44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 21, 2022 02:00PM
Uqaqtittiji, I would like to thank the member for his very thoughtful speech and his statement. I really appreciated it.
I do agree with the member that there are some gaps in this bill and I think we are going to need to make sure amendments are made. I wonder if the member could share with us whether one of the gaps is that it does not take a rights-based approach to ensuring that indigenous rights are being protected and better served in Canada?
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the work my colleague and I do together on committee. I look forward to the work we can do.
Our team has a number of ideas that we are going to put forward as amendments. We are going to be listening. If you have some ideas, we are more than happy to consider those and work together to improve this bill.
Let us be fair; this is a good starting point. There are some ways we could improve this bill and move it a little farther down the road to advance reconciliation for all people across our country. I am happy to work with you on any of the ideas you would put forward.
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- Sep/21/22 4:43:02 p.m.
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Again I am going to remind folks to work through the Chair. On the usage of “you” and speaking directly to other members, just do not do it quite as much.
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Mr. Speaker, I have been here for some time. I had very dark hair when I first came. I think the importance is in making sure that we are not referencing each other or actually referencing young sheep, because I am not sure, when they keep talking about “you”, whether it is “you” plural as we would say in northern Ontario or “ewe” the little sheep.
Mr. Speaker, could you please clarify the importance of speaking through you so there is no misunderstanding. People might be thinking we are talking about little sheep. I would, if I was referring to the Conservatives say “youse guys” because that would be more the second person plural, but I am not going to do that. I would speak through you.
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- Sep/21/22 4:43:49 p.m.
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Thank you for that clarification to work through the Chair and on the usage of “you”. It is probably best not to use “you” when we are dealing with questions and answers in this chamber.
We still have some time for questions and comments. The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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Mr. Speaker, we have a very significant day coming up next week. It is a statutory holiday. It is part of truth and reconciliation. There is this expectation that maybe there is something that we could do here. I believe there is.
When we take a look at the support that seems to be implied in the comments and questions, it would be a wonderful thing to see this legislation pass. Would the member provide his thoughts on the significance of the legislation in terms of its passage before the statutory holiday next week?
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Mr. Speaker, my understanding would be that the legislative calendar is controlled by that side of the House, not by us. I have not been here that long but that is my understanding of how this works.
I have been very clear about my desire and intention to have some conversations about this at committee and about proposing some amendments that we think would improve the bill. I guess I would throw that back at the other side of the House. It is on them, not us, to determine the schedule.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-29, the national council for reconciliation act. This bill is the government's attempt after six and a half years to address the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action 53 through 56. Indeed, since 2015, the Liberal government, for all its rhetoric on reconciliation, has only fully implemented 11 out of the 94 calls to action and only eight of the 76 calls that actually fall under its jurisdiction.
Bill C-29 is long overdue, and the rush by the government to implement something has produced a flawed bill. If we are to continue down the path of reconciliation with indigenous people, a robust and inclusive response to calls to action 53 to 56 is needed. Unfortunately, the government has failed to produce that response. Bill C-29 provides a framework for the implementation of a national council for reconciliation, but the foundation is cracked and will need some care and attention at committee if the government hopes to provide a workable council that is respected by all indigenous leaders, communities and organizations across Canada.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that the government establish a national council for reconciliation in call to action 53. Bill C-29 would address this through the creation of a not-for-profit corporation that would have between nine and 13 members who would monitor and report the progress of the government on their efforts for reconciliation with indigenous people. The council would not be an agent of His Majesty in the right of Canada, nor would it be governed by the Financial Administration Act. It would be, in every practical sense, an independent body, or at least it should be.
Here we find the first of several issues I have with Bill C-29. How independent would this council be if the members of the board are picked by the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations? The bill stipulates that the first board of directors would “be selected by the Minister in collaboration with the transitional committee”. However, let us not forget that the transitional committee was selected by the minister in December 2021. Why is this important? First, the board would have the vital task of establishing the articles of incorporation and other founding documents that set aside how future boards would be elected and who would constitute a member. In other words, the minister and his hand-picked transitional team would determine the future of this so-called independent council, and its job would include taking the minister to task over their failed record on reconciliation.
