model and say, "This is something that is working for the province, so it will obviously work for the First Nations in Alberta or in B.C.'' because I do not think that would be widely accepted either.
I think the possibility of a consolidation is very real. First Nations have realized that for the significant number of years they have been operating at a complete disadvantage when it comes to offering educational services in their communities and that they will see a benefit in consolidation.
The aggregate, the structure of the school boards and any kind of regional authorities will have to be determined by the First Nations. I believe that it will require extensive community consultations. If consolidation is imposed, then I do not think you will have the success that you could potentially have with consolidation.
Mr. McCue: Mr. Chair, before Mr. Kelly's response you asked whether consolidation is a pipe dream or a reality. Categorically, if consolidation does not occur with respect to First Nations education in this country, then the educational outcomes of First Nations youth will not improve.
Ms. Atleo: I am thinking back to the consolidations that occurred for administrative purposes for bands. I see this as very similar. In my community, we are in a situation where there was a consolidation of three different bands that then had to learn to work together because historically they been very much at arm's length. It takes time to process those kinds of things.
While I agree that consolidation is necessary, they need to be processed in the regions. They might not fit the jurisdictional kinds of areas that we might expect, which is an important issue with regard to the provinces and the federal government. It needs to be up to the First Nations to be able to have extensive consultations around this because it becomes an intimate area of interacting at the school level and working together. While historically, especially in the federal government, we have looked for economies of scale through aggregations, we are also looking for sustainability, which cannot happen through economies of scale in the way that we have historically looked at it. Increasingly we look at the issues of diversity. Historically, Aboriginal people have looked at diversity and have been enactors of that kind of diverse strategy within communities across Canada. Very different from the non-Aboriginal system, communities have a loading on diversity and divergence rather than convergence. Issues of aggregation will have to be dealt with by negotiation.
We need to understand that it will be sustainable over a longer run because it is part of what we have experienced. Currently, it is not sustainable, and aggregation will not necessarily fix that.
Mr. Stonefish: In Ontario, we have so many political affiliations. In other provinces, a second level administers services to the majority of the province, if not to the whole province. The political and geographical predicament in Ontario makes it difficult for aggregation.
Aggregation makes financial sense because there is equality in funding and opportunity for capacity building and developing models that go beyond governance to cultural or linguistic affiliations. When you think outside the box about how First Nations exist socially within themselves, their families and communities, you can see the opportunity for regional authorities.
Right now, the Union of Ontario Indians is trying to develop a school board. A lot of work has to be done on the financial template of a school board such as what it will cost, how much funding each school will get, including remote schools and busing so that it is equal across the board. That is what will bring aggregation together so that First Nations will have true jurisdiction, equal opportunity and capacity building to deliver education in their communities.
The Chair: The last part of that question was about a national education commission. Would anyone like to comment on that specifically?
Mr. McCue: This speaks to your question to Mr. Wilson about where a provincial First Nations education body would fit along with a national body. From my perspective, a provincial First Nations education body would certainly be an element of the third level of service that I outlined earlier. As well, a national body, whether a commission or a national board of education with some structure at the national level, would also be, in my opinion, a functional constituent of a third level of education service within a First Nations education system.
There is a role for a national education First Nations body in this country. Quite frankly, there is a role for a national education body in Canada with respect to Canadian education. Many people in this country lament the fact that because of our Constitution there is a lesser role for a national body with respect to education in general.
I am giving you my druthers here. If a First Nations education system is considered and realized, I would certainly argue strenuously for the establishment of a national body in addition to the other bodies that would be constituent at the other level, either as a provincial or regional body, to complement the local schools.
The functions of a national body would be largely those of an overview. Such a body would provide an overview capacity to ensure that education standards are being met; to address any difficulties in the provinces or territories where they might exist; and to conduct research that would be useful to other education bodies in the system to ensure that First Nations education remains on the cutting edge.
The Chair: As I understand, you would have four levels: first, the school; second, the school board; third, a provincial organization; and fourth, a national organization. Is that what you are saying?
Mr. McCue: Yes. Whether it is three or four levels, a national component needs to be included.
Senator Meredith: Mr. Wilson and Mr. McCue, you said that consolidation should not be top-down but that it should start at the community level. I agree that the cultural component talked about by Mr. Stonefish comes from the community level. There are challenges. Is there a strong willingness on the part of the leadership to see this come to fruition? We could deliberate. As someone who is passionate about youth issues, I see the number of young people who are being taken advantage of on a daily basis, whose lives have been ruined consistently over the years and still today, and I always go back to leadership. Is there a true willingness on their part to see this come together?
You talked about the four levels and the chair has alluded to the four levels of it, whatever you determine it to be, but is there a true willingness to see this take place? We can write policies and influence things, but I want to make sure there is a true commitment moving forward. Is that something you can elaborate on?
Mr. Wilson: There is definitely at the community level a willingness to see improvements. There is a willingness to see change and it is coming from the parents in my experience. As a former director of education, in our community every year we put out, as an example, a report on education for the community. Any data we could collect, we put it in a report. We presented that to the community and it was the parents who drove and continue to drive the push for improvements. Parents are saying, "Why aren't more of our kids speaking Cree?'' For years we had Cree taught in our school; we never produced one Cree speaker. It was the parents that challenged us and said, "Why are you offering Cree if you are not producing Cree speakers?'' As a result, we went to an immersion program and we started producing Cree speakers. It was the parents who pushed us. We presented our grade 12 provincial assessments, which were below provincial averages. It is data that everyone needs to know. It was the parents who challenged us and asked what we were doing to raise those. They wanted to see our plan to raise those provincial assessments so that our students were scoring above provincial averages. It is the push from the parents that is pushing educational leadership and political leadership to make changes.
In Manitoba the process has been endorsed by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs through the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre, which is facilitating and leading a lot of the work in developing second and third level services. It has very much been endorsed through resolutions at numerous levels through the creation of all the panels and progress reports and all that.
Mr. McCue: Thank you for the question. It is a legitimate question.
In my opinion, given the terrible statistics that exist around First Nations education in this country, the absence of a large-scale wave of protest is unfortunate and it certainly gives rise to the questions such as yours, namely, is there a real appetite for fundamental reforms in education on the part of the leadership?
