EVIDENCE

Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs NUMBER 032 1st SESSION 42nd PARLIAMENT Wednesday, November 2, 2016 Le mercredi 2 novembre 2016 Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs CANADA [Recorded by Electronic Apparatus] EVIDENCE November 2, 2016 Committee Edited Evidence * Table of Contents * Number 032 (Official Version) Official Report * Table of Contents * Number 032 (Official Version) Témoignages * Table des matières * Numéro 032 (Version officielle) 32 02 11 2016 2016/11/02 08:05:00 House of Commons Comité permanent des affaires autochtones et du Nord Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs INAN Chair Mr. Andy Fillmore 42 1

(0805) [ English ]

The Chair (Mr. Andy Fillmore (Halifax, Lib.)) :

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the panellists and welcome to the people in the gallery. We're very happy to have you here. We're grateful that you're here. We're also grateful to be meeting today on the traditional and unceded territory of the Coast Salish nation. We are the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs of the House of Commons. I am stating this for the record, so we all know where we are and that we are in the right place. We are continuing our study on suicide among indigenous youth and in indigenous communities this morning. In the next hour, we are hearing from two organizations.

They are the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, welcome to Mavis Benson, and Aboriginal Life in Vancouver Enhancement Society, welcome to Scott Clark, the executive director. I am happy to give each of you the floor for 10 minutes this morning. After the two 10-minute testimonies, we'll move onto questions from all of the members. We will wind up at about 9:30 a.m. I'm not sure if you've decided who would like to go first, or if it matters. The honour is yours, Mr. Clark.

Mr. Scott Clark (Executive Director, Aboriginal Life in Vancouver Enhancement Society) :

Good morning, my name is Scott. I am Coast Salish from Vancouver Island. I am currently the executive director of an urban aboriginal organization known as Aboriginal Life in Vancouver Enhancement Society, ALIVE. We've been around for approximately seven years and we are a resident-based organization. We do not take government money for programs, and our goal as an organization is to seek to create opportunities throughout Vancouver's 24 communities taking on the existing barriers.

We develop processes with the parks boards, the school boards, and the City of Vancouver to identify the barriers, create solutions, and create opportunities so all urban indigenous peoples have equality of opportunity for conditions. Saying that, I also wear another title, which is the vice-president of the Northwest Indigenous Council, which is perhaps Canada's newest provincial off-reserve political organization representing off-reserve aboriginal peoples.

Very recently, in the last six weeks, we just got membership in the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples as our national political organization to advocate on behalf of the interests of our people living off-reserve throughout Canada.

We did get short notice that this event was happening, and we are very pleased to be able to have the opportunity to present some of the key issues we've identified here in Vancouver as they relate to suicide, and most importantly, about how we address it in an innovative way that moves beyond the status quo we've seen among all levels of government, which in essence in the urban environment here in Vancouver has ghettoized indigenous people, segregated them, and reduced their level of choice.

We've been working quite diligently for the last seven years on an evidence-based innovative approach on how we should move forward to get in front of issues like suicide, child apprehension, graduation, and the whole array of issues. We know what the approach needs to have in order to support all vulnerable populations. In saying that, I want to share this with you. About this time four years ago, we had a press conference here in east Vancouver in the Grandview-Woodlands area, and that press conference dealt with a suicide pact that was averted back in late October four years ago.

Thirty young people had made a commitment to commit suicide together in east Vancouver. The outreach workers and the police were able to identify 24 of those 30 young people, and bring them to the hospital and have them assessed. They identified that all of them were aboriginal.

They were all under the age of 15, mostly 13 to 15, and mostly aboriginal girls who were being preyed upon by gangs, older men, in the east Vancouver area, a hop, skip and a jump from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, where our young people get preyed upon for peddling drugs, sexually exploited, and all the things that we've come to know and that research has shared with us.

Immediately upon learning of this suicide pact, we and a number of our key organizations organized an emergency crisis response, which we identified as a youth matters crisis response, bringing together in essence about 60 different organizations and government levels that all claimed to be working to support the vulnerable children and families in Vancouver's east side.

Through that emergency response, with Christmas around the corner, we recognized that we not only had to support just the young people, but we also had to support the families because of the unstable housing, the issues around education, and so forth.

(0810) Through the youth matters emergency response four years ago today, we have created what we call a “community partnership agreement”. I believe we have sent you that information and it's going to be translated for you. I don't have a copy here. In the last four years—and much to the dismay of many who like the status quo here in Vancouver—we've been able to develop a process to work with vulnerable children and families from the ground up. We work from needs before they become issues, from the prenatal stage, when the fetus is inside mummy's tummy, all the way through a post-secondary graduation strategy.

We bring in partners from academia, the hospitals, the schools, the community centres, the libraries, the police, and everyone else out there who is providing services. You've all heard the expression, “It takes a village to raise a child,” but have you ever seen a village in an urban context? The answer to that is virtually “no,” because we have created a system in Canada for the last 70 years where we've segregated urban indigenous populations. We have taken the on-reserve model, replicated it in the off-reserve context, and never questioned that. We've never had the evidence to say that it actually works.

In 2011, the “Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study” came out. It is a national study looking at the needs and aspirations of urban indigenous populations. It tells a very different story from what service providers tell, a story about wanting to take our place in the community, to graduate, to have housing, and to have real opportunities like every other Canadian or Vancouverite. We are very proud of who we are. The issues are immense, i.e., racism and discrimination. We know about that, but that study was a key study that challenged the status quo.

Since November, 2012, which was the time of the suicide pact on which we did a press conference, we have been working with a whole array of other partners, principally out of the Ray-Cam Cooperative Centre where we have been working on this model for nine years. We have now extended it from that community centre to five other community centres. We are now building villages in each of those five communities, pulling them together, doing the research, connecting the services, and challenging the non-aboriginal organizations. We ask, “Where is your aboriginal strategy? Do you hire aboriginal people?

Are they on your board of directors? Are they members? Are you working with the non-indigenous population through a reconciliation lens?” All of these hard questions are things our political leaders have been saying for at least 10 years at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels, but you never see them being developed and organized at the community level. This is what we have been doing here in Vancouver. We are very pleased, because the evidence from our partners through the University of British Columbia is showing that we're actually getting the results we've been seeking.

By bringing the doctors and nurses right into the programs, and those services into a community centre, we're able to connect with the programs and services, build up the trust level, and then build those relations so that assessments happen at a much earlier date. We bring in the dentists, the lawyers, and so forth. We had the highest vulnerability rate of children going into kindergarten in the province of B.C. After four years of the model we've been developing, we were able to reduce our vulnerability from 73% to 50%.

While the federal and provincial governments were cutting programs and services, we were able to unite organizations and develop a proactive, evidence-based model that is starting to show real results, where urban indigenous children and families can take their place in their community, on the board of directors, designing programs and services. We call this model a collective impact, place-based approach.

(0815) This is a model that's been developed around the world, but you only have to go down to the United States and look at another model down there, which this is based on, called Promising Neighborhoods. The recommendation I would make to this committee is to look at the Promising Neighborhoods model and look at having a pilot project across this country, because you cannot deal with suicide in isolation of poverty, housing, homelessness, education, and so forth. If you want to be serious about this, then you need to start to looking at a more comprehensive approach that's grounded in indigenous philosophy and that has a nice reconciliation lens to it. Thank you very much.

The Chair :

Thank you so much, Mr. Clark. That's much appreciated. Ms. Benson, go ahead, please.

Ms. Mavis Benson (Member, Cheslatta Carrier Nation) :

Thank you. I also got notice late yesterday. Can you give me two days' notice at least? No, just a few hours. I'm here representing the Cheslatta Carrier Nation. I would like to thank the Coast Salish first nation for allowing me to be here on their territory to tell my story. My name is Mavis Benson. I am from the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, which is in central northern B.C. It's a semi-isolated community. You take a ferry west of Burns Lake for about 15 kilometres. It takes about 15 minutes, and my community is on that side beside two other bands and a non-native community.

I am also a mother and the grandmother to three of my grandchildren. I am their sole caregiver. I'm sorry, I'm sick, too, so they got me at a really good time. I want to share my story with you all because I believe it's the story of thousands, a story that shares a similar core to other people, and a story that I hope inflicts a spark for change. Suicide has taken many lives in my community of Cheslatta. This is due to colonialism, the Indian residential schools, and the forceable eviction of our people in 1952 from their traditional territory.

Our community used to be a close-knit, culturally oriented community that worked together in all aspects of life. Due to the Indian residential schools, we have lost most of our language, culture, and identity. Our community is fractured and lateral violence is the norm. Alcohol was a part of my life growing up, and violence and sexual abuse came with that. This is not only for me, it was for the majority of my cousins, everybody that I know my age, and younger and older. The forceable eviction of my people from their traditional homelands took their pride, their way of life, and their culture.

They were forced to live in a foreign world, one that was unkind and unwelcoming. The people began to drink to numb the pain of both the Indian residential school and the forceable eviction. This intergenerational trauma continues in our community and our peoples today, especially on-reserve. As an example, I will give you a short bio of my life. My presentation is quite different from Scott's, and I'd like to thank Scott for his presentation. At the age of nine, I was put into Lejac Indian Residential School.

I was told it was for my own good, that I would get a good education there, and that they would treat me better than I was treated at home. I remember being excited and scared at the same time. That dream of a caring and loving educational environment was crushed as soon as I took that long walk up those stairs to the school's doors. I experienced racism amongst my own people, as well as abuse by adult supervisors. My first day of class was exciting, as I sat down and got ready to join all the other children.

The teacher had me do a test to see what level I would be put into, A being the smarter kids, and B, C and D being the dumbest, as she stated. She put me in the corner by myself, and I completed the test without any problems. I happily turned my test into her, and she marked it while I sat at my desk. She came up to me and said I cheated. She hit my hands hard with a yardstick and called me a “stupid, dirty Indian”. I was put into group C. I later found out that I didn't get any questions wrong, so why did she do this? It confused me for many years as to how I approached my academics. Do I try to do my best?

If I do, I may get punished. So I don't, and then I get punished anyway. I ended up making sure that I did not get all my answers correct. I intentionally got questions wrong because I did not want to get hit again. It was not an experience I'll ever forget, and this was an experience for many of my peers in my classes. You see, in Indian residential school, education was never the priority, discipline was. I was made to feel inferior and stupid, something I still deal with today. I lost touch with who I was in an educational context and at a personal level. I was made to hate myself and authority figures.

