Feds rebuked for child-welfare delay

OTTAWA — The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is pushing back the deadline for Ottawa to get rolling on compensation for First Nations children and their families over child-welfare services, but the delay comes with a sharp rebuke for the federal government.

The tribunal has ordered the federal government to pay what likely totals billions of dollars for harm done by chronic underfunding of those services for children on reserves, including families’ being split up needlessly.

Now the rights tribunal has sent a letter to the government, as well as the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and other parties involved in the case, saying they have until Jan. 29 to figure out a way forward on the compensation package. That includes which families should be compensated and how and when the money should be given.

The original deadline was

Dec. 10. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said the deadline is impossible to meet because the 40-day federal election campaign left the government in caretaker mode for much of the negotiation period set in the September ruling.

But the tribunal makes clear it is revising the date against its will because the government has done nothing to work with the other two parties to meet the deadline.

“The panel feels ‘cornered’ and does not appreciate it,” reads the letter from tribunal registry officer Judy Dubois.

The tribunal ruled in September that Ottawa was to pay $40,000 to each First Nations child who had been inappropriately placed in foster care because of the federal government’s continued underfunding of the child-welfare system for children living on reserves.

The same compensation was to go to parents or grandparents whose children or grandchildren were taken away.