Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 23rd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Be brief if you can, Karen.

[Karen Kabloona]

We have a new cabinet committee, as you heard from the minister. Also in the department we have a new Inuusiq committee, which is the life committee, so all of the departments feed into it. The Quality of Life Secretariat holds those meetings, disseminates information, and brings information back. We're the lead for monitoring the implementation of the action plan you have there, for reaching out to communities, and for engaging with communities and our other partners. We're just starting to do some research specific to the strategy, so we are focused on delivering the commitments of the original strategy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you for that.

Our next question is from Romeo Saganash.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to both of our witnesses for their contributions to this committee.

I have a couple of questions, but I want to go back first of all to the issue of housing, because it's such an important component to this debate on suicides of our Canadians. I know that you mentioned, in response to Gary's question, that there's a critical need in the territory. I understand it's a critical need for all regions in the north, but can you give us a specific number of units that will be required in the territories, let's say tomorrow morning?

[George Hickes]

We wouldn't be able to build that many units in a short term, but again it is a question of stabilization of funding. The latest numbers I have show that we're more than 3,000 units short across the territory. That may not sound like a lot to some people from larger jurisdictions, but it's a huge component here and we're going backwards, anywhere between 85 and 100 units per year, due to population growth. So we're not even maintaining what we're growing, never mind tapping into the backlog of needs.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

It's comparable. I have a riding in which there are 25 indigenous communities: 14 Inuit, 9 Cree, and two Algonquin, and the amount is about the same. Three thousand units would be required tomorrow morning if we were to meet the needs.

Just to follow up on that issue, one of our witnesses in Kuujjuaq yesterday said that if we were to tackle the issue of housing in our communities, it would solve 50% of our problems. Would you agree with that?

[George Hickes]

That's a very long discussion. Housing has a very diverse impact; you're talking about health, education, and mental health. The opportunity for violence in a household when you're living in overcrowded scenarios, I would say is at least 50%. It would alleviate some of the pressures on a lot of our social issues.

When we talk about housing, it has such an overarching effect on our quality of life. I live in a home with my wife and two children. I've seen people living in that size of unit with 18 people in it. I can't fathom the complexity and the challenges of just finding a quiet corner to do your homework or finding a spot to have a good night's sleep.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

I want to go back to that cabinet committee on quality of life. I think it's an important initiative for your government. I was wondering whether or not you are also looking at the whole question of cost of living in the north. I recall a couple years back, during your previous Parliament, I wrote to the Auditor General to look into the nutrition north program, for instance. He responded positively to that request. He examined the program and concluded that the program doesn't work. He even went on to say that the department responsible for the program did not have any mechanisms in place to check where the money was going or who was benefiting from the program. Is that part of the work that's going to be involved with that cabinet committee?

[George Hickes]

I'll let Karen enhance it a little afterwards, but in general, yes, to a degree. We are looking at social inequities, which Mr. Obed brought up in his appearance, and I reiterate that. When we're talking about people living at or below the poverty level, food security is obviously a huge component of that. However, it just goes more to general social inequity if our people, our residents, and our fellow Canadians don't have access to opportunities the way everyone deserves and the quality of life that people deserve in Canada.

We export a lot of funding and financial aid to a lot of places outside Canada while we have people in our country living in overcrowded conditions, who lack food security, and opportunities. That's a huge component.

I'll let Karen elaborate. I've covered it? Thank you.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

I have a general question perhaps. With all these strategies and plans that are being proposed by many different organizations and levels of government, local and throughout the region, is there an organization or government that can play a leading role in coordinating all these plans and strategies with respect to suicide prevention?

[George Hickes]

That's our office. Right now, we're working on our action plan. There are a number of different indicators we want to have an impact on, but we need assistance. We need partnerships.

The federal government is one of those partners. The RCMP has been a great resource, NTI , and a number of stakeholders. We also want to participate in the national suicide strategy as it rolls out. The ITK strategy that came out a couple of months ago is a step in the right direction. I was in Kuujjuaq for that announcement as well.

The Government of Nunavut is a representative government, but 85% of our population are Inuit, and we have to make sure that we are working with our population to overcome the challenges that society has thrust upon us in such a short period of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

That's the end, Romeo. Thank you.

That's rather ominous. It's not the end, but it is Michael McLeod's turn to ask a question.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, George and Karen, for appearing in front of us.

I'm from the Northwest Territories, as you know, and this is certainly an issue that we share in terms of jurisdiction across the north. We've been hearing presentations and talking about this issue for several months now as a committee. During that time I've been trying to put together numbers as we hear presentations and as we start to see the broad crisis situation that's developing and has been in place for a long time. It's important that we put it in perspective, and I think between Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Nunavik, Yukon, and Labrador, in the last 15 years we've probably seen well over 1,000 people commit suicide, and that is something that the nation did not recognize for the longest time. But I think now we have the attention of the nation on this issue.

We've had strong voices from youth across the north, from the leaders across the north, and we're certainly starting to have the political attention to this issue that it requires. I think it's no surprise to all of us that one of the factors that leads to the condition of despair is that people feel there's no way out. We have some challenges in the north. The high cost of living is one of them. Housing and socio-economic inequity are right across the north. Our youth are starting to experience cultural disconnect that is really causing a lot of confusion in our communities.

