[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Monday, October 7, 1996
.1516 
[English]
The Chair: We're back.
We have with us this afternoon, more in a round table format, Bill Erasmus, representing the Dene Nation; Peter Liske, councillor on the justice issues portfolio of the Yellowknife Dene Band; Tom Eagle from the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre; Mike Paulette, vice-president of the Métis Nation; and Arlene Haché.
Ms Haché, who are you with?
Ms Arlene Haché (Executive Director, Yellowknife Women's Centre): I'm with the Yellowknife Women's Centre.
The Chair: Great.
We welcome you all here. We have felt very welcome in the north and we have a lot to learn from you. I see you all have notes.
Yes, Mr. Paulette.
Mr. Mike Paulette (Vice-President, Métis Nation): Excuse me, Madam Chair. If there's no objection, I would like to invite Shannon Cumming to the table. Shannon is a Métis lawyer employed by the Métis Nation of the Northwest Territories as in-house counsel.
The Chair: Oh, sure, please.
Welcome, Shannon.
Go, Bill.
Chief Bill Erasmus (National Chief, Dene Nation): Thank you, Madam Chair.
Welcome to Yellowknife. We didn't receive very much notice prior to your coming, but it is an important issue and we'd like to share it with you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Chief Erasmus: I have with me Tom Eagle, who has spent a lot of time in the north here and has a lot of experience. He is older than the rest of us at the table here, so I think we should encourage him to speak first. We'll let him take the lead and then go from there, if you don't mind.
The Chair: That's fine; go ahead.
Chief Erasmus: Thank you.
Mr. Tom Eagle (Tree of Peace Friendship Centre): Good afternoon. I too wish to welcome all of you, not only this standing committee but other committees and commissions looking into the well-being of Canadians.
I have some difficulty with how some of these commissions come about. I didn't learn about this standing committee coming to Yellowknife until just late last week. In fact, Friday was the confirmation. I was told we would be getting some documents or some print material. I understand that is what my colleagues here at the table were told as well.
.1520
I did receive some print information from this committee this morning - it must have come over the weekend to my centre - and there was nothing there at all to go by. There was only your itinerary for coming to Yellowknife, then proceeding to Edmonton and on to Winnipeg.
It appears to us that every time there is a hearing, we're the last ones to know someone is coming here. I even looked at your agenda presentation for about 15 minutes. We just didn't have time to get something in print so we could give it to you.
However, I think all of us have experienced this Young Offenders Act, previously the Juvenile Delinquency Act, and we will have our input here this afternoon. Hopefully you will take some of the things we come up with very seriously.
Bill.
Chief Erasmus: Thank you.
In my discussions last week with Ms Burke I tried to get an idea of your mandate and the objective of the standing committee. She made it clear to me that you're travelling across the country trying to get an idea of some of the problem areas people are encountering and the potential answers you might find. She said you've opened yourself to a whole list of possibilities, so I'm assuming you're quite open and we can get into a discussion.
I have not any prepared notes in front of me. We're engaged in a whole number of things in the north here. We're trying to, for example, set up our own new constitution in the western part of the north. Right now we're still regarded as a territory moving towards responsible government. We don't have the authorities that the provinces have.
Collectively, people in the north are trying to design something, and that's taking a lot of our time. We are trying to bring something to the different citizens so they can look at it. By 1999 we hope to have a constitution here in the west and a new one for the people in the east. So Canada will look quite different by 1999.
The other thing is, right here in Yellowknife, the major conglomerate called Broken Hill Proprietary, BHP, is working with our people, the territorial government and the federal government to come to terms with the potential diamond mine, which is the equivalent of what's going on in the northern Saskatchewan area in uranium and in Voisey Bay in the northern parts of Labrador. So major things are happening.
We envision, for a whole number of reasons, which I think are quite obvious, that our people have to institute the laws they believe they have and that they've always had. Here in the north we are a majority. We still have our elders, who are alive and know how it is to live without other people's laws interfering with them. They know what the original treaties were all about. They understand the concept of coexistence. They realize that other people are here to stay and will not leave, but we have to develop a new relationship.
.1525
We are lucky in that regard. Possibly we are where people in Quebec were a couple of hundred years ago, when the French first arrived and were trying to set up, with the English, Upper and Lower Canada. That's kind of where we are. We're at a position where we can identify how we want to be a part of Canada.
With Canada recognizing the inherent right to self-government, with Canada now talking about not having people extinguish their rights, we are really pleased to get into a discussion where we can see what kind of future we might have working with the provinces and working with the federal government, and so on.
Justice plays a big role, because in any society you need order. You have to have order; you have to have rules. We've always had rules, otherwise we never would have survived. I think anthropologists and other academics are now just beginning to recognize that. I think at one time they believed that somehow we just survived. The animals were out there, and if we were lucky we ran into the animals, we shot a caribou. If we were even more lucky we shot a couple of ptarmigan, and somehow we survived.
But I think they now realize that we were really well organized as hunters and gatherers. They are only now recognizing that hunters and gatherers had even more leisure time than farmers, even more leisure time than the industrial society. Here, for example, when you had a community hunt, you got a lot of meat or a lot of fish or game, and then you could sit back and do other things. You didn't have to hunt every day. People planned ahead.
The laws were known by everyone and were adhered to. The elders had a very good role. The parents had a role. The extended family played a big part. The children knew where they stood. Everyone knew how the community operated, and there was no need for jails. There was no need for mental institutes. There was no need to have a violent society. The women were not afraid to walk out at night.
I think it is still possible to have a kind of society where, yes, you can have Canada's British common law but at the same time have Dene common law recognized and implemented.
We can understand what the rule of law is. We have our own rule of law, which has always existed. I think only now is Canada recognizing - and the royal commission made it very clear in its report - that a separate justice system is necessary, because we're finding that our families are not falling apart through their own doing. Canada plays a big role in it.
If a child is in an abusive situation because the mother and father are drinking alcohol or whatever, the child can be taken away, and our chief and council have no say in the matter. Social services comes in. They can apprehend the child on a temporary basis. If the family doesn't improve, then they can take the child permanently. They don't come to us first and say, ``What do you think? You know the mother and parent, you know the child, you know their aunts and uncles, you know their extended family. What should we do?'' They don't come to us. They take the child, and we don't know where the child ends up.
When the child ends up, for example, in southern parts of Canada, in a foreign home, they don't know where they've come from if they are really young, the parents don't know where they've gone, and our whole extended family and our network shatters, falls apart. That is just one small example of what happens on a daily basis with our people.
I know the territorial government is interested in changing that. So is the federal government, but I don't think they know where to begin. I think they see it as such a huge problem that I guess they just don't know how to priorize. I'd like to think it's quite simple.
