National Settlement Conference
(Kingston - June 18-20, 2001)
Settlement Accord: Government Speaker
Martha Nixon, Assistant Deputy Minister, Citizenship and Immigration Canada
Good morning. I am very thrilled to be here. I can't believe that we
actually pulled this off. Congratulations to you for being here. It is
so important to come together here to discuss, argue, and have fun together.
I think, it's great to have a conference. From our point of view, it probably
took too much time but congratulations.
I think that, having had long association with the process in immigration,
settlement is the essence. We have all of the processes in immigration
that begin with people overseas, we see them in process coming into Canada,
received, and in their communities. If we don't do settlement work properly,
we will not succeed in our overall objective, which is to make these people
part of our Canadian context, part of our Canadian society, and an investment
for all of us. So, bravo to all of you. I think, speaking together --
and having a chance to discuss -- today and during the course of the three
days is so critical. And I am so thrilled that we have been able to do
this.
Naomi Alboim spoke of our antecedents and I know that in my long career
-- when I was working in the settlement area, particularly when I was
managing settlement service delivery out of the Rideau Street office for
then, I guess, Employment and Immigration -- having the contact with agencies
in the Ottawa area was one of the most satisfying parts of my career.
And I hold many of the people I worked with during that time as still
close friends in my life and advisors in terms of the things that we do
today.
However, I am here today to speak to you about the work that I have been
involved in through the Department as a representative of CIC but working
with a large number of people both from the non-profit sector and from
the government to try and pull together one of the pieces of this whole
voluntary sector initiative. You've now heard about it from, I believe,
Joan Atkinson yesterday and Monica Patten referred to it briefly: the
attempt that we are making together to try to figure out the many elements
that go into building a positive, more positive, and evolving relationship
between government and what we are calling today the voluntary sector.
The word voluntary sector was very aptly touched upon by Monica Patten
in terms of how inadequate it is as a descriptor but I am going to apologize
right now for using it simply because it is what we've used to describe
this overall initiative even though we understand its inadequacies.
But, as part of this, I've had the privilege of working with seven government
members and seven members from the sector to try and describe something
that we have called a Joint Accord. The Joint Accord is a proposal, a
piece of paper, a lot of words that have been put together for discussion
-- to stimulate some back and forth discussion between government people
in all departments, between people throughout Canada coming from the community,
working in many different capacities, to try and build on what our relationship
is now and what we want our relationship to be in the future. And to look
at it in all of its aspects, not to get hung up on the past and the past
has been difficult. And I am the first one to admit that, even where I
sat in government, it was painful. Some of the things that had been happening
in the past -- and you go back to the funding cuts, the transfers that
happened some years back, you look at what we all went through together
through the programme review period when every single government department
was cutting back on its funding, and we look even now today where the
impact of the HRDC situation has made life extremely difficult for many
people in the non-profit sector.
Recognizing that it's often our context at this particular period in
our history, try very much to sit back and say "What do we want our relationship
to be, how can we improve it, and how can we ensure that it's a continuous,
evolving piece?" I think that the Joint Accord and the voluntary sector
initiative are indicative of the fact that the Government of Canada is
willing to have that conversation and hopefully, in many places, very
willing to have that conversation in a way that allows us to recognize
the difficulties that are inherent in it, to deal with them, and to maybe
not have them removed totally but to say "We have to build on what we
have and understand each other better."
When you look at where this Joint Accord discussion has come from, it's
really based on some of the examples and experience that others have had.
Many of you may be familiar, many of you may not be familiar, with the
fact that, in Britain and in Scotland, they have put in place what they
call a Compact. This happened in late 1998. And, I think, they recognize
-- we talked to many of them and had the benefit of people speaking to
us as a joint table working on this issue -- that they were allowed to
examine the relationship that existed and mostly to look at it in terms
of public policy. How does public policy happen? But, I think, in doing
that they discovered that there were many benefits in sitting together
to examine the many different facets of how the relationship worked. And,
in fact, probably some of the benefits that haven't been realized have
happened as much in increased discussion together, increased information
sharing, and annual meetings where it is public and where there is an
accountability in terms of sitting down, taking stock of how the relationship
is working, being open and transparent about it, and recognizing where
failures have been happening as well as where successes are.
In a sense, that model is one that prompted us. But we also have models
in Canada. And there are works that many of you in the room would be familiar
with both in Newfoundland where they have been working on some kind of
contract and in the Province of Québec, in the process which included
"le milieu communautaire" as an essential partner for the planning and
implementation of policies for social and economic development.
Indeed, the Broadbent Panel endorsed moving forward with a compact or
with some kind of a Joint Accord, a document that would serve as a framework.
