$40B deal compensates Indigenous children for ‘discriminatory practices’

OTTAWA-The federal government hopes to settle long-standing concerns over what it admits is discriminatory underfunding of social services for Indigenous children with a $40-billion package to compensate impacted kids and improve programs over the next five years.

The agreements-in-principle unveiled Tuesday would see $20 billion in compensation for an estimated 115,000 First Nations children - as well as their parents and caregivers - taken from their homes and placed in foster care between April 1991 and March of this year, according to government officials, Indigenous leaders and lawyers involved in the deal who spoke at a news conference Tuesday.

Tens of thousands more children who were denied an essential service or did not receive one because of arguments over which level of government should pay will also receive compensation from this pool of money, according to the agreements-in-principle.

On top of the compensation, the government is pledging approximately" $20 billion over the next five years to improve child and family services for First Nations.

The agreements are a result of negotiations that concluded on New Year's Eve, just hours before the government's self-imposed deadline for a deal, a spokesperson for Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu confirmed. The talks started in the fall after a Federal Court judge dismissed the government's appeal of a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order to compensate First Nations children and their caregivers $40,000 each for harms suffered through what it called racial discrimination through underfunded services.

The agreements-in-principle - which still need to be approved in Federal Court - would make $40,000 the minimum compensation and allow those who suffered more grievous harms to receive more money.

Cindy Woodhouse, who took part in the talks as Manitoba regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations, called it a historic settlement" to redress monumental wrongs" against Indigenous children who are massively overrepresented in foster care across the country.

Census data from 2016 showed Indigenous children under 14 - who made up 7.7 per cent of the child population - accounted for 52 per cent of kids in foster care. Some advocates see the situation as a disturbing echo of Canada's residential school system that the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission deemed a cultural genocide."

Every day for decades, First Nations children - some even newborns - have been ripped from their families and communities, and many denied medical services and other supports when they needed them, all at the hands of a federal child welfare program that should have protected them," Woodhouse said.

Now that agreements-in-principle have been reached, Hajdu said the goal is to continue talks to reach a final settlement as soon as possible that includes details on compensation and future funding to end what she called the federal government's discriminatory practices."

No amount of compensation can make up for the traumas that First Nations children, families and communities have experienced," Hajdu told reporters Tuesday.

Those losses are not reversible, but I believe that healing is possible."

Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society who has been involved in the human rights case since it began in 2007, said at her own press conference Tuesday that the agreements were still just words on paper" and that her organization would push to ensure there is fair compensation for impacted children and families.

Compensation should not be determined by victim interviews about potential traumas, but should rely on metrics like a child's age when they were taken from their homes, as well as the number of homes they lived in while in foster care, Blackstock said.

The government is also still appealing the human rights tribunal compensation order, though Justice Minister David Lametti said Tuesday that it will drop that legal action when a final settlement deal is reached outside of court.

We owe it to the survivors and the youth in care and the families that were told their kid wasn't worth the money, to see this thing through to completion," Blackstock said.

The human rights tribunal ruled in 2016 that Ottawa's underfunding of social services for First Nations kids amounted to racial discrimination.

The Liberal government later increased funding to these programs and passed a law allowing Indigenous nations to take responsibility for child welfare services, but the tribunal also repeatedly ruled the government had not complied with its 2016 ruling. In 2019, it ordered the federal government to pay $40,000 to impacted children and their parents or grandparents - the maximum amount the tribunal can order by law.

The government agreed compensation was warranted, but nonetheless applied for a judicial review of the tribunal's order to do so. The government argued the tribunal settlement was too narrow because it only applied to affected children and families since 2006, and that the flat $40,000 compensation rate didn't account for degrees of harm or allow for individual claims to be negotiated.

Meanwhile, the government engaged in talks to settle class action lawsuits which sought damages for children harmed by these same social services since 1991.

Then, last September, the Federal Court dismissed Ottawa's appeal of the human rights tribunal decision, prompting the government to start negotiations mediated by former senator Murray Sinclair this fall. Those talks resulted in the $40-billion agreements-in-principle unveiled Tuesday.

Asked whether public shame" played a role in the government's decision to pursue a settlement after fighting the human rights complaint for so many years, Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller said if the truth causes shame, then so be it."

He added: There's plenty of shame to share, but it's been on the backs of Indigenous children that haven't had a fair shot because of our practices."

Alex Ballingall is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @aballinga