.1530
Where you begin is with people like those at the table here. You have a councillor here who deals with this on a daily basis. We have over 1,100 members in our community here in Yellowknife, of which I am a member, and throughout the valley we have 30-odd communities where the situation is the same.
We know our membership, we know our families. Many of us know our laws and how we should function. The big problem is that Canada refuses to recognize it. Even if they did recognize it, they'd say, yes, you do have the right; the problem is how to implement. And they say, well, if you're going to implement, then what's the dollar factor? Fiscal restraint, the realities of the day.
I recognize that. As I said, we are trying to develop our own political setting here where we would have our own dollars and can function without relying on the federal government for transfer payments and so on, to a large extent. So we know the dollar situation, but I think we're prepared to use our imaginations.
It shouldn't have to cost a lot of money to put a child in a relative's home. If the relative agrees to take care of a child, it shouldn't cost us anything extra, really, if we work together. That's what we used to do. If a child became an orphan, someone - a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin - took that child in and everyone worked together. And that wasn't only in our society, it was in everyone else's.
The farmers did that. If someone needed to build a barn, the farmers got together and built the barn. If someone else needed a home - new wedding, new couple - they helped the individual. We used to do that, but now everything's based on the individual. The Canadian Constitution tells us the collective is not a good thing, so we all go for our own pockets and we don't work together anymore. If you're an elected official, you're told to go out there and help everyone, and you go out and say, ``I'll do it for you. Vote for me.'' So people don't know what to do anymore.
Society really needs to take a look at itself. Some of those old values are good; some of the old principles that our parents or grandparents used are good principles, and I think we can still put them into practice.
Those are some of my thoughts. As I said, I don't have anything on paper. People at the table here can give you a lot. Mike Paulette, who is the vice-president of the Métis, can speak directly to some of our thinking.
We went down twice, for example, to the Navajo reservation in New Mexico and saw things first-hand. We met with their supreme court judges, we saw the courts in action, we saw their police force in action, we went to their academy where they train their policemen, we met their tribal government, we spoke to their chief and their assembly. They are very serious about their own justice system. They have their own criminal code, they speak in their own language in the courts.
It was really enlightening to us, because we're thinking of the same things. At that time, which was 1988, they had an annual budget of $340 million, and out of that they put $80 million of their own funds into their budget. The rest came through treaties and treasury dollars.
So it is possible. There are ways of working together cooperatively with the state, with the tribal administration and the federal system to make the justice system work.
We're open. We'd like to continue the discussion with you. Thank you.
The Chair: Mike, did you want to add something?
Mr. Paulette: I'll add some general comments. I think Shannon can speak directly to some of the proposed amendments.
.1535
In the Northwest Territories, where the aboriginal people are a majority, we're in a situation where we're fighting an uphill battle. We've been fighting an uphill battle for many years, in spite of the fact that we now have a legislative assembly that has a majority of aboriginal members and in spite of the fact that there are social programs and other programs that have been established to assist aboriginal people.
It hasn't been too long since there was nothing to help aboriginal people. The only people who were in the communities at the time were the bishop or the priest, the Indian agent, the RCMP officer, and possibly the teacher. The aboriginal people depended entirely upon themselves. A lot of things have happened over the last 40 or 50 years that have brought us into a situation where we're finally beginning to see a little bit of daylight.
Our children are in a very disadvantaged position. We don't have the luxury of having many professionals or academics who are aboriginal. As a matter of fact, we have done our own studies and we have done research into the number of aboriginal people who graduate from high school. Even though we are the majority of people in the Northwest Territories, the number of aboriginal students who graduate from grade 12 represents less than 20% of the total number. The rest are non-aboriginal.
Our people drop out of school. In a lot of cases we come from dysfunctional families. A lot of our people are still suffering from social conditions and social problems that have been around for many years. Our children are suffering, they're not going to school, and they get into trouble, so of course the ideal place for a young offenders act is the Northwest Territories.
There's no question about the problems I'm telling you about. You can take a walk down to the YCI and take a look through that jail and all you'll see is aboriginal people. That's why I say we're in a situation where we're struggling; it's an uphill battle, but we're beginning to see a little bit of daylight. The only reason we're beginning to see a little bit of daylight is that we have people who are committed to improving the lives of aboriginal people in this country, people who are at this table.
Tom has been doing his job helping people in Yellowknife for many years. Shannon is a lawyer now. He's working with us, but we don't know if we're going to have the money to be able to keep him. Lawyers don't come cheap.
The Chair: There are three at this table who did.
Mr. Eagle: He might be running for Parliament.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Paulette: The professionals we have are few and far between. We don't have that many professionals or academics to develop our own programs or our own strategies. We have to do it with government money. We have to keep our own organizations and jurisdictions afloat with not very much money and at the same time try to correct all the things that are going on in the communities.
It's terrible out there in some of those communities. Some of our people are really in bad shape, but 10 or 20 or 30 years ago those same people were perfectly at home. They had good lives living out in the bush doing trapping and coming back into town and working in the summertime. They had no problems whatsoever. Today they're completely lost and their children are completely lost.
.1540
So it's a struggle, and as I said, we're beginning to make a bit of headway. We have an opportunity, through the political process, to make some real changes in this country. There are developments that we have to keep on top of. There are government changes and government amendments to different legislation that we have to keep on top of.
We have to keep on top of a multitude of activities and initiatives just to be able to respond to things like this. It's true what Tom says about response time. This is supposed to be phase two of this consultation, but I can't recall seeing anything come across my desk on it. It was only in the last day...
Shannon worked over the weekend to prepare some notes on exactly what amendments are being proposed and what impact it will have on us. It will have an impact on us - there's no doubt about that. As I said, it is difficult, and whatever we can do in terms of contributing towards the consultations, great.
A lot of things are going on in this country where I think we're not being taken seriously. For example, there is the aboriginal justice system set-up. I've been pushing for a long time to look at the aboriginal justice system or the criminal justice system here in the Northwest Territories, not just the Young Offenders Act.
Things that go wrong for us happen on a daily basis, but if we try to institute something and it goes wrong, suddenly it's no good because one thing goes wrong. I'm talking about an incident that happened in B.C. where they have aboriginal or traditional sentencing. They instituted a system and then something went wrong and they looked at it right away as a failure. But we're being failed day after day by the system.
We have to be taken seriously when we offer our comments or start talking about things that affect the lives we live, our families and especially our children. We have to work together as aboriginal people up here to stick together to work towards trying to improve our lives, which are not very good at this point.
The Chair: Shannon, did you want to say something?
Mr. Shannon M. Cumming (Counsel, Special Projects Coordinator, Métis Nation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank the members of the committee for allowing me to come to the table.
