Stop tragic suicides on reserves

The news that two 12-year-old girls took their own lives on the northern Ontario First Nations reserve of Wapekeka last week is heartbreaking. But tragically, the horror of children taking their own lives is all too common - sometimes even epidemic - on remote reserves across the country.

In the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, alone, which includes Wapekeka, 70 children aged 10 to 14 and 200 young people between the ages of 15 to 20 took their own lives from 1986 to 2016.

Another Nishnawbe nation, Attawapiskat, declared a state of emergency last April after 100 people, including children, tried to kill themselves in a community of only 2,000. Assembly of First Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde says the aboriginal youth suicide rate is five times the national average. Such a crisis would never be tolerated if it was happening in a white, non-indigenous community. It must be stopped.

No wonder, then, that Nishnawbe Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler is asking for a national suicide strategy to combat the epidemic.

It’s up to First Nations and Ottawa to work out quickly what such a strategy would look like. But in the longer term, the solution must be to root out the causes of hopelessness that fuel the spikes in child suicide. Among them are poverty, overcrowding, inadequate housing and schooling, a lack of mental health services, the high removal rates of children from their own homes by child welfare authorities, addiction and skyrocketing rates of sexual assault.

In short, Ottawa must address the inequities that children on reserves face to stop the desperation that leads to suicide attempts in the first place.

In fact, that is exactly what the federal government did a year ago when the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal slammed Ottawa for discriminating - for 25 years, no less - against vulnerable First Nations children on reserves. The tribunal found Ottawa was providing less money for child welfare services than would be available off-reserve, although the needs are greater. It ordered Ottawa to “cease the discriminatory practice” and redress the wrong.

At the time, the Trudeau government welcomed the decision and vowed to take action, setting aside $635 million to address the problem. But the money was to be doled out over five years, with the largest amount coming after the next election in 2019.

It’s true that the government cannot solve the desperate situation children on reserves find themselves in overnight. But it has been over a year since the human rights tribunal’s ruling. Ottawa should have a plan in place to at least deal with the lack of child welfare services on First Nations reserves.

It’s not as if money hasn’t been available to help these kids. In the fiscal year 2015-2016, for example, the department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs spent $900 million less than was allocated to it - money that could have gone to child welfare services, housing, schools, or even water treatment plants to improve kids’ lives. As long ago at 2008 the World Health Organization noted that inequities were killing people “on a grand scale,” Blackstock points out. “That’s what we’re seeing with these kids.”

It should not take the suicide of another child on a reserve for the Trudeau government to listen and act. Shame on it if it does.