Call to action 54 calls on the government to provide multi-year funding for the national council. The government did so in budget 2019 through the allocation of $126.5 million, yet the act would not require any accountability on the expenditure of this money, and not one financial report would need to be filed by the council.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission recognized the importance that relevant and timely information be provided to the council for it to actually do its work. This was enshrined in call to action 55, where all levels of government are required to provide annual reports and current data on a wide range of areas related to indigenous matters, including but not limited to child care, education, health, incarceration rates, criminality and victimization rates. It would be interesting to hear from provincial and municipal authorities how they are able to implement this requirement. I hope, for the council's sake, that a lot of the work to streamline these requests has already taken place between the crown-indigenous relations ministry, including Northern Affairs Canada, and their provincial counterparts. I also hope that there will not be any undue burdens placed on our already taxed municipal governments with respect to extra reporting requirements.
Call to action 56 calls on the government, the Prime Minister in fact, to formally respond to the report by issuing a state of indigenous peoples' report that outlines the government's reconciliation plan. Bill C-29 utterly fails here, designating the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, rather than the Prime Minister, to make the response.
One of the most glaring issues with Bill C-29 is the lack of representation on the national council for reconciliation. The bill sets aside three seats for the AFN, ITK and MNC, three national organizations that the Liberal government almost exclusively deals with when it comes to indigenous issues, yet they are not the only national indigenous organizations in Canada. In fact, large swaths of urban and poor people would be ignored. There is no representation of women or children designated on the council. There is no acknowledgement of the work of the on-the-ground community organizations that do the work day in and day out for indigenous people.
The Liberals will argue that those organization could get elected by the membership, and sure they could, but why do some organizations get guaranteed spots and not others? Why have important national organizations, such as the Native Women's Association of Canada, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples or the National Association of Friendship Centres, been designated as second-class organizations by the government? Where are the other Métis and indigenous voices?
What about organizations focused on the important work of economic reconciliation? I often hear in meetings with indigenous leaders about the importance of economic reconciliation, not just to address their own issues with their own resources, but to also to return a sense of self-sufficiency and honour to people who have had it stripped away by a paternalistic, archaic, and irreparably broken Indian Act.
If the government of Canada is serious about true reconciliation, we need to address the elephant in the room. I believe that we need to immediately, and in partnership with indigenous leaders, do a comprehensive review of the Indian Act with the intent of removing the legislative barriers to participation in Canada’s economy and developing a long-term plan to fully transition away from the Indian Act.
Some indigenous communities are already there. Some are in the process, and some are not ready for that conversation. That is why we need a cautious approach to supporting the abolition of the Indian Act by providing indigenous communities that are prepared for self-government with the legislative avenues to do so, while also ensuring that a robust and national dialogue on the plan for what is next is held inclusively with indigenous and non-indigenous people and ensuring that any new legislation is based on consultation relating to autonomy, taxation, transparency, accountability and property rights.
At the same time, it is my belief that we need establish a national dialogue with indigenous leadership and organizations to remove the bureaucratic barriers to economic prosperity that exist at Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, with the goal of phasing out these government bureaucracies all together. There is no reason why indigenous communities and organizations cannot deal directly with finance or health or any other government entity without consulting the gatekeepers at those two ministries.
We need to modernize the land treaties system to initiate economic prosperity for indigenous communities; provide the tools for indigenous communities to determine their own destiny while balancing the rights of Canada; ensure the need for certainty and finality of terms, so as not to impede the overall governance of the nation; and provide future certainty for governments, industry, and indigenous and non-indigenous people.
The existing model of federal public servants determining who is and who is not ready for self-governance needs to change. Reconciliation must be centred on the future of indigenous people, not what is in the best interest of this Liberal government. By modernizing our approach to indigenous partnerships through the eventual abolition of the Indian Act, we modernize Canada, and we usher in a new age of economic prosperity and equality for opportunity.
Bill C-29, which disregards the important counsel of organizations devoted to indigenous people, women's and children’s issues, urban and poor first nations, and self-sufficiency and equality is a symptom of a much larger issue. Conservatives support reconciliation with indigenous people, and we are ready to have conversation.
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Mr. Speaker, I would love to comment on the member's approach here, which was very constructive. Many great things were put forward. I sincerely look forward to working with the member again on the indigenous and northern affairs committee to work through some of these issues.
I, too, want transparency and accountability for indigenous peoples across this country. I wonder if the member could comment briefly on the complex nature of the TRC calls to action and this incredible work that we need to do. Perhaps we cannot oversimplify this work, but really need to go slowly and make sure that it is done properly, while also recognizing the urgency.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member opposite's work on the committee.
Yes, obviously we want to ensure everything is done properly. It is why my colleague from northern Saskatchewan and I just outlined in our speeches some improvements we would like to see made. At the same time, there are less than nine calls to action under federal jurisdiction that have actually been completed, and we have been at this for a great number of years.