As a young person who comes from a small community in the Northwest Territories, I always find it difficult to speak on behalf of some of the people in our communities. I consider myself fortunate to have grown up around elders who helped shape my upbringing, and I'd like to acknowledge people such as Tom Eagle who have worked in this community for many years in trying to improve the condition of our people.
I have a couple of comments on some of the amendments I'd like the committee to consider, but before I do that I want to point out the way many aboriginal people discuss issues such as amendments to legislation.
It's fine to look at specific amendments and get into the nuances or the technicalities of how to best word them to meet needs, but at some point our world view dictates that we look at it a different way. We see linkages where other people perhaps do not, and I don't think that's so strange. In rural Alberta or Quebec or Toronto, I think people in communities are asking themselves what's wrong with their young people. So in some ways I don't think we're that far apart.
I want to talk about section 3. I was fortunate to have been a student lawyer when I was at UBC, and I appeared in provincial court with many young aboriginal clients who had come into conflict with the law. Section 3 for us young counsels became very important, because that is the section the judge would look at when he or she decided how best to deal with issues.
.1545
There are two balancing aspects in section 3 - the need for the protection of society balanced with the need to afford young people special protection under the law. This section is very relevant to many of our young aboriginal people because they do come into conflict with the law. As one of our speakers pointed out, if you go to the jail here you will find that the vast majority of the residents are aboriginal. If you go to a territorial court, a youth court in particular, about 90% to 100% of people before the court are aboriginal.
One of the comments that repeatedly comes into our organization is the focus the wider Canadian society places on property offences. Many of the crimes committed by our young people in our communities are property crimes. With regard to section 3, we're concerned that the amendment would give the courts greater discretion in sentencing young offenders. We see a potential for greater focus on retribution in sentencing. Given the number of young aboriginal people in conflict with the law, the concern is that there will be a shift in emphasis to the punishing of a young person instead of the addressing of what we see as being the underlying issue. Some of the issues that have been spoken about include family violence, poverty, and systemic discrimination in the investigation and even in the prosecution of offences.
In comparison, aboriginal communities look at the underlying reasons for the offence and do not focus on the specific individual committing the offence. In other words, we don't focus, as the legislations say, on the offending behaviour. We focus on the individual and what has happened to bring them to that point, and I suggest this is different from how the act may look at things.
With regard to section 3, we have a concern that it may be applied in such a way as to make it more likely that our young people will continue to be prosecuted and convicted of offences. In the north many of the offences are what we call - I hope this translates well for our French colleagues - pop-and-chip break-ins. Young people, often in the company of siblings, including older brothers or sisters, will break into a place and steal a can of pop or perhaps a bag of potato chips. This is something we're grappling with at the community level, because although it's about property, we harbour a concern about the individuals committing these offences. The reason that many of our organizations are considering readopting our traditional systems of justice is that we feel we have ways to deal with this.
When you talk about aboriginal justice, think of the present justice system as... From our perspective it is like trying to build a house with tools you've never used before. It's unfamiliar to us. We don't recognize some of the tools that other people, including counsel who are colleagues, can use with great ease. As aboriginal lawyers, as aboriginal communities, we have serious questions as to whether we should use these tools at all.
That's why some of our colleagues have travelled to places like the Navajo nation. I had the pleasure of meeting someone named James Zion, who was - and he may still be - counsel to the Navajo nation. He talked to a group of young aboriginal law students at UBC in Vancouver. He said that when a lot of Navajo students enter law school, they have a sense of poetic justice, but by the time they leave that poetry is gone. I think what he meant was that for those of us who have to go off to a Canadian legal institution to get a legal education, we have to struggle to ensure that our community values are brought to the table and discussed in that environment, and I think all Canadians benefit as a result of that.
.1550
I saw in the paper recently that consideration is being given to circle sentencing for a non-aboriginal offender. I can't tell you how much that thrills me, because as Métis we stand as examples of aboriginal people and non-aboriginal people getting along. In that vein, I think there's much to be gained from sharing our different value systems and getting a good result from that.
I also want to speak briefly about the amendment that deals with the transfer of serious offences to adult court. In our communities, as much as anywhere else, there's serious concern about what we perceive to be rising levels of violence. Again, I think we can't really quarrel with that particular section. If somebody commits a serious offence, perhaps the court needs wider discretion in deciding whether it should go up to adult court for disposition.
However, we must also bear in the mind that in our communities the majority of offences are not offences against the person, they're property offences. So while we see these amendments as being important, we sometimes question how relevant they are to our everyday life. Again, we want to talk about some of the successes in how we're dealing with community justice, not about the failures.
Some of the members can see a picture of an old airplane on the wall of this meeting room. I remember as a child seeing that plane taking off from the airport and saying, here comes the law and there it goes. I don't think that way of meting out justice is acceptable in our communities. I'm not sure what members expected of our representatives, but I would echo their concern that it would have been nice to get more notice of the amendment, because our resources are very strained.
In addition to our duties to our communities, many of us are also parents. We have children to raise and we don't have a lot of time to deal with things. That's a reality and we accept that. Members of Parliament know about frequent travel and not being home with family enough, so I'm not telling them anything they don't know.
We feel this is important, and if there is another round, it would be great for the members to get out into some of the communities and listen to some of our elders. I think they can talk in a way that would make us look befuddled. I love listening to our elders because they say things with such clarity, and they bring things like the Young Offenders Act into very sharp focus. I think it's something members would really benefit from.
That's all I have to say at this time. Thank you for listening.
The Chair: Thank you.
Peter, did you have something to add?
Mr. Peter Liske (Councillor, Yellowknife Dene Band): One of the things we keep hearing in the community, even during our council meetings, is that our elders are very concerned about the justice that's being done. For example, a couple of months ago one of our people wanted to have the court hearing in Dettah. That's only four miles across here, just across the lake. I tried working with a lawyer and we sent a letter to the justice department. They told me I needed six elders to witness this court hearing. After we followed up on all the information, they came back to us and said they didn't have enough time, there wasn't enough preparation, so we couldn't have that court hearing in Dettah. So his court hearing was held here in town and this person now is being sent down to a southern institute because of that. The elders felt that if it had been held in Dettah, the judge might have changed his decision to send this person down there instead of having him doing his time here. We want him to do his time here.
.1555
That was one example we tried and it didn't work out. A lot of our other inmates are being sent down south and our elders are very concerned about that. We passed a motion at the Dene Nation assembly this summer in Deninu K'ue pertaining to this issue of our people being sent down south. That was passed and it will be followed up this coming winter.
All in all, I just wanted to say that our elders have a lot of concerns and we are trying to listen to them. They want this justice to be controlled in the community. We want to control our own justice; we want circle decision-making for our own people. We can do it in our own community.
