Ottawa is delaying justice on First Nations child welfare
In September, the Federal Court dismissed Canada’s appeals of two Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders providing public services to all First Nations children off reserve via Jordan’s Principle, and compensating tens of thousands of First Nations families who were separated due to Canada’s discriminatory child-welfare system. First Nations parents are more likely to be accused of maltreatment. First Nations children are 14 times more likely to be separated from their families and put into foster care than other children.
The key factors driving First Nations children into care are sourced in federal public policy. The federal government ran the residential schools, created multi-generational trauma and devastated families.
The schools robbed First Nations of their cultural and community supports for family functioning, and yet the government funds public services for First Nations children at lower levels, creating a perfect storm of heightened trauma without the resources to deal with it.
Child maltreatment is to lifelong health as tobacco is to lung cancer. Maltreatment overwhelms the child’s stress management systems. Some stress is inevitable as part of day-today living, even for babies and young children; it can promote the ability to develop strengths and to cope.
Harmful stress is different. It can be due to traumatic events. It can also be chronic, a constant pressure on the child’s mind, brain, heart and every other organ in the body: toxic stress. It is every day, unrelenting pressure that keeps the child on edge, watching for the next deprivation, the next demand, the next attack — be it physical or psychological. Those children are marked for their lifespans.
These stresses put them into a constant lifelong vigil, looking for threats and guarding their survival.
When parents and families are stressed, that is transmitted to infants and young children. When funding is not available for health, for healthy foods, for housing, for education, for recreation, families are stressed.
When parents struggle with poverty, addictions, and physical and mental-health problems, high levels of stress are passed on to their children.
We can measure the effects of traumatic and toxic stress on the chromosomes of children before they are three years old. Infants and toddlers who are subject to adverse childhood experiences are more likely to have problems with physical and mental health, addictions, learning and relationships. They have higher rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiac disease and cancer. They live shorter lives.
When they become parents, they are more likely to pass on the feeling of being stressed to their own children, even before they are born. The federal government’s discriminatory treatment of First Nations children and families creates this kind of stress.
Indigenous communities in Canada are fighting for survival, and many are winning. Increasing numbers of Indigenous children, youth and adults are finding ways to succeed in their own lives, by their own standards.
Colonial practices continue to disrupt their communities and deprive them of their own culture; their own structures for governance, health and education; and community support for family life and parenting. Scientific evidence has linked Canada’s discriminatory provision of public services to the harms and deaths of children for over 100 years.
The government has admitted its non-compliance with the tribunal’s orders to end its discriminatory service provision has been linked to the deaths of at least three children.
The government’s appeals create further delay and are inhumane. They focus on the “right” questions: whose jurisdiction, what regulations, what are the implications and so on. They ignore the harms to children and families that are happening now.
Justice Paul Favel of the Federal Court dismissed Ottawa’s jurisdictional arguments and upheld the tribunal’s decisions. Canada is still considering an appeal, which will further delay justice for these children and their families.
Unlike politicians, First Nations children and families cannot take a vacation from the injustice governments foist on them. For these children, delay can mean the difference between illness or health and even life or death. Delay means lost opportunities and lost capacities for education, work and family life.
These are human rights. These are rights we fight to keep for our kids. The courts have spoken — the government has lost, and yet justice is still being denied to Indigenous children and adults. The delay is unconscionable.