Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you very much, senator. I asked that question myself of the department when I read Ms. Talaga’s report.

I will start by first reassuring people that we do not have a shortage of children’s medication in First Nations. It’s very important that we understand that is not the case, and that community health centres not only have children’s pain medication in stock, but we also have many of the compounds needed should we get to a place where we need to compound those medications, obviously with professionals at hand.

In terms of the report, what I understood from the department’s briefing to me was that the information that Ms. Talaga had was incorrect. There was that directive by other provincial health authorities to save medications that were out of date for potential use. Again, we are not there by any stretch of the imagination, and I am glad for that. We have a very sophisticated team at the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch that regularly monitors medication shortages and works closely with the Public Health Agency of Canada, Health Canada and provincial partners to make sure that we will have the supplies we need.

As of today, we are certain we do.

Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: Thank you, and welcome, minister.

I believe you are aware that in the community of Pangnirtung in Nunavut, there are active cases of tuberculosis, or TB; there are 35 active and 126 latent cases that could become active. A lack of screening facilities means the accurate number could be much higher.

We know that a study published by the Canadian Medical Association found that Nunavut Inuit transferred to Ottawa from my home region have a 25% higher chance of dying after surgery due to what the authors note as systemic barriers in accessing timely and culturally appropriate care.

However, federal monies granted through ICPC — the Inuit‑Crown Partnership Committee — meant to aid in the screening and treatment of TB are not being spent due to a dispute between NTI — Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. — and the Government of Nunavut.

Are you willing to take direct action, minister — this is your money — to ensure the money that was allocated to eliminate TB in Inuit Nunangat is spent?

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you very much. It’s an excellent question.

I have been taking direct action. In fact, all summer and into this fall, I’ve been speaking with both parties. I’m pleased to say that they have signed their letter of agreement on how to move forward. That is a very positive step.

But I will also say that you’re right: The Government of Canada has invested millions of dollars to combat and treat tuberculosis. Obviously, on the medical side, we do need provincial and territorial partners to do that work, in large part because they are the health care delivery providers.

But in addition to that, in Budget 2022, the historic investment of $845 million for Inuit housing allows us to build on some of the progress we have made. There still is a gap. It’s important when we are talking about tuberculosis that we don’t forget about the social determinants of health like housing and access to things like education and information that is culturally appropriate and in languages that people can understand.

We’ll continue to work with our partners to deliver these funds and the supports that are needed so that this extremely urgent work can get done.

[Translation]

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you very much. I’m pleased to hear this question because, in fact, it was one of the first pieces of work I did as a minister for this government, launching the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. I will note that there are senators in this room who were very active in that work as well.

Of course, it is difficult work. It is a multi-sectoral work. We need partners at the municipal level, the provincial level and the federal level.

The federal government, I often say, is very good at giving money. We don’t necessarily know exactly what to do. Communities do, municipalities do, provinces do, and I see our role as an enabling partner.

We certainly do now have a national action plan that, as I said, partners have fed into. That is a plan for how we get to this place together. There are billions of dollars committed and invested. The national action plan is also what is considered an evergreen document, so it will be updated as we learn more, as we see what works and what doesn’t work.

I will say, it is also something that the work that we’re doing on housing, on homelessness, on supports for Indigenous people in urban settings is critically attached to. Just a few weeks ago, I was in Manitoba, announcing funding for a women’s shelter to be able to have core permanent funding and additional space, dignified space, for Indigenous women who find themselves engaged in the streets, in violent situations, in risky situations. I spoke to some of the women in the shelter.

The federal government is increasingly becoming a very strong partner with municipalities, organizations, Indigenous-led organizations, friendship centres. It’s an all-hands-on-deck piece of work, and I’m honoured to be able to do that with partners.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Minister, as a senator from Manitoba, let me thank you for what you have done in helping that women’s shelter. As you know, you and I were on a flight coming back from Winnipeg the day that you came back from there, so thank you.

Minister, in the spring of this year, the Parliamentary Budget Officer published a report which analyzed the government’s expenditures and results for Indigenous peoples through the creation of a second department. The report found the government was failing Indigenous peoples in a multitude of ways, noting a significant increase in expenditures, which is estimated to be several billions of dollars, and a “significant decline” in the results for Indigenous communities. The report concluded, “All organizations examined performed poorly in their ability to consistently maintain a target and date to achieve it . . . .”

Minister, how do you justify another report that your government is spending more and achieving less? In the six months since the report was tabled, what concrete steps have you taken to reroute the bulk of these expenditures from the Ottawa bureaucracy to Indigenous peoples directly?

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you very much, Senator Plett. I will tell you that closing a gap, especially when that gap has been ignored for decades, if not generations, is extremely expensive. Turning a gap around, sometimes those early investments don’t demonstrate the kinds of success that we want to see immediately. It’s like closing any gap.

It’s not closed, by the way. The government has a goal of closing the infrastructure gap, for example, by 2030. But the gap is so large that even with historic investments in infrastructure, over $18 billion to date, we still see the need of communities far outstrips the investments made to date.