We had a good workshop up in MacKay Lake, 100 miles north of here, and we put a five-year plan together. One of the issues was justice, and the elders keep bringing it up. They say they want this justice to be done, to be held, in our own community. We're planning to have that every year, and if the elders speak to our young people, I think the younger generation will listen. The elders have a lot of power in our community and that's where we get our power from.
I just wanted to pass this message on to you. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Peter.
Arlene.
Ms Haché: In saying anything about the justice system in the Northwest Territories, I would have to lean very heavily upon my co-workers here. In lots of ways I'm still a guest here, so I listen to what they say very carefully.
I didn't get the act and I didn't get the information, so I'm not really clear on what it's all about and I'm not really sure how I got to be here, although I'm honoured to be here with these people. What I will do, though, is just give you a small picture of what I do and how I'm involved in the community. I can help you understand how I perceive that we can best help young people at the community level and then you'll be able to ask me questions, basically.
I have lived in the Northwest Territories for about 25 years and currently I run the women's centre in Yellowknife. The women's centre does lots of programs for kids and we have hot lunches and counselling and parenting programs. In the end, our goal is to try to assist men, women, and children to get a better foothold so that they can look at the deeper issues of life. If they don't eat and if they don't have clothes and if they don't have a place to live, then they're not going to be able to look at the bigger issues, so we provide a very basic service.
What I want to say in terms of aboriginal justice is that the aboriginal philosophy the elders talk about works. If only the rest of Canadian society could tap into the wisdom and the value in that, we would be much better off.
I'll just add one other little part, and that is that I was raised in Ontario in a family of incest survivors; basically all of our family members were victims and offenders of incest. It was through being here in Yellowknife and listening to aboriginal people that as a family we learned to come to terms with that type of family violence and the other violence issues around that.
.1600
When I look at the young people I deal with every day, the justice system as it is generally is not the answer, and by the time they get to the justice system, all you're trying to do is contain that destructive behaviour. The foundation has never been laid, particularly in the Northwest Territories, for healthy families, because that was robbed from the communities.
One of the people here was talking about how the government whips in and takes the child away if it sees that there's an alcohol problem or a family violence problem. There are no mechanisms in place to reunite the family in a healthy way. There has been no control at the community level or the family level. Parents - including non-aboriginal parents, I have to say - are frustrated, because they're quite lost on how to deal with their children. This is because the old ways have gone by the wayside. If parents try to discipline their children in today's society, they're accused of abusing their children or Social Services will come and investigate the family. There seems to be no balance to a parent's right to discipline.
I think it was just a little while ago that one of the RCMP officers said parents should be charged if their kid goes out and breaks into some place. As a parent I felt fairly frustrated, because I've lost all rights to bring my child up in the way I see fit. I know that the elders have certainly talked about that before. They have their laws, and they have their ways, and those have been treated as not of any value. So now they have to sort of fit in, or now they are being held responsible for the behaviour of their children when they were sort of removed from the bringing-up process.
We have a lot of work to do in the Northwest Territories. The sooner the responsibility and the way of working that out get back to the community level, the better chance we have. I'm very concerned, because our young people in the Northwest Territories die on a daily basis. If they don't actually commit suicide, they're on the road to it. I'm very concerned that the resources in terms of both federal funding and territorial government funding tend to be used for things like economic development, roads, infrastructure, defence, trips to Russia to check out - what do you call it - how they do fur there or something. There seems to be no recognition that for each dollar that is not committed to making the social infrastructure better, there is a loss of one child. In a community of 300 people, the loss of one child makes a big difference to that family or to that nation. That's what my concern is.
I agree with what Mike was saying. Whenever an aboriginal program is put into place, the government expects a financial report and an activity report. Everything has to be just A-1, all the success indicators have to be there, and it has to be just superb. Someday I'd like to go into a government office and say that I want to see its success indicators, I want to see how well it manages its finances, and I want to see how well it did, because it would be awful.
What I want to say is that we have to do a cooperative endeavour here and give the communities the funding they need to do the job, and they'll do the job, but not according to your government's false standards. I don't mean your false standards; I mean the government's false standards. I said it to Lloyd Axworthy one time when he was minister of health and social services. I said that he makes me lie to him every year, and I did it very well. I said that I do my job when he gives me the money I have, and the community benefits, but because of the rules and because he expects perfection from what isn't there, I have to work my ass off to pretend that perfection is there.
.1605
I think that's about all I'll say, but if I can give you any information, I would be more than willing to. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. I'll just start with Mr. St-Laurent.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent (Manicouagan): Insofar as it is efficient, you have an enviable system. All systems are enviable when they are efficient.
Let us imagine for a moment that our conventional judicial system does not exist. Imagine that there is no imprisonment. If a young person in your community, because we are considering ways of improving the Young Offenders Act...
By the way, I want to take this opportunity to answer one of your questions. We are holding these hearings to hear what kind of changes people would like to see made to the Young Offenders Act. All hypotheses are being analysed and considered. Together, we are discussing possible improvements.
Therefore, imagine for a moment that there are no prisons. If something happens in your community, you have to settle the matter yourselves. You are entirely on your own.
Consider a 15- or 16-year-old who kills one or two persons for no apparent reason. By all accounts, he is dangerous. You stated earlier that prisons did not belong in our society. I agree with you up to a point. How then would you deal with this dangerous young offender? Is it not important to protect society? What measures would you take to reintegrate this young person into society, while protecting the public at the same time from anything he might do if given his freedom? Would you release him?
[English]
Chief Erasmus: Thank you, Madam Chair. I was the one who commented about our society's not having jails, so maybe I can comment first.
I'm not sure whether Mr. St-Laurent heard me correctly through translation, and I don't speak French well enough to explain it in French. I didn't say there was no place for jails here. I think we can get back to that kind of reality. What I said was that prior to contact - before the French, before the English, and before the other cultures came here - there were no jails.
The reality today is that there are jails. There is another system imposed upon us. You are lucky in Quebec, where your civil French law is recognized. Dene civil law is not recognized here. The British common law is imposed upon us, and it's a big problem. What happens today is that if someone is a danger to society, someone else takes care of our problem, because our chief, our council, and our internal system are not recognized.
.1610
If we were to imagine that we were independent, which is what we are... We don't have to imagine, because we are independent. I never became a Canadian.
When I was born, before 1960, we had no vote. We were not considered citizens. We had no vote. We could not consume alcohol. If we became business persons, we lost our Indian citizenship. If our mothers married someone who was not les autochtones or les sauvages, as they used to call us, we lost our status, and it goes on and on.
In 1960 they changed the Citizenship Act to make us Canadians. We never asked them. They made us Canadians under their laws, and then they said we could vote. So all of a sudden we're Canadians.