This is a fact of life for all of the members of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation. Drugs, alcohol, and addiction to prescriptions is the norm. When I returned to my community later on after residential school, I continued to endure horrific abuses of all kinds at the hands of a family member, who was also a residential school survivor of 15 years. My only refuge was when I attended school, where the teachers always encouraged me to excel at everything I did.

(0820) I clearly remember the day when the special education class started, because I did not see any of my cousins or friends in my classes. I asked my teacher about this, and he said they were put into a special class. I wanted to go to that class too. I demanded to go to that class now. My teacher told me to go sit down and do my work, and basically just shut up, so I went and sat down and shut up. Anyway, when I think about it now, I'm forever grateful to my teachers for believing in my potential as an academic student, because to clarify, all those students who were put into that class never did graduate.

That's where the problems starts, and one of the biggest problems that we have in our communities to this day is graduating illiterate community members, and I see it in my community. My home life was not a good one. It was one fuelled by alcohol, violence, poverty, and sexual abuse. That continued daily for most of my childhood. Many times I tried ending my life, but to no avail. To clarify, the first time I sliced my wrist was at the age of 10. No one in my family cared. I just cried myself to sleep and woke up the next day feeling weak, but still alive.

I tried this a couple more times in my teen years, but again I didn't succeed, thank goodness. At the age of 13, I ran away from home due to the unrelenting abuse that I had to endure daily. Thinking that running away was going to solve my problems was a fantasy, and reality hit quickly. I went from one hell to another. At the age of 16 I had my one and only daughter, and I did not know how to be a parent. As a single mother, not long after my daughter was born, I went back home to my community to find my way in life. During that time, I felt a yearning to return to high school and graduate.

If it had not been for school during my younger years, then I would have died at a very young age due to the intergenerational trauma that I experienced. While my story is one of hope and resiliency, more must be done, and each and every one of you in this room is capable of helping to make the calls to action for meaningful social change, as it pertains to our aboriginal youth and families, and our communities on- and off-reserve, especially on-reserve. A hope for a better future through a purposeful healing and educational system is needed. I also have some ideas here.

For example, in our community, when there is an attempted suicide, we have to call 911. Well, Burns Lake is close to 800 kilometres from Kamloops, and 911 dispatch goes to Kamloops. There is no 911 in Burns Lake. The ferry stops at 11 o'clock at night, and suicides usually happen after drinking late at night, between 12 and six in the morning. Those are the times that we usually experience all of the incidents of anything, such as someone getting beat up, a murder, or someone going missing. Parties happen at that time, and suicide attempts usually occur during that time in our community.

When we call 911, they dispatch us to Kamloops, to that dispatch, and it takes forever. I'm thankful we have that contact to 911, but there should be one in Burns Lake itself. The ferry service stops at 11 p.m., and it doesn't start until 5:30 in the morning, so when someone does try to commit suicide, it takes forever for the ambulance, at least an hour and a half to two hours. If they rush, it's an hour and a half to start up the ferry, to get the ferry going, and get the ambulance.

If there's no ambulance service—they have an ambulance service on the south side—and if they're not available, or if no one's there—they volunteer on the south side—then they have to wait for the one from Burns Lake to come. They have to get the ferry across to the north side, bring it back over to the south side, and then dispatch it wherever. Our community is 50 kilometres in radius. We're not a community with all the houses in one spot. We're 50 kilometres apart from one end of our community to the other. We're very spread apart.

I believe that we need better ambulance service with people who are certified to be ambulance paramedics, and that's one of the biggest things in our community. I also have three other recommendations. One is that we have a trauma counsellor rather than counsellors in our community. Counsellors in our community rotate every two years. They do their time, and then they leave. When I was working there, I decided to see a counsellor.

She had to leave, and then they said, “Oh, there's another one coming in.” I'm not going to tell my story over and over again, I'm just not going to do that, and if I don't do that, who else is going to do it? No one's going to do it, and it has continued. I've left my community in 2009 to do my undergrad degree and then my graduate degree.

(0825) So no one's going to do that. They're just not going to do it. I highly recommend a trauma counsellor in our community, and also treatment for families regarding historical trauma in our communities, especially the ones who have gone through suicide—like we've all gone through it—but the ones with suicide attempts or they've committed suicide. They need trauma counselling. They don't need alcohol counselling; they need trauma counselling. That's what we're experiencing. I also totally agree with a community centre, of course, as Scott said, for sports and culture.

We need our cultural teachings and our language to be brought back to life. That would bring the spirit back of our people. I'd like to thank you.

(0830) The Chair :

Thanks very much, Ms. Benson, for that. We will go right into questions now. These are seven-minute questions. The first question is from Mike Bossio, please.

Mr. Mike Bossio (Hastings—Lennox and Addington, Lib.) :

There's so much information there, and so many similarities from other witnesses we've heard from. Well they're similar but not similar, because everyone's individual story is so personal and different, and difficult. You mentioned the three recommendations that you had, and I liked that they were very specific. Many times they're a much larger picture, but you've drilled down at a very specific level. Right now, today, you have a counsellor who comes in to the community. They are general counsellors for alcohol and drugs, and I assume other social...mental health aspects as well, but they're not trained specifically on the trauma side of things.

Ms. Mavis Benson: No.

Mr. Mike Bossio: So they're not able to provide.... Would it be another resource that would benefit you most, or do you think that the central training of these counsellors should be to deal with trauma and that the others be secondary?

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Yes, I really believe that. For example, the counsellors are sent in by the Carrier Sekani Family Services. They're hired by them and they go into the communities that are a part of this organization. They do a two-year term. They graduate from post-secondary. They have to do two years in order to get certified. Once they're done their two years, they're not going to stay on the south side, so they leave. They're not specifically, as you said, trained for trauma; they have some trauma counselling. I really believe, for example, that we need psychologists out there, and dealing with trauma specifically.

I go to see Rob Hadley. He's a hypnotherapist, and that's how I started dealing with my trauma. I went to see counsellors here in Vancouver for many years. Once I started seeing him, he made a big, big difference in my life. He's given me hope. He's helped me through law school. Otherwise, I would never have graduated, because the insecurities, the trauma, all of that started coming back. When you first go to law school, the first year is hell. It is hell. He helped me with that. We do specifically need trauma counsellors, and I believe they have to be specifically trauma related.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Trauma related from a standpoint of indigenous—

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Yes.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

—experiential trauma, rather than just trauma, right?

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Yes.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Are the counsellors indigenous?

Ms. Mavis Benson :

No, not always. I don't believe we've even had one who was indigenous.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

I've had a number of witnesses in the past say we should be focusing our indigenous youth, through the education system, very early on, in getting involved in health, in education, in a number of different fields like this in grade 3 or grade 4. This would start to move them in these directions so that we can start to employ local indigenous people into these very important roles, because they're typically going to have greater longevity within the community.

At the same time, it's training them to the social and economic predeterminants that exist within their communities around alcoholism, around drug addiction, around sexual assault and violence, to enable them to see the signs of potential suicide. Then it's being able to take particular actions within their own home, within their own community, to try to identify and deal with and focus on it, before it becomes a crisis. The first group that brought this to our attention was the Indigenous Nurses Association. Would you agree that would be beneficial to do at such a young age? Would it benefit youth?

(0835) Ms. Mavis Benson :

I believe that awareness of culture and language is really important and critical at a young age. It should be implemented in the schools. I have to say I don't agree that we should focus our young kids just on health and wellness. Cultural awareness and language are our health and wellness. That's the way we build our strong identity on who we are. All of our children can't, as you said, become health workers. None of my kids are going to be health workers, regardless of what I went through.

Of my three grandchildren, one is going to be an actress or singer, one is a soccer player, and the other one is just three years old, so I don't know yet. In my community, a lot of the community members have aspirations. Yes, maybe if you notice one or two who are very interested in health, then focus on them and encourage them, but we also have to encourage the other children to do what they want to do. What is their dream? None of them have dreams. None of them have aspirations. You ask, “What are you going to do after you graduate”.

They say, “Oh probably just go on welfare like my parents or work for the band.” That's the common response, and it's quite sad. That's why I say we have to focus on our young children and their aspirations.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Sorry, I should have qualified that. Yes, the cultural heritage side of it is the most important aspect of it. I couldn't agree more, and I've seen that with many different communities and many different witnesses, but this is an additional thing to add to it, to try to educate our much younger youth on the social determinants that exist within their social economics in their communities.

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Yes, I agree with how you stated it there. Don't they have classes? My daughter goes to this one class called social education, or something like that. I think they should have it at a younger age, but that doesn't mean that we're gearing them toward a career in health. I think, yes, awareness in that area and awareness that they can come to someone and talk to them. When I was young, my teachers knew what was going on. They called the ministry. The ministry was too scared of my father. The cops didn't want to come. Social awareness is important. Thank you.

The Chair :

Thanks. The next question is from Cathy McLeod.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod (Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, CPC) :

Thank you to both the witnesses. I first have a quick question to Ms. Benson. Does your community have good broadband, and is there any way to provide support and services? I know that throughout Canada we're going to have challenges with that counselling revolving door, but it is shown to be effective. Is that something that is available right now in your community, a broadband connection for telehealth?

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Yes, at the health centre we have, the Southside Health and Wellness Centre, they do have a broadband connection, but a lot of our community members just won't go there. I have bronchitis, so I now go to the health and wellness centre. For issues where it's mental and physical—I say physical because physical is mental too—they're not going to go, because they're too ashamed. They don't know what depression is. A lot of them don't know that they're depressed. I never knew until my late 30s that I was going through depression my whole life since I was really young and from when I first tried to commit suicide.

There is not the awareness of what depression is. How does that look, and how does anxiety feel? You know.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

I guess if there were going to be some services that were consistent and long term, then there would also have to be a lot of work around gaining acceptance in the community. That is something that's helpful.

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Yes.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

Thank you. Mr. Clark, there were a few areas that I wanted to follow up on. You said your organization has no funding, so how do you sustain yourself?

Mr. Scott Clark :

We do not take government programs, and we do not deliver government programs through our organization. We organize events where we generate revenue to pay our salaries. It's very different from program service delivery.

