44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 11, 2023 11:00AM
- Dec/11/23 3:38:25 p.m.
- Watch
I have to give the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan an opportunity to answer.
17 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 3:38:55 p.m.
- Watch
It is unparliamentary and the hon. member should know better.
The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
19 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 3:45:14 p.m.
- Watch
Before we resume debate, I wish to clarify for the House that the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan has moved concurrence in the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, not the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, which is on a very similar topic. The Chair misspoke earlier in putting the motion to the House.
Resuming debate, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
79 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 4:17:42 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, on the same point of order, I want to make sure it is very clear on the record that the Conservative Party of Canada filibustered a study in the foreign affairs committee for 16 weeks so that it would not have to study women's reproductive rights. The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan—
58 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 4:42:04 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I always enjoy working with my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
I think a lot more needs to be done. One of the things we could do, and this has already been proposed at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, which I am a part of, is not put a cap on the number of Afghan immigrants we welcome. The special measures program for Afghan refugees currently plans to welcome 40,000 Afghans.
Everyone agreed in committee. At least, the opposition parties did. The motion was moved by the NDP, and the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois supported it. The Liberals were somewhat receptive.
Earlier, my colleague talked about female members of Afghanistan's parliament whom we have been trying to evacuate from that country for a year. We have worked very hard together on that file, but it is still not resolved. We think that the government is too slow to bring these people to safety on Canadian or Quebec soil.
Once they are here, these people could use their voice because they are the best people to restore democracy in Afghanistan. We must help them come here so that they can be safe and deliver their speeches and be heard internationally. That is how they could help their country.
That is one way to help rebuild democracy in Afghanistan and ensure that the Taliban leaves the region for once and for all. I think that is one possible solution.
251 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 5:02:02 p.m.
- Watch
We are not going to start debate.
The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is out of order.
I am going to ask the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay to withdraw his comment.
Please, we do not want to generate more acrimony.
46 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 5:10:31 p.m.
- Watch
We will now begin questions and comments with the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
17 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 6:00:13 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his commitment to trying to help make a difference in the world. There are so many countries Canada could help. The government of the day, way back when, chose to get us involved in Afghanistan.
The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan talked about the challenges around fatigue, and that is the biggest challenge I always had in talking to Canadians about why we are there. At the time, I was a soldier. Soldiers go where they are told to go and serve whatever political stripe of government is in power here in Canada.
However, Canada can help. I believed in that mission, and I think my speech highlighted that. However, one of the concerns I had, which I tried to explain as I moved up the ranks, was that Canada needs to understand that when we commit ourselves to these international missions to try to make peace and security in other countries, this is not a world war where we are fighting a uniformed combatant or enemy. This is stuff where we are trying to promote democracy. That takes a generation.
Unfortunately, the west sometimes does not understand this and does not have the political will to support things for the two or three decades it takes to provide this necessary support. That is why it is important that we work together as coalitions of the willing or in international organizations like NATO or the UN.
247 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 7:12:31 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Chair, the parliamentary secretary and I work together on the INAN committee and have had a good history of working together.
The parliamentary secretary spent much of her time tonight talking about the water legislation, and I get that it is an exciting announcement for the government, but with the introduction of this legislation there has been a lot of talk about co-development, the idea of engaging with first nations across the country. To be honest, in my engagement with people last week who were in Ottawa for the Assembly of First Nations, all of the people I talked to say they are not sure who this co-development was with because it was not with their communities.
Today, the FSIN, which represents 74 first nations in Saskatchewan, said the bill completely misses the mark. Chief Bobby Cameron said in a release, “As it stands, the federal water act announced today is not true reconciliation, it is an attempt to legalize the status quo.”
I would ask the parliamentary secretary to explain to us who exactly the co-development was with, who they talked to, which first nations across the country they communicated and engaged with on the development of this legislation, because nobody I have talked to was part of that process. If she could answer that, I would appreciate it.
226 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 7:23:18 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Chair, as I begin my comments tonight on the Department of Indigenous Services, I want to take a moment to congratulate the newly elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Cindy Woodhouse. Also, as an MP from Saskatchewan, I would like to congratulate David Pratt on running a great campaign and on a strong second-place finish.
Speaking of the AFN, last week, as chiefs from across the country gathered here in Ottawa, I had the opportunity to meet with many of these leaders. I always come away impressed with how the leadership is focused on finding ways to improve the lives of the people that they serve. More and more of these discussions revolve around trying to find ways to end the failing path that forces them to come to Ottawa to fight for programming dollars.
The waste of time, energy and resources for first nations leaders, who are put in a position to compete with other first nations to see who can best fill out forms or who can hire the right lobbyists or endlessly spend money on outside consultants to make sure applications are done just right for somebody sitting at a desk in Ottawa, needs to end.
It is time for first nations people to make their own decisions. What they need is less made-in-Ottawa, not more Ottawa.
Unfortunately, when looking at the indigenous services department, or ISC as I will refer to it, it is clear why major change is needed.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking specifically about the results of this department.
ISC sets targets under its four core responsibilities. In 2022-23, ISC sought to achieve 45 results. Progress toward meeting these results was measured using 83 separate indicators. A result status is assigned to each indicator based on the measured outcome, or the actual result.
Of the 83 indicators, only 14, or 17%, of them met their target; 19, or 23%, have no result available; and 37, or 45%, are to be achieved at some point in the future. To extend this out a little bit, over the last five years, there were 367 indicators and the results are actually very similar, as 17% met their target, 23% have no result available and 46% are to be achieved sometime in the future.