So I don't know how I became a Canadian. I'd like to see the documentation to indicate when Bill Erasmus became a Canadian. I'd love to see it, because Canada has never demonstrated to me that I'm a Canadian. So I believe I'm independent.
My dad remembers when the first white people came around here. They didn't know what they were doing. In our language, you say Kwikwa-tine for white people. What does it mean? It means rock people. I asked what rock people means, and he said he thought it meant prospectors. These people were searching around the rocks. They were looking for something - something they never lost.
So we believe we're independent, and Quebec is trying to get what we already have. I don't say that just because you come from Quebec. The way I understand it, if someone did something like that - if they had a gun and they shot someone - there was a system in place. It goes with the gun law today.
Canada is trying to impose that gun law on us. It's not a bad idea. You have to have laws. You have to have a society where people feel safe. But did they go to our chief and council and ask what we thought of the gun law, whether they should work with us, what we would do, would we mind registering, could they have a central registering list with our membership - we have 1,100 members - could they have all our names, or do we think our membership minds registering and working with them because we're hunters and trappers?
They never asked our people. They passed legislation saying all kinds of things. They're going to make us criminals. So we have problems, but if someone did something like that, we would protect the people.
Right now we're saying we can do a heck of a lot better than the present justice system. Of the people in our penal system in the north, 93% are aboriginal. Also, 95% of our kids are dropping out of school. I dropped out of high school. Peter dropped out of high school. We went to school together. We both dropped out of school, because it's not relevant. We followed the Alberta curriculum.
You know, we pretend we're a suburb of Edmonton. Yellowknife called itself a city. It's not a city. With 20,000 people, it's a small town.
It's a serious thing, and we're glad you're here. The suggestion our young lawyer made that you should come north and that you should come into our communities - because Yellowknife doesn't reflect the north... Come into our communities to talk to the old people and hear them speaking in their own language. English is not our first language. It's a second language to us.
I could go on and on. We have other people here who could say things and articulate it much better than I, but I really think the best thing you can do is recognize that we're not going to kick you out. You should start working with us.
I'm part of the first generation to be brought up in a community like this. Our parents were brought up in the bush. We're the first generation. I managed to go to university afterwards as a mature student, so I have my degree. I have my academic background. I've studied political science, I've studied the system and I understand how you operate. I don't agree with it. I'm here to change it.
.1615
My children are going to be second generation. I don't know if they're going to have the tolerance we have. As I say, I remember what it was like before 1960. I remember what it was like before we got organized, before we got our political organizations in place to fight for our rights. I remember that, but my children don't. My younger brothers and sisters don't.
But they've been waiting for something, because we're telling them, yes, the aboriginal rights question is going to get resolved. Yes, you will have a land base. Yes, you will have an economic future. Yes, we can work with Canada. But it's really not improving.
So I say to you, come back. Let's get serious and let's resolve it.
Thank you.
Ms Haché: To some degree, the way your question is asked is how all Canadians ask the question. It's when a child gets to the justice system that people ask what do we do with this kid? Really, the question should have been asked when that kid was young.
I'll give you a couple of examples.
We have a mother from a community who has been sober for five years. Her children have been sexually abused. Her young boys, who are 10 and 12, are starting to offend; they're starting to sexually abuse other children. She comes in desperation to the government and says ``My children are starting to offend. The teacher says `So?' The RCMP say `So?' Help me; I'm really desperate.''
That mother has been looking for three years for therapy for her child, but the government won't pay for it because it's not an alcohol and drug problem. The government won't pay the little bit for her to stay in a place like Yellowknife to actually get therapy.
What they have done now is basically say they have no resources. So they will wait five years, and those boys will sexually assault someone very badly, they will end up in jail and they will progress. Then we'll have adult offenders and then we're in big trouble.
That is not unusual in the Northwest Territories. The resources are not there.
The other thing I would say is this is how the system goes. For example, the territorial government is looking at changing its policies on welfare, on child welfare and on justice. They put out a contract saying ``We're changing our policies and we're having a new policy manual. Everything is going to change. We want somebody to do this work.''
So a whole bunch of the community groups got together and said ``These are really important issues. We should have some input. Let's write a letter and let them know we're really interested, because down the road we're going to have to live with these things.''
We wrote and said we wanted some input because these issues would affect us, and the government wrote back saying, basically, ``It's premature. We want to present a package to you. We don't need your input now; we'll get it later.''
The real bottom line is we've been accepting packages from the territorial government and the federal government for generations. They don't go back to the community first and ask how we see it going and what we think.
Unless we reverse that, we're going to be in deep trouble, and all of this, as usual, is just for nothing. In a way, it's like when you come here. It's getting community input, but the work is already done. The principle is already in place, so it's very hard to reverse. It's very hard to go back, because there's no innovation in the beginning.
I'm hoping that answered the question. Those 15- and 16-year-old kids who shoot somebody don't just pop up out of nowhere. They don't decide one day, at 15 years old, that they're just going to shoot somebody for the fun of it. There's a history to it.
The history of child welfare in the Northwest Territories has been dismal. One of my goals - by the time I'm 80 I hope it happens - is to have some kind of royal commission into child welfare in the Northwest Territories. If there were, I believe tremendous human rights violations and all kinds of things would be uncovered, and you would see the government has failed in providing the support that's needed for healthy families.
Thank you.
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The Chair: Mr. Eagle.
Mr. Eagle: Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to address your question, and I want to talk on it directly. I would like to talk from the experience everyone is talking about, from our side, about the Indian law, Indian values, of how they work.
You mention serious offenders, sir. In the aboriginal system - and it's like that for all different nations, and I have studied quite a bit on Indian justice in North America and have done a lot of research work on this - there wasn't such a thing as a dangerous offender to society because these were dealt with in the community as the child was growing up.
For example, if a child or a youngster did something, that person would be identified with the parents, which is not happening with your law. The parents had some responsibility. Whoever that young offender committed the offence to, the parent and that person, the victim, would talk it over together. Then if there was any support to be given that young person, normally the grandparents played that role; that is, to do counselling to that young offender.
When it got to a really serious offence...for example, I know growing up in a farming district in Manitoba - our reserve is a big farming community - somebody had stolen cattle. It was two young boys. They weren't taken to court. They had to work and pay back the value of the cattle. See what I'm getting at here? We didn't have that. There were some serious offences.
I have never heard of gays, lesbians, or somebody committing suicide when I was growing up. I'm being very honest about this. I knew about gays when I joined the military. I stayed 25 years in the military, so I think I know quite a bit of your systems. We never heard of this. We never heard of anyone committing suicide in the reservation where I was born. I never heard of anyone threatening with a weapon.
