Census misleading, says friendship centre exec

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Robert Adams, executive director of the Native Canadian Friendship Centre in Toronto, which reports the fifth largest Aboriginal population in Canada, says the census figure of 20,300 Aboriginal people for Toronto is low. He estimates the total is 60,000 to 70,000.

"We're under-represented because our Native peoples do not participate in formal surveys. When the census-takers come around to our doors, whether we're in the cities or on the land, we just don't want to co-operate. It's a learned practice."

Despite Statistics Canada's assurances that co-operation in completing the census has never been better, Adams doesn't agree.

"It's this reticence even to participate in a governmental process, it still exists in the city, so I would imagine . . . probably half the Aboriginals in the city of Toronto didn't participate even though they had an opportunity to do so."

Adams said 60,000 to 70,000 is the number that all Aboriginal service agencies in the city of Toronto use to do their planning for service delivery.

But apart from a major discrepancy about numbers, Adams thinks Statistics Canada's report "was pretty well written. I thought they categorized it pretty well. I thought their language was pretty good. But I just thought they're in denial: they're participating in denying what the real numbers are, because they're wedded to the bureaucratic process and that's their job, and it just doesn't fit the reality of the city."

Adams said reality is that the Toronto friendship centre provides services to 70,000 people annually, of which two-thirds are Native. Some of these people the centre sees daily for a period of time, "so we have a rational basis upon which this number is drawn." Adams adds that when the bean counters say real Aboriginal numbers can only be estimated at 50 per cent more than the 20,300 enumerated, "We know that's fundamentally fraudulent. We don't think it's deliberate, but we know that the government uses Stats Canada numbers in which to provide dollars to service Aboriginal people in our city.

"So we're getting less of the support than we're actually providing in real service, and I think that many in the government of Canada realize this and they're quite happy with the low estimate, 'cause it saves hard dollars to deliver real service dollars to the urban Native population. I think it's cynical."

Adams admits, however, "Toronto gets some really good support. I'm not denying that the support is real and that it is good, but it's way under what the real Aboriginal population is in the city."

To make up the shortfall, he said, "We scrounge from everybody. We're developing a momentum at the Native centre to write proposals and have funding. The United Way gives us a lot of funding: $250,000 a year, but that represents just eight per cent of our budget."

The city of Toronto, the province and "different federal departments, depending on programs that we offer, contribute," said Adams.

The friendship centre's broad range of services are aimed more "to provide support to teenagers . . . and young adults, 20 to 30, who need help with resumes, training, jobs."

Adams says their relationship with city hall is "not bad, pretty good. They fund some of our programs. City funding is harder to get because they have less money in total, but there's a pretty good dialogue with the city of Toronto." He recognizes that in that city, Aboriginal people are "but one community in a larger basket of communities, whereas, if we're in Regina or Saskatoon, there's the mainstream and then there's the other-the Native community." That makes it harder to get the money they need from the city.

He said since the last census, Aboriginal people have experienced "incremental improvements in all areas-education, housing, health, our cultural knowledge base."

First-term Toronto city councillor Suzan Hall (Ward 1 Etobicoke North) has had more than 40 years of community involvement, including being chair of the YouthGang Work Group, which she said has one Aboriginal member, and she's a member of the Race and Ethnic Relations Community Advisory Committee. She previously was a school trustee for 16 years.

Hall said her community "was very, very diverse" ethnically, "and we have the largest percentage of children and youth of any area in the city, and not enough is being done." She says in her ward they are looking at ways to resolve youth unemployment, which at 24 per cent is much higher than elsewhere in Toronto. They're also looking at recreation, arts and culture, housing and environmental awareness and how to engage youth in those issues. But Hall stressed that out of necessity, Toronto takes a multi-cultural approach, rather than focusing on Aboriginal-specific programs and services. Where those do exist, they seem to be based in community centres' programs.

Hall admitted to not being very familiar with Aboriginal priorities, but she said when the race relations committee held focus groups, Aboriginal people said they wanted a directly elected person on the municipality. In areas such as housing, Aboriginal people wait with 60,000 people on the list.

Hall said many service groups in the city dispute Statistics Canada's numbers, and on the same basis, which is that members of some ethnic communities do not identify themselves to census-takers.

"I'm not certain how you can absolutely address that." She says she knows there may be a percentage of any group not accounted for in the census, but when it comes to providing funding support, "statistics are a sound base on which to go."