Time for Ottawa to deliver on Indigenous issues

Jane Philpott has a lengthy to-do list for 2018.

The federal Indigenous services minister has ambitious plans when it comes to ending water quality advisories in First Nations communities, closing the gap on Indigenous child welfare spending and reducing what she calls an “abhorrent” number of Indigenous children living in foster care.

One thing not on her list for the coming year is hearing the word “no” from anyone in her department’s bureaucracy.

This coming year will be a test of a minister who, echoing a speaker at a conference last month, said she wanted to be part of the “let’s get s--done” attitude on Indigenous files.

Philpott is a key minister in a government often accused of overpromising and under-delivering on Indigenous reconciliation, showing a fondness for the symbolic over the substantive.

She didn’t get that memo. She’s not just promising; she’s guaranteeing.

As we spoke this week, Philpott sat at a desk with six multi-colourcoded spread sheets in front of her, detailing all 68 long-term drinking water advisories in communities directly funded by her department, with the dates the order went into effect, timelines for ending them and potential barriers in the way.

There are a total of 100 such advisories in First Nations communities including privately operated systems.

The federally funded systems will be cleared of all advisories by March 2021, she insists, and she is looking for qualified water operators who will stay in the communities.

The coming year will yield much progress, Philpott says, because in many communities construction has been completed and testing is underway.

“I met with my department on this (Monday),’’ she told me.

“I made it extremely clear that failure to meet this target is not an option.”

She is prepared to provide detailed timelines to the media in late January.

She has called the rate of Indigenous child apprehension a humanitarian disaster. Indigenous children 14 and under make up 7.7 per cent of all children in this country, according to the 2016 census. But they represent 52 per cent of children in foster care.

In Manitoba the rate can be as high as 90 per cent, but the rate is any- where from 60 to 80 per cent across western Canada.

“It is positively abhorrent. There is clearly something very wrong,’’ Philpott told me.

Babies and children continue to be taken from their homes and their culture, but she says that is not a solution. The system needs to solve the problems of poverty and substandard housing.

Rather than take a child from a home deemed overheated, buy an air conditioner; if the home is deemed substandard, provide better housing.

Instead of putting the child in foster care, deal with the underlying problem that may be endangering the child’s welfare.

Poverty should never be a reason to take a child from its home, she says.

She has convened an emergency meeting on this issue early in the new year, bringing Indigenous leaders, the provinces and territories and child-services experts to the table.

Philpott finally withdrew a judicial review of a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling that found the funding gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous child welfare in this country was discriminatory. The cost of closing the gap has been pegged at up to $250 million per year. Philpott’s officials could come back from consultations with a higher figure.

No matter. Philpott says that money will be in the 2018 budget.

To be sure, there are other priorities on her desk.

Life expectancy for First Nations and Inuit, is, on average, a decade shorter than non-Indigenous Canadians.

Diabetes rates are four times higher for the Indigenous population, the likelihood of dying from an opioid overdose is five times higher.

A push to have First Nations control First Nations education is showing promise.

But it is also up to Philpott to light a spark in a bureaucracy that has for years worked to thwart Indigenous progress, launching court challenges and slowing programs in the name of protecting the taxpayer.

Bureaucracies are not monolithic, as Philpott points out. They are composed of people who care and understand 150 years of injustices.

They smile, she says, when they are told to find a way to deliver a “yes,” instead of falling back on an automatic “no.”

Perhaps, but this is a big ship to turn in turbulent waters. The Liberal government cannot endure another year of dashed expectations on reconciliation.

“We have to deliver,’’ Philpott told me. “The days of denial are behind us.”

Time to get s--- done. Tim Harper writes on national affairs. tjharper77@gmail.com, Twitter: @nutgraf1

Life expectancy for First Nations and Inuit, is, on average, a decade shorter than for non-Indigenous Canadians