In 1974 - and I think Peter Liske can tell you this - the friendship centre started what we call a youth council. There were RCMP involved in that committee, some of the elders, members of the community, and the youth.
I remember a certain person in the community today committing an offence, a B and E. That young person was brought in front of that committee; he didn't go in front of a judge. That's before they were talking about circles of justice. That young fellow came in with his peers, and it was mostly the youth doing the talking. The young people themselves, with direction from the RCMP and all those who were involved, passed on what they considered action to try to correct that young fellow's behaviour.
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Today that young person is an adult. He's in the community and becoming one of the community leaders.
I can think of another one. The elders were doing the counselling I was talking about. This youth came before the committee - and I was involved in it - and today that person is finishing his fourth year of university.
There is hope, but to get back to your question, you see, that's coming from you. Yes, there are dangerous offenders. As I told someone last week when we were talking about aboriginal offenders, if somebody commits a crime or murder we should try to rehabilitate that person. I believe you can work on that person, but, sir, you tell me how you can rehabilitate a person when he has taken - and it's against Indian law - someone else's life. The difference here is your values versus ours.
Thank you.
The Chair: Bill, do you have a little something you want to add?
Chief Erasmus: Yes, thank you.
You've got me thinking. I'm 42 years old, which is not that old, but a lot of things have changed in that short period of time. I was just thinking back to my childhood.
Like you, I grew up in Yellowknife. When I was younger, the population in Yellowknife may have been 2,000 or 3,000 people. The government moved in in 1967. The community was then not only the mining town but also the capital, because the government moved in.
In 1967 or 1968 - and it did not make sense to me at the time, but in later years I began to think about this - one of our young ladies, who was in high school and was perhaps 16, became pregnant. She was not married. In later years I met her young fellow, the child who was born.
When she became pregnant, it created a big uproar in our community. My parents were really concerned, especially my father and my grandmother. I remember all the older...because people used to visit a lot in those days. We didn't have television, we never grew up with television, and people used to visit each other first thing in the morning. If you got caught in bed when someone came to visit, you were considered lazy, and being lazy is one of the worst things in the world for our people.
I always used to pretend that I was up. I could hear my aunt or someone...the old people always came early. They were up at 6 a.m., so at 7 a.m. half the day was gone for them. At 7:30 a.m. I could hear my aunt coming, so I'd jump up and pretend I was awake.
They would talk, and we could hear...So-and-so is pregnant. It was a big thing. She was pregnant, she didn't have a husband, and they would wonder who it was, what happened, and how come she was pregnant. I remember that this thing went on and on for two or three weeks. I kept on hearing, ``How come she's pregnant? Who got her pregnant? I believe the white guy.'' I wasn't very big.
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It was uncommon; it was not a common thing. I found out later, as I got older and began to understand the community better, that this society is very, very well organized. You couldn't marry just anyone. There were certain families...they told us who we could marry, who we couldn't marry, and when we should marry. Then when we did, they helped us get settled. Everyone contributed. That was not very long ago.
They were really concerned because the family network, the society, was beginning to break down. Someone had come in and got this girl pregnant. No one knew who it was. She was homeless. She was by herself, so who was going to help her? Was it her parents? They didn't know how to deal with it; they were trying to find a way to deal with it.
Now it's the absolute opposite, it's the norm. If you're married, it's an exception.
I remember one meeting in which one of the elderly chiefs got really upset. He said he was in a coffee shop and these young kids were in there. They were just kids, kids having kids. One of them came in with her little baby. She was proud of herself; she was showing her baby to everyone. There was no father. You don't know who the father is. He was insulted and said, ``I don't want to see the baby. What does it mean to us? It's another hungry mouth.''
It must really, really hurt our old people to see that. They lived through it, our elders, our old-timers.
That's why I say let's get serious. I'd really like to do something about it. As I think about it, I was very lucky to be a part of it. As I get older, I'm getting a glimpse of what it must have been like.
I'm not saying it was Utopia. It was not perfect, of course, but if you work at it, it's possible.
The Chair: Mr. Cumming.
Mr. Cumming: Thank you, Madam Chair.
I wanted to respond to Mr. St-Laurent's question. I believe it's a good question, and I believe it's addressed in section 16 of the act. The question, as I recall, had to do with what happens when a young person takes a gun and shoots and kills another person. How can this act deal with that?
I want to reiterate what some of my colleagues said. In our community, as in the wider Canadian community, this is a crime against our society and we need measures to deal with it. I believe that section 16 of the act goes part-way into dealing with it.
As I understand section 16, it's a process of reconciling different objectives when the judge decides whether it should go up to adult court. On the one hand, there are the interests of society. Aspects of that are public protection and rehabilitation of the young person. That's one thing the court would consider. The second thing the court has to consider, as I understand it, is whether those objectives can be reconciled within the jurisdiction of the youth court. If the court feels the objectives cannot be reconciled, at that stage protection of the public shall be paramount and the matter will go to adult court.
The question we have from our community perspective is what are the parameters of protection of the public? Does it end when the youth is bumped up to adult court and dealt with as an ordinary criminal? Does it end at the gates of the prison? Does it end upon the end of the young person's sentence? Let's look at it practically, because in our communities we have to be very practical. We think in terms of generations. We think a long way into the future and derive our history from looking a long way into the past.
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If a person who is 16 years old commits manslaughter or murder, even if that young person is bumped up to adult court and sentenced, and even if that young person serves 25 years, they're still a young adult when they get out. They're just in their forties. From the community perspective, they wonder what happens in those 25 years that they've potentially served their sentence that would make anything different for that person from when they went in.
I agree completely, from our perspective, with protection of the public, but I think we may differ on what constitutes public protection. Is it enough to just throw people in a warehouse that we call prison? From our experience, we've had a lot of our young people come back having killed. They come back very angry and they come back violent. So from a public protection standpoint - maybe I can ask the members - how do the changes to the act reflect protection of the public? If you take the broader view of it, where does it end? Does it end at the gates of prison, that duty to protect the public?
All we're suggesting is that when you talk about public protection you think a long way down the road. Think about when that person walks out. Thank you.
The Chair: Thanks. One question has triggered, I wanted to tell you, half an hour's worth of answers. That's pretty good, Bernard. You do good work.
Mr. Ramsay, the shorter your question the more time we'll have for response.
Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): I want to thank the panel for coming today. I think you've put your finger on a number of things that we as members of government have to ask ourselves.
Where does the authority come from to accomplish the things we want to accomplish? We have taken the authority away from the families, as Arlene said. We've heard that before, and I hear it all across the country whenever I hold meetings and this issue is brought up. The family has lost the authority to discipline their children, to bring up their children - to deny, as Bill said, that while you cannot marry here and you cannot marry there, this is the best course for you. I'd have to wrestle with that one for a while; nevertheless, the principle is sound.