(0840) Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

You talked about how in the past the urban services have tried to replicate. Could you talk a bit more about what's been done in trying to replicate? You talked a bit about where you've gone with that sort of coordination and organization. Describe how you've seen replication in the past.

Mr. Scott Clark :

Oh, very simple. There are a number of challenges, of course—very different from the on-reserve versus off-reserve—and the federal government, regardless of what political party has been in power, has never been the friend of the off-reserve indigenous population. I think we have to start there. There is the Supreme Court of Canada Daniels decision, which says that the federal government has a fiduciary responsibility to non-status and Métis, including the status population.

That historical evolution of that relationship has for all purposes, up until 2015—and I would suggest even to this day—left the off-reserve population in a vacuum. The devolution process of the federal government in 1996 to the province, and the province to the city, has created this vacuum where nobody wants to step forward and step up and say who's really responsible for this 80% of the population living off-reserve. That hasn't happened. Now the landscape has changed, and hopefully we'll see some progress with this new government.

What we have witnessed over the last 70 years here in Vancouver, and it's well documented, is.... You can look at the demographic patterns of where indigenous people live in Vancouver as an example. We make up 2% of Vancouver's population. The majority of us live in east Vancouver. The majority of us in east Vancouver live in what we call the Grandview—Woodlands area, and then the second community—it's like an L—is the Downtown Eastside, Canada's most impoverished urban area code.

The programs and services that have been developed over those 70 years have created, in just Downtown Eastside alone, 260 non-profits, and in the Grandview—Woodlands area, 40 other non-profits. If you go to the other communities in the nearby areas, there are very few. What we have effectively done without questioning—because for whatever reason we don't question this stuff—is we have created a ghetto. We've ghettoized urban aboriginal people. We segregate them in the educational institutions, and we segregate them in programs and services.

We say that if you want day care you have to go over to this community in the Downtown Eastside to get your service. We pull them out of their natural community, away from their natural friends, their parents, their work, and their public school. We have a whole bunch of alienation that has been taking place unquestioned. The key concept we have to be looking at when we're dealing with indigenous populations, on- or off-reserve, is what is the framework? What is our goal? Do we really intend to close the gaps, if that's our goal? Then how do we get there?

The key concept, as we see with our brothers and sisters on reservations, is that they have a comprehensive community planning process that's funded. When it comes to the off-reserve, you have federal governments, provincial governments, municipal governments that don't want to deal with these issues. They all say it's someone else's responsibility.

At the end of the day, what we see is a concentrated population in cities cross this country, which has ghettoized us, with no means, to this day, to find comprehensive indigenized solutions that go beyond an item—that go beyond suicide, beyond poverty, or homelessness, or day care, or whatever. Thank you. I hope I answered your question. I don't know if I did.

The Chair :

You have 30 seconds.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

I have a quick question. There is a variation for the urban population. It sounds like some bands provide really good support to their membership regardless of where they live, versus others that choose only to provide support to their membership who live on-reserve.

Mr. Scott Clark :

Without getting caught between on-reserve and off-reserve and who is and who isn't providing, let's be real, all right? If this study you're working on is going to be real, if you want to make it meaningful, then you have to realize you can't just pick and choose an item and address that item. It has to be comprehensive. That's why I said collective impact, place-based strategies, working on the social determinants of health, which look at the social, the economic, and the environmental variables that impact the health of the individual in a community, in a neighbourhood.

You have to start looking at the economic opportunities, the education opportunities, the health opportunities, the cultural opportunities, the opportunities for reconciliation. How do we build that into a village? It sounds challenging, but guess what? Our children deserve that passion and commitment to change what's going on right now. You can't pull these things away. You have to look at them. You have to create a strategy, with a village.

(0845) The Chair :

Thanks for that. The next questions are from Jenny Kwan, please.

Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP) :

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My apologies for arriving late. There was a car accident, and I couldn't get through traffic. Thank you to the witnesses for your presentation. Ms. Benson, thank you particularly for your personal story. It takes a lot of courage to share that information and, of course, it brings back memories that are very difficult. We really appreciate your taking the time to do that today. Mr. Clark, you've been a long-time advocate in the community, and you've done a lot of work on the issue around the place-based strategy that has been talked about and the wisdom behind it.

I think some of that was shared with the committee today. If the committee were to make a recommendation to the government about moving forward, what would it look like to implement place-based strategies, particularly in the urban context? Steps one to five, what are the things that government needs to do to move in that direction, and what are the resources that are required for this to happen in a way that will help ensure success?

Mr. Scott Clark :

Thank you. I just quit smoking and drinking coffee yesterday, so those are tough questions. It's very simple: research, research. We can look at the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples done in 1996. We can look at the reports that came out, but most importantly, we can look at the 94 TRC recommendations that just came out. The first five deal with child welfare. The first five of 94 deal with child welfare. Who's doing what where? The City of Vancouver adopted it. The parks board here in Vancouver adopted it. The school board adopted it. They're all implementing strategies. They're working co-operatively.

The research of who is doing what where is important. Second, look at promising neighbourhoods in the United States. Why are they doing this in 61 communities, and what are the results of it? Ultimately, you'll see that it's going to save resources and save lives. Third, work with our national political organizations. I make a very clear distinction between political organizations and service organizations. They have different mandates. The federal government has played those organizations off each other. Honestly, I think in 2016 we need to move beyond that.

Fourth, implement it, and five, evaluate it, because really the wave of the future for indigenous populations, the TRC recommendations, and Canadians as a whole is taking the best practices around the world—promising neighbourhoods, the collective impact, place-based—and start doing it here in Canada. We are way behind, and it gets a number of birds with one stone because we start working with children and families at a very young age and with girls so they don't end up as another statistic in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Do the math. We start building and bringing them together through a reconciliation lens.

It's being done here in Vancouver, and we can do it across the country.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

You referenced the United States, and I've been to conferences where presentations have been made about what they have done and how it has been successful, especially on educational outcomes and successes for students. I wonder whether or not you have any of that information, maybe not at this moment, but after the meeting you could share it with the clerk so we can actually have on the public record what some of those successes look like and how they resourced them to make them happen. That would be something we can begin with.

Mr. Scott Clark :

We would be pleased to gather that information. In fact, we're in the process right now of making a request through the civic, provincial, and federal governments to jointly fund this as a model here in Vancouver. We'd be happy to provide all that information for this committee to address those issues. I think one of the key things I want to say is that a collective impact place-based approach is also nation building. It's not segregating urban aboriginal people from a different entity whose territory we're in. It's actually about building us and bringing us all together and respecting the territory.

You can do the TRC recommendations, educational outcomes, get in front of the missing and murdered women, and support these young children so they actually have real choices when they move through the transition stages of education.

(0850) Ms. Jenny Kwan :

One of the issues that you mention, and you're right, is that there are many components to the situation we're in, and housing and homelessness, for example, is a key piece within that. I have in my previous experience indigenous families, single parents, who are separated from their children. Their children are taken into care simply because they can't find safe, secure, affordable housing. To that end, what are your thoughts with respect to addressing issues like that? There needs to be a foundational piece for people to build their lives on.

Mr. Scott Clark :

It's extremely important. We've been meeting with the City of Vancouver. Housing is tremendously important. Safe, suitable, affordable housing for the diverse needs of vulnerable children and families is critical. You have to engage the cities. The federal government, through this report, can start advocating that the provincial governments start working with the city governments on a tripartite relationship to ensure those housing needs are built around schools and community centres. What does a healthy community look like? It looks mixed.

It looks inclusive, vibrant, engaging, and reflective—no more just streamlining us into one pocket. Vancouver, from what I've noticed, is beginning to do that approach.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

We haven't had a national affordable housing program since 1993. It was cancelled. As a result of that, across the country we lost over half a million units of affordable housing that would otherwise have been built, had that program continued. What are your thoughts on a national affordable housing program?

Mr. Scott Clark :

We participated recently with CMHC and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, about a month ago in Gatineau on this issue. You are right; it's a critical issue. Ultimately, the federal government.... We are the only G8 nation without a federal housing strategy. In the devolution process that I shared with you, the feds have always said that we are not their responsibility—the 80% of us who live off reservations are not their responsibility—so we've been living in this vacuum. Housing is critical, and we believe that the feds need to show some real leadership and get back into supporting housing across this country. Thank you.

The Chair :

Don Rusnak, go ahead, please.

Mr. Don Rusnak (Thunder Bay—Rainy River, Lib.) :

Thank you for coming. It's a pleasure to be here. The stories we have been hearing across the country—and from people from across the country in Ottawa—have been very helpful, first, in my own learning about the different issues across the country, and also in learning about us as indigenous people. I say “us”, because I am from Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation, Anishinaabe from Ontario. I am Ontario's only first nations member of Parliament, and I'm also the chair of the indigenous Liberal caucus. My lens is changing a bit, or perhaps my view on where we go with this issue.

Of course, there are the immediate things we need to do, reacting to the crisis immediately with some kind of response—and I've said this over...through so many different witnesses. In the past, it's been crisis teams that have been developed by FNIHB or Health Canada. We've heard that some of those teams would come in and then leave. That's not effective. It's not the right way to deal with this crisis. What we heard last night.... We were at a youth centre on the lower east side, UNYA, with indigenous youth from the lower east side area.

They said that programs like that and centres like that go a long way, but there were a lot of youth, their friends, who weren't there and who had been dealing with thoughts of suicide and needed something more, or a follow-up—needed a safe space, but also someone to talk to. I think it's happening in pockets, mainly not because of anything governments are doing but because of what the people on the ground are doing. It's very important to listen to people on the ground, because that's where we are seeing it, at the front line.

We are seeing positive results of programs like UNYA, and we are seeing not-so-good results from Health Canada teams going into communities like my area of the country in northwestern Ontario, Pikangikum, and leaving, and then we have another crisis pop up there, or in northern Saskatchewan. I believe I know your answer, and maybe I've said parts of it, but what should the federal government do immediately? I believe we need to work in partnership, not only with municipalities but with the provincial government and the providers of service.

What can we do to make it easier to do the job that you guys do, and what else should we be doing for the immediate...?

