‘WE CAN’T ANSWER’ BASIC QUESTIONS.

She said the government has approved more than 29,000 requests received under Jordan’s Principle since 2016, thanks to an injection of $383 million in federal funding, including for physiotherapy and mental health support.

But where Philpott sees a win, others see a government dragging its feet. In January 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found the federal government was discriminating against First Nations children by failing to provide them with the same welfare services given to children living off-reserve, and ordered the government to fully implement Jordan’s Principle, which extends to health, education and child welfare.

Since then, the tribunal has slapped the government with three non-compliance orders, most recently in May. The government initially planned to go to court over the latest compliance order, but withdrew its case last month.

Earlier this month, Philpott said more money for child welfare would be forthcoming in Budget 2018, but didn’t provide any numbers. She has also called an emergency meeting with the provinces on Indigenous child welfare in January.

“It shouldn’t take court orders to get the government to treat First Nations children fairly, in ways that keep them safely with their families,” Blackstock said. “But they didn’t take the action needed. … So that to me is very disappointing.”

The calls to action also demand that the government eliminate the funding discrepancy between students attending schools on- and off-reserve. According to Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Budget 2016 included $2.6 billion for on-reserve education over five years. But last December, Canada’s budget watchdog reported that on-reserve schools could still be underfunded by $665 million in 2016-17.

Blackstock said she hoped the government would announce a plan to close the gap after the report came out. “But no announcement has been forthcoming.”

The TRC report also calls for annual reports on the number of Indigenous children in care, the education funding gap, and health outcomes in Indigenous communities. To date, that’s largely not happening.

“I can’t sit here today and tell you with any accuracy how many First Nations children are in care, or how many children are in care in general,” said Blackstock. “Some of these basic questions that you need to inform policy, we can’t answer.”

According to Statistics Canada census data, Indigenous children under four made up 7.7 per cent of all children and 51.2 per cent of children in foster care in 2016. In 2011, there were more than 14,000 Indigenous children under 14 living in foster care.

But Philpott said the federal government has to work with Indigenous communities to figure out how to collect more precise data. “We’re not in a world where our government should be dictating to communities that have the right to self-determination what they need to be reporting and how,” she said.

There are many other calls to action that have yet to be addressed. There is, as yet, no National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, nor is there a national monument to residential schools in Ottawa. Registries of students who died at residential school and of the cemeteries where they’re buried have yet to materialize. There’s also no national research program to advance understanding of reconciliation.

Cathy McLeod, the Conservative critic for Indigenous affairs, said her major concern is that implementation of the calls to action to date has been “shrouded in secrecy,” without proper analysis or costing.

“They seem to be scattered, there doesn’t seem to be a logical process,” she said. “I think the execution and the transparency for both the Indigenous community and Canadians is quite puzzling, to be honest.”

‘Reconciliation means not saying sorry twice’

When it seeks re-election in a little less than two years, the Liberal government will have to answer for its record on the TRC calls to action. But it’s unclear how success or failure will be measured.

“People often measure progress in terms of whether boxes have been checked,” Philpott said. “But the work that we’re doing is much more than ticking off boxes.”

Still, that’s basically what the calls to action are — a list of boxes to be ticked, to help right past wrongs. And at the moment, said Obed, there aren’t a lot of check marks. “There are many things that are in flux, that have been started, but there are very few things that we can all champion together and say, ‘That was a job well done on this particular item,’” he said.

Where to go from here, then? That depends on who you ask. “We have to lobby harder every federal budget,” Bellegarde said. “That’s how you bring about policy and legislative change.”

He also said the coming Indigenous languages act is vital. “We never want to ever say that these residential schools won,” he said. “So we can still speak Mohawk and Cree and Mi’kmaq and Dene and Blackfoot and Ojibwe. We need those languages, it’s part of who we are.”

Obed said the government must come up with a concrete action plan. Moran said the national council must be set up to provide oversight. Blackstock said that, above all, the government must properly fund welfare services for Indigenous children, to prevent more children growing up without their parents.

“And the reason I’m focusing on children is that, for me, reconciliation means not saying ‘Sorry’ twice,” she said. “You cannot lament the past by perpetrating those same wrongs in the present.”