What we've done is we've created institutions to serve us and then lost control of those institutions. Our police forces, our courts, our government - we lose control of them. Here we are as a committee coming here to listen to you. Who's the servant here today? Is it us or is it you? Who's serving who? We should be serving you. Bill spoke about the gun control bill, and that's just one example where the decision is made at the top and down it comes and we all have to adjust to it whether it fits or not. If you want to resolve problems, I learnt as a young man in the RCMP that you get the people who are involved in the problem together and you solve it. You keep it away from institutions that you've lost control over, because they have their own head of steam.
I worked with a problem. An aboriginal person was in jail for a murder he didn't commit. We got him out. But you know what we were doing when we got him out? We challenged the institutions of government. We challenged those institutions that are supposed to be there to serve us. We challenged the court system, we challenged the judge, we challenged the appeal court system, and we challenged the police department, the crown prosecutor. They all felt threatened because they had made a mistake and the evidence was so overwhelming that they could not do anything but admit they'd made a mistake, at least in part. But we're still fighting, and so is that aboriginal person, to clear his name, because those institutions are still covering their rear end by pretending they had the right man and he just got off on a technicality.
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I don't know if I have a question for you or not, but I do know that what I hear coming from you is common sense. It's common sense and I hear echos of it across the country.
I don't care how you run a justice system. I don't care how you run your communities as long as there's peace and order in those communities. I don't care how a family runs its affairs as long as the children...I can tell how the family runs its affairs by looking at the children.
I want to quickly share something with you. I know an organization that sends two people into every home of its members once a month, two men, and their duty is to check on the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of all members of that family, not just the children but the mom and dad as well. Not only that, they send in two ladies to meet with the mother to do exactly the same thing.
That organization has the resources, if they need help financially, to do so. If they need food or clothing for the children, they can help them - not carry them but help them get up and run on their own. It's not a government organization. It's people doing it with their own funding, their own resources, and their own love for one another. They've very successful, and their families and their children are looked after.
That's what I hear Bill talking about when he spoke first, that care, the elders knowing the need to look after one another and using their experience and wisdom to guide the child when they get off track. So what do we have now? We have people making big salaries, and they have to depend upon people going through the justice system in order to justify their big salaries.
I call it the expanding criminal justice industry. That's what I call it. Maybe I'm not fair towards it, but I see so often where they want to deny you what you're asking for, which is the right to deal with your problems within your own communities.
Where is the best place to deal with them? Of course it's in the communities, but they want to take them out of the communities, because if the justice system doesn't have a certain number of people passing through it what will happen? It will lose its justification for existence. You see, this is what I hear coming from you. We're taking your authority away as individuals and as moms and dads and as communities, and we're giving it to an institution that thrives then upon your children going wrong. We have to change that. We have to change it and I see - and I'll finish by making this statement - many answers to the problems of Canadian society coming from the aboriginal communities.
Thank you.
Mr. Paulette: You mention the institutions, and what I would like to emphasize is that the aboriginal people have been up against institutions for a long, long, long time. That's why I said at the beginning that we're finally beginning to make a few gains.
I think we've swung around a bit and we're beginning to take things in our own hands to change them. One of the biggest obstacles I've had during my career in aboriginal politics is the bureaucracy. In many cases the legislators or the members of Parliament or the ministers, for that matter, are very sympathetic. They're compassionate in some cases. They have more common sense than the bureaucracy.
It's difficult to work with a machine that has layers and layers and 5,000 lawyers looking after it and stuff like that. It's hard to penetrate and change things. Bill and I have been frustrated for many years in dealing with the bureaucracy. Now it's turned around to where they moved the government to the Northwest Territories, and the bureaucracy in the Government of the Northwest Territories is even worse. Sometimes I say, bring Stu Hodgson back; we'd be better off!
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The Chair: Don't get out of control here.
Mr. Paulette: The point I want to make is that aboriginal people in the north are beginning to move, and we're moving on our own. We're involved now in processes that are going to make a difference in the north, and in a lot of cases we've had to bully our way into those processes. But we have an opportunity in the Northwest Territories to change things for the better. Where we have a majority of the population, we don't get criticized for being involved at the highest level of diplomacy, and that's the development of a constitution for the western NWT.
There is no question about our involvement, because we pushed our way in there and we've become credible organizations in the NWT that can work and do things. That's fine and that's acceptable with the legislators and the politics, at the political level.
When we get into the bureaucracy, we have a hell of a time accounting for $30,000 that they gave us and they want copies of every single receipt to justify what we did with that money. On the one hand, it's great; on the other... You're not good enough to handle a $30,000 project; on the other hand, you're good enough to develop a constitution for western NWT.
But we're making headway and we're going to continue to push. Thank you.
Mr. Cumming: Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to respond to Mr. Ramsay's comments because he raises a good issue. It's about the issue of institutions.
In the north - and some of the other speakers have alluded to this - there were existing institutions of government. There are existing institutions of the administration of justice. These all happened in our community for thousands of years. We had institutions for virtually every level of government. Those in the last generation or two have been replaced. They have been replaced by institutions of public government.
The administration of justice in the Northwest Territories is kind of a funny state of affairs. Under the division of powers, the federal government has certain powers of law-making. That's what brings you here today. But in other respects it's the territorial government that's in charge of the administration of justice in the communities. To that extent they have a community justice section. You may have heard something about it this morning. But from our perspective, we have some problems with these institutions.
If you look at the federal crown prosecutor's office in the Northwest Territories, where they have, I believe, about 20 or 22 lawyers, there are no aboriginal crown prosecutors. If you look at the territorial government, their department of justice, there are no aboriginal lawyers working there. We have, I believe, one aboriginal woman practising criminal law for the legal services board. It's an arm's length body.
But the point is that the institutions for the administrations do not reflect the communities they serve, and when Mr. Ramsay talks about institutions, I hear what he's saying. It's time these institutions became more relevant to our communities. That would begin by making them more reflective of the communities they serve.
Thank you.
Mr. Eagle: Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to add something to what I was saying about that committee. Mr. Erasmus told me he's about ready to give his closing statement, but I want to talk about that committee.
The Chair: You guys take a lot of pressure off me to chair this committee.
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Mr. Eagle: The committee was so good. There was no money involved in this. The committee did all the volunteer work. The territorial government saw the committee on youth I was talking about in operation. They took that work away from the friendship centre and they put in the justice department. To our knowledge, they are trying to copy the same thing, and in fact they are now saying they have community justice committees.
I don't think these justice committees are functioning the way they should be functioning. There is one very important reason for this. The reason, as Bill said, is that something is being imposed on you - here is the committee; here is the way we want you to run it - whereas that committee originated from the community and developed. There is a lot of difference there and there is a lot of bureaucracy.