(0855) Mr. Scott Clark :

Immediately? I guess your lens is very important. As an urban indigenous advocate, I think we've been researched and programmed to death. We've been “clientized”, you could even say, and I think that we have to move beyond that. It took us how many decades to get here? How many decades is it going to take us to get out of here, together, in a good way? I'm very apprehensive about saying that “this is the key thing” or “that's the key thing” or “this program is key” because a program to me is just how they keep all the service providers fighting for the same bits and pieces. Meanwhile, we lose a strategy.

We have to change from being program-immediate based to being strategy-evidence based. That's what we need to indigenize that process, and it has to be open and inclusive for non-indigenous people in that area. You're Ojibwa. In my community, regardless of our ethnicity, we all come together through our philosophy. The same lens needs to apply in the urban context. Meaningful partnerships between the feds, the provinces, and the cities need to happen, and they need to happen soon. The problem with the feds and the provinces, and even the cities, is that they are imposing stuff on us.

It needs to come from the ground up. If you talk to the people in those communities in a comprehensive approach, you can identify where those opportunities are. There's a lot of goodwill out there, but there's no ability to tap into that goodwill and turn it into a strategy.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

How I had it layered was, first, immediate response and, second, youth intervention. Some of that you filled in: the partnerships with municipalities, youth centres...the grassroots service providers telling us what they need and then we deliver it.

Mr. Scott Clark :

That's very important. I'm going to say it again because it's worth saying: I am very concerned about a program provider approach, a service provider approach. This is the problem. Governments dump money on a program. However, we're talking strategy. We have those 30 kids who had a suicide pact. We created, and we're still creating, a strategic approach where we can identify the vacuums and fill them with the residents in the communities, not the service providers.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

Ms. Benson, I come from a first nations community that, like yours, was flooded out. I looked at Google Maps to see where you are, and I noticed that you're on the south side of the lake. When you said ferry, I wondered where you were, but now I see that you have to actually take a ferry. Your community is purposely isolated from the highway, and you have to take a ferry over to get any services from any other communities in the area. That's one of the big problems: the Indian Act and all the things it has done to our people since colonization. Those people filter into the urban fabric.

We heard yesterday that there's so much mobility; this isn't just an issue for first nations on reserves. I personally don't like that characterization because I've never lived on a reserve. I grew up in the city—

(0900) The Chair :

We're out of time.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

I'll continue if I get—

The Chair :

I'm sorry. I'm being strict because if I'm strict now, we can have three more questions, not two. We're going to go on to five-minute questions, and maybe the answer can come forward. The first question is from David Yurdiga.

Mr. David Yurdiga (Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, CPC) :

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today. This is a very important study. It was very interesting yesterday when we met with the UNYA group. I was very impressed by how articulate and intelligent these young people are. These youth can be so much more if they're given the opportunity. However, it seems like these suicide pacts are becoming more prevalent, and that's very concerning. What types of strategies are being developed, or have been developed, to address suicide pacts in reserve communities and in urban settings? Is there a difference in the strategies? I'll open up the floor to both witnesses for comments.

Mr. Scott Clark :

Something that I want to be really clear about—and I haven't even begun to address this issue in the urban context—is that lot of the service agencies are muffled. They're not allowed to speak the truth of what's really going on, because if they spoke that, then they would lose their funding. This is why we don't take government funding. When we had a suicide pact here of over 30 people, many service organizations tried to downplay it. This is why service agencies cannot be relied on, because they have a different agenda from the people. This is why I say we have to go for a strategic approach.

Many of the service agencies here in British Columbia are muffled by design, and you're not going to get the real information. That's where academia comes in. That's where the residents come in. You start developing a strategy. You have to change your whole lens. It's not a program. It's not a quick fix. Your whole lens has to change. We're here to support our most vulnerable people, so let's deal with the facts and the best facts we can get. If you're getting misinformation from non-profit organizations who are covering their behinds because of their government funding, then we should be clear about that.

Ms. Mavis Benson :

I believe on-reserve, or when I experienced suicide pacts with our youth—it's not only youths, it's young adults, too—it's a lot different than off-reserve because off-reserve has a lot of services. We don't have any services in our communities, none whatsoever. When I was on band council, for example, I worked 24/7. If someone wanted to commit suicide, the cops would call me in the middle of the night, like 2 o'clock in the morning, because they can't get there fast enough. I'd go to the house. I'm not a counsellor. I was a political leader.

I would go there and sit with the person until an ambulance attendant and the cops could come. That's what the chief and council continue to do now. They're not psychologists, psychiatrists, or counsellors. They're political leaders, but they put their own time in to help. If they hear there is a suicide pact going on, then they go into the houses, regardless of whether the residents are drinking, or doing drugs, or whatever. We were all there at one time. We don't segregate them. We don't isolate them.

We make them feel like they are part of the community and they're worth something, because we are all human beings. We're all Cheslatta people. The thing is that we don't have services that can assist these people in our communities. We have lots of services here in the city. That's one reason why, as Scott was saying, a lot of first nations people are segregated on the east side. I live in southwest Vancouver, and I did that on purpose. I wanted my children to have a chance to have a better education and a better outlook on life. They're doing amazingly, all three, well, two of them.

One has to go to the east side to a day care, but it's an awesome day care. As I say, on-reserve we don't have the services. Even mental health workers don't necessarily live on the south side. There's no housing there, so they live in town. When something like that happens, the ferry is not going to start up just for them. They will start up for the ambulance or the police, and that's it. I remember one time, there was an incident that happened, and they told my uncle, who was the chief at the time, “Go see if they're really dead.” when there was the murder of two people. The cops told him to do that.

He came and got my mom and my sister to go there and check if the two individuals were murdered, and they were. Then he called them, and then they came.

(0905) Mr. David Yurdiga :

Thank you.

The Chair :

Mike Bossio, you have five minutes.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Thank you. I'd like to pass my time to Don.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

Not to waste any time, I'm going to continue on with the sort of long-term solution. I don't see indigenous people always being here. I've said this at this committee before. In 50 years, I don't want another member of Parliament asking these same questions about suicide. I've said this also. Suicide is only a symptom. I think this study needs to go broader and look at all the problems that are leading to this ultimately horrible conclusion for a lot of indigenous youth and indigenous people.

In terms of first nations communities, on the positive side, a lot of communities in a certain area of my riding are doing well financially, and that's through partnerships with resource companies, with municipalities, business ventures that community members have done themselves. They're healthier communities. You see virtually no suicides. You see kids going to school, going on to post-secondary education, getting involved in the trades. We had the B.C.

Treaty Commission meet with us in Ottawa—I think it was last week—and they outlined a number of agreements that they've helped shepherd along over the last many years. Have your communities been involved in any processes, or economic activity, or governance building that gets them out from under the Indian Act?

Ms. Mavis Benson :

My community, Cheslatta, is actually doing quite well, doing joint ventures with different businesses and organizations, and not necessarily depending on INAC funding. We do have resources, through forestry contracts, with economic development through different organizations like mining companies. Our community puts that back into the community. During the summer, we have a camp-out that's one week long, and it's all culturally oriented. That's another way to find out whether there is a suicide pact going on, or there is an individual, a youth, wanting to attempt suicide. I'm on Facebook.

I'm here, but I always read the Facebook messages. If I see that someone has said they want to die or whatever, I call my chief and council. Of course, it's all confidential. I will say, “This person is saying this. I just want you to know.” They are not on Facebook, so that's how I intervene, or else if I know them really well, I intervene. I will call them myself. We have a cultural camp that's culturally oriented, and that really helps people. We also have fishing season all of August, and everyone gets involved when we get salmon.

Everyone has learned how to cut and dry salmon, and they package them up and hand them out to people. Our community is well off in the sense that we can get extra programs. We can send people to different things, choices, and other things, but we also assist other communities.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

Is the community looking at getting out from under the Indian Act?

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Yes, our community is eventually hoping to get out from under the Indian Act. We finally got our lands back at Cheslatta. Of course, you had seen on the news where Christy Clark signed the land back over to Cheslatta members a few weeks ago. That was a big event.

(0910) Mr. Don Rusnak :

Basically, some communities do better than others under the Indian Act. There are various reasons for that. However, being in the Indian Act and continuing in the Indian Act as a community is unhealthy, and we know that. I like to hear that communities are working to get out from under the Indian Act, whatever those ideas are. It's the choice of the community, and not necessarily the choice of the Indian Act band chief and council. That's why, when I go to communities, I like to talk to the grassroots people from first nations communities.

Once these communities come out from the Indian Act, they start getting involved in cultural things, and other things that are healthy in building a community. When we have healthy communities, we don't have people going to urban areas. It's not bad that people go to urban areas, but we don't cycle into this problem again. We end it at the source, so to speak.

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Education is the key right from the grassroots level.

The Chair :

Thanks. We're out of time. The final questioner is Cathy McLeod, please.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

Thank you. I will pick up where Don left off. You talked about your community having some good partnerships and, it sounds like, some good oil source revenues. Is that also creating employment opportunities for youth or is it just the revenue stream? That would be part one of the question. Part two is, as you sort of created these partnerships and the opportunities, are you seeing things improve in the community in terms of general mental health and wellness?

Ms. Mavis Benson :

On the first question, yes, there are a lot of partnerships that the community has gone into with different organizations. For example, I know they have a partnership with forestry companies. They have a partnership with mining and all these different organizations. They do employ a majority of our people, but they also train them. A lot of the training is for community members on-reserve, which is something I am really hoping changes because I live off-reserve. They have training, for example, for truck driving. They have upgrading courses where they'll actually pay for day care

whereas before they never did. Under the Indian Act, you can't pay a student to take upgrading courses, but in our band, they did give them a stipend to go and take upgrading courses as an incentive to go. There is training and there is education through the different revenues that are generated from these companies. What was your second question again?

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

Earlier, you talked about some of the aspirations of youth to be on welfare or a band office employee, but with those new partnerships, is that building the aspirations of the youth in the community and then, as part of that, is there a noticeable change in terms of mental health and wellness?

Ms. Mavis Benson :

Yes, what the community is working towards is creating a.... We don't like to call it a treatment centre, but way out at the west end of Cheslatta Lake we have a big cabin that houses probably about 10 people. We're hoping to create a wellness centre that deals with post-traumatic stress disorder and all of the issues that came with colonization. I suffer from PTSD, and a lot of community members do, and this centre that we are striving to open is going to deal with trauma, sexual abuse, and all the core issues that make us drink, that make us do drugs, and that make us want to commit suicide.

