Ottawa will meet Indigenous kids’ needs
TRIBUNAL TELLS FEDS TO FUND CHILD WELFARE, MINISTER AGREES
Child welfare agencies on reserves will immediately start getting funding to cover the actual cost of programs to keep families together, Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott said Thursday.
The commitment is a direct response to an order from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal made public on Thursday.
It was the fourth time the tribunal said Canada was not fully complying with its 2016 order to stop discriminating against kids on reserves and demanding proper funding for child and family service programs. In its 99-page decision, the tribunal panel said while the federal government had taken some steps to respond to the 2016 order in the last two years, it is “incorrect for Canada to say it did everything it could and everything that was asked of it.”
The tribunal also took issue with Canada’s argument that the tribunal can’t make orders about specific funding, saying that goes against the idea that human rights legislation is there to ensure governments uphold rights.
“More importantly, this case is vital because it deals with mass removal of children,” said the tribunal. “There is urgency to act and prioritize the elimination of the removal of children from their families and communities.”
While Indigenous children represent about seven per cent of all kids under the age of 15, they make up more than half of all kids in foster care. In some provinces as many as 90 per cent of kids in care are First Nations, Metis and Inuit.
Indigenous advocates and child welfare experts for decades blamed the fact governments funded foster care for Indigenous kids at the same rates as non-Indigenous kids, but when it comes to programs to help keep families together, programs on reserves were grossly underfunded. It meant there was an incentive for agencies to take kids away because it was the only way they could recoup their expenses.
In 2007, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society brought a human rights complaint which resulted in the 2016 ruling that First Nations kids were being discriminated against.
Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the caring society, said Thursday it was shameful it took two years and four orders of non-compliance for Ottawa to get to the point of funding actual needs for kids.