All governments need to respect Indigenous rights

Last week the Parliamentary Budget Office said it could cost the federal government up to $15 billion to compensate First Nations families and children who were denied services by the child welfare system. This would also include denials or delays of essential services.

This failure for First Nations families to receive proper health and social services is defined under the terms of Jordan's Principle, which is basically a requirement of the federal and provincial governments to provide treatment that would be available to any other Canadian person. All too often governments deny services to First Nations people based on whether it falls under federal or provincial jurisdiction.

The term Jordan's Principle gets its name from Jordan River Anderson, a First Nations child from Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba. He was born in 1999 with complex medical needs and spent five years in hospital while the Province of Manitoba and the federal government argued over who should pay for his at-home care. The province argued that he was a status Indian and therefore a federal responsibility. The federal government took the position that he was not living on a reserve and was therefore a provincial responsibility. Jordan died in the hospital at the age of five, never having spent a day in his family home.

Jordan's Principle is a child-first principle calling on the government of first contact to ensure First Nations children can access public services on the same terms as other children.

In December 2007, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion in support of Jordan's Principle. But the good intentions from the elected body simply formed more paving stones for our road to hell.

Canada's Indigenous Peoples have always been subject to the colonial rule of the Department of Indigenous Affairs and in this case, it made only a weak attempt to follow through on the motion from the House of Commons.

The result was that the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society along with the Assembly of First Nations took the Department of Indigenous Affairs to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. In 2016, the tribunal ordered the department to stop applying a narrow discriminatory definition of Jordan's Principle and implement the spirit and intent for which the principle stood.

The government continued to apply a narrow definition and First Nations children were unnecessarily denied services that other Canadians take for granted. The tribunal forced the issue and laid a number of non-compliance charges against the department, but it continued to drag its feet.

Finally, in 2019, the human rights tribunal found that the government was “wilfully and recklessly” discriminating against First Nations children and ordered the government to pay compensation to the children and families that had been harmed by the department's callous handling of this issue. The compensation amount could go as high as $40,000 per individual.

In December, the federal government appealed the ruling and later in January the Parliamentary Budget Office made its announcement that the settlement could be as high as $15 billion. It's passing strange that this announcement came as the government prepares its appeal to the order.

In any event, once again we are in a battle with the federal government to have our basic rights recognized and respected.

In Canada, we have a situation where different political parties can hold office and make declarations of support and commitment to develop a new approach to Indigenous People. But the bureaucracy of the Department of Indigenous Affairs continues with its old colonial mindset.

The culture of Indigenous Affairs is to push back against change, deny treaty and Aboriginal rights and act as a law unto themselves. The result has been a long string of abuses that have cost us lives and futures and are now costing the public purse in the form of compensation and ruined lives.

Compensation for residential schools, day schools, the Sixties Scoop and now Jordan's Principle is costing millions and, in the end, no amount of compensation can repay our people who have been victimized by the system.

Governments may come and go, but the colonial bureaucracy remains firmly in place and continues to deny progress.