There is a lot of work that can be done faster. We know how the government likes to drag things out. We want to push it a little more to actually get the job done, and that is what we will continue to do.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to make an interesting note about one of the comments the member made about abolishing the Indian Act. This was something proposed by the other bench by the then prime minister Trudeau Sr. A strong activist and indigenous leader from my province of Alberta named Harold Cardinal responded by saying that we should not demolish and do away with the Indian Act until such time as we have a proper and measurable response to indigenous claims of rights and land.
Would the member agree that indigenous people need to have a pathway to sovereignty and recognized rights before we contemplate abolishing the Indian Act?
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Mr. Speaker, yes, it is exactly what I pointed out in my speech. We should first of all be ready to have this conversation, and there are many who are ready to have this conversation. Many acknowledge the barriers the Indian Act has imposed upon communities right across the country.
There are communities, as I mentioned in my speech, that are ready for this conversation now. There are some considering it, and there are some that are not willing to have this conversation. That is why we are very cautious to say that maybe we can have this conversation with the inclusion and the very real input of indigenous communities, but also provide the off-ramps for those who are ready to have this conversation today.
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Mr. Speaker, Bill C‑29 states that the purpose of the council will be to monitor the progress being made towards reconciliation in all sectors of Canadian society and by all governments in Canada. That is a broad scope.
Which sectors does my colleague think should be prioritized? Should the monitoring be limited to federal institutions? Should the council also monitor federally regulated private companies?
I would like to hear his thoughts on that.
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Mr. Speaker, we want to, as I mentioned in my speech, respect the various jurisdictions, such as provincial and municipal governments, and work with them in partnership when there is an opportunity to do so. We also do not want to overstep and be the federal government that knows best.
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Mr. Speaker, I realize the Conservatives are very passionate about seeing call to action 56 implemented.
I am wondering if he could speak to me about any of the other calls to action he would like us and his new leader to fast-track so we can prepare to move forward in a faster way to get these calls to action done.
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Mr. Speaker, we have talked about the slow response to the TRC calls to action. We have done that many times in committee. We have questioned the minister over and over again about the slow response to these calls to action.
Right now we are talking about Bill C-29, and we are pointing out flaws and things the government has missed in its bill. As I said in my question to that member opposite a few minutes ago, we want to see an amendment to call to action 56 that would include the Prime Minister making the response to the council's report.
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Mr. Speaker, today I am speaking on behalf of the Bloc Québécois about Bill C‑29, which provides for the establishment of a national council for reconciliation.
I am especially grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate because I am a member of the Huron-Wendat nation, the first Huron-Wendat to be elected to the House of Commons. Like the minister, I too was present when the survivors' flag was raised on Parliament Hill a few weeks ago. With us was my colleague from Manicouagan, who is the Bloc Québécois's indigenous affairs critic. We are still a very long way from having fully measured the tragic consequences of a vicious colonial regime.
We need to acknowledge a historical fact. The meeting of two worlds, of indigenous nations and European empires, heralded a brutal culture shock, to say the least. In the name of introducing peoples deemed inferior to the glories of civilization, nations were expropriated and crushed. For those nations, the freedom promised by westerners was actually, more often than not, oppression.
The bill before us today responds to calls to action 53 to 56 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was established through a legal agreement between residential school survivors, the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit representatives, and those responsible for creating and running the schools, in other words, Ottawa and religious authorities.
The commission's mandate was to ensure that all Canadians were aware of what happened in residential schools. The commission has documented and provided us with a great deal of new information about survivors, their families, communities, and anyone else who was ultimately directly affected by the residential school experience, including former students who were first nations, Inuit, or Métis, as well as family members, communities, churches, former residential school staff, government officials and other Canadians. A tremendous amount of investigative and research work was required.
Let us not forget that from 2007 to 2015, Ottawa paid money, $72 million, to support the work of the commission. The commission members spent six years all across the country to hear more than 6,500 testimonies. They also held seven national events in different regions of the country to mobilize the Canadian public, raise public awareness about the history of residential schools and the scars they left, and share and commemorate the experiences of former students and their families.
In June 2015, the commission held its closing event in Ottawa, at which time it released the executive summary of its final report in several volumes. The summary outlines 94 calls to action and recommendations to promote reconciliation between Canadians and indigenous peoples.