There is no question that there will be resistance on the part of the political First Nations status quo for a variety of reasons. The second part of the second question raises the issues that would be required to overcome some of that reluctance. A process is absolutely essential, which is basically a consultative process that would include a detail of what would be proposed in terms of establishing a First Nations system of education. It would identify as well what the benefits would be and it would identify as well what the potential costs of that would be. Using this proposal or presentation as a basis for consultation, I think an appropriately constituted First Nations committee or commission, however it is described, would consult and meet with First Nations leaders and communities using the presentation as the basis for the interaction and the discussion. Based on that consultative process, reform or amend whatever is included in that presentation and then take it forward for appropriate action.
I believe that process or some kind of process — it does not necessarily have to be as I have just described — would address and to a certain extent mollify objections or concerns that the First Nations leadership might have toward these fundamental reforms. However, having said that, having identified a hypothetical way to deal with the concerns that the leadership might have, it would also be important to recognize that at the end of the process something would have to be done, regardless of the feedback that the process engendered. Clearly the status quo in terms of what exists now cannot be allowed to continue for another decade or two decades.
The Chair: Thank you.
Colleagues, we will have a question period, but if there is any clarification on the subject at hand, I invite comments. This is one of the first times I have been involved in this type of process, so it is experimental to a degree.
Senator Dyck: I want to follow up on the comments with regard to the process. I agree with what you were saying, Mr. McCue, which is that the process is critical in terms of the consultation. Probably, without the correct process, nothing will really happen; there will not be a buy-in and people will not see the benefits.
Because the process itself is so important and critical to the success, can you give us any guidance as to who should decide how that process should go? It seems from the six years that I have been here, the process that has been set up in the past through the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has not been one that has been necessarily well accepted by the communities or by the leadership. Perhaps there should be a consultation even within defining how they should move forward. If you go to a community with a set agenda and give two or three options, it is not really a process of consultation. It is important to define who the leaders who are involved and, when you go to a community, what does that mean. We heard from Mr. Wilson how important parents are. We do not necessarily want to exclude parents but we want to make sure we include all the people who should be involved. Is there a way of facilitating that kind of consultation to maximize the opportunities for success?
The Chair: Ms. Atleo, I think you wanted to say something.
Ms. Atleo: I think we are looking at something quite different. We really do not get into dialogue with the kind of process that has historically happened. When we talk about consultation, usually First Nations are really interested in dialogue and not just a quid pro quo, which really maintains the status quo, depending upon where the power exists. I see the issue around dialogue as being a critical kind of issue so that true consultation — and we hear this over and over again — is you do not come to the table with the intent of something; you come to the table with the intent of making meaning around the issues with both parties. The issue of power is a really important aspect of that.
For different kinds of information, you go to different kinds of people. Leadership may or may not be amenable to major kinds of changes if they cannot see what is down the road. That is difficult. While it is a good question, I have difficulty with the implication of Senator Meredith's comment that this is an intentional process, namely that there is intent and an attribution of motivation with respect to what is happening with children in the communities.
I would like to go back to Dr. McCue's piece where he talked about a commission that Aboriginals and non- Aboriginals were in. I think that is one of the important dimensions, otherwise we are just having a conversation within the Indian Act and with Indian Affairs. Unless the education pieces come at the federal level so we can talk education from an Aboriginal and First Nations perspective with other education systems, we are not having a conversation at the federal level at all. I think it was Paul Cappon from the CCL who made a recommendation for a federal learning commission that would allow these different players to participate in that process. I could envision that. I think that would be at the fourth or fifth level. First Nations education systems can speak at that level to non-First Nations education systems outside of the Indian Act and outside of INAC. That is what we might expect from constitutional type of consultation. That would help the process immeasurably. It is about that kind of respect at the constitutional level. The jurisdiction comes at that level, not just from the Indian Act. I see that the Constitution supersedes the Indian Act in that respect, especially issues around moral life and education. It might be controversial, but I see that as an appropriate place for that to develop and I think you would then have a lot of buy-in from the leadership.
Mr. Stonefish: There must be a commitment behind the process. I talked about the different papers I reviewed. There have been so many recommendations put forth and we have spent so much money on community consultations, traditions in education and RCAP. There are different recommendations out there that have not really gone anywhere. If there are 30 recommendations, you take the top five that are the east easiest to do. You do those and you leave the hard ones. Developing an education system will be a hard one. There must be some commitment to it. The biggest problem of this process will be: Do the First Nation leaderships trust what is going on? Do they believe that we will actually go somewhere this time?
I sit on the Performance Measurement and Review Committee for the AFN and AANDC. We are talking about an education information system that costs $30 million and we are being handed what will happen. There is no community consultation. I ask for an agenda of "What is going on? What is the process here? What is the partnership? What will we get outside of it at the end?'' There is nothing that comes forth. I have every province that sits on that committee and this past weekend I got emails from people saying they do not respect this process and that this is not consultation. When First Nations representatives hear that there is no consultation and the agenda is hidden, how will they believe in this? That is the real problem. Our First Nations do want this. How long have we run our schools with no money for? We do want this type of success for our students but the problem is how we make it real and how we get them to believe it.
Mr. McCue: Unquestionably, any process involving the communities must be carefully and thoughtfully worked out. There is ample evidence in this country that there has been movement in significant areas without bumping into, respecting and disrespecting authorities and sensitivities. I am referring to the creation of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. There are precedents in this country for the establishment of processes that have been more or less successful and did not require an interminable amount of time ensuring that every level of jurisdiction and authority were respected in every region and province.
With all due respect to Senator Dyck's comment about how we start the process, it will not be easy. However, the reality is that major processes in this country have been started with a minimum of interference and cost, and they have been more or less successful. It has been done. We can do what we are talking about here: creating and achieving fundamental reforms in First Nations education. It must be done thoughtfully and sensitively as Mr. Stonefish has indicated, otherwise problems will occur. The important thing is that it needs to be done, should be done and, in my opinion, can be done.
Mr. Kelly: We have covered a significant amount of territory here in the last little bit.
I will take a step back. There is no doubt that there should be some form of a national education commission. There is a definite role. We have to be careful about the role of the national commission. You want to ensure that it does not become an overseer of everything that happens in Aboriginal education in the country. Its cannot become another department. It must be an enabler. It must also be a group that will mediate between the three levels of government. I see some definite roles for it. However, it must be a commission that would ensure the necessary resources are there and one that would be financially viable. It cannot be a department that says, "This is what will happen in our communities.''
Senator Dyck, I thank you for your comments because what Mr. McCue has said is true. A significant number of initiatives have been successful, but a number of them have not. We must be mindful of any processes we go through in establishing any kind of structure at one, three or four levels. There must be a significant component of community engagement or involvement.