The structural change between the two departments, I believe, was important. It was very difficult to have a department that was responsible for the relationship, if you will — land claims, settling of long-standing treaty disputes — along with a department that simultaneously was responsible for administering services.

We are stabilizing as the two departments have become clearer in their roles, and I think having a department that is solely focused, like mine, on Indigenous service delivery allows for us to get better and better at doing that work through the principles of self-determination.

It’s a huge shift for the government in the way that we think about this work, but it’s an important one. I think it will have a legacy for many generations.

Hon. Tony Loffreda: Thank you, minister, for being here, and welcome to the Senate.

As a member of our National Finance Committee, I have noted that your departmental results report for the last year has not been provided, and the previous one was less than thorough. These reports should contain critical information for the Senate’s National Finance Committee.

Will the minister provide a date when we can expect a report and ensure that it is thorough and complete, with verifiable performance indicators, beyond stating that the funding has been dispersed?

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you very much. I think the honourable senator is speaking in my language — measurement of outcomes is extremely important to me. However, we are also talking about measurement in a space where self-determination is very important and data has been used and misused. So there is a huge distrust, in some cases, by Indigenous peoples of the collection of data and of the way that the government will use the data. So this is delicate work. It is important work, and everyone agrees that we need to be able to show outcomes.

In terms of the date of the departmental results report, I’m thrilled that someone reads that because it’s important. In fact, I would agree with the senator that the first year when I was the minister, that report was rather thin. I hope that you’ll find that the report has improved this year. I recently signed off on it, so I would assume you’ll have it in short order.

Hon. Bernadette Clement: Welcome, minister. On behalf of Senator Pat Duncan, I want to ask the following question:

You have an understanding of health care, and with your current responsibilities of Indigenous Services, your mandate letter includes a whole-of-government approach.

Status First Nations can be identified through provincial-territorial health care numbers. Why is assisting the renewal of status cards through Indigenous Services at such a bottleneck and causing such difficulty for First Nations? Why have we not seen quantifiable improvements after the millions you have spent to improve the system?

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Minister, in June, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs warned that Indigenous Services Canada is on track to miss its 2030 target to close the infrastructure gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. As I have outlined previously, it is clear that your government’s approach to simply throwing more money at a problem in the hopes that it will magically solve itself is not manifesting in results for Indigenous communities. While funding is necessary, in the absence of an actionable plan and no strategic implementation of these funds, nothing gets done.

Minister, will your department commit to reviewing its approach and to producing an actionable plan to close this gap?

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you. First of all, I’ll reflect back to my opening comment, which is that closing a gap that has been ignored for decades, if not multiple decades, is a huge, astronomical task. In fact, I asked the department when I first arrived a year ago to make sure that they began that work of assessing the gap and what it would take to address it.

I would say, with all respect to the honourable senator, it will take more money. It will take a lot of money to close that gap because, in fact, we have gaps in housing, in community centres, in schooling and in all kinds of infrastructure, including civil infrastructure. Communities are running out of lots to build houses on because, in fact, they are running out of land in some cases, or the land they have is unserviced, so it requires heavy civil engineering. I have learned more about infrastructure in the last year than I ever thought would be possible.

The government is committed to closing that gap. It will require strategic investments of financial resources, and it will require increased capacity, in some cases, in some communities to be able to plan. It will also require rigorous oversight to make sure that the contracted services that we, as a government, fund and that First Nations contract, deliver in a timely and sustainable way. We’ll continue to do that hard work together.

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you very much.

I agree. This is a complaint that I hear about. I would say it’s the bread and butter, in some ways, of front-line work for members of Parliament, because when someone cannot get the renewal of their status card, of course, it creates all sorts of challenges for them.

Our government, as you note, has invested more money to increase the efficiency of status card renewal. I have asked and directed the department to look at automated ways to do this. I think part of the challenge is that it is a very laborious process that requires increasing numbers of individuals. Of course, as we work to amend some of the systemic discrimination in the Indian Act — I know that a number of senators have worked extensively on this — that means even more people seeking status cards.

This is a direction I have given the department — to look at ways we can use some automated process. I’m no tech expert, but certainly some way to facilitate a faster process that allows for people to get the critical information they need.

[Translation]

Hon. Michèle Audette: Kwe, minister. We’ll start from the same principle of self-determination. Your government made a series of amendments — Bill C-3 in 2010 and Bill S-3 in 2007 — to announce its intention to address the issue of emancipated persons in order to eliminate gender-based discrimination in the entitlement to Indian registration. Where we part ways is that in my books, this is more about softening or reducing discrimination and maybe not eliminating it altogether. I would like your thoughts on that. What are you going to do for the thousands of people, men and women, who can be registered in Ottawa, but because of membership codes in section 10 of the Indian Act, will be excluded from their community? To me, that is not what it means to eliminate discrimination.

