Budget pledges $5 billion in new spending on Indigenous affairs.
Extra money spread out over five years
After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement this month of a new approach to Indigenous rights that seemed as vague as it was ambitious, Tuesday’s federal budget made clear the scope of the Liberal government’s efforts to redefine the relationship between the government and Indigenous people.
The budget commits $ 5 billion to improve Indigenous social services and infrastructure — including anticipated billions for child welfare, drinking water, health care and housing — and to help Indigenous communities move past the Indian Act.
The new funding is the latest, and perhaps the biggest, in a series of announcements intended to signal that the Liberal government is forging a new path with Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. Last August, Trudeau announced he was splitting Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada into two departments. Earlier this month, he delivered a speech in the House of Commons broadly outlining an ambitious new framework for Indigenous rights.
Now, Budget 2018 sheds more light on the course the Liberals are trying to chart toward greater autonomy for Indigenous peoples. It also directly tackles the Liberals’ desire to see Indigenous communities move toward self- determination, including commitments to help Indigenous bands form larger nations and to start paying for Indigenous participation in treaty negotiations.
“This budget invests in new tools to help nations rebuild, and to accelerate self- determination and self- government based on recognition of Indigenous rights, so that our shared future is one where Indigenous peoples are in control of their own destiny, making their own decisions about their future,” Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in his speech Tuesday in the House of Commons.
The budget sets aside $1.4 billion in new funding for Indigenous child welfare over the next six years, part of an effort to address the disproportionate number of Indigenous children in foster care. Indigenous children currently represent 7.7 per cent of all children under 14 in Canada, but account for more than half of children in care.
The new funding would provide roughly an extra $ 270 million per year for child and family services, increasing total funding to about $ 1.1 billion in 2023. The funding is intended to fill a gap identified by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2016, which found the government was dis- criminating against First Nations children by underfunding child welfare relative to the services available to nonIndigenous children.
Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Perry Bellegarde said the new funding should more than close that gap, and said the budget shows the government is “moving in the right direction” with respect to the needs of Indigenous peoples. “These are investments, but the needs are great,” he said in an interview. “Long-term, sustainable investments are going to be needed.”
T he government al s o promised an additional $ 173 million to eliminate long- term drinking water advisories on First Nations reserves, on top of the $ 1.8 billion pledged in 2016. Despite the Liberals’ promises to eliminate them, there remain 81 long- term advisories on reserves, in many cases with no construction plans in place to lift them. The government hopes the new money will accelerate the pace of construction, to prevent a last-minute scramble to meet the March 2021 deadline Trudeau has set.
However, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the government hasn’t provided enough new funding to meet its own target. “The government has not taken a significant step there,” he said. “Even though this government’s committed to some financing, it’s nowhere near what they need to address the boil-water advisories.”
In an attempt to address the housing crisis in many Indigenous communities, Ottawa is committing $ 1.5 billion to support separate housing strategies for First Nation reserves, Inuit and Métis communities, including $ 300 million in new funding. The rest will come from a $ 4- billion First Nations infrastructure fund announced last year.
The government committed another $ 1.5 billion over five years to Indigenous health- care services, including an initiative to eliminate tuberculosis in Inuit communities, where the rate of active tuberculosis was 270 times higher than among the non- Indigenous population in 2015. And it highlighted $ 5 million in funding to the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, which promotes reconciliation.
Tuesday’s budget provided more clues about what may come from Trudeau’s new Indigenous rights framework, announced earlier this month, including a plan to help First Nation bands organize into larger Indigenous nations — and included a five- year, $ 102- million pledge to Indigenous groups that want to make that happen.
Crown- Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett has indicated she’s keen on seeing the more than 600 First Nation bands across Canada reconstitute into larger nations, a key recommendation of the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. As it stands, bands are the only legal entity recognized under the Indian Act, making it difficult for groups of bands to negotiate as one with the federal government if they want to take control of delivering services like health and education. But many individual bands are too small to deliver their own services, something the commission identified as a problem. Bennett has suggested the reconstitution of larger nations would help Indigenous communities take jurisdiction over their own programs.
In another shift, the Liberals committed to pay for Indigenous participation in treaty negotiations, instead of issuing loans to be repaid by Indigenous groups. They’re also considering forgiving and paying back past and present loans, possibly going back to the beginning of modern treaty negotiation in the 1970s, and plan to engage with Indigenous groups on the issue. The budget provides no estimate of how much that might cost.
The budget also contains plans to expand the First Nations Land Management Act, legislation that gives First Nations more control over reserve lands and makes it easier to attract investment for economic development projects on reserves. The Liberals are proposing $ 144 million over five years to add 50 more First Nations to the land management regime, up from 136 currently.
The expenditures represent the latest step in the Liberals’ efforts to build a new relationship with Indigenous peoples. In August, Trudeau announced that Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada would split into two departments, with Jane Philpott named minister of Indigenous Services, including child welfare, health and infrastructure, and Bennett focusing on treaty negotiations and the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the government.
THESE ARE INVESTMENTS, BUT THE NEEDS ARE GREAT.