It can be done. There are processes that have happened in the past that can ensure that it can be successful. We have to take the time and make the commitment that to do this correctly there must be more than just a dialogue in the community or a quick visit that will say, "This is how I interpret that what has been said is actually the way it should happen.'' We have to ensure that there will be a process that will actively and thoughtfully engage the community.
In answer to Senator Meredith's question, there is definitely a willingness. There is a real passion for education in all First Nations communities. The difficulty we are facing is that what has existed has largely not worked. As long as there will be another "good idea'' imposed, it will not be welcomed with open arms.
Therefore, we need to ensure that whatever process we go through will be a process that will engage the community with thoughtfulness and cultural respect as to how engagement takes place in individual First Nation communities.
The Chair: We will now cover possible legislation, briefly discuss financing, and then turn it over to senators for questions. We have a few more questions for our expert panel. Although I would like to leave as much time as possible for senators to ask questions, bringing this group of people together to offer their expertise is more important in some ways. I am at the beck and call of the committee in that regard.
I will proceed with the matter of possible legislation. We would like the views of the witnesses on whether new federal legislation dealing with First Nations education is required. We have covered some of this during our previous discussions. We have heard from witnesses that the skeletal and outdated provisions of the Indian Act do not provide an adequate legislative basis for the renewal of First Nations education as it neither reflects the goals of First Nations education nor serves the interests of First Nations education. Some have suggested that federal legislation allowing for a variety of organizational options could provide the foundation for a reformed system of governance, financing, accountability and clarity of roles and responsibilities.
If you feel that national legislation is critical to establishing a solid foundation for the delivery of First Nations education, we would like you to identify some of the principles that might inform such legislation and to provide your views on the following questions: What would be the specific goals of national federal education legislation? What form do you believe it should take? What would such legislation specifically provide for? In other words, what would be the key elements of the legislation? How would the national federal education legislation interact with existing regional educational jurisdictional agreements, such as those in B.C. and Nova Scotia, treaty commitments, as well as the policy of Indian control of Indian education formally acknowledged by the Government of Canada?
Ms. Atleo: It is interesting. I am a British Columbian who has been living in Manitoba for years and working in the educational sector. I have been more involved in looking at it from an academic perspective rather than from an experiential participatory perspective. It is healthy that we have different models across Canada as they have developed. However, I go back to my position that the Indian Act and the bureaucracy have usurped the developmental opportunities of First Nations in the context in which they live. This process has not provided the opportunity, which has been backed by legislation, to develop in these contexts for the most part. We could go to Mr. McCue's paper and the kind of work he has been talking about. We need something that will facilitate and enable First Nations communities to articulate, because that has been forestalled for far too long. That has been stillborn to date and needs to evolve and interface with existing systems.
The expectation was that somehow this would not happen; we do not have facilitating structures for it to happen. I defer to Mr. McCue on some of the dimensions of that facilitative structure. I would speak to the absolute need of those facilitating structures and sufficient opportunity for regional diversity. We have seen this kind of development, but it should not be just in the form of pilot projects by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. We do not have pan- approaches to them, which is absolutely critical. We do not have pan-approaches to provincial educational activities. The "pan'' piece comes from the Indian Act. First Nations provide us with that kind of diversity across Canada. In fact, diversity and sustainability are becoming an exportable project — an important dimension of a Canadian resource that we should value to provide facilitative structures rather than continue to smash it.
Increasingly, we are looking at our current K to 12 educational structures as being highly problematic in the way that they are organized in this global era. First Nations had some of those underlying strategies in their educational system before that we are actually beginning to look at. That would be my statement in deferring to Mr. McCue's more specific legislative dimensions.
I recommend strongly that there be some level of legislation to bring Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal systems together at the federal level. They interface anyway, except mainly through the bureaucracy. We need to have the trickledown and trickle-up effects of that kind of information on strategies, which is not really happening at this time.
Mr. Kelly: When I heard the question, I leaned over to Mr. McCue and said that we should defer it to his paper, where it is well covered.
There is a requirement for legislation. The disturbing part about the lack of legislation is that, as I understand, federally education is policy. As long as it is run through policy, any decisions can be made at a bureaucratic level or even at the ministerial level. Any changes to legislation will require debate in Parliament and public consultation. Education is run federally by policies. That is why someone can say, "We will hold increases in First Nation education funding to 2 per cent.'' That has been in place for the last 10 to 12 years, which is too long. It is truly crippling. Definitely there needs to be legislation in this country in the form of an education act. On the specifics of the act, I would defer to Mr. McCue's paper, which covers it off quite nicely.
I would add that any kind of legislation must ensure that there is always the potential for and that the avenues are always open to any kinds of relationships or partnerships with the provincial counterparts. Ms. Atleo is right in saying that anything happening in the way of partnerships in education between First Nations and the provinces is because of the bureaucracy rather than legislation. In the jurisdiction where I work, we are having a significant number of discussions with band-operated schools about partnerships so that we are able to share the kinds of resources available at the provincial level that are not available at the First Nations level.
More importantly, we want these partnerships because we are dealing with the same children and we have a significant amount to learn from the band-operated system. We believe that we will be able to improve the delivery of education by ensuring that there is a significant relationship between band-operated, federally funded and our provincial schools.
The other reason I believe there needs to be an avenue for the partnerships is that in all of this there is a role for the province to play in First Nations education. In my time with Treaty 8 and our conversations with the province, we were always very much of the opinion that they have a financial responsibility as well; it is not just a federal responsibility. As long as the province introduces targeted funding or very specific programs and have those available only to provincial students and not to federal students is unconscionable because First Nations students in Alberta are Albertans as well. They should be benefiting from the wealth of natural resources and the kinds of programs offered to our provincial students.
There needs to be a role there. That role needs to be defined and there must always be that avenue for discussion. You want to make sure that the legislation, when it is in place, does not remove that.
Mr. Wilson: I am really curious to hear Mr. McCue's response, actually, but I will dive in there so I do not end up echoing you.
There is definitely a need for federal legislation. Again, to use the word "enabling,'' that needs to be defined. What exactly does "enabling'' mean? Specific goals need to include funding infrastructure within the legislation so that — Mr. Stonefish talked about this — there is an end goal that communities and leadership are seeing towards opting into this.
