Toronto, Canada Canada announced on Tuesday two agreements totaling $31.5 billion (40 billion Canadian dollars) to compensate First Nations children who were taken from their families and put into the child welfare system and to reform the system that removed them and deprived them of services they needed.
The agreements include $15.7 billion (20 billion Canadian dollars) for potentially hundreds of thousands of First Nations children who were removed from their families, who did not get services or who experienced delays in receiving services. Another $15.7 billion is to reform the system over the next five years.
The agreements come almost 15 years after the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society brought forward a human rights complaint.
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal repeatedly found child and family services discriminated against First Nations children, in part by under-funding services on reserves. Children were then removed from their homes and taken off-reserve to get those services.
Canada admitted its systems were discriminatory but repeatedly fought orders to pay compensation and fund reforms, including an appeal it filed last year
ItsHereItsMe on January 9th, 2022 at 23:18 UTC »
No monetary settlement will solve the ongoing issue that is the challenges First Nations face. Their culture is also recognized and preserved through many, many well funded programs and explicit education during primary and secondary schooling. They get schools, roads, statutory holiday named after them and almost every public institution has some text recognizing unseeded lands.
Bring them back into the rest of society instead of having them on the reserves. Have them attend school with everyone else, work and pay taxes like everyone else, build a career like everyone else.
You can't fix an issue of inequality by paying people off. That just keeps lawyers and chiefs happy and greedy. You fix it by having them treated just like everyone else.
Markorific on January 9th, 2022 at 20:07 UTC »
Obviously there is no resource for information on the current plan to resolve the issues that continue to be " solved" by throwing money at it. Some very spot on comments stated here. Money will not solve the isolation and despair, in this case may further add to issues. Reserves do not seem to be the answer. Monies earmarked for issues preclude the same issues found in isolated Communities in Canada. $280 million for Reservations without medical facilities, nothing for non- Indigenous Communities. Government supplied housing on Reserves are single family bungalows, in urban communities 12-24-36 unit apartment buildings are the solution. Like the Governments of the past whose goal, it appeared, was to remove Indigenous peoples from society and onto reserves to become wards of the state, seems to continue. A settlement if this size will not undo the past. The Government acted when Elders would not intervene and now it is another injustice. Reservations are a breeding ground for despair, offering no positive future. In major Cities, Indigenous students are segregated in schools under the guise it allows for instruction in their culture. You do not see students of European descent being schooled in separate schools for the same reason. Residential schools did not have caucasians attend so schooling was never the reason as we now find out. Reservations simply do not appear to be the answer and all of Canada need to be informed as to issues, past, current and future and welcome Indigenous people as equals and not wards of the state.
Blujeanstraveler on January 9th, 2022 at 16:10 UTC »
The agreements come almost 15 years after the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society brought forward a human rights complaint.
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal repeatedly found child and family services discriminated against First Nations children, in part by under-funding services on reserves. Children were then removed from their homes and taken off-reserve to get those services.