I think they're going to take individuals and families, not necessarily only people who want to commit suicide, but everyone, including families who deal with alcohol and drugs, or individuals and youths who are addicted. It's like a comprehensive view of how we holistically deal with this person and these family members as a whole. That's the kind of treatment centre or healing centre, I guess they would call it, that Cheslatta is now working on, and they have been working on it for a while. They are going to be hiring psychologists and certified trauma counsellors rather than just generic counsellors.

This is something that they are working on diligently, and I really commend them on that.

(0915) Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

Mr. Clark, you talked about the organizations that deliver services wanting to downplay the issue around the pact. I guess there's the other sort of thinking sometimes around suicide that, the more it's in the news, the more you create—and it's been shown, of course, from the research—this sort of snowball effect. My question is, was it really a downplay of the critical issue or was it possibly a strategy to help save youth by giving it that sort of profile?

Mr. Scott Clark :

Its a very good question. Having lived and breathed in this community with this issue I recognize that point, but the changes are difficult. It's extremely difficult to get different organizations and government bureaucrats to change how they are held accountable. We have had the whole gauntlet. Some are in complete denial, and some very high-profile people—there are big battles around this stuff—are just saying, “You know what, we did a great job. It's not our fault,” and pointing the finger, trying to deflect blame from themselves.

But ultimately, it takes a village to raise a child, and we all need to be held accountable to those young people and their families. That culture is missing. We need to decolonize services from all levels of government and to work with community from the ground up.

The Chair :

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and well-considered testimony. Your depth of experience and passion are evident in what you've told us today. It's going to be of tremendous help to the study. On behalf of the committee, I offer sincere thanks for that. We will suspend for about 10 minutes.

(0915) (0925) The Chair :

We'll come back to order. Welcome to this public hearing of the indigenous and northern affairs committee of Parliament. As you know, we are continuing our study on indigenous suicide. Thank you very much to both of you for joining us this morning: Gabriella Emery, project manager for indigenous health at the Provincial Health Services Authority, and Cassandra Blanchard, program assistant for indigenous health at the Provincial Health Services Authority. I'm very happy to offer you the floor for 10 minutes to share between you. As I understand it, Gabriella, you are going to begin. Go ahead, please.

(0930) Ms. Gabriella Emery (Project Manager, Indigenous Health, Provincial Health Services Authority) :

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee, for this opportunity to present to you today. I'd like to start by acknowledging that we are on unceded traditional ancestral territory of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh first nations. My name is Gabriella Emery. I am from the 'Namgis First Nation. I am the project manager at the Provincial Health Services Authority indigenous health program.

Ms. Cassandra Blanchard (Program Assistant, Indigenous Health, Provincial Health Services Authority) :

I'm Cassandra Blanchard. I am a program assistant with PHSA for aboriginal health, and I'm Northern Tutchone.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

To get started today, we're going to be talking to you about our upstream suicide prevention program called Cuystwi. As we know, indigenous suicide isn't a new issue in Canada. It was established as a priority action area in the “Transformative Change Accord: First Nations Health Plan” back in 2005. To ground the rest of our talk, I want to give some background on the values and the philosophy that we use in our programming. One of the main points is that colonization and racism are determinants of health for indigenous people.

I think that's something that really needs to be kept at the forefront when we're looking at prevention efforts. Secondly, we use evidence from the literature that states that identity, culture, and connections to land are really important when we're talking about indigenous youth suicide prevention. That brings us to Cuystwi and how we got started with our program. We were doing some work with first nations communities in northern B.C., and they had expressed desire for an upstream suicide prevention programming for their youth.

They really wanted a program that would teach youth our history from the indigenous perspective. They requested that it should be culturally relevant and would promote wellness, and that it would be culturally safe and decolonizing in nature. With that feedback, we hosted four World Café-style focus groups in the north where we brought youth together to flesh out what that meant to them and what they wanted to see.

When we got some positive feedback from those youth, we moved on to a think tank in Vancouver in 2012, where we brought youth and youth workers from 20 different nations together to really flesh out what that would look like to them. On the slides, you can see one of the drawings representing what the youth wanted to see. With that positive feedback and the direction from the youth, we embarked on the creation of an online quest called Cuystwi. It's meant for youth aged 10 to 12 and it's designed so they go through a journey with many different activities, videos, and audio.

That was one of the things that they expressed; they wanted it to be interactive and they wanted to use media tools. The online quest can be explored either as an individual or as a group. It's meant to be facilitated in community, by community members, and to complement other existing youth programs. The quests were really meant to be a conversation starter and not meant to be the be-all and end-all of information. We really wanted to provide a platform that communities could use to make it their own; to have their own teachings and their own values that they could bring to the table.

That being said, the five main themes that the quest goes through are strengthening identity, understanding the importance of culture and wellness, understanding colonization and how it affects us, our families, and our communities. It gives them some tools to deal with racism and it ends with an invitation to become a young warrior. From there, we moved on to the development of phase 2 Cuystwi. There was a desire expressed that we wanted to address some of the older age groups, so this one was for 13- to 15-year olds.

It has a very similar style with an online quest that youth can go through again, either by themselves or in a group. We built on the five main themes from phase 1, but we also added on topics like healthy relationships, and that can be with the land, our friends, our families, and significant others. We talk about sexuality, self-regulation and emotions, and we really go into more depth around the Indian Act and residential schools, again, teaching our history from our perspective. Both programs are free to use. You send us an email and we'll send you a link.

We also provide facilitator manuals, so that communities have a resource, in addition to accessibility to needed support. Again, we really want to emphasize that it's something that communities can take and use in the way they see fit. They don't need to use it exactly the way the quest is laid out. It's meant so the youth can take what they want to learn and supplement it into their other programming. As best practice, we really believe in having youth-driven programming, with the understanding that youth know what they need.

Many health promotion programs have been implemented without an indigenous world view or real and meaningful engagement or collaboration with the people who actually would be using the services they're developing. We believe that youth need to be recognized as experts in determining what they need to stay well and we really need to fully support and engage youth, so they are part of the development from the very beginning when we're moving forward with programming.

This really helps to ensure that there are high rates of participation, that people feel like they have a sense of ownership over the content, and take pride in their communities. With that being said, we also want to recognize that indigenous youth aren't one specific group. When we're talking about programming, we really need to be understanding that there's youth on-reserve, in foster care, and in urban settings, so we really need to address all of those.

(0935) One of the ways that we've been ensuring that we have youth involvement in our development of our programming is that we had 12 pilot communities from around B.C. We asked those communities to send us youth representatives who were interested in sitting on an advisory panel. It was an advisory panel where they could provide direct feedback and help develop content with us, but it was also an opportunity for youth to get some training.

We used telehealth equipment, so that we could bring in people to provide training around research, facilitation, skills, and leadership, etc., so that they could go back into their communities to solicit more feedback from youth in their communities, and it had a ripple effect outwards. We always make sure we pay our youth to give us their time, and we honour them for their contributions. I think that's really important.

We have facilitator gatherings so that community members can send representatives and young people down to learn about how they can use Cuystwi in their communities, as well as gain skills around facilitation. We have a youthful team. We try to keep our team with youth under 25, which I think is really important, so that youth are at the table not only when we're in the workplace, but also when we're in a community. One of the main ways right now that we ensure that we have youth involvement is to do a lot of video workshops around the province.

It's not only a way to help youth gain skills to tell their stories through media, but it's a way that we can work with them to create content that's relevant and meaningful to them. One of the benefits that we've seen from doing our work this way is that it's decolonizing in nature. It gives us an opportunity again to learn our history from our perspectives. We have youth at the table developing the content and making sure it's relevant, and they're going to be interested in what you're creating. It's skills building, and it's not only for our staff.

We believe in mentoring, so we do hire young people and help them figure out what their passion is, but also with the communities we work with, their youth are gaining skills as well. It's a lot of fun being able to work with youth, and most importantly, we believe that it's important that youth are able to see themselves in the content and that it's not just a resource. They can connect with it. Now I'm going to turn it over to Cassandra, who is going to share a bit of her story.

Ms. Cassandra Blanchard :

I'll talk about my story and how Cuystwi could have helped. I'll try to keep it short. Throughout years of addiction filled with loneliness and unhappiness, I learned that the health care system is ill-equipped in dealing with mental illness. Despite numerous suicide attempts, I did not receive a full and proper psychiatric assessment, even when it was court ordered. I was turned away from a clinic because I had to be 30 days clean. If I hadn't been turned away, perhaps I could have bypassed trauma after trauma, which included falling into the sex trade and ending up in the Downtown Eastside.

My mental health went on a downward spiral, and I was experiencing psychosis for long periods of time. It came to the point where my parents told my sister to brace herself for my death. After my stepfather raised a stink, I was finally seen by a psychiatrist who, in two days, diagnosed me with severe type 1 bipolar disorder, and a case that was the worst he had seen in three years. With therapy and medication, I became stable enough to graduate from UBC and find work with the indigenous youth wellness project.

This project made me think that if I had Cuystwi years ago, maybe I could have used it as a support while waiting for a psychiatric assessment. Cuystwi has content that addresses mental health through care action plans, and it has videos of cultural teachings that, for an indigenous person, fill a need for cultural awareness. Knowing about culture helps to form a personal identity in the face of emptiness and struggle. What is important is that youth can do Cuystwi at their own pace whenever they have access to a computer either at home, school, or youth centres.

Cuystwi can act as a buffer as youth navigate the system to address their mental health concerns. It is my hope that Cuystwi gains more support from a wider audience, because no youth should be left behind or turned away.

(0940) Ms. Gabriella Emery :

With that, I'd just like to say we couldn't do without our partners. We have many, including the Cowichan Tribes, Daylu Dena Council, Nisga’a, and may more. Thank you.