One of its goals, in my view, is to get AANDC out of the education business so that if communities opt into this legislation they are essentially opting into a system that would be self-reliant and self-governing without any AANDC oversight. I am grappling with the proper wording to use. The funding would essentially come from Treasury Board directly to the system, which is the end goal that people can see. There is a system that is self-reliant.
That gets into the last question. A huge thing in my area, in Manitoba, is the treaty right to education. What is the treaty right to education? Our office facilitated a round table discussion. We brought together First Nations educators, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the federal government and the province.
My community is part of Treaty 5, which says that Her Majesty agrees to provide a school and a teacher when the community shall desire it. In 1875-76, when Treaty 5 was signed, a school and a teacher meant cutting-edge education. The leadership wanted access to cutting-edge education because they wanted their kids to have opportunities. They saw the changes that were coming, they knew they had significant negotiating power and they wanted to guarantee success and opportunities for future generations. They wanted cutting-edge education and access to education for their kids.
I see the creation of a system as really the first implementation of the treaty right to education. It goes beyond the ad hoc nature of individual band-operated schools into something where we are talking about bigger treaty fulfillments here, which is critical in my area, critical to opt in with the communities, with the leadership and with people at all levels.
The Chair: Mr. Stonefish, do you have a comment on this legislation?
Mr. Stonefish: Legislation is not really my strength, but I will say this: Legislation must outline the authority to develop educational standards, such as curriculum, teachers and assessment. My doctorate is in curriculum development. I worked in the province of Ontario on curriculum development and tried to crack the nut of getting in there where First Nations input is substantial. Because the federal government defers First Nations to the provincial standards of curriculum, we do not really have any opportunity to develop our own curriculum as far as the curriculum standards of Ontario of what is mandatory.
I have sat on ministers' committees and I have been part of literacy teams for the ministry. In the end, all of the different avenues I have tried to offer input to were bound by provincial governments and their ministries of education and their standards, when First Nations education is not the responsibility of the province. When I say "allows us the authority to develop those,'' it also must have the financial means and a sound strategic plan to develop the capacity, curriculum and teaching, and assessment standards.
That is all I will say.
The Chair: Thank you.
I will give you the wrap-up on this, Mr. McCue.
Mr. McCue: Thank you.
Yes, legislation is critical and First Nations education legislation specifically. What I will comment on next in terms of what should be the specific goals and what form you believe it should take, I am assuming that the content of a First Nations education act would occur after several months, if not years, of the consultative process that we discussed earlier has concluded. In other words, the legislation would be one of the end results of that consultative process.
Ideally, the legislation would be framework legislation. To echo Mr. Wilson's initial comments, we do not need and I do not think it would be helpful to have something comparable to the provincial education act that every province and territory has. I do not think the detail included in those provincial and territorial education acts needs to be replicated or even sought in a First Nations education act. It should be a framework and specific goals would include situating the jurisdiction for education with First Nations. It would identify and locate the three or four levels of institutions and jurisdiction in a First Nations education system. It might identify the specific structures that we have discussed earlier, and it might include philosophies and principles as well.
Fundamentally, we do not know why we are educating First Nations children in this country. There are no philosophies or principles per se that help to guide administrators, teachers and even parents as to what are the objectives. What are we doing with First Nations youth with respect to formal education? There is an underlying assumption that we are doing it because everyone else does it and we believe it is important, regardless of the outcomes. However, there are no principles or philosophies about First Nations education, and I think it would be germane and valuable if the framework legislation commented on that.
Obviously, a resourcing formula and again the formula would be the result of the consultative process. The resourcing formula for First Nations education would also be part of the legislation.
I do not think it would be necessary to do more than create a framework. I would argue that an opting-in clause or provision would be an essential part of the legislation. I think including an opting-in clause would go some distance to quell or address some of the concerns that First Nations leadership in different parts of the country might have toward the entire initiative, including the legislation.
The Chair: Thank you.
We will go now to segment 4: Method of Financing.
I think everyone has given their opinion about the amount of financing but we are talking about the method. The terms of reference of our study does not include funding levels, but the method by which First Nations education is funded is closely related to issues of structural reform. We are trying to recommend the structures that should be in place.
We are well aware that the AFN, the Auditor General and many other First Nations have suggested that new funding mechanisms are required if the delivery of education on reserves is to be improved.
Funding is provided through contribution agreements that must be renewed on an annual basis. Several witnesses have advocated for a statutory base for First Nations education funding.
This is what we would like your comments on at this time. I would like to go to questions as soon as we can. I am sure the other senators are sitting there waiting with a huge amount of anticipation because of your expertise.
Mr. Kelly: There is no doubt that the band-operated system is currently funded. It requires some form of consistent long-term funding. It also requires specific targeted funding initiatives.
I do not know if this is the right term for it or if I am reflecting what you refer to as a statutory base for educational funding. Quite often the difficulty with funding for education comes into the contribution agreements, which are more global in nature. There is funding given to the reserve for the operation of everything from housing to health care to education. In many cases, the amount of funding received through these contribution agreements is not sufficient. We have seen cases over the years where First Nations have not been able to meet the requirements of a tuition agreement or fund education as necessary. Other things happened on reserve that required getting into the monies that were given over in the contribution agreement. If there is an increase in housing, there is a housing crisis. We hear a significant amount about infrastructure, water costs, et cetera. Quite often, the amount of money given over in a contribution agreement is not sufficient and money was taken from education and may have been from other services as well.
I think it would be beneficial if there was a sustained level of funding guaranteed over a long term so that First Nations would be able to get into the planning aspects of education delivery like we do in the province. My experiences would not lead me to believe that First Nations would have any difficulty with funding specifically allocated to the delivery of educational services on reserve and to be accountable for those dollars either through an audit or financial check.
The chronic underfunding with on-reserve education is troublesome. The lack of services required in education and is enjoyed by most of the province is troublesome as well. It is problematic that a number of First Nations have to take dollars from the operation of the band-operated system in order to pay tuition agreements to the province, which is educating their junior and senior high students. I would agree with some form of statutory base for funding as long as it is consistent, long-term, reflects the educational needs in the community and at the very least mirrors what is being spent provincially.
I cautioned my band-operated colleagues about looking for an equal amount of funding per student as the province receives any time there was a submission to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. In many cases, even that amount would not be sufficient because the majority of the schools within the Treaty 8 area are relatively small schools which, by their very nature, are expensive to operate. A significant number of the educational needs that need to be addressed at the band-operated level will require more funding than you spend on an average in a particular province.
