One Woman’s Fight for Equal Funding of First Nations Children Lands Feds in Court

What would the Harper government do to avoid its responsibility to all the children of this country? If their conduct at the Human Rights Tribunal is any indication, just about anything. Starting today, First Nations children’s rights activist Cindy Blackstock will finally have a chance to take them to task.

In 2007 Blackstock, an associate professor at the University of Alberta and a former social worker, filed a human rights complaint about inequitable funding of child welfare services on reserves on behalf of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (FNCFCS). She charged that the federal government was discriminating against children on reserves by spending 22% less per child than provincial governments spend on those off reserve.

Since then, the federal government has delayed proceedings on technicalities, attempted to discredit Blackstock herself by spying on her social media presence, and withheld tens of thousands of pages of documents. All this was done at a cost of more than $3 million to tax payers, money that would have been better spent toward fixing the system, Blackstock believes.

The strategy has backfired, prolonging the trial and giving Blackstock, who has steadfastly refused to back down, a kind of fame. She has even been interviewed in Vice Magazine who billed her as “the Native activist who the Canadian government was spying on.”

Starting July 15 Blackstock will argue before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that the federal government has been retaliating against her personally for bringing the complaint. She’ll be backed up by a report from the Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard, who found in May that Aboriginal Affairs and the Justice Department went too far in their information collection efforts.

Then in August hearings will finally begin on the actual complaint. The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network will be live streaming the entire procedings. 

So why all the delay? Blackstock’s ideas are not radical. They include bringing funding for reserve schools into line with those off reserve, assuring access to clean drinking water, introducing culturally-based addictions counseling, and cleaning up jurisdictional fights before they cause real harm to the children involved. She’s an advocate of micro-loan systems such as the Grameen Foundation that have helped entrepreneurs in impoverished communities around the world.

All this is founded on the belief that the emotional and physical health of both the parents and the community has direct effects on that of the children. Deal with the root causes of neglect and far fewer children will have to enter the child welfare system.

She points out that the World Health Organization estimates every dollar properly invested on a child saves seven down the line. “Choose not to spend that money properly at this point and you will be spending that money on prisons, on mental health services, on social assistance payments,” she told in the CBC documentary series 8th Fire.

What stands in the way of change is a profound misunderstanding of the way the federal government funds reserves. “Most caring Canadians think that not only do these kids get the same level of service, they get bonus services because they’re First Nations. The reality is completely different.”

She works from the assumption that if most Canadians saw the numbers, they would be appalled by the disparity. Part of the point of the complaint is to get those numbers into the public and get the government to act on them in a substantial way, not with words of apology, but with investment and change in policy.

Whichever way the tribunal decides, it will be setting a precedent. A positive decision for the FNCFCS would pressure the government to provide equal funding for other areas, including education, policing and health. Admitting to their wrong-doing here might also open them up to law suits from children who were abused and neglected within an underfunded child welfare system.

A negative decision, on the other hand, might hinder First Nations groups bringing future issues to this kind to the tribunal, robbing part of Canadian society that struggles to be heard of a powerful podium.

Five years ago in his historic apology for the terrible history of residential schools, Stephen Harper said there is “no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian residential schools system to ever prevail again.”

Today there are an estimated three times as many children in child welfare care as there ever were in residential schools. The average child on reserve gets $2000 to $3000 less in education funding and more than 500 reserve schools lack access to basic amenities such as running water and libraries. It seems as though an attitude adjustment is precisely what we need.

By seeking ways to discredit Blackstock and resisting the efforts of a fair tribunal, the federal government is putting off the hard work of reconciliation. Like so many before them, they’re laying the problem in the hands of the next generation, and through that shortsightedness, making the future just a little bit worse for everyone.

First Nations child poverty by the numbers:

• Each on-reserve First Nations child receives 22% less funding than each child off of reserve.
• 50 per cent of status First Nations children in Canada live in poverty.
• Approximately 3 times as many First Nations children are now in child welfare care than were ever in the residential school system.
• First Nations children are 6 to 8 times more likely to go into child welfare care than non-aboriginal children.
• 65% of kids in child welfare care in Alberta are First Nations (who account for less than 10% of the population).
• 53% of kids in child welfare care in British Columbia are First Nations.
• 1 in 6 children on reserves in Canada doesn't have clean water to drink.
• The cost to pull all First Nations children out of poverty: $1 billion.
• The World Health Organization says, for $1 properly invested in children, the taxpayer saves $7 down the line.
• That’s a net profit of $6 billion.

Image Credit: University of Alberta