The Chair :

Thanks for that very much. That was much appreciated. What you weren't able to say, I hope we'll be able to hear, because of the time, through the questions. We're going to go into a seven-minute round of questions. The first question comes from Mike Bossio, please.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Thank you, Chair, and thank you both so much for being here today. Once again, this adds your personal story to the evidence, as do these programs we're seeing on the ground that are making a difference. I guess that's where I would like to take this. If there's one thing we've seen in indigenous communities, it's that we really need to look at mental health and health in general from a very different lens, and we're looking at public health typically within the wider communities. Is that happening in B.C.? Is there a concerted effort to view health and mental health through an indigenous lens?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

I would say that in our organization and in our team, yes. I can't really speak to the broader context. As you'll notice, our project is called the indigenous youth wellness project; it's not called the suicide prevention program. That was the advice from youth; they were not interested in going to a program that had the word “suicide” or “mental health” in it. They wanted the focus to be on wellness.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Does your program employ 100% indigenous peoples?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

That's wonderful. In the broader context, what does your program represent within the provincial health authority from a resource standpoint?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

I'm not sure I fully understand the question.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Your program is specifically focused on indigenous youth wellness. If we look at the investment into resources for indigenous health, are there other provincial health programs that focus on indigenous health in general?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes, for sure. Provincial Health Services Authority has, I believe, maybe nine or 10 different agencies within it. There's the Chee Mamuk aboriginal health program. There are specific rural and perinatal services. B.C. Women's has a director of indigenous health, as well as aboriginal patient liaisons. They're kind of scattered, but our organization is the core of indigenous health for PHSA. Within that, each agency may have their own area.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Many health care services—counselling, mental health, trauma—are provided. Are they all delivered through an indigenous branch of the health service, or are there just general health branches that serve indigenous and non-indigenous people?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Generally, I would say no. Our program doesn't actually do any direct health care service delivery. We have our indigenous youth wellness program and the indigenous cultural safety program. Those are the two branches within our specific part of PHSA.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Specific to the program, how many individuals are locals on-reserve or off-reserve in the urban environment? Do you have resources scattered throughout the province, individuals who are working on the ground, or is this more of a central role that is trying to come up with programs that would then be delivered by other agencies?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

All our contacts with the indigenous youth wellness program are in Vancouver. They facilitate our gatherings. Going to youth conferences, and stuff like that, is our way to network and grow our network, to find people who are interested in doing work with us, but we aren't—

Mr. Mike Bossio :

You're not funded to have resources on the ground in the different communities.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

No, we don't do direct health care delivery in any form in our specific program.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Are you working with those who are providing that direct health care? Are you giving them the sensitivity training to deal with these issues within local reserves or in the urban environment?

(0945) Ms. Gabriella Emery :

The indigenous cultural safety program is available for anybody to take in B.C. There is another with specific training for indigenous people on that side, but within our specific work, we usually work with youth workers or health directors...mostly community members who are interested or who sought us out after hearing about our programming.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Okay. I guess I'm trying to get a sense of what kind of sensitivity training is given to counsellors within the health care, mental health, or counselling sectors around delivering services within indigenous communities. This would be training to deal with trauma, to be able to identify at-risk youth, or to identify the markers that suggest someone may be contemplating suicide or may not be in a good place? Does your organization provide any of that kind of sensitivity training to local, on-the-ground health care workers?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Anybody can ask to take the indigenous cultural safety program, but our program does upstream suicide prevention. We're not focused on clinical services or crisis situations. That's not where our funding comes from, so I can't really speak to that because that's not what we do.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Okay. I guess that's it, Chair.

The Chair :

The next questioner is David Yurdiga, please.

Mr. David Yurdiga :

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank the witnesses for participating in our study here. My passion is—and I believe the rest of our group is very concerned about—the future of our indigenous youth. I see you have a program called transformation to young warrior. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

That's the second phase of Cuystwi. That's built off the initial program we started for 10- to 12-year-olds. The communities we worked with said that they wanted some programming for youth who are a little bit older. As you can see on the slides, it's set up as a quest map so that's what it would look like online if you went into it and logged onto the training. Youth can sign up either themselves or through a youth worker after the community has requested a link. It goes through 24 different lessons on various different topics.

There is stuff around colonization, racism, learning about our history, talking about wellness, learning what healthy relationships look like, sexuality, and learning about emotions and self-regulation. It's really an opportunity to start conversations, maybe, on topics that aren't always talked about in our communities or that people aren't necessarily comfortable with, and that's why we also have a facilitator manual that we will provide to the communities as a resource to help their youth go through the training. But really it's an opportunity for communities to make it their own.

There is already a lot of wonderful programming going on in communities, and this is another resource that they can use to support it. We've had our pilot communities run it in on-reserve schools. We've had people do it in youth centres, summer camps, and anywhere that would complement something that was already happening, usually. Some communities have used it as a reason to gather in the first place so that's what they were going to do, go through the training with their youth.

Maybe they would meet once a week or something, and then we really encourage them to bring in elders or people who have specific cultural teachings or values. Some people used it as an opportunity to talk about the content, but also to learn to can fish or to build a smokehouse. We had people who would use it as a way to start a drum group. One of our communities had a very small drum group but, because there was community buy-in and interest, the drum group actually ended up with about 60 members who were showing up every week together, which is pretty amazing.

We have people who used it as an opportunity to put it with some physical activity and started a judo club, and then this was a component of it. It's really meant to be a versatile program that can really just be taken as communities want to use it.

Mr. David Yurdiga :

Thank you. Do you deal with suicide prevention at any level? Obviously it's a cultural identity, so is there any programming that touches that?

(0950) Ms. Gabriella Emery :

That talks specifically about suicide?

Mr. David Yurdiga :

Yes, suicide.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

In the emotion and self-regulation part, we touch on that, but we're not selling it as a forum to talk about suicide. We want youth to come together. It's more of a wellness focus instead of a focus specifically on suicide, and that was the message we heard from community and youth, that they really wanted something that was more holistic and not just focused specifically on suicide.

Mr. David Yurdiga :

What's the age range when they can start to be part of your programming?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

The first phase of Cuystwi, which specifies themes, is for 10- to 12-year olds, and then the phase 2 that I was just referring to is for 13- to 15-year-olds. But again, that was from communities that wanted something for that earlier age group to hopefully build some programming and some resources together so that we were talking to youth before suicide was even on the table.

Mr. David Yurdiga :

I know that elders play a large role in indigenous communities, so are elders incorporated into your programs at all? Do they come to events or speak, or do they develop programs or anything?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes. We have our main elder who's been with us since the very beginning, and that is Gerry Oleman. We've had three other elders who have played roles both in developing content and actually participating. They wanted to do videos to share their teachings. Those are in the program, but we also really encourage communities to make it their own, by saying, you have the expertise. You know your community better than any of us could ever know. You need to bring in those people who have those teachings.

We really encourage people to bring in their knowledge-keepers who can share their traditions and values with the youth when they implement the programming, but it's not mandated. We let the communities decide what they need.

Mr. David Yurdiga :

I also see that you have a youth and elder-led advisory board. What does this advisory board do? Who do they advise?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

That was when we were in the main phase of development. We don't have an active youth board right now. It was an opportunity for all of our pilot communities that were interested in helping develop the program to select two youths from their community to meet via telehealth technology. We would have meetings after work, after they got off school, so that they could really just tell us what they wanted to see. It was a place where we could say, “This is what we heard you say. This is what we're thinking of doing. Does that resonate with you?

Is that what you told us?” It was a way to make sure we were actually doing what they wanted and with their feedback. It was also an opportunity for us to provide training via telehealth technology around skills development, around facilitation, and public speaking so that youth could go into their communities to solicit feedback from other youth, so we were having a much broader set of youth giving us feedback on the topic.

Mr. David Yurdiga :

Do you participate? Do you put on the youth conferences, or do you provide funding for other groups to do it? How does that work?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

It depends. We are playing host to a youth conference later this year. We usually go to youth conferences when we're invited. We usually do film workshops, or something of that nature. Or we're just there to do promotion. We use that opportunity to, again, get feedback, so that we're always checking in and saying, this is what we heard. This is what we did. Can you give us some feedback? What would you actually want to see? That's one of the reasons why we like to check in as often as we can.

Mr. David Yurdiga :

Thank you.

The Chair :

The next question is from Jenny Kwan, please.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

Thank you to both of the witnesses for your presentation. Ms. Emery, I'd like to touch on your program. It sounds as though it does not provide for clinical support, so any counselling support, as such. You do not provide for those.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

No. We're an upstream program. We're not a crisis intervention—

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

Do you know, then, within the health authority, what resources are allocated for those kinds of services?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

I can't answer that. I'm not really sure. As I said, we're not participating in direct service delivery of any kind.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

What about outreach workers? Is there any provision within your programming that provides for outreach with youth? Or is that something that's also outside of your realm?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes. That's not something we do.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

In terms of training, in some of the communities people have identified, witnesses have identified, that they need training, people who could train them on trauma counselling, for example. Is there any provision within your program for training of other individuals or workers in the community?

(0955) Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Specifically for our program, we have logistical tutor gatherings, which is an opportunity for people to come together to learn about the program and also to strengthen their facilitation skills. But again, we're not a service delivery organization.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

All right. In terms of funding, then, for your program, what's the funding allocation for this program?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We're core funded out of the Provincial Health Services Authority's budget. We do have funding each year that's stable.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

Can I ask how much?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

It's about $150,000 a year.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

Which communities do you reach into?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

The 12 pilot communities that we've had in the past.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

So it's the 12 pilots.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

It's what we have done in the past. Right now we're not funding any communities directly, as we've just finished up development. But we have provided funding in the past for communities to be able to get some money so that they could either have a facilitator or they could use the money how they saw fit, to really support that. If the programming in place didn't have, necessarily, a youth worker who could facilitate it, or maybe they didn't have a venue, it was up to them to work with us to figure out how that money would be used.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

In the past, what kinds of resources went into helping other organizations to build up that capacity and to be able to do that work?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

What types of organizations?