This was the Broadbent report that came out in August 1999 , and described
some of the elements that should be in a Joint Accord. And so, in October
2000, a "Joint Table" was struck. And we have sat at many meetings and,
I will tell you, those of us who had been working at this table have found
it extremely challenging, at times wonderful -- wonderfully amusing --
and a real learning experience to sit down and actually talk about things
like values, principles, and commitments. What did we mean when we were
speaking with a government perspective and what did the people sitting
at the table from the community mean when they were looking at those words
from their own perspectives? And, you know, you sat at lots of meetings
where you tried to agree about something that could be as simple as a
paragraph in a text: How difficult can that be when you start saying "
I don't think I understand what you really mean by that word!"
So we've had our challenges and it's taken us since October to come up
with the document. And I must say that there would be none of us who would
say "We've got the perfect document." We've had some testing done of it
and we've had some discussion and feedback. As well, there is a process
of consultation underway. And part of what we want to accomplish today
is that we generate that discussion with you and that the brief overview
I am going to give you will allow you to think about it in a settlement
context. The work that you do is very intertwined with government people.
The relationship that you have goes back a lot of years: Often it is based
on a Contribution Agreement Framework; often it's based on some contractual
relationship. But all of you know that you had good times and bad times
as you worked through your relationship with government. All of you know
that there are areas of improvement and that there are areas where we
have had real success. In fact, the planning of this conference, I would
say, having been a joint venture, has been a real success.
So, when we sat together, what we wanted to do was to come up with a
framework, a framework that would allow people to say: "As we go through
the next few years, if I am looking at my relationship in Moose Jaw and
I am trying to have some impact in terms of the work that I do from a
policy stance or even from that of changing a programme idea, I look at
what's happening in my real world and I say, if I look at this framework
document, this Joint Accord that was struck back in 2002, I don't think
that what's happening here is living up to the ideal, to the principles
and the values that were expressed in this document. And I think that
we have this as a yardstick against which to measure our work and we need
to sit down and talk about why we are missing the mark in terms of the
interaction that we have going on in our community, in our programme."
And I think that the possibilities for a Joint Accord will give us a
capability to have something which we can point to, which we will also
have to review on a periodic basis -- whether it is through an annual
meeting, whether it's something different -- to say "If we have this document,
what does it mean to us? How has it been lived up to during the past year?
Are there pieces that don't fit? Are there things that we must improve?"
There are workbooks available now and I know that there were some copies
of the Accord itself on the tables outside. And you have a brief summary
in your kits. The workbooks are forming the basis for a series of consultations
that are going on now across the country, organized again jointly with
groups identified through the Voluntary Sector Task Force and the people
representing the voluntary sector. And the workbook asks you to have ideas,
to give us feedback, and to tell us what you think.
Let me just touch briefly on some of the parts of the Joint Accord. First,
is we try to enunciate a set of shared and common values that guide our
relationship. And they're easy ones to agree to: democracy, active citizenship,
social justice, and inclusion. When you look at them, we tried to define
them; we tried to define them from both perspectives. You see there respect
for diversity; you see there the concept of civic engagement; you see
there the kind of principles that we enunciate in the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and you
see there freedom of association and freedom of expression, particularly,
as it relates to advocacy.
There is a whole section as well on principles. And here it's so important
for us to understand that framing the very essence of our relationship
is a principle of independence: independence of the sector -- voluntary
sector -- and interdependence with government. These two things have to
be enshrined as principles and they have to work for us, not against us.
And, I think, Tim Owen is going to touch on some of the clauses in the
Accord where there is particular attention being paid by the sector and
where in fact we've had the most trouble as we tried to negotiate the
words that are in the Joint Accord.
One of the principles around independence and interdependence touches
very squarely on the fact that advocacy from the voluntary sector must
not and should not affect a funding relationship. And that is something
which, I know, you will be very interested in discussing about what that
means and how we've reflected there. Other principles, the principle of
dialogue: We may not always agree; we may have some strong disagreements;
but we have to dialogue. Cooperation, collaboration, and the principle
of public accountability: All of these things we need to talk about from
our own perspectives.
There is a section as well -- and I will move quickly here -- on commitments
to action. Look carefully at this section because it talks about shared
commitments; it talks about government commitments; and it talks about
voluntary sector commitments. When you look at the Accord, I ask you to
look at it with an open mind to see whether or not it will serve you where
you sit, where you live, and where you work, as a useful tool. We want
to build trust. We want to listen to each other. We want to understand
each other's realities. This can be one part of our world together. Does
it lead you to action? Does it help you when you are looking at policy
issues, funding issues, issues of how to collaborate better, and issues
of how to change programme realities? If it doesn't, tell us how it should.
And if you think it's useful, give us feedback; tell us how we can make
it more useful for you. It is a tool; it will become what you want it
to be; and it will be useful only if you embrace it and use it for its
most helpful potential.
Thank you very much. Tim and I will be happy to follow up with questions.
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