It is so much easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken adults, noted Frederick Douglass, the 19th-century African-American abolitionist and social reformer.
It’s a sentiment the federal government needs to embrace, especially given the ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that Ottawa has discriminated against children on reserves in its funding of child-welfare services.
The tribunal published its findings Tuesday, nine years after a complaint brought by the Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, which argued that Ottawa has failed to provide First Nations children with the same level of services that exist elsewhere.
A central figure in the issue is Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the Caring Society who is a member of B.C.’s Gitsxan First Nation.
The federal government is responsible for providing services to aboriginal children on reserves and in the Yukon, but has failed to provide the same level of funding for children’s services provided by the provinces. No one should be surprised by the findings — according to the government’s own figures, funding for welfare on reserves runs between 22 and 34 per cent below provincial rates.
The seeds of success are planted in childhood, and so are the seeds of failure. Without a safe and healthy childhood, it is difficult for people to become responsible, self-reliant adults, to become the leaders First Nations need to move beyond the significant challenges of poverty, child abuse, addictions and crime. It is difficult to understand why a government would short-change children on their futures.
“I can’t think of a lower thing that a federal government can do than racially discriminate against … kids, know that they’re doing it, know it is harming them by unnecessarily removing them from their families, have the recommendations in their hands where they could have made it better and they don’t do it,” Blackstock says.
And yet the Harper government fought the case tooth and nail right from the beginning, filing one appeal after another in an attempt to derail the complaint.
The tribunal has ordered the government to cease its inequitable and discriminatory practices, a ruling considered legally binding. The current government welcomes the decision and is committed to acting on child-welfare issues, said Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, a former B.C. regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
“This is a good day,” she said. “This is about equality. This is about ensuring that there is equal investment, and it is not just in terms of money, it is in terms of outcomes, that we create the space in this country for every child to be able to succeed … this is the place and time.”
It is indeed time. For too long, the government of Canada deliberately sought to eradicate the culture, language and beliefs of aboriginal peoples. Much of that attempt was made through the residential-school program, which left a legacy of dysfunction, broken families and violence.
The underfunding of welfare services hindered the healing of those wounds. Worse than the lack of resources was the implication that aboriginal children on reserves were not as deserving as children elsewhere in Canada. Those who needed more help got less.
Equitable funding for child-welfare services will not instantly erase the problems faced by First Nations, but it will give children and families better tools to deal with those problems.
