[IPSM] what? stealing children is an "offbeat good-news story"?

[Dan ngh!]

System is failing Canada's First Nations


The Gazette

Thursday, January 06, 2005


Here is an offbeat good-news story: An estimated 40 per cent of all Canadian 
children in foster care are aboriginals. While precise totals off reserve 
are hard to determine, it's known that in 2004 more than 8,000 status 
children spent 2,322,100 days in foster care and 324,920 days in 
institutional care - figures that clock in 71.5 per cent higher than the 
average between 1995 and 2001.

While these numbers suggest a problem of chilling proportions, they can also 
be taken as evidence that the authorities charged with safeguarding children 
on Indian reserves are doing their jobs.

Of course, a peaceful and loving home with two original parents is the best 
place for any child. But where such a home does not exist, we should not 
pretend it does. On reserves as elsewhere, the welfare of children is the 
primary, absolute and non-negotiable priority.

Having made this fundamental point, we can again reflect with sadness on the 
social quagmires that many - not all - Canadian reserves are and the 
paralysis that grips thinking on all questions relating to aboriginals. 
Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine is hardwired to blame problems 
on inadequate funds from Ottawa, and did so in response to this revelation, 
which was drawn from internal documents prepared for Indian Affairs Minister 
Andy Scott.

The minister himself has suggested that he will pressure the cabinet for 
more money - more than the eye-popping 2004 Indian and Northern Affairs 
budget of $5.8 billion, which included increases of $226.4 million for land 
claims, $84.4 million for standard programs and services, $80 million for 
water management, $65.9 million for education, $26 million for 
infrastructure renewal and $12 million for parcel-post food service to 
northern communities. These are not line-item numbers, mind you, but 
increases.

To keep raising this ante is folly. Indian and Northern Affairs plays an 
annual starring role in the waste-watching reports of auditor-general Sheila 
Fraser. More money would too likely mean more waste, not to say abuse, at 
some band councils, and further entrenchment of existing problems. If the 
funds so far poured into improving the lot of aboriginals have not created 
households equal to the task of nurturing children - a task fundamental to 
the health and prosperity of any society - then it is the system, not the 
funding, that is inadequate.

There have, in the past, been outbreaks of originality. Some of us remember 
the White Paper of 1969, which called for the abolition of Indian status. 
For better or worse, the Constitution Act of 1982 reaffirmed existing treaty 
rights, without quite shutting the door on reform. Former Indian

Affairs Minister Robert Nault tried to introduce real change two years ago 
with his First Nations Governance Act, to the predictable outrage of some 
leaders who stood to lose their privileged positions.

Prime Minister Paul Martin, always quick to pass the popularity pipe, killed 
that bill. His better idea? More money. As these foster-care numbers show, 
more money does not buy results. The Martin Liberals - and all Canadians - 
need to rethink our policy on aboriginals.

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005

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