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

You just said that in the past you had resources that were provided to other organizations, communities, to do this work. I'm just wondering how many organizations benefited from that.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We had Cowichan Tribes, Daylu Dena Council, Nisga’a Lisims Government, Gitsegukla health centre, Nak’azdli Band, the walk tall program out of Carrier Sekani Family Services in Prince George, the Okanagan Nation Alliance, the Urban Native Youth Association here in Vancouver, the Squiala First Nation, the Sumas First Nation, and Métis Youth B.C. All of these we've partnered with.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

When you say you partner with them, you mean these organizations were given funding to develop a conference or program of their own?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

In the initial development phase, they helped us pilot the training. We took their direction and learned what they wanted to see, and we worked with them to develop it. Then we provided funding to help them pilot the training in their communities, so that they could check to see if we were getting it right. They used that money to support some piloting and the training in their communities.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

When you say you piloted the training, what does that mean exactly?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We had communities that had agreed to support the development—these are the ones I just listed—and they were going to run the youth group, or run the training, either a youth group or their schools. They were going through the entire training to give us feedback on what they thought about the program.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

I see. How many youth do you think this program reached?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We haven't done a big launch yet. We kind of just did a soft launch earlier this year. It's tricky counting numbers. We provide the link to the communities. They can either sign up under one name and then log in and go through it as a group, or, if they want, we had some people who had multiple computers so that youth could log in and create their own. It's a tough call to say how many per se, but within the 12 communities that initially piloted, we're looking at at least 200 to 300 out of that group. It's hard to track because we're trying to make it accessible and not burdensome for them to be reporting to us.

We just want them to be able to use it as they see fit, without having us always asking what they're doing.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

One of the issues raised was that, when youth have challenges, whether from past trauma, their current situation, or whatever the case may be, when an intervention takes place, usually a 911 call is made. They are then shepherded to the hospital and from there they are detained. After that, I guess there's a psych assessment and then they're released. There's no follow-up with respect to counselling support, for example. Some organizations say it would be really great to not actually phone 911, but rather, to phone some other place to get support for youth who might be showing suicidal tendencies.

I'm wondering if there's anything within PHSA that provides these kinds of support for youth. If not, even within your programming, has this come up as an issue?

(1000) Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We're doing upstream work, so we're not dealing with crisis management in any form. The direction we got from the community was that they wanted upstream programming, so I can't speak to that.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

Nobody has raised this issue?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

With the youth we've spoken with, that wasn't the main priority we heard. I'm not saying it's not a problem. I think you'll have to ask the community members and they'll tell you.

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

In terms of—

The Chair :

I'm sorry, Jenny, you're out of time. Before we go to the next questioner, I'm trying to articulate something that might be helpful. The impression I'm getting is that your program is to suicide prevention what perhaps exercise and good diet are to disease prevention. It's not IVs and surgery for disease prevention. You're way upstream from that. You're about good living, basically. Right?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes, that's correct.

The Chair :

Hopefully, that's helpful in framing the situation. The next questions are from Don Rusnak.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

That's kind of what I wanted to get at. First of all, we didn't get a backgrounder, or at least I can't find it. As to the Provincial Health Services Authority, I'm sorry but I'm from Ontario and I'm not familiar with the authorities out here. Is it the Provincial Health Services Authority here in B.C. that funds your organization, or are you a part of that organization?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We're a part of it.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

Okay. So are you a program in...?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We work for the indigenous health program inside of PHSA. We're the core indigenous health program and we deliver indigenous youth wellness programming that I'm here to talk about as well as the indigenous cultural safety program.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

The Provincial Health Services Authority, is that B.C. Health?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

It's one of the health authorities in B.C. We have a provincial mandate and then within B.C. there are, I believe, six other health authorities.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

So what's the mandate of the Provincial Health Services Authority in British Columbia? From my context, I worked for Manitoba Health in the province of Manitoba. We had Manitoba Health, which was essentially the ministry of health and then we had regional health authorities. So we had the Winnipeg Region Health Authority that covered Winnipeg. We had the WestMan region, which covered the western part of the province. We had NorMan and NorEastMan. It was divided up regionally. So is the Provincial Health Services Authority something that covers all of the British Columbia with a different mandate than say if they had a Vancouver regional health authority?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes. We're provincial. There is Vancouver Coastal Health authority, Interior Health, Vancouver Island Health Authority, Northern Health authority, Fraser Health authority, and then the First Nations Health Authority as well. We have a provincial mandate. We provide more specialty services. Broadly we have B.C. Ambulance, B.C. Renal, B.C. Cancer, children's hospital, women's hospital. So we provide, I believe, more specialty services, maybe, than the regional health authorities.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

So you cover everything. You cover everything that Coastal Health would cover. You cover all the territory, so to speak.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

So if Vancouver Coastal Health has found a group of people who want your programming they can call your office and say can you come in and deliver it however they want it.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Anybody can reach out to us and ask for a link. We don't really work within that much of the health authority structure. Again, we're mostly working with first nations communities and indigenous organizations that are interested in running our training. So anybody can ask us for a link to use our training.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

Have you been advertising your services across the province? Does it get advertised by the government? Does it get advertised by regional health authorities? Does it get advertised by first nations? Does the information just disseminate out through emails or word of mouth?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

As of right now we pretty much have done a soft launch. We're looking in the coming months to do a more formal launch now that the programming has been completed. Right now our main sources of promotion have been Facebook and a YouTube channel. We have been relying on communities and networking, going to conferences really just talking to youth and people who are doing youth work in communities. In the coming months we're hoping to develop a more formal strategy for getting our information out there.

(1005) Mr. Don Rusnak :

How old is the program?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We started in late 2012. So we've been around for, I guess, four years.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

How many engagements, if you want to call it that, with different groups or how many things have you been doing around the province and has it covered all of the geographic area of the province?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We try to be as provincially representative as possible. We always try to attend the conferences wherever they are if we get invited. If communities invite us to events, we go. It's hard to put a number on it but we do a significant number of engagements through events. The Gathering our Voices youth conference, I'm not sure if you've heard about that, is one of the biggest indigenous youth conferences that every year during spring break brings 1,200 to 2,000 indigenous youth from across B.C. We quite often host workshops at those events around video-making as well as promotional efforts.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

You mentioned some of the partner organizations. Are they founding partner organizations or...?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

The partnerships we have are communities that had expressed the interest in creating an indigenous youth wellness tool. Then to make sure we have provincial representation across the different health authority regions we put a call out to see who was interested or who the idea resonated with. The initial call for this program came from communities we were doing chronic disease prevention work with in northern B.C.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

Do you have individual people for each region? Say that the Nisga'a Lisims Government has a request for information, would you have someone specifically for that region within your organization?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Not specifically. We have a very small team. Right now we have three staff, two of whom are here today. It just depends. When people send us an email, we'll just connect with them however they like. If they want to have a chat with us over the phone to find out more, or if they've already heard about us and are excited and just want a link, it's as easy as that. They just get the link from us. We'll send them the facilitator manual, and then they can use it how they like.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

With regard to the communities you've been working with, and the other organizations and partners, how have you been received so far in your brief four years of doing the work you're doing?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We've had amazing community partners I think, really trying to do the work in a good way, and ensuring that we were working with them every step of the way. They're the ones who came to us looking for an idea, or wanting something around indigenous youth wellness.

Mr. Don Rusnak :

Thank you.

The Chair :

Thanks. We're going to move into five-minute questions. We have time for a few of those. The first one comes from Cathy McLeod, please.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

Thanks to both of the witnesses. Cassandra, you told us a compelling story. To the degree that you're comfortable sharing, what helped you through your path to where you are now? What happened in your life that helped you to get on a more positive direction?

Ms. Cassandra Blanchard :

I just fell off the grid, but my stepdad, like I said, raised a stink. He went on The Bill Good Show a couple of times. He talked about it at conferences. He finally got a call saying that I could have an assessment now. It's just getting that assessment, and then the medication that comes with it. You throw the kitchen sink and it just stopped everything. It gave me a chance to get better.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

It was really having that medical help, that psychiatric assessment, the proper medication.

(1010) Ms. Cassandra Blanchard :

Yes, to know what was going on, basically. It was bizarre.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

That was what took your life from there, and—

Ms. Cassandra Blanchard :

Yes. It took a couple of years to get an assessment. It was just having that medical care, a proper treatment plan, the right combo of medication, and an amazing psychiatrist.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

Okay. We met with a number of youth last night. It seems that the path to a more positive future is very different for different youth in terms of what they need. Your story is a little bit different from theirs. We were hearing from some of them that they found that the services were very daunting and actually were very unhelpful. I guess it's not always that way. Sometimes—

Ms. Cassandra Blanchard :

I got lucky.

Mrs. Cathy McLeod :

I appreciate that. Thank you. To go to the specific work that's being done, I can appreciate your communities creating tools and letting communities take advantage of them, and not creating a lot of barriers and paperwork. Of course, it's always helpful to also be able to evaluate. What plans do you have in terms of an evaluation component? For example, your warrior program sounds kind of fun; it sounds intriguing. First of all, do you have an evaluation plan? Second of all, have you had any results from it?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We have piloted and evaluated phase 1, which is for 10- to 12-year olds. That was the work that took place with our 12 pilot communities, with the preface that it's an upstream prevention program. Looking really long term, we can't tell you that it's preventing suicide right now. What we can tell you is the biggest learning that came out of that phase 1 evaluation was that kids had no idea about our history. It really gave them an opportunity to learn maybe why their community was the way it is, why maybe their parents got some things...it gave them an opportunity to have a deeper understanding of who they were.

That was really neat to see. It's a history that a lot of Canada doesn't know, but it's a history that a lot of our own people don't know. That was the main learning that came out of Cuystwi phase 1. Phase 2 is a part of a youth participatory Ph.D. dissertation project that's happening right now out of the University of British Columbia with Cowichan Tribes. They're looking to evaluate that program with that group of youth, and it just started this fall. We're really excited to see where that goes. They have a bunch of awesome young kids who are in high school, around 18 or 19 years old.

They are taking ownership of the project and are going to be doing it that way. I want to quickly say, it totally depends how you measure success. We really believe that communities need to be involved in determining what success looks like for them. It can't be something external, where we're saying success only looks like this, when we're not the ones living there. I think there are lots of different ways to measure success that aren't necessarily the typical ways.

The Chair :

It was very well timed. Right to the minute. The next question is from Mike Bossio, please.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Cathy you were going exactly in the direction that I was looking at going in myself, so I'm going to follow on that same line of questioning. Why do you feel that it is important to the youth or to community to focus on the upstream part of this puzzle rather than the downstream? What is the connection there? I know Cassandra spoke about how what was missing so much on her side was the psychiatric evaluation. Could this have offset...was it to approach the problem much sooner before it became a problem in the first place?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

That's the idea behind upstream prevention programming, you're trying to stop something before it happens. That's the message we got from communities. They wanted something that would help their youth become stronger and have a stronger sense of identity, instead of only worrying about the crisis intervention. It's a very important piece. I'm not saying that's not something that needs to be there, but I'm saying we need to get to the root of the problem. We can't always be funnelling stuff when we're reacting to a situation.