As is the case in many bills, the intention is often commendable, but at times the devil is in the details. In this case, I would like to say from the outset that the Bloc Québécois is voting in favour of the principle of Bill C‑29.
The Bloc Québécois is a vocal advocate for nation-to-nation relations between Quebec and first nations. Giving indigenous peoples a stronger voice and allowing them to be heard during the reconciliation process is entirely in line with our position. Remember, the Bloc Québécois is a political party that supports Quebec's independence. In our opinion, this is the best way to achieve a new partnership between nations: a new regime that will no longer have any ties to the racist system of the Indian Act, whose very name is insulting. In fact, my status card says “CERTIFICATE OF INDIAN STATUS”. This is not a card from the 1950s. It is from 2012 at the earliest, not that long ago. Do not be fooled. That term is as insulting and disrespectful as the N-word and, yes, they are absolutely comparable.
The term Indians is just as insulting to first nations. For the Bloc, international relations start at home, in our own country. The Bloc Québécois is working with indigenous nations at the federal level to strengthen and guarantee their inherent rights. It is ensuring that the federal government applies the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in its entirety in federal areas of responsibility. The Bloc has also come out in support of indigenous nations receiving their due, and we will continue to apply pressure on Ottawa to ensure it responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action.
On June 21, 2021, the Bloc secured the unanimous passage of a motion to ensure that indigenous communities have all the resources needed to lift the veil on the historical reality of residential schools and to force the churches to open their archives. We could say that this bill works towards that and it is one reason why we will support it.
We also announced that we want to ensure that there will be predictable and sustainable funding for programs to help residential school survivors heal, such as the health support program that was specially designed for that purpose. This bill would establish a council to provide ongoing follow-up for this file.
The bill provides for the establishment of a national council for reconciliation, an independent, non-political, permanent organization. The minister stressed that earlier. This organization, whose mission is to advance efforts for reconciliation with indigenous peoples, must be led by indigenous people. It responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's calls to action 53 to 56. I am going to read them, because they are important.
Call to action 53 reads as follows, and I quote:
We call upon the Parliament of Canada, in consultation and collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, to enact legislation to establish a National Council for Reconciliation.
That is a good start.
Call to action 54 reads:
We call upon the Government of Canada to provide multi-year funding for the National Council for Reconciliation to ensure that it has the financial, human, and technical resources required to conduct its work, including the endowment of a National Reconciliation Trust to advance the cause of reconciliation.
Call to action 55 reads:
We call upon all levels of government to provide annual reports or any current data requested by the National Council for Reconciliation so that it can report on the progress towards reconciliation.
Call to action 56 reads:
We call upon the prime minister of Canada to formally respond to the report of the National Council for Reconciliation by issuing an annual “State of Aboriginal Peoples” report, which would outline the government’s plans for advancing the cause of reconciliation.
Naturally, we are fully and firmly in favour of these calls to action. Earlier, the minister thoroughly explained the organization's mission, its mandate, its governance structure and representativeness on the board. That was all well explained, and the bill is fairly straightforward. We also applaud the obligation to table a report in Parliament and the government's obligation to respond to that report. We approve of all that and have no issue with any of it.
Nevertheless, some questions remain unanswered, and I urge the House to pay close attention to these issues. The first is funding. The 2019 federal budget included an envelope of $126.5 million to establish the national council for reconciliation, including $1.5 million in first-year operational, or start-up, funding, but we have no information about ongoing funding or how long that envelope is supposed to last. Details about how this is actually supposed to work are lacking.
Another lingering question is that of the scope. One thing that recurs frequently in this bill is all the entities the council will monitor in order to make recommendations. We can see that the council's current purpose is to “monitor...the progress being made towards reconciliation in all sectors of Canadian society and by all governments in Canada” and to “recommend measures to promote, prioritize and coordinate efforts for reconciliation in all sectors of Canadian society and by all governments in Canada”.
First of all, what does that mean? We would like to understand what is meant by “all sectors of Canadian society”. Crown corporations, surely, would be included. There are Crown corporations in Canada that could be scrutinized by the council, and government departments, too.
Will federally regulated private businesses also be subject to monitoring and investigation? Would an independent airline, for example, be included in the mandate to monitor and make recommendations?
The scope is very broad. It is perhaps a little too vague in the bill. The bill gives the council a great deal of latitude in its activities. This is not a problem in itself, but it could also undermine the council's effectiveness, because we think it could narrow its focus on government entities, rather than on private businesses. This is not to say that private businesses should be ignored, but rather, if there is one thing that should be looked at, it is the government, because the government needs to be held to a higher standard. Focusing on the government, then, only makes sense.