[English]

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: It’s a very difficult question that the senator has posed to me. In fact, I find this space a challenging one because there is no question that people have been discriminated through the Indian Act. The entire act is discriminatory. The aspects regarding how the colonial state decided who is — or is not — Indigenous has been marked with gender discrimination and other forms of discrimination throughout its history.

As the honourable senator knows, we are working now on amendments that would allow individuals with family histories of enfranchisement to transmit entitlements to their descendents — to the same extent as individuals without family histories of enfranchisement. These came from the Bill S-3 three-year review and extensive partner outreach.

The honourable senator is correct that it is also a somewhat contentious space because, in fact, there is not consensus amongst First Nations leaders, in particular, about how to reincorporate people into the community. Having status is one thing. Being a member of the community is another. This work continues: to understand how we do this in a thoughtful way that doesn’t impose obligations on communities — which some communities don’t want — and, yet, also satisfy the rights holders, the individuals, in terms of their connection to their community.

Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: My question is about the Non‑Insured Health Benefits, or NIHB, in Nunavut. There was a 6% increase of the 36,611 eligible clients under the NIHB administered by your department. This is all about Inuit: They are unable to access the full range of services that are meant to be covered under NIHB because many communities don’t have regular access to professionals, such as mental health providers, dentists, opticians and other specialists. They have to come to Southern Canada to access these services.

Once they are here, without the means to pay upfront, they find it difficult to find providers who direct bill to NIHB. Many of those who can pay upfront have complained about being left seeking reimbursement — only to get lost in a maze of bureaucracy.

Does your department have a publicly available list of providers that are enrolled in the NIHB direct-billing programs which are translated into common Indigenous languages and broken down by province?

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you.

I believe the honourable senator knows I can’t talk about the legislation that will be tabled at some point in order to address the ongoing systemic discrimination.

I believe that the legislation that we will table will address some of the concerns, and likely not all of the concerns, because there is still more to do. There are still people who have some strong perspectives about what needs to happen.

I will say this: The government is committed to ending all sex‑based discrimination. We will be looking forward to the comments from honourable senators in this place during the inevitable study of the legislation.

[Translation]

Hon. Scott Tannas: I’d like to go back to my questions, minister, with respect to staff — 6,800 full-time employees. We heard about the status card bottleneck. We heard at committee a few days ago that it was taking up to two years to get a simple residential lease transferred.

Indigenous governments need to take up the jurisdiction. They want to take up their jurisdiction. You want them to have it. What is the plan? What does the “stop doing” list look like? How do you get your 6,800 people to back off and start planning an exit from the affairs of Indigenous people?

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: I think I understand the honourable senator’s question.

The water settlement is one of the largest in Canada’s history. Quite frankly, I hope that this country arrives at a place where we are not forced to do things through litigation, but, rather, we lean in and do these things as a country.

We know that when Indigenous people have a fair chance to succeed — when communities are healthy, and when people have access to drinking water and education — all of us will thrive as a country.

In terms of how the compensation will flow, I can’t specifically say. I don’t have that information in front of me, whether or not all of those community members are subject to compensation, but my suspicion would be yes.

It is a broad number of people who are owed compensation as a result of long-term drinking water advisories. That agreement, as I said, has been reached with the litigants. We look forward to flowing that compensation. It’s being managed and administered by a third party.

The historic settlement also commits the government to the appropriate amount of money to be able to complete the rest of the long-term boil water advisories, as well as to provide equity in operating funds for the salaries of the water operators — that was one of the critical ingredients to having clean water in communities.

Not having people paid appropriately or equitably, compared to the province that they were in, meant that, oftentimes, communities could not retain qualified, skilled people to run the plants.

Hon. Marty Klyne: Minister, my question is in reference to digital transformation, and the mobilization and readiness of young adults located north of the fifty-fifth parallel to compete in the new economy.

As you know, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada is working feverishly to connect all households and businesses in rural, remote and Indigenous communities with 50/10 internet speeds.

Minister, what levels of digital skills, training and readiness are our working-age Indigenous adults at? Are they ready to participate in the new economy? What efforts are being made to close any gaps before they widen?

Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario: Thank you. The honourable senator raises a complex question with multiple moving parts.

In terms of capacity of communities, and our capacity as a government to close the digital divide, we have been making historic investments in broadband. We need, again, to work with partners to do that.

The federal government doesn’t have its own broadband company — for example, in northern Ontario, where I come from — where we can hook homes up to it. In some cases, we have to work with regional providers and, in other cases, provincial providers. Frankly, I think we all have to work to push those regional and provincial providers to consider how they will be equitable in their approach with Indigenous and remote communities.

It can be a challenging conversation when many of those providers are looking at this through the lens of revenue and economic feasibility rather than of equity. That’s where I hope that our investments at the federal level will help to close that divide.

You’re right; access to the digital world is a critical ingredient — not just for education, but also for health delivery and economic capacity. Many communities are growing their own economic capacity, and they need access to high-speed internet and broadband to be able to market their services and goods. We will continue this work with our provincial, territorial and regional partners.