If I could add to this, I admire the bureaucrats trying to uphold their policies, their directives and what the laws may be. But I have no admiration whatsoever for a politician who hasn't got the guts to make the change. There is a difference there between bureaucracy and policy-making.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Erasmus.
Chief Erasmus: I've got to write down that quote: ``...no admiration whatsoever for a politician who hasn't got the guts to make the change.'' When I do my memoirs...
The Chair: This will be in mine, too. It will be the day I lost control.
Chief Erasmus: Thank you.
I am thinking, Mr. St-Laurent, I got a little bit hot under the collar because we're so -
Mr. Liske: I thought we Indians never get hot under the collar.
Chief Erasmus: Well, I said I kind of got hot under the collar. We're so preoccupied with changing things. It is as Mr. Ramsay said; it is just common sense. It is common sense things that will get us somewhere.
They've got us going from meeting to meeting. You know how it is. You guys live the same way we do. You're running from one thing to the next and you don't have time or you're not organized well enough to really get done what you want to get done. I've been in public office for 10 years as of this summer. It seems as though I just started yesterday and I haven't done a thing.
I don't mean to come on strong and say we have more rights than the French or other people, but I think we really have to dig deep and understand each other. I honestly think Canadian society is sympathetic, but we don't need sympathy. We have to go beyond this.
People tell us they support our land claims, but on the other hand they do everything to undermine exactly what they just said. What do they mean when they say this? You have to start thinking. What does a land settlement mean? What does a separate justice system mean? What does coexistence mean? When you say ``co'' it is not subordinate. We believe we come from a nation of people. We're a nation. When Canada says it is a nation, I beg to differ because I think they're still a colony of Britain. They're a state. We never gave them nationhood.
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So we still have a lot to talk about. I think, on par, a lot of Canadians are afraid of us. They're scared of us. They wonder what we will do when they give us government. I think they're scared stiff of us. It's about time we quit being scared of one another.
The old-timers were not scared of one another. I talked to a lot of people in the prairies, and in the early days the farmers and the Indian people got along well. Here it's the same thing. The first people who came here got along well with us. My uncle was a special constable for the RCMP for 25 or 30 years. Our people helped others open up the country in terms of what they called development. They worked together in those days.
The Supreme Court of Canada is trying to make decisions on treaties and aboriginal rights and they don't have a clue what they are. If I met Justice Whoever-it-is now, I'd tell him that. I'm serious. I don't think they have a clue what our rights are. They're academics trying to study us from afar.
I've met a judge once in my life, last summer. It was Judge Halifax. He met with our community and he was very open. An old-timer, again an elder, shot a caribou. It was one shot; he never missed. He skinned the caribou and the officers came and caught him. He believed he was practising his treaty right, his mode of living. They took him to court, so he had court in our community of Dettah. It was the first time I'd met a judge.
Maybe I shouldn't be saying this for the record, but he said he didn't think the elder should even be in court. He said our government and the territorial government should have made an arrangement prior to this so that this old fellow would never have had to go through this. The only reason he said that was that he studied our system a little bit and he got to understand that it's common sense you're talking about.
The Supreme Court of Canada is going backwards. They're so conservative and they're afraid of us. Mulroney put in a whole bunch of people who think like him, and you know where Mulroney is. There are two people sitting there. What's his name, their leader, Charest, I've met on more than one occasion. Charest is hardly in the House. How many times is he there for the vote? Check his record. He's there less than anyone else in the country, because he's trying to get his forces going again.
If we're lucky, we have someone in the Supreme Court to support us, but you won't see any Indian judges in there, or Métis or Inuit. I'm serious. I really think we're lucky in a way in the north. We had old Judge Morrow and Judge Sissons. They opened the laws in terms of customary law and they provided good precedents to people in the south.
But still we had cases like Michel Sikyea, a member here from Yellowknife, the famous duck case. The Canadian government spent $1 million to fight that poor old man. He was 63 years old. All he wanted to do was go out and shoot some ducks and live a healthy life, because he was in the hospital with TB. He came out and he wanted to get himself strong again, to eat our food. He shot a duck and they took him to court, and seven years later...
I really think we have to work together. I think we have to open our thinking to each other, open up our hearts, because Canada is in a lot of trouble. It doesn't matter which society you look at. People who come here from other countries are looking for a good home. They're looking for prosperity.
Ms Torsney, you're from Ontario, from Burlington, right? I used to have a teacher from Sarnia -
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Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Who was that?
Chief Erasmus: Jerry Tobin. He taught here in our school.
Mr. Gallaway: Not Brian Tobin.
Chief Erasmus: Not Brian Tobin from Newfoundland, no.
Those people taught us Canadian history the way it was written in the books. We learned about our own history at home.
Your forefathers landed there, and those people worked with them - the Six Nations and the Iroquois Confederacy - and they had a pretty good relationship in the early days. Now you hear ``Mohawk'' and it's something different.
I don't know where your recommendations go from here, but I really think you have to somehow wake up Parliament. You also have to wake up the executive arm. The judicial arm is on its own, but you have to wake up the executive arm, because they're the ones who do the implementation. We're talking about the bureaucrats versus the politicians.
Going into the 21st century, it's about time we settled our differences. Let's work together the way people originally wanted to.
We don't have the same background as the States. There they tried to wipe the Indians out, literally. Custer and others tried to wipe them out. Canada has a different history.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you all very much for giving us quite a send-off.
You've suggested to us that if we go to a correctional institute we'll see a lot of your people there. I want you to know that is exactly where we're off to now, to see the facility and also to meet with some of the youths there.
Having said that, we're very grateful to you for your time, for your wisdom and for the opportunity to hear from you today. Thank you.
Mike, I know you have something else to say. Some of us will stay around to hear it.
Mr. Eagle: When is the committee finished its work?
The Chair: I think there's a misconception. We're not dealing with any amendments in particular. This is part of a consultation to see where the country stands on the Young Offenders Act and to see whether any changes are needed. If there are changes, we'll be back.
Mr. Paulette: Thank you for coming to Yellowknife.
The Chair: Thank you for having us.
Mr. Paulette: The message we were trying to give is that the aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories are working towards their own self-government, and we have to be considered. It's very important that we're considered. Otherwise we're going to bully our way through, as we've done on a number of issues.
It's unfortunate that your visit was so short. You probably spent in excess of $30,000 for your air fares to come to Yellowknife. It would have been nice for you to fly out to one of the smaller communities and really take a look at what life is like there, but perhaps that will happen some other time.
But thank you.
The Chair: Thanks, Mike.
Mr. Paulette: I hope you consider our remarks and comments in your recommendations.
The Chair: We will. Thank you very much.
We're adjourned.