Ms. Atleo: This goes back to the idea that at some point in time these local schools would be gone.
When we returned to our First Nation in 1970 with credentials to teach in the schools, the idea was that the school would be closed down so that they would not have to service that local area. That was the history. When we see the lack of sufficient funding and resourcing, it evokes the expectation that sometime there would be a fade-out of the need to support Aboriginal schools and students. I think of Mount Currie in British Columbia which was one of the first band-controlled schools. We have a brand new high school right now which opened a couple of weeks ago in our community. This was a bureaucratic move to get people out of the remote communities because the aggregation that happened in the early fifties did not work. They wanted to shut these communities down. My community fills up a kindergarten classroom every year. The communities are alive and well there.
There needs to be an opportunity to move away from this crisis management approach to Aboriginal education with a statutory financial base so that there can be some planning. We have just moved to a four-year election system. We know that many communities are still on two-year election systems. We have had an educational authority that the money gets dedicated to, and it has worked a lot better under those circumstances. It becomes important to separate those out if we are to have a statutory financial base that is dedicated to that.
In relation to the funding, as Dr. Kelly said, there will always be a margin that will be more for the nature of those on-reserve schools, but there are also a lot of opportunities to work with school divisions and school boards in the same jurisdictions because you are dealing with those people all the time anyway. There is an opportunity to share resources instead of all the resources from the First Nations communities flowing into the school divisions, as we experience now, especially in some of our northern communities, and not receiving the services in return that are required. At least there would be a point of negotiation between the two jurisdictions if there was an articulation of that jurisdiction and if that Aboriginal jurisdiction were funded through a statutory base which would allow them to find a fit. The funding up to the requirements is critical and over time predictability is needed around that for planning.
Mr. McCue: I will be brief: Statutory funding is essential, as is a negotiated formula that arrives at an appropriate level of funding for First Nations education.
Currently and historically, the federal government has attempted to provide money to individual band schools by a formula that attempts to match the provincial formula on a per student basis for elementary, secondary education. Unfortunately, Indian Affairs, in the last few decades, which is responsible for the funding to individual schools, has fallen short of meeting the provincial per student cost. That is where the chronic underfunding has arisen.
In addition, using the provincial student tuition as a base for funding is not appropriate nor is it adequate. The money that the provinces provide to their schools, based on a per student tuition fee, does not reflect the costs of school boards, for example, or the costs associated with the maintenance of its ministries or departments of education. These are additional costs that First Nations do not receive and are not reflected in that per student tuition cost. Not only is the federal government failing to meet the provincial per student cost in its funding to First Nation schools, but the basis on which it is providing that money is simply unreflective of the actual education costs that the provinces and territories are required to meet annually.
Senator Brazeau: I must say this has probably been the most interesting panel for me since we started this study because it is one thing to actually talk to experts dealing with education as opposed to, perhaps, the leadership.
Mr. Wilson, you mentioned ct that in many First Nations communities — and I fully agree with you — there is a groundswell of support by parents and students to move beyond the status quo. In talking to some of the First Nations leadership and to actual experts in education, one of the issues I have experienced is that we often hear two different themes. For example, there was an education panel that was named not too long ago and some chiefs decided to boycott that process. In my view that is shutting the door on some of the options for change that we are collectively discussing. There are others who, in dealing with education, do not want to lose the authority that they have in terms of managing the funding that they receive in terms of band-managed schools.
What do you believe is needed to increase that groundswell of support to move beyond the status quo, whatever that may look like in the future, so that we can actually attain the results that I believe we are all working toward and seeking?
Mr. Wilson: First, the relationship between First Nations and the Crown has not always been a strong one. When I talk to people about treaties, I always use the analogy of a marriage. That is why something that happened 140 years ago is important today. Similarly, my wife and I got married 13 years ago. Our marriage is still important today and the ceremony we went through is still important. However, the relationship has not always been a strong one. Our office did a survey of Manitobans last year. We asked how they would rate the relationship between First Nations and the Crown. Only 13 per cent of the respondents rated it on positive terms.
What is happening now in this marriage is that there is a lot of positioning and not a lot of listening. People come to the table with a position — and I have seen this on both sides — and they do not listen to anything the other person is saying. They are wearing their hats and nothing changes because the positions do not change. There is this lack of strength in the relationship. I heard former Minister Strahl put it very well. He said, "Now we are in a situation where it is like if I tell my wife you look nice today, dear, she says, what do you mean I look nice today? I didn't look nice yesterday?'' We are reading in all this extra baggage into the relationship. That relationship must be rebuilt.
To me, outcomes are huge. As my colleagues have mentioned, there is an importance to curriculum assessments and all that stuff. There is an old education expression that you measure what you value and you value what you measure. If we are moving toward something that will succeed, there has to be clear and measurable goals for both sides to work through.
I do not know if that answers your question entirely. Lots of baggage will be brought to the table, definitely. We have to move away from that. In my view as well, the parents will be the ones who will push this forward.
Senator Brazeau: Some of you referred to the federal government and the funding formula, and we have talked a lot about that in this discussion. However, not too much has been said with respect to the potential responsibility of provincial governments in all of this, including perhaps even having some special seat on school boards for First Nations people specifically in urban areas, I suppose, or even on reserve as well, in terms of funding and providing some human resources to assist First Nations schools. What are your thoughts on provincial responsibility going forward in any scheme that we may come up with collectively?
Mr. Kelly: If I may, I will wander down that road.
I mentioned earlier that there is a financial role for the province to play as well. I will say it again: On a number of occasions we have told the Province of Alberta that First Nations kids and band-operated schools are also Albertans. I will give you a concrete example.
An initiative was put in place in the province a number of years ago for self-identified First Nation, Metis and Inuit students in the province. They would self-identify and the particular school board would get $1,163 per student. The money would go to the school board and they would disperse those dollars to their schools. The intent was that the school jurisdiction would have to implement First Nations, Metis and Inuit programs in the schools. In the Northland School Division, 40 per cent of the students are tuition agreement students. Although they are Albertan students, they have on-reserve status and cannot self-identify. We do not receive monies for those students, even though we are required to put those kinds of programs in place, because they are on reserve and a federal responsibility. There have been examples over the years of targeted funding initiatives that the province would put in place where on-reserve schools would not receive those dollars because they are considered a federal responsibility.
