Government defends aboriginal spending

Indigenous affairs minister, PM say $8.4B budget promise first step to lasting changes

OTTAWA— The Liberal government believes improving the lives of aboriginal peoples in Canada goes far beyond money, which is why some of the $8.4 billion promised in the budget will have a slower start.

“We have to make sure that it is done right and that means building the proper partnership with indigenous communities that haven’t led on this,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday in an interview with CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning.

“They’ve been told by the government, ‘This is the money you have and this is how you are going to spend it.’ We need to renew that relationship in a respectful way,” said Trudeau.

The goal of lifting First Nations, Métis and Inuit people and their communities out of poverty — including bringing an end to the Third World conditions that placed some reserves under boil-water advisories for years — and giving them a stronger role in shaping their destinies was a major theme of the first budget introduced by the Liberal government.

The amount of new spending is unprecedented — $3.4 billion more than the defunct 2005 Kelowna Accord promised over the same fiveyear time span — but some of it begins slowly, with a significant amount slated for a second mandate that might never come.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said that was by design.

“It is being ramped up,” Bennett told the Star on Wednesday.

“We believe that we are doing everything we can to build capacity and be able to create the infrastructure, the training, the graduation of people that will eventually run these programs,” she said.

Bennett pointed out that the money for schools and other infrastruc- ture will flow more quickly, as there are “shovel-ready” projects just waiting for adequate funding.

“This is without a doubt a first step, but we are doing it in a way that I think we will be able to make sure that we are successful,” she said.

That was also the reason she gave in response to criticism from aboriginal child welfare advocate Cindy Blackstock, who spearheaded a successful complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal alleging the federal government was discriminating against First Nations children by underfunding child welfare services on reserves. The federal budget commits $634.5 million over five years to strengthen the First Nations Child and Family Services program, but Blackstock pointed out that includes just $71 million this year — well below the $200 million she believes is necessary to comply with the legally binding decision of the tribunal to end the discriminatory funding practice.

National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations, who was hard-pressed to be critical of a budget that delivered on virtually everything his organization had asked for, acknowledged the level of capacity — and ability to put this influx of new resources to effective use — varies from community to community.

“This is one budget and we are not going to solve all of these problems in one year. We are working towards a long-term, sustainable, predictable relationship with the Crown that is based on needs, because that has never been in place,” Bellegarde said of the new fiscal relationship that will replace the 2-per-cent cap on annual increases to on-reserve program spending that was lifted.

Bennett said the funding will come with accountability mechanisms and measurable outcomes — the global indicators for monitoring progress in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals is one model she suggested — but stressed the new relationship will go far beyond money and metrics.