UNDER-FUNDED
Paul Martin right to be frustrated over First Nations education budget.
The allocation in the federal budget of $200 million to improve aboriginal education has enraged Canada’s 21st prime minister.
“I don’t understand why this government makes it such a partisan issue as they did in this budget. I believe discrimination in education funding will be an (election) issue for Canadians,” Paul Martin said in an interview.
Perry Bellegarde, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, called the money in the budget an “outright snub and a missed opportunity.” The two men were speaking prior to a Canada 2020 symposium on aboriginal people and economic development in Ottawa on Wednesday.
Martin has devoted much of his time in the years since leaving the Prime Minister’s Office to raising education levels among the country’s First Nations children, the fastest-growing segment of the population.
His experience with his own Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative has convinced him that, with the right investment, First Nations kids can meet national standards.
“If we give them the same tools as other Canadians, the results will be drastic, as they were in these programs,” he said. “What we wanted to do was demonstrate that you could reform the system in terms of literacy.”
Martin is a partisan and, as with all partisans, he is quick to denigrate the views of his political opponents. He can’t help himself harking back to the Kelowna Accord, a $5-billion funding arrangement his government negotiated with the provinces and aboriginal groups that the Conservatives quickly scrapped. “I hate to keep going back to Kelowna …,” he said, more than once.
But when the former prime minister speaks about aboriginal education, he has justifiable grounds for anger.
It is, he believes, the single biggest moral and social issue we have as a country.
The $200 million promised in the budget — spread over five years — is hardly likely to shore up a failing system, where spending is 30 to 50 per cent less per capita than in provincial schools.
Funding increases have been capped at 2 per cent for 19 years, despite a population that is growing four times faster than that of non-aboriginals.
The results in education terms are well known and hardly surprising — only one in three First Nations students on reserve completes high school. The wider social implications are linked — 23 per cent of prison admissions, despite making up just four per cent of the population, and a suicide rate that is twice that of non-aboriginals.
The Conservatives recognized something needed to be done and in their First Nations Control of First Nation Education Act (Bill C-33) promised a more realistic increase to core funding of $1.25 billion over two years, with an annual growth rate of 4.5 per cent thereafter.
Unfortunately, powerful forces within the native leadership pulled the rug from under Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo, claiming that the act’s title was a misnomer and control would continue to reside in Ottawa.
The immediate consequence was that Atleo resigned, while the legislation and the money remain parked.
Bernard Valcourt, the aboriginal affairs minister, has said he is prepared to work with willing partners and take a regional approach. Officials suggest there are prospects for smaller deals in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. But the chances of resurrecting a grand “Marshall Plan” for First Na- tions education this side of an election are slim.
The government’s point of view is that the AFN wants money with no strings attached — “while it’s not clear they can deliver,” in the words of one person with knowledge of the file.
Bellegarde said the process around Bill C-33 was “flawed.”
“Stephen Harper signed a deal with Shawn Atleo but no one knew about it. When people heard about it, they said ‘we can’t accept that’. You’ve got to include everyone and in this instance, that process was not adequately followed.”
The new AFN leader says he has a mandate from his executive to establish a national fiscal framework around education. He said he is meeting with the minister soon, but “it is up to Bernie Valcourt to show some political will.”
The political logjam is a tragedy — doubly so because Martin’s Aboriginal Education Initiative has displayed that, with comparable funding and cultural-specific programs, native children can perform as well, if not better than non-natives.
The Model School Project in two First Nation elementary schools attempted to bring literacy levels up to provincial average by Grade 3, using techniques pioneered in Ontario problem schools a decade ago. In the year before the project began, only 13 per cent achieved provincial standards for reading and only 33 per cent for writing.
By 2014, 70 per cent of the students met reading standards and 90 per cent met the writing benchmark.
Martin says the costs of the pilot were comparable per capita to provincial schools. “To turn around 150 years of history is going to cost. But if we don’t turn it around, the cost will be substantially greater,” he said.
Another project — the Aboriginal Youth Entrepreneurship program — offers school credits for students in Grades 11 and 12 who sign up for financial literacy, accounting and marketing courses. The project, initiated in 2007, is now offered in 46 schools and includes use of specially created textbooks, written within the context of traditional aboriginal values.
Martin is outraged at the government’s under-funding but he is encouraged by the potential for progress. “There are now over 500 students who have benefited and learned to read and write to provincial averages by Grade 3. That’s the optimistic aspect to this.”