Quite simply, students in Alberta are Albertans — end of story. Any dollars that come from the provincial coffers for education should be equitably distributed to all students in Alberta, not just to students in the provincial schools. Interestingly enough, they will give 70 per cent to private schools but still nothing to the band-operated school system.
I contend that any legislation must provide First Nations with the ability to enter into a partnership agreement with the province. Rightly or wrongly, the interpretation of my experience has always been that many First Nations are a little leery of the province becoming involved in education because of the underlying fear that some government might say that it is easier to write one cheque to a province to educate all of our students than it is to enter into many First Nations agreements. First Nations do not want to, and should not, give up that right to First Nations education. There is always a little reluctance. However, I believe that the province can play a significant role in an agreed-upon partnership. Mr. Wilson's analogy of a marriage is quite correct. We used to use the original principles of the treaty — a partnership where one party was not supposed to be subservient to the other. There is a role for the province.
It is essential that the province become involved in some aspects because we have a significant number of First Nations students in provincial schools. The results in the provincial schools are not all that great. There is a role for the province to learn and, through defined partnerships, both systems can become stronger. It does not mean control of the school or taking over the system.
Ms. Atleo: The money is a big draw. I always told my kids that we own our house and we pay taxes so they do not have to declare that they are Aboriginal on question forms at the school because it would constitute double-dipping. They are trying to extract money from the Aboriginal system for the schools. That happens quite a bit in British Columbia, in Manitoba and anywhere that has the "self-identify'' dimension. Funding to the provincial system does not in any way advantage Aboriginal students. It gets lost in the system because the money is spent at the discretion of the people in the system.
Recently I did a presentation in a resource centre for people who came to talk about special Aboriginal grants. I was talking to one of the teachers about resources. After a couple of suggestions, she said, "That is enough. I need to spend some of this money on the resources for the Filipino kids.'' That is typical because teachers want to provide equalizing opportunities in the classroom and do not see that the special funds dedicated for First Nations are there for a reason. It happens in the same way throughout the school system. The logic is such that if they are doing better in some way, it will benefit the First Nations. Now with the special education, it is a booming business in Manitoba, as it probably is across Canada. Everything Aboriginal is framed in special education terminology because there are funds for it. Show me the money, and I will show you the problem. That often happens in Aboriginal education. If there is a new problem that has money attached to it, then those parameters will dictate how it is managed in the education system.
Senator Campbell: I must preface my remarks with a comment about the use of the word "leery.'' Like Senator Dyck, I have been here six years. "Leery'' would be too light a word when it comes to describing First Nations people dealing with the federal government, especially Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada; and I understand that.
We talk about a marriage but, if I am correct, by the time we are finished with it, it would be in a fundamental Mormon marriage because you would have to be married to the municipality, to the province and to the feds. That is the difficulty we run into here. Treaties between First Nations and the federal government must be honoured. Unfortunately, the federal government, in my view, has not lived up to the treaties. I am concerned that monies from AANDC designated for education in our First Nations communities have to be used for other things that are more important, such as safe drinking water and housing; the list goes on and on.
Although we have to consider the treaty, is there a responsibility on the part of First Nations to fund education? Is that a process? Is there a difference between a treaty First Nation and a non-treaty First Nation when it comes to this funding?
Dr. Atleo, you said that you pay your taxes and so it would be a double-dipping situation. Does that change by reason of treaty or non-treaty?
Lastly, it is always about funding. No matter what issue this committee deals with, it always comes back to funding. At what point do you deal directly with the funder, i.e., the federal government, in a manner that does not have you going through a screening process known as INAC? At what point do we get rid of INAC? At what point do we start looking at how we fundamentally treat and educate our children?
I know there is a lot there. This has been going on for so long. When will it stop? I can't take it any longer, and if I can't take it, I can just imagine the position First Nations are in.
How do we go about funding? Is it a federal responsibility to fund? If it is, how do we ensure that the funding is proper and that it does not go to something other than that? Where does the province come into play here?
I will mention something that no one else has. I am a former Mayor of the City of Vancouver where we have a significant First Nation inner city population. How do they come into play in this? Taxpayers fund that education.
Mr. McCue: Thank you for the question. There are many parts to it.
I would like to deal with the urban First Nations education question because it is a serious one as more First Nations residents move off reserve. As I understand it, this session today is dealing with on-reserve education so, with all due respect, I will pass on that, despite the fact that I agree with you that it is a fundamental issue as well.
Senator Campbell: By separating this out we are making a big mistake and being disingenuous to all First Nations, because we have now made two kinds of First Nations, on reserve and off reserve. It is federal governments in general that have done this. When we differentiate between them, we make first- and second-class citizens, and you and I know that even the first-class citizens are not first class. That is the difficulty with this whole process of First Nations on reserve and First Nations off reserve. There has to be one solution here; First Nations dealing with a federal government.
The Chair: I think we are dealing with a constitutional aspect, but I will let Mr. McCue answer that.
Mr. McCue: I would be happy to return to the committee when it decides to focus on off-reserve educational issues because I agree with the senator that that is a pressing issue as well.
When a First Nations education system is established with the various levels that we have touched on here today, one of the responsibilities of the third level would be the negotiation of appropriate funding contributions by the provinces. I agree with the panel members who have spoken on this that there is a necessity and a legislative responsibility for the provinces to contribute to First Nations education, both on and off reserve.
The reason the provinces have not had their feet held to the fire with respect to the funding issue is that there simply is not an institution or an organization in this country, other than the federal government, to approach the provinces and say, with the authority that the organization or institution has, "You have a responsibility here. Let us sit down and negotiate what that contribution will be.''
Currently and historically, the only agency in this country that has the authority to do that is the federal government, and we all know that when the federal government approaches the provinces with respect to funding it becomes a real area of conflict and disagreement.
At what point do you deal directly with the feds? I would see that as a driving principle of the legislation. When the framework legislation is developed and the funding formula is identified, it would seem to me appropriate to identify the parties to that funding relationship. In response to your specific question, that is the time that you would deal directly with the federal government.
I will defer to the folks on the panel who have more knowledge and expertise on the difference between treaty and non-treaty.
Mr. Stonefish: An important question is why legislation or funding is needed. Until the federal government and the provincial partners understand why this is needed, we cannot move forward. I have said repeatedly that we have to understand the definition of student success. We have to understand that education is a healing process.
The social legacy in which First Nations students and communities exist is a direct result of Indian policy in Canada; residential schools and Indian Acts. Social elements in our communities are a direct result of what has happened to us under Indian policy, colonization and assimilation.
