Niagara Falls Review e-edition

Indigenous child-welfare case begins

Ottawa resists pressure to drop the issue in the name of reconciliation

TERESA WRIGHT

Ottawa’s controversial legal challenge of a pair of rulings involving First Nations children torn from their families by a chronically underfunded child-care system heads to Federal Court Monday, despite repeated calls for the cases to be dropped in the name of reconciliation.

The federal government is poised to argue against two Canadian Human Rights Tribunal rulings. The first awarded what amounts to billions of dollars in compensation to First Nations children inappropriately taken away from their parents after 2006, and to their parents and grandparents.

The second ruling expands Jordan’s Principle to children who live off-reserve or who are not registered under the Indian Act.

Jordan’s Principle is a rule stating that when different levels of government disagree about who’s responsible for providing services to First Nations children, they must help a child in need first and argue over the bills later. It was named after Jordan River Anderson, a boy from Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba who died in hospital while the Manitoba and federal governments argued for five years over which should pay for his care in a special home.

Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, which filed the original human rights complaint over 14 years ago, says the case is fundamentally about addressing harms suffered by Indigenous children who have faced systemic discrimination by Canadian child welfare policies and practices.

But even while Ottawa is moving forward with its legal battle challenging the tribunal’s rulings, Liberal cabinet ministers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continue to insist they are in favour of compensating Indigenous children who were harmed by what they call a “broken child-care system.”

Ottawa instead wants to compensate these children and their families through a settlement in two separate but related class-action lawsuits.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller says such a settlement would pay out larger sums than the tribunal’s maximum $40,000 award for each child, and would be able to offer compensation more proportional to harms they endured.

“We do not deny that harm was suffered. We do not deny that the systemic discrimination exists,” Miller told reporters last week.

“But it is very difficult to look at the CHRT tribunal, which can only award a maximum amount of $40,000. And it did so, we argued, in a way that wasn’t proportional, in a vacuum. And that is the subject matter that will be discussed principally in the court proceedings next week.”

There has been a “convenient narrative” that government is dragging First Nations kids to court and refusing to pay, Miller says. But he argues this is simply not the case.

CANADA & WORLD

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2021-06-14T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-14T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://niagarafallsreview.pressreader.com/article/281728387465342

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