The other thing we need to keep an eye on is the monitoring of all Canadian governments. The bill refers to “governments” in the plural, so we see that there is a desire to monitor the provincial and territorial governments. Although indigenous affairs currently falls under federal jurisdiction, the challenges affecting first nations also relate to many provincial jurisdictions, such as health and education. We see here that the government wants to disregard jurisdiction and allow the council to monitor all government activities in Canada, including those of the provinces and Quebec.
I must admit that that is an irritant for us because we cannot support a federal council that would seek to put Quebec on trial. We are going to keep a close eye on that aspect of things, even though we are in favour of the principle of the bill, as I said earlier. This aspect does not change that support, but it is something members should be aware of.
The Public Inquiry Commission on relations between Indigenous Peoples and certain public services in Québec, otherwise known as the Viens commission, was put in place to determine the underlying causes of all forms of violence, discrimination and differential treatment of indigenous men and women in the delivery of certain public services in Quebec.
In his report, the commissioner made 135 recommendations to the Government of Quebec. The report contains 142 recommendations in all, but seven of those were not for the Government of Quebec. We are left with 135 recommendations involving the Government of Quebec. These calls to action apply to all of the services that the government provides to indigenous peoples, such as justice, correctional services, law enforcement, health care, social services and youth protection.
The Government of Quebec announced $200 million in its 2020 budget to implement the commission's calls to action. Since October 2020, $125 million has been invested in enhancing, ensuring the sustainability of and improving public services, in addition to implementing cultural safety measures.
In the interest of independent and impartial monitoring, the Quebec ombudsman was given the mandate to follow up on the implementation of the recommendations set out in the Public Inquiry Commission on relations between Indigenous Peoples and certain public services in Québec. The Quebec ombudsman has established an advisory committee that includes first nations and Inuit people in order to promote collaboration and ensure that the Viens commission's calls to action are translated into measures that meet the needs of first nations and Inuit representatives.
Another committee, made up primarily of university researchers and people from civil society, was also created to independently document the implementation of these calls to action. It operates out of the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, and its first report was published in 2021. This is a great model to follow, in our opinion. We applaud all of Quebec's efforts in this area.
Getting back to the current bill, it could be said that despite what I just stated about what Quebec has already done, we may be seeing the establishment of another body to provide oversight and make recommendations in addition to the two that already exist in Quebec. Therefore, we can wonder if there will be overlapping jurisdictions, meddling in jurisdictions by Ottawa, or if the council will focus just on federal issues in Quebec by analyzing only matters under federal jurisdiction.
The council will be responsible for providing oversight and making recommendations. To that end it will need investigators and analysts. For the committee to properly carry out its responsibilities in this era of labour shortages, it will also be interesting to know the number of staff that this council will need. In short, despite our support, there are many grey areas as I have just mentioned.
In conclusion, it is time to leave behind the rhetoric, crocodile tears and symbolic acts and to take action. Quebec's motto is “Je me souviens” or “I remember”. Today, let us remember. We owe it to the victims of these repugnant acts that in many respects we have barely uncovered or understood.
I will end my speech by saying tiawenhk, which means thank you in the Wendat language.
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Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to listen to the debate, particularly from Conservative members, but my question is for this member. When the Conservatives try to give what I would argue is a false impression and make a simple statement by saying that x number of calls to action have been implemented, it is somewhat deceitful. There are numerous recommendations, a high percentage of those calls to action, that are being acted on. It is not just solely the federal government, and this leads to the question I have for my colleague across the way.
Would my colleague not agree that, when dealing with the calls to action and in the spirit of reconciliation, there is a need for governments to be working together to address the injustices from the past and to try to work collaboratively in order to achieve many of those calls to action?
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Mr. Speaker, I am certainly in favour of collaboration.
As I said, we are taking part in a democratic debate. I have expressed reservations, but we agree on the fundamentals. We will look at ways to improve the bill and see what kind of answers we get to our questions. Then we will make up our minds.
Clearly we need a collaborative approach to the duty to remember. That goes without saying. One thing we know is that the story does not belong to any one person, it belongs to everyone. That is what informs our position today.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my friend from the Bloc. Once the council is operational, and he referred to it in his speech, the bill would require all levels of government to submit any requested data to show progress on reconciliation, as set out in call to action number 55.
Does the member have any concern with the lack of consultation with the provinces during the process of developing this council, which will impact all levels of government?
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