You have to understand what education means to First Nations people. The number one indicator of student success for our organization is that they see themselves in the curriculum. The Ontario curriculum, which is what I deal with, is intended to produce contributing, competent members of Ontario's society. That is not what First Nations education is about. We have our own society and our own social existence to deal with, so education means something different to us, and you have to understand that. Until you understand what cultural and community-based education means to First Nations, you cannot really understand or develop policy, although we can develop frameworks. In provincial systems, schools are not allowed to fail. If they have low marks in literacy and numeracy, they get $100,000 for three years to bring those numbers up. That is their definition of student success.
In our communities, if our kids cannot get to school due to domestic problems at home or if they do not have the wellness necessary to learn, how can we be worried about literacy and numeracy? We need to have character development and confident citizens of First Nations communities. That is our definition. We have a long way to go. We have schools that are chronically underfunded. We have to build a new foundation for our schools. We talk about curriculum standards, curriculum development, teacher education and teacher training. There must be a foundation built for all of those things before we can start talking about formulas.
Quebec was trying to develop a formula for the amount of money needed to run a school. First Nations schools get about $4,000 compared to from $9,000 to $14,000 in other schools, and they have resource sharing among the school boards. We are not set up that way. We have to understand what the barriers are. I keep going back to curriculum and teacher education. Those are the two prime things that the students deal with every day for 14 years.
We do not have an in for curriculum or teacher training. In Ontario, they are allowing the EIC to be one of the first organizations to offer AQ courses from the Ontario College of Teachers. That was a back door we went through, and they were gracious enough to let us in, but there is nothing mandating or allowing us to develop our own standards of education. Now that we have these courses we have developed, you have to take them in order to teach in our schools. We could never say that before; we never had the capacity to do that.
When you talk about legislation and funding, you have to understand where we are and understand the plan of where we are going and why we are going that way. You asked, "When will you deal directly with the federal government?'' We will deal with them directly when they truly understand what we need and where we are going. Then it will be a lot easier.
Senator Raine: Thank you for the insight. This discussion has been excellent. We are kind of hoping that out of it will come some solutions.
In my experience, which is very limited, I have a hard time relating to First Nations because what is a First Nation? When you think about aggregating schools to make the delivery of second-level and third-level services more likely to happen, we have a country that is so wide and so different from one end to the other, that to have a one-size-fits-all solution is not possible. We are looking to find a framework that will allow the evolution of good educational practices, no matter the local circumstance.
I have heard and read a lot about the education information system, or EIS, which is currently being developed by — I will go back to the acronym of INAC because everyone understands it. That gets to the heart of who decides how to measure student success. If this should be coming from the bottom up, maybe we need to share the ten things everyone wants and then people could add what they specifically want in their systems.
Do you think that the development of an education information system could help, or do you think it is the federal ministry meddling at the local level?
The Chair: We are running out of time and this is sort of sliding off subject, but I will let someone answer.
Ms. Atleo: It is not really sliding off subject because this will determine absolutely everything. First Nations do not get access to these levels of systems, so it is a production of information. Health systems are like that; it is a production of information, and it gets back to jurisdiction, standards and these kinds of things. I talked about how First Nations on-reserve status at some level is how that is usually determined. It is a very particular segment of the Aboriginal population.
The EIS will be developed so that determination can be made of who is eligible, what the nature of that eligibility is and how the funds are being spent, just the same way as the onerous nature of the reporting system that INAC currently has in place.
Therefore, we have these reporting systems that are incredibly onerous and the information does not go back to the community; it goes back to the federal government to make those decisions. We know that. Numbers are power, and the numbers go back to the federal government. Therefore, the community is not involved in developing that information or interpreting any of it. We know interpretation is incredibly important because if you do not understand the ground, you cannot interpret the information. That is pretty basic research methodology. That will not happen because the bureaucracy will interpret it at that level based on not necessarily the needs of the community but on the common good; it is not operating in a fiduciary role but in a governmental role. This is the kind of thing that creates incredible problems.
It is not serving the needs of First Nations people; it is serving the needs of society writ large, from a moral level through the bureaucracy. That is what those information systems, when people are not participating in them, are about.
Mr. Kelly: I have not been involved in the formation or any discussions on EIS in the last couple of years, but I think it is necessary. I really do. I think that information should be there. My experience with Treaty 8 was such that we would send leadership to meet with federal officials, they would go armed with anecdotal information, and the bureaucrats would want statistical data — prove it — and it was not there.
I do have one what I consider significant issue with the EIS, and that is who owns the information and who is the holder of it? As I understand it right now, this will belong to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. I think that is a huge mistake. They are saying all the right things, such as, "We will be the holder of the information and any First Nation who wants the data can come and get it.'' I am very much of the opinion that it is First Nations data that should be controlled by First Nations, and if the federal government is looking for information from that data, all they have to do is request it.
Mr. McCue: The few friends that I have will tell you I am not a cynical person, but I think it needs to be recognized that the emergence of the EIS initiative is the department and the government's response to the report by the Auditor General, who lambasted the department and the government for not having up-to-date and appropriate information and statistics on First Nations education. It is not there to do anything other than to meet that criticism.
There will be the generation of hopefully useful information, but as long as that information resides with the department, then its use and function will remain questionable.
Mr. Stonefish: I sit on the Performance Measurement Committee; it is the committee that developed the indicators for the EIS. Going on almost two years now, I have sat on that committee pulling my hair out because the only things that First Nations are required to report on are based in their funding agreements. As far as academic achievement, the First Nation Student Success Program, FNSSP, that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to different communities, in order to sign onto that and get that money, you had to provide your provincial literacy and numeracy scores. Those are their indicators for success, looking at those scores and then measuring them against the province, which is not right as far as funding goes.
Outside of that, there are questions such as, "Do you have a First Nations language program in your school?'' If you had 15 minutes, you could say yes, but no idea if it is producing speakers. "Do you have a cultural program in your school?'' You could say yes; it could be that you smudge in the morning, but there is no qualitative data that looks at and measures what we define as student success, what is needed in our schools. Of the 16 indicators going forth, the data that will come out of it, you will find out how many kids are going to school, how many of them are late, what their provincial scores are. It has nothing to do with what we are concerned about with student wellness and development.
With respect to the EIS, we are working on terms of reference in terms of who owns the data and who analyzes it and keeps it, but as far as the system itself goes, it is being pushed through us as far as with the indicators and reporting mechanisms that exist in the agreements. There is no real educational data that will arise that talks about student success or our definition of student success.
