Grand Chief happy with $40B child welfare compensation agreement
Agreement-in-principle would provide $40 billion compensation
Grand Chief Joel Abram of the Association Of Iroquois and Allied Indians is satisfied with the agreement-in-principle reached with the federal government to compensate children affected by the "discriminatory underfunding" of First Nations Child and Family Services.
"It's not perfect, but it's a good start," said Abram, who was one of the lead political negotiators for Ontario on the matter. If approved, the agreement would set aside $20 billion for children, parents and caregivers affected by this discrimination from April 1, 1991, to Mar. 31, 2022.
About $20 billion will also be used to reform the child and family services program for First Nations children to avoid this from happening in the future.
"We can begin to address the systemic racism and discrimination and the barriers faced by First Nations families and children for many generations," said Abram.
He explained that this underfunding has harmed the children it was supposed to serve.
"It varies from First Nation to First Nation," he said, "but a lot of it comes down to access to primary health care services, to mental health services," he said.
Abram believes the system has "more or less been a continuation of the residential school system that's been carried over to child welfare."
"I think it would suffice to say there's more children in care than there were children in residential schools almost," he said. "Those numbers are huge."
He believes that one way to bring those numbers down is having a focus on healthy families.
"At the end of the day, we want to make sure that our kids and our family are happy, they're healthy and that they're supported and to really focus on prevention and to reduce the overrepresentation of First Nations children in the child welfare system."
He sees this as "a big step on that road to recovery."
The next step is to come up with a final agreement in the following months based on the agreement in principle, sorting out the details surrounding the First Nations Child and Family Services program reform and the compensation packages.
This agreement came out of talks with the federal government and the Chiefs of Ontario, the Assembly of First Nations, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, counsel for the Moushoom and Trout class actions, and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.