Baranyai: Indigenous foster care urgent priority

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It’s a shattering indictment: 16 years after then-prime minister Stephen Harper formally apologized for Canada’s residential school system – time enough for a generation to reach driving age – there are more Indigenous children and youth in foster care than there were in residential schools at any given time.

The blunt practice of isolating First Nations children from their families, communities and culture is a shameful continuum from the residential school system and the Sixties Scoop. Clearly, the foster care system was not designed with the intent to “take the Indian out of the child.” When fully half the kids in care across Canada are Indigenous, however, parsing intent feels a bit like splitting hairs.

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In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled the chronic underfunding of First Nations child and family services amounted to wilful and reckless discrimination. This month, a historic agreement to remedy that harm and transform the system was debated at a special chiefs’ meeting in Calgary. Ultimately, the agreement fell short.

National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak of the Assembly of First Nations helped negotiate the $47.8-billion settlement agreement with Ottawa. Ultimately, however, the decision rested with First Nations chiefs, who rejected the offer by a vote of 267 to 147.

Some found fault with the process, which did not directly involve all regions in negotiations over the terms of reforms. The executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, Cindy Blackstock, argued while the agreement had some strengths, she was wary of “loopholes” that might derail the federal government from delivering on its 10-year commitment.

As the chiefs hit reset, Woodhouse Nepinak vowed to move forward, noting more First Nations children were removed from their communities and families last year than at any time in Canada’s history.

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In a statement, Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu vowed Canada “remains steadfast in its commitment to reform the First Nations Child and Family Services Program so that children grow up knowing who they are and where they belong.”

Some fear efforts to negotiate a new agreement could be hampered by a change in government. It is difficult to forget that in 2008 – on the very day Harper formally apologized to residential school survivors – his protege, Pierre Poilievre, was trash-talking the residential school settlement.

Appearing on talk radio, Poilievre questioned whether Canadians were “getting value for all of this money.” The future Progressive Conservative leader added insult to injury, elaborating: “My view is that we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self-reliance. That’s the solution in the long run; more money will not solve it.”

Poilieve stood in the House of Commons the next day and apologized for “remarks that were hurtful and wrong” (an act of contrition for which the Opposition Leader seems to have lost the knack).

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He was younger then, and owned his mistake. Still, it’s noteworthy the man who wants to be Canada’s next prime minister once described compensation for grave harms as a value-for-money proposition.

Blackstock didn’t mince words about future negotiations. “I’m hoping that this wasn’t a take-it-or-leave-it deal from Canada, because that would be disrespectful to the children and it would be a walk away from reconciliation,” she said.

The stakes were underscored by Ashley Bach, a young woman taken from Mishkeegogamang First Nation at birth and adopted by a white family. “Despite those colonial systems working against us, a once-in-a-lifetime agreement has been reached, or maybe it might be better for me to say that it’s a once-in-a-childhood agreement,” she told the assembly with emotion. “If we take too long, we’re going to lose another generation.”

write.robin@baranyai.ca

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