It was inevitable the proposed $47.8-billion deal — struck by the federal government, the Chiefs of Ontario, Nishnawbe Aski Nation and the Assembly of First Nations — to rectify the underfunding of on-reserve child welfare services, would be rejected.
If passed, it would have been the largest financial compensation and program allocation for First Nations in Canadian history, to address the needless suffering and apprehension of tens of thousands of children.
On Thursday, however, in a vote of 267-147, the majority of chiefs in Canada rejected the deal in a special meeting of the assembly in Calgary.
SEAN KILPATRCIK / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES
The leader of this fight has been Gitxsan child advocate Cindy Blackstock and the organization she founded in 1999, the First Nations Caring Society.
The Agreement on Long-Term Reform of the First Nations Child and Family Services Program was a deal forced by multiple decisions over two decades by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. After it ruled the experience of on-reserve First Nations children was discriminatory, it ordered the federal government to fix the system and compensate families and children forced into foster care.
The leader of this fight has been Gitxsan child advocate Cindy Blackstock and the organization she founded in 1999, the First Nations Caring Society.
If you don’t know Blackstock, look her up.
For decades she has made it her singular career goal to fight for marginalized First Nations children and ensure they are protected from violence and the complicated legacies of residential schools and Canada’s mistreatment of First Nations.
In 2007, Blackstock and her caring society joined with the assembly to file a discrimination suit on behalf of children at the tribunal. After multiple favourable decisions, which Canada has ignored, in 2023 public pressure forced the federal government to begin to negotiate how to compensate victims and adequately fund on-reserve child welfare.
This is where the problems started.
After leading the fight for more than two decades, Blackstock was left out of negotiations by the assembly, led by National Chief Cindy Woodhouse — newly elected after accusations she had orchestrated the removal of her predecessor, Roseanne Archibald.
Then, the assembly negotiating team became dominated by chiefs from Ontario, even though the majority of First Nations citizens live in the four western provinces.
In May, the deal was presented to the assembly as a finished document with little space for amendments.
The whole thing, frankly, was doomed for that reason alone, but then there’s the actual deal itself.
The agreement fulfils many of the orders recommended by the tribunal — to compensate victims $40,000 each and fund child-welfare systems properly — but the provisions to fix on-reserve child welfare involves money promised over a 10-year span, with only the first year under a Trudeau government and the rest allocated by future governments.
There were no commitments to expand or continue the agreement if further discrimination of children by Canada took place.
The agreement would also be administered by a “confidential committee” run by the assembly that would determine how more than 600 First Nations child-welfare systems would be funded at an ethical standard.
That would put a lot of discretionary power into the hands of a political group that makes political decisions and, potentially, left out many children and families.
There were other concerns, including that compensation would not be adequately delivered, the agreement violates Indigenous rights and has a weak dispute-resolution process.
Days before the assembly vote in Calgary, Blackstock and her caring society published a list of more than 20 “required” amendments before the agreement could be supported.
That set the stage for two days of conflict at the assembly meetings along geographical, political and ideological lines.
The “yes” side consisted of mostly chiefs from Central Canada and supporters of the national chief who viewed the agreement as an opportunity to get what they can on a long-standing issue with a friendly — but dying — Liberal government.
The “no” side consisted of mostly chiefs from Eastern and Western Canada, many of whom viewed the agreement as falling short of Blackstock’s vision and refused to be pressured into accepting a faulty, incomplete deal.
Now it’s back to the drawing board, while First Nations children and their families wait to see if they will be compensated and their needs addressed.
Multiple rulings that have demanded Canada act to fix on-reserve First Nations child welfare will ensure the issue won’t go away. But, perhaps more than ever, it’s evident the assembly, in its current state, is not the instrument to get a deal done.
At this point, the assembly and Woodhouse have played their cards and lost.
There appears to be only one person left who can save the agreement.
It’s the same person who started it all — Cindy Blackstock.
Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist
Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.
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