Additionally, there is this internal services component of the department, which, according to public accounts, increased from $146 million in 2018 to $296 million in 2023.
The solution now is to take a whole new approach and to implement a renewed departmental results framework for 2023-24. By the way, they did this for the 2019-20 year already. ISC will roll all four core responsibilities into one new core responsibility.
Remember, this is a department that claims that it plans to meet 45% of the targets it sets for itself sometime in the future. I guess that future will never come.
This department spends more time playing bureaucratic games by changing target-setting schemes than working on solving the actual challenges indigenous people face.
This is a department that has increased its planned spending from about $9.3 billion in 2018-19 to $39.6 billion in 2022-23, with the same projection for 2023-24. The actual authorities that were approved for 2022-23 were $44.8 billion. Over the same period, it has increased the number of FTEs, or full-time equivalents, from 4,210 to 7,278. Those are significant increases.
I am not the only one who has raised these concerns. On February 1, 2022, at the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, I moved a motion asking the Parliamentary Budget Officer to conduct a research and comparative analysis on the estimates of CIRNAC and ISC from the years 2015-16 to 2022-23.
On May 18, 2022, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released his report. Let me quote from the executive summary of that report:
Financial resources allocated to providing Indigenous services has increased significantly over this period. A quantitative and qualitative approach using publicly available data was employed to evaluate how effective the organizations providing these services were in using these resources.
The analysis conducted indicates that the increased spending did not result in a commensurate improvement in the ability of these organizations to achieve the goals that they had set for themselves. This was partly driven by the volatility in the departmental result indicators. Many were added or removed over the course of the period preventing results from being collected due to data collection lags. Some indicators lack target values and completion dates altogether. Based on the qualitative review the ability to achieve the targets specified has declined.
These are the words of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. They are not my words.
Mr. Ken Coates is a distinguished fellow and director of the indigenous affairs program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He is also the Canada research chair in regional innovation at the University of Saskatchewan. In August 2022, he wrote an article in response to the same PBO report that I referred to. Here is what he said:
Put bluntly, Canada is not getting what it is paying for—and what’s worse, the massive spending is not improving lives in Indigenous communities....
If Canada spends billions on Indigenous affairs, it must mean that we care deeply about First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples.
But it does nothing of the sort. While headlines emphasize dollar amounts, the statistics that tell the actual story of Indigenous well-being—around employment, health, housing conditions, suicide rates, violence and imprisonment, language, cultural revitalization—are much more sombre. When spending vast sums fails to make a substantial difference in many communities, the federal response is too often to double down and spend even more, in the absence of understanding what actually works to improve the lives of Indigenous peoples.
When Mr. Giroux, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, was at INAN to discuss his report, I asked him to comment on what Mr. Coates had said. I asked him whether these results were common to other departments or whether they were unique to CIRNAC and ISC. Mr. Giroux responded by saying:
In short, [I would say] based on the performance indicators that we have analyzed in our report last year, I would tend to agree with Mr. Coates. [That] seems to be consistent....whether it's common among departments, I would say...it's not common to see a level of increase of that magnitude that is not accompanied by a significant improvement in performance indicators.
Mr. Coates went on in his article to say something else: “The government can and does change up targets and metrics, making it difficult to determine actual outcomes. But given the vast expenditures, such a conclusion is tragic.” When I asked Mr. Giroux to comment on this, he said, “I agree with Mr. Coates that there seems to be an outcome problem.” I asked him further, “Do you think there's an accountability issue that's created by these moving, changing targets that aren't consistent?” He replied:
I agree with you.
I don't think it's done on purpose. I think public servants who come up with these indicators genuinely mean to have the best indicators. However, changing them regularly or frequently does not help for accountability and accountability purposes to track a departmental performance over time.
It is a department where, in 2021-2022, 94.6% of the employees, at executive level or above, received performance pay totalling almost $3.3 million. Remember, it is a department that met 18% of its targets in that year. What is worse is that when I drilled a little deeper, I found that over the previous five years, 99.2% of executives at a level three or above received performance pay. This represents the top 33 people in the department in 2018-2019, and that number grew to 56 people by 2022-23.
I asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer about the performance pay system, in response to an answer I got on an Order Paper question. The Order Paper response reads, “Individual performance pay holds executives accountable for individual results and is not related to departmental results, which measure organizational goals.” I asked Mr. Giroux whether he thought there was merit in tying performance pay to organizational achievement rather than just individual achievement. He replied:
I don't see how a majority of executives can have at-risk pay and performance pay if a department only meets half of its targets.
Is there merit...? I think there's more than merit. I think it would be common sense.
If I can be so blunt, it does not require a great deal of management expertise to conclude that the department of indigenous services is failing. Almost every conversation I have with indigenous leaders from across Canada involves commentary around the fact that they are utterly exhausted by the inadequacy and bureaucracy of the department. A leader of a national indigenous organization told me recently that ISC is a machine that eats money. If we want to move down a path of reconciliation, we must at least begin with the truth. I think, unfortunately, that is what the Prime Minister and government fail to admit. After eight years, the government has spent more money with fewer results. It has hired more people with fewer results. It has increased bonuses with fewer results. It has shuffled targets and target-setting procedures with, yes, fewer results. It is time to accept the truth: This is not working.
1616 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