I think we all recognize that there is no magic solution. We've heard it in the communities that we visited. We were in Kuujjuaq and we were in Nunavut yesterday, and I think everybody recognizes that is the case. There are a lot of things we can do for prevention in this situation, but it's going to require adequate investment in the north, as you pointed out. We need to deal with the issue of housing. We need to increase the number of dwellings in our communities. We need to have more on site and better educational opportunities. The economy has to perform a lot better. We need more jobs. We need people to get to work.

We have to deal with the issue of trauma, physical and sexual abuse in our communities. That may be a result of a number of things, but residential schools have certainly been mentioned throughout our visits. We certainly need to find a way to deal with the addiction issues we have in every one of our communities, including mine. For the most part, we don't have the resources. We don't have the facilities to do so.

We heard many things during our visit. We heard about the need for crisis centres in the communities and cultural centres. We heard about the need for family centres. I would like to raise the program of friendship centres that we have in southern communities that seem to work quite well, and education-based programs for early childhood. Throughout our visits we have heard that people want to see community-based solutions by our own people, our own communities, and the people who live there.

So I wanted to ask you in your capacity, and I know you've been around for a while, what you have seen that works, what approaches work in our communities? What would you like to see happening in our communities to help us deal with these concerns that we're experiencing?

[George Hickes]

I agree with everything you said, Michael. One of the things is that I think you'd be very hard-pressed to find somebody in Nunavut, NWT, Labrador, or Nunavik who hasn't been touched by this issue of suicide.

When we're talking about some of the things that have been working or some of the things that need to be enhanced, you talked about that cultural disconnect. A lot of our youth don't know where they fit in right now. Are they living in a western society? Are they living in a cultural Inuit society with the values associated with that? We've got a foot in both and we have to find ways to bridge that and celebrate our cultural connectedness to each other, to the land.

On the values that our elders are passing down to us, we're losing more and more every day. I'm also involved with the seniors file obviously, and there's so much knowledge and so much desire to assist our youth to overcome this adaptation to today's society. We have to work and we have to be able to give our kids the tools to overcome their challenges. We have to give them the opportunity to be able to live and learn, and to know that suicide is not an option. When you said earlier in your comments that when we've put our children in a place where they consider that they don't have any other options, we have to put more options out there then so that suicide is not one of them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

You just have 30 seconds.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I have a number of questions, but since I have such a short time.... Language has been raised many times as an important part of growing up in those communities. Can you just tell us what your plans are in Nunavut to continue to support languages in schools and other places?

[George Hickes]

I'm probably the worst person to respond to this, Michael. I lost my language as a child, but I think that gives me a higher focus on how important it really is. There are a number of different words in the Inuit language that you just can't translate into English. Working with the Department of Education, working with the official languages division, we are streamlining a lot of the processes through recommendations. We are working with NTI and our regional Inuit organizations to accelerate language training opportunities for not just our youth but for people like me who have lost their language yet who desire to at least be able to function at somewhat of a level.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you, Minister.

We're moving into a five-minute round of questions now. The next question is from Arnold Viersen.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today.

We've been really inundated over the last couple of days with this topic and so the questions just keep piling up to some degree. You're the health minister. One of the things that comes to mind is smoking because that was something that our nation tackled over 30 years ago. We've seen a dramatic reduction in the use of cigarettes and things like that. There was a several-pronged approach to that. There was a taxation approach and there was an education approach. That's one of the things I'm looking at in this.

Do you have an education approach as Health Canada did with smoking? You think that education is education, but it was a Health Canada initiative, advertising and all these kinds of things, something that would hold up a good story, a positive message. A lot of this is dark, depressing talk about these things. We were even told that just having these discussions may actually trigger some suicide attempts. That's the question. What are you doing for more of a positive approach?

I really appreciate the ITK report and the talk about all those mitigating factors. You can go through that list. I think it's five items. Do we have a family that you can hold up and say, these are good intergenerational connections, this is a cohesive family unit that works well together, so a good-news story basically or some things so that you could say, just don't go here, and we'll have a better outcome eventually? Is there an education program, an advertising program, or something like it that you're running?

[George Hickes]

Health has a number of different programs with a smoking cessation program. We have a number of different campaigns on smoking cessation, specifically, where we have posters of residents that people know.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Yes. Not specifically for smoking, but are we doing the same thing but for suicide?

[George Hickes]

We have a promotion of life campaign that's ongoing. A lot of it is still being developed, even as we speak. With this specific focus on suicide prevention, out of my office, there's a number of different initiatives, such as injury prevention and not hurting yourself, and promotion of a good quality of life across the territories. There are a number of different campaigns that we're looking at, and that's where we need some assistance to be able to focus our energies on specifics.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Is there an Inuit leader we can look to as a role model? I think in our Internet age, we all end up in our silos. Where are the guys we need to follow? For me, it's some of the snowmobilers who do the high arctic snowmobiling and stuff like that. I think that's cool. I'll probably never do anything like that, but I'd like to do that some day.

Is there a range of Inuit role models we can look to? An inspiration, I guess, is what I'm looking for.

[George Hickes]

Absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head. We have to celebrate. There are individuals in our society, and the first one who comes to mind is...we do want to focus on the everyday people, but we do have leaders.

Jordin Tootoo is an example. He's led a number of suicide prevention initiatives internationally. He's done some great work on bringing focus to the Inuit. He lost his brother, my cousin, to suicide a number of years ago. Instead of dwelling on the negatives of that, he's taken a leadership role.

We have a number of people who live in the Territories, and we've all been touched by suicide in one way or another. We have a lot of people we want to continue to work with at the community level. They're everyday people who are seen every day, and we celebrate their lives and their healthy life promotion.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

That's my time.