I think it's going back to looking at the determinants of health for indigenous people, and that includes colonization and racism. If we're not getting to those, then we're not going to stop the trickle that's happening that we see now.

(1015) Mr. Mike Bossio :

You've really focused on the 10- to 12-year-olds. In this case, have you an indication yet that maybe it might be even more effective to apply it at an even younger age?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We don't really tell anybody they have to use it for 10- to 12-year-olds. Again, that was the message we heard from community, and that was an age group the partners we were working with were concerned about. It's not to say we haven't had people who have shared their resources with their younger children or have had conversations with, but maybe they didn't use the whole training. It's really meant to be flexible. There are no boxes they have to check that says they are 10 years old or they're 13 years old and they can't take that training.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Perfect. This is exactly what we've been talking about so often. The priorities need to be set by the community and driven by the community. You're really acting as a facilitator for the community. You even tweak the program in the direction that they think it needs to go in, establishing that historical perspective or the path that we want to go through, the warrior path. Whatever dimension that might take, you are going to help them to design it to be more effective for their specific perspective.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes. The program is really meant to be a conversation starter that will provide you with some baseline information about colonization, or things about the Indian Act or residential schools. That community has its own teachings, values, and perspective on that issue that are more valid than we could ever just blanket with a program that was supposed to cover every first nations group in B.C. It's really meant for communities to use as a resource and then put their expertise, knowledge, and teachings into using it in their communities how they see fit. We're not there to dictate how they use it.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

I know as well—following on Cathy's questioning—that downstream you can measure the performance of a given program based on how many people you were able to save, but upstream, at some point, you need to look at it and ask how you are doing. I realize that from 2012 to now you went through the development of the program, the pilot, designing the specific criteria to fit that community, but where do you see the performance metrics coming out of it? How do you measure the effectiveness of it?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We are definitely looking at tracking the number of participants after we do a larger launch of the program. So far, we have just been working with people who have come to us. As I said, the program is being piloted in Cowichan in the upcoming year, and they're looking at having youth develop indicators of success themselves. The community is coming together with the youth to evaluate it. They will say what is working for them as Cowichan youth in that community.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Great. What was the initial catalyst for this? Did you see this somewhere else or was it really homegrown in B.C.? Are you now taking it to other jurisdictions outside of B.C.?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

The idea came from the communities. They wanted something that was online so that it would be much more accessible and a wider audience could use it. That being said, there is a lot of wonderful programming going on. A lot of the research that we looked at when the development started came out of the former Zuni life skills development program, as well as warrior programs run by communities. The Nak’azdli First Nation had a very similar program.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Are you working with any others?

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We have done presentations at different health conferences about it, but it's fairly B.C.-specific. It uses B.C. geography and B.C. youth. People can use it as they like. We're not saying no to other provinces if they want to use it, but we preface it by saying that it's B.C.-specific.

Mr. Mike Bossio :

Thank you so much.

The Chair :

We're out of time for questions in this round. Thank you. Before we conclude though, the chair doesn't normally ask questions but I'm going to use my prerogative to ask just one, very briefly.

Ask Auntie , this beautiful process drawing in the back of your presentation...there's quite a bit of online stuff there. There are the aunties online; you mentioned the YouTube channel. How's the uptake on that? Are you getting traffic with those things? Do you feel it's a good thing? Is it working?

(1020) Ms. Gabriella Emery :

We have definitely had a wider range. We just got social media approval not that long ago. We have a staff member, the third member of our team, who is really social media savvy. She has increased our presence quite a bit. We have also had different organizations approach us to use some of our videos in their own training. I think it's really interesting to see the ripple effect. It's not necessarily just youth who are watching our videos or using them. People are looking to use some of the content we've developed elsewhere as well, so that has been really interesting.

The Chair :

That's a good sign.

Ms. Gabriella Emery :

Yes.

The Chair :

Thank you, both, for your wonderful testimony this morning. I have to say I really love your unofficial job titles too, “Still Waters Run Deep” and “Organizational Wizard”. That's good stuff. What you've told us today will be extremely helpful for us, so thank you for that. You probably heard me say at the close of the last panel that there is an online portal for leaving more information, up to 3,000 words. If you want to convey something more to us that you weren't able to fit in today, Grant can help you to get connected with that website.

Also, we have developed an online survey, and because you're in the health field we would love for you to pass it along to your colleagues, or anyone outside of your organization in the health services delivery field, to help us build some really good data for the study as well. I was going to close, but Jenny, did you want to say something?

Ms. Jenny Kwan :

I wonder whether or not this is possible, Mr. Chair. It would be very useful, I think, for the committee to obtain information from the health authorities about the actual crisis intervention programs and the clinical services that they deliver. For example, it could be information about trauma counselling, where it is located, how much is being funded in in each community, and the number of counsellors there. A major issue is people getting the initial assessment. How long are the wait lists and so on? Outreach workers would be key in terms of reaching out. If we could get some of that basic information from the appropriate individuals, then I think that would help inform the committee.

The Chair :

Thanks for that. Thanks again to both of you for your time and stories today. We appreciate it very much. We'll suspend very briefly, for about four minutes, and come back very promptly.

(1020) (1025) The Chair :

We will resume now. Thanks everyone, and welcome to the three of you. We have, in this hour, two panel presentations of 10 minutes each. The first is from the British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres, with Eric Klapatiuk. Thanks for being here and for speaking on behalf of your organization. From the Métis Nation British Columbia, we have Cassidy Caron, who is minister of youth and provincial youth chair, and Tanya Devoren. Welcome. I'm happy to offer the floor to Eric for 10 minutes, and then to you two to share your 10 minutes any way you see fit. Please, go ahead.

(1030) Mr. Eric Klapatiuk (President Provincial, Aboriginal Youth Council, British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres) :

Debbie Williams from Duncan, B.C., was going to join me this morning, but her flight was cancelled out of Duncan due to weather. As introduced, my name is Eric Klapatiuk. I'm with the British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres. I sit as their youth executive. Currently, I'm residing in and working with the Friendship House of Prince Rupert. One of the things the friendship centres across B.C. and across Canada really advocate for is the urban aboriginal population in the nation.

When we say urban aboriginal people, we talk about virtually anyone who is seeking help, but mainly our first nations, Inuit, and Métis brothers and sisters who are moving away from their own home communities and relocating into urban centres, whether that be for employment or education. When we talk about urban people, these are the people we're talking about, people who are moving from their home communities to these big urban centres where supports are not as easily available. Their social circles are not the same; they diminish.

I moved to a new centre in Prince Rupert, and it's not the same as my home community. It's not the same as Kamloops. It's not the same as Quesnel. Prince Rupert is a completely different isolated town I'm navigating. I want to start my conversation about someone who is very close to me in my life and has become one of my brothers in my day-to-day life. I'm going to give this person the name of Matt. He is a very happy individual, someone in whom you would never see any outward signs of suicide. He was very good at hiding it. That's what we find when it comes to people who are considering or planning suicide.

They don't want people to know, but at the same time they want people to know, and they will put feelers out. Matt was suffering for a long time. He was in a relationship, and the relationship brought him down to a level where he did not know what to do. He did not want to reach out to anyone, and the more we tried to be there for him, the more he pushed us away. I remember getting a phone call at 6:30 in the morning from his mom asking me to come over to his house. I instantly went over, and I had a conversation with his mom. She was completely devastated.

That morning Matt was driving home and stopped his car in oncoming traffic. He just stopped it and turned the engine off. In Quesnel during the winter months, this is a dangerous thing to do. Road conditions aren't great, the weather conditions aren't amazing, and his plan in that moment was that he needed to leave. There was nothing more he could do. He had had it with everything that had been going on. He'd had it with relationships that were not there for him. He'd had it with having no support.

He saw himself as rejected and as a burden to his friends and society, and he felt that sharp pain of stigma toward people who are suffering. He had a feeling there was no support and he was cut off. I am thankful now he is still with us, and I'm there for him, and his family is there for him, and we're all able to sit there and support him. One of the things that has come out of this for me, as a bystander and a witness to his struggle, is this feeling of depression. Even though Matt was not successful in his suicide, it still affected us around him.

I had an internal struggle of why no one was there to help him. Why was he not asking us for help?

(1035) Also, because of my relationship with him, I think I did not understand the fact of it being hard to be someone close to someone who is committing suicide. We forget that we're a huge part of their lives, and would assume they would come to us when they are struggling and just be outright about it. Matt is a first nations individual and we live in a society that still views aboriginal people as “less than”. We live in a society that is rampant with racism, and this was another factor in why Matt believed he needed to commit suicide.

Matt attended Gathering of Voices, which is a national youth conference that the B.C. association hosts. One thing that Gathering of Voices does well is adding that connection to community, adding that togetherness, that culture of learning, adding that engaging aspect and that ability to express oneself and be real with other youth around the province and around the country. We know that Gathering of Voices works. We've had instances where youth participants—people as young as 10, 12, and 14 years old—coming to Gathering of Voices with a plan.

I have had conversations with people one year and they've come to that particular conference with a plan. I would see them the next year for Gathering of Voices, and even though I wouldn't remember their names, I would remember I had talked to them before and they were so thankful I had taken five minutes out of my day to have a conversation, taken five minutes out of my day to see how they were doing and really ask them how they were feeling and if they were enjoying themselves. That was a change for them. That was what flipped in their minds, saying, “There is no isolation here.

I am not isolated in my small remote community. I have support outside of my community.” Gathering of Voices is a conference that youth around the province really look forward to. In Prince Rupert, where I'm now living, one of the most difficult obstacles these youth face on a month-to-month basis is having nothing to do on the weekends. We are doing the best we can with what we have. I ask them to tell me something that's missing in their lives right now, and weekend programming for youth is a critical missing part of that.

Weekends have traditionally and concurrently been an avenue where we see rises in drinking and drug use. When you bring it into a remote community like Prince Rupert, a small community, those numbers rise. When we look into the as