Indigenous child-welfare settlement heads back to human rights tribunal for approval

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A revised multibillion-dollar agreement that adds an extra $3.3-billion in compensation for hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children and families will now go forward for final approval, the second attempt at a settlement after the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal concluded that the original deal was not good enough.

The upgraded agreement was reached through negotiations between Ottawa and the Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. It will deliver $23.3-billion to more than 300,000 Indigenous children and families who the tribunal ruled were discriminated against.

“We are proud to say that this revised agreement is the best possible for our children and families who have been so significantly impacted by Canada’s discrimination,” said Manitoba Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse at a news conference Wednesday.

Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu said the federal government stands behind the agreement.

“We will see it through. We also have to learn from these mistakes and not repeat them,” she said about the need to move forward on the work to improve the system.

It is the largest settlement in Canadian history, Ms. Hajdu said. The package also includes another $20-billion for long-term changes to the current system.

The settlement has its roots in a 2016 human-rights tribunal ruling that concluded Ottawa had discriminated against First Nations children for years by not properly funding child-welfare services on reserves. Three years later, the tribunal ordered the federal government to compensate the children and families.

The federal government, Assembly of First Nations and lawyers for two related class-action lawsuits announced a deal to pay that compensation in January, 2022.

But last October, the tribunal decided against approving the settlement.

Chief Woodhouse said the revised agreement received the unanimous support of the AFN chiefs-in-assembly this week. The AFN chiefs also called for a public apology from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the “representative plaintiffs and the survivors of Canada’s discrimination and those who have passed on to the spirit world.”

“While an apology and compensation will not bring back our children, or make up for the loss of childhoods or connections to family and culture, we have heard from survivors that this will mark an important step on their healing journey,” she said.

The original deal required Ottawa to provide up to $40,000 in compensation to each First Nations child unnecessarily taken into foster care as a result of underfunded government services since 2006. The order also required payments to parents or grandparents.

The newly revised agreement will provide compensation for children and their caregivers who were removed and placed off-reserve in homes not funded by Indigenous Services Canada, caregivers who had multiple children removed and for the estates of some individuals who have passed on.

Chief Woodhouse said the claims process for compensation could start later this year or early next year, depending on if the agreement receives approval by the CHRT and Federal Court, which she said could happen this spring.

B.C. gives Indigenous groups control over child welfare

Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, called the new agreement a good deal overall and said the compensation is about providing some justice for those children and families who were harmed.

But she added that Canada has not yet learned from its “prior destructive behaviour in regards to First Nations, Métis and Inuit children.”

“That’s why it’s so important that we not close a book and exhale right now,” she said. “Our job number one is to make sure that the hurt stops, that Canada does not continue to discriminate against our kids.”

Ashley Bach is one of the plaintiffs in a class-action suit working to put a stop to the discriminatory practices that took her from her home community of Mishkeegogamang First Nation in Northwestern Ontario when she was born, placing her in foster care and then adopted.

She said the compensation is a step toward enabling healing for the harms plaintiffs like herself experienced and suffered.

“We know that missing murdered indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people; youth suicide; and many of the other issues that our communities are facing right now are linked to our experiences of genocide and discrimination including through the child-welfare system and through the discriminatory denial and delay of services that should have been provided,” she said.

“We have a right to grow up with our people, with our lands and languages, in our communities, with our families and our nations and to be proud of ourselves for who we are as First Nations people.”