Senator Dyck: My question concerns the method of funding. Numerous witnesses, including you this morning, have talked about the inequities of funding between on and off-reserve schools. I think this is a major question that political leadership will be concerned about. If we set up the structures that we are talking about today — second, third and maybe even a fourth level — will the structures be able to have in place a system where funding is determined? Let us say someone suggested the funding should come from Treasury Board and that INAC should not be part of the formula. If we put those structures in place, will we be able to equalize the funding so that that problem will disappear?
I think it is important for us to do that. Cindy Fisher, who appeared at the same time as Mr. Stonefish, said to us that it really was a moral and ethical problem. She essentially asked, "Are our children not worth it?'' If we are not giving equal funding to children on reserves, that is really a moral and ethical problem.
If we are proposing legislative changes, I think we cannot morally or ethically do so unless we put in place something that equalizes funding to get rid of that inequity. Can we do that through legislative structures?
Mr. Kelly: If I understand the question correctly, I see absolutely no reason why that cannot happen.
When I sat with Treaty 8, I would look at the funding formula that came from the federal government. I think there were 24 different categories under which you could apply for dollars. When I sit with the province and look at the funding formula, it is a one-inch thick binder with formulas that would allow you to access dollars to address particular situations, whether related to geography, distance, second language, whatever. I think you are able to build it in so that there is equity in funding dispersed through Canada. You will not do it by talking about certain numbers of dollars because there are too many factors that impact the cost of educating a child.
I would caution you to steer away from saying that whatever the province spends is what we should spend. You need to remember that provincial averages are just that — averages. The average comes about from where the majority of the students reside. In Alberta's case, that would be Edmonton and Calgary. I run into significantly higher costs in education in a remote northern community than I would in Edmonton or Calgary.
I think you just have to ensure that there are comprehensive formulas. You can take a page from some provinces and look at addressing the particular areas or issues that individual communities would face.
Senator Meredith: Along the same lines as Senator Campbell's question, is it truly reasonable to expect that First Nations struggling with a lot of issues like poverty, health or housing could assume responsibility for their full education system without the capacity?
Mr. McCue: The short answer to your question is no, but that is why the system is required. That is why the various levels that we have identified here are essential because individual communities are struggling. We all know that. I am sure you have heard that plenty of times. It is unconscionable to allow the status quo to continue.
Ms. Atleo: In the United States, they tried termination in the early 1960s. That was a shutting down of reserves. It did not solve anything. The issues are always still there.
The development of capacity really began in the 1960s, and there has been a lot of work done in the development of capacity. Moving students off reserve into urban communities will not solve anything. Moving them into the provincial system does not solve anything because the provincial system does not have the capacity to deal with them at all.
Therefore, we have two systems. One is highly articulated that does not have the capacity to absorb Aboriginal students. The other is a struggling Aboriginal system that might not have the capacity, but is willing and, morally, ethically and constitutionally, has some reason for existing and being articulated in a much more appropriate manner. We have those two things. I use a model in which we are looking at two totally different systems that have never really interfaced with each other. At this point, there must be an a formal, legal articulation of the Aboriginal system as we move away from the bureaucratic articulation of this system through policy. The interface will come later. It can only come later because you can only interface like with like. What has happened now has been a real tragedy over the existence of that bureaucracy. Policy and bureaucracy cannot do what legislation and a legal interface between organizations throughout those systems can do.
Senator Patterson: I want to thank the experts. I wanted to primarily listen today. I think we all have some very good direction on where we should go as we work to wrap up our study.
I found the advice on the funding fascinating. It seems to me there has been a real challenge for us to find a way to engage provinces in contributing to the education of all their citizens, as Mr. Kelly suggested. I know there are big constitutional barriers, but I also know that provinces are very concerned about the wasted human resource potential. An enormous human resource potential to develop our natural and other resources is being lost because of the failures of our education systems in First Nations. I think that is an important idea that is new to me and that we should pursue.
I think the advice on legislation is very clear. It must respect the primacy of First Nations' governance. It must be enabling. We must work to a system that establishes second and third-level support that is not there right now. Dealing out Indian Affairs, or AAND, as we call it in the North, is a bold idea. We have heard from the officials in charge of education that they really are not education experts. They are badly equipped to do anything but administer. Therefore, your suggestion about a new approach and perhaps breaking away from that failed model through Treasury Board, is, to me, very significant.
I have been thinking about next steps. This is going to take leadership.
There was talk about having a commission with them and with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation or the residential schools. No one mentioned a role for the Assembly of First Nations. We have had the Inuit leadership here talking about an Inuit approach to education. We have a grand chief who I know is an educator and makes it a priority. Do you see a role for the AFN? As we move to the next steps, do you see the creation of some kind of commission of people not associated with the present institutions?
Ms. Atleo: In many ways, we would not be at this point in the discussion if we did not have that leadership from the AFN on education. We could have been talking economics and trusteeships at this point in time. I think it is part of the deal. That is where the leadership has been coming from to create public discourse and to sensitize us around these issues. It is a facilitating role and I see them playing a part in facilitating.
If we think of the structure of the AFN, it is provincially and First Nations organized. You have a natural organization there — especially in the First Nations piece — that reaches back down into the communities. To use that organization to process this would be one way to understand that.
Mr. McCue: I think the national and the regional organizations have a role to play in the process. I think their roles would be subordinate to the creation of a commission or a committee. I would see the AFN and its other national and provincial organizations as contributing to the process.
I refer to the precedents that exist: the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, the residential school commission and the royal commission. There was certainly input on the part of the national organizations including the AFN. However, these initiatives were done largely without the principle involvement of the Assembly of First Nations and other organizations and I see no reason why we cannot follow the same path.
The Chair: I see everyone nodding. Senator Patterson, you summarized it great with your observations. It has been educational, inspiring and informative.
On behalf of the senators, we appreciate your presence here today. The method in which you brought forward your expertise I am sure will be a significant part of the report that we plan on working on. This has been experimental as far as this committee is concerned, namely bringing an expert panel in on a round panel but you have done an excellent job. I am sure I am speaking on behalf of each and every one of us when I thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
If anything arises which you think you could be of assistance to us and we have not had time to deal with, please do not hesitate to get in touch with any of the senators, the library or our clerk.
With that, honourable senators, if there are no other comments, the meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)