Will the federal government finally do right by First Nations children?

Jordan You could, I suppose, see this as a story about the federal government eventually, doing the right thing that would require you, however, to stretch the definition of eventually, over at least 15 years, and probably centuries, if we’re being honest.

News Clip 1 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’ve needed them.

News Clip 2 Canada agrees to an unprecedented $40 billion deal to reform the on-reserve child welfare system and compensate those who suffered through it.

Jordan $40 billion is a lot of money. Sure, but there are a lot of victims out there, and a lot of work that needs to be done, and a lot of wrongs to right. So why did governments I say governments because it was more than just the Trudeau liberals fight so hard for 15 years to avoid a settlement with First Nations children, if they are saying now that it’s the right thing to do. Why did they go to court to avoid spending this money, even as they acknowledged publicly, that Canada has committed genocide against indigenous people? What finally forced their hand and now that there’s an agreement in principle, will anyone believe it? Until the check clears?

Jordan I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings, this is the big story. Cindy Blackstock is the executive director of the First Nations child and family caring society. She’s a professor at McGill University School of Social Work. And it was Cindy alongside the Assembly of First Nations, who filed a human rights complaint against Canada in 2007, which eventually led to the agreement we’re discussing today. Hello, Cindy. Hello, could you maybe begin by taking us back to 2007? What led you to file this human rights complaint,

Cindy Blackstock It was a really a last-ditch effort to try and get Canada to end what really amounts to apartheid public services to First Nations kids and to their families. Ever since Confederation, the federal government has had responsibility for funding certain public services for First Nations, and has done so at far lesser levels than everybody else. But of course, at the same time, the Government of Canada was foisting onto First Nations the trauma of residential schools, so they had more trauma, but less services to deal with it. And that was resulting as a 2007, in more First Nations kids being separated from their families, and from at the height of residential schools. We had worked with Canada for the previous decade, documenting these inequalities and in terms of First Nations child welfare, Canada was giving 70 cents on the dollar compared to other kids. And the real deficit was in no supports to keep families together. It acknowledged it and had recommendations to fix it, it just didn’t do it. And that’s why we have to file the case.

Jordan You mentioned that it was a last-ditch effort as you filed it. What were your thoughts on the ultimate outcome?

Cindy Blackstock The ultimate outcome actually, I thought would come quickly. I you know, I think they thought we were bluffing when we said we’d file this human rights case. And when we did, I thought, well, that’ll shock them and show them we’re serious. And they’ll finally do something about this for children. They do do something immediately, and that was to cut all of our funding. And then to start this dialogue about, well, this is the wrong place to be able to discuss this and resolve the tribunal doesn’t have any jurisdiction. They went for nine years on these various motions to try and get the case dismissed. But and eventually, they failed. And we actually went to trial in 2013.

Jordan Before we talk about the trial, and all these years of fighting for what is hopefully a great outcome. You said many times about this case that you are fighting it for the children. Yeah. Tell me about the kids that you’re fighting for right now.

Cindy Blackstock You know, when I think about what the discrimination looks like, on the ground, I think about families like Zach Trout’s, who was a loving father, along with his wife of two children who are in palliative care due to a rare condition. And Canada, capped the number of catheters and feeding tubes for those children. So they would have to make a choice about whether or not you would rewash these things and risk infections to your children, or would you not feed them or toilet them? I think about Jordan River Anderson, a First Nations little boy who for medical reasons how to stay in the hospital for the first two years of his life, but should have gone home at the age of two and would have gone home if he was non-Indigenous and then had support services to keep him there. But he was left in the hospital for over two and a half years, while government of Canada and Manitoba argued over who should pay for those at home services because he’s first nations.

Cindy Blackstock And as a sister Jerleen Anderson said, dies of a broken heart in that hospital never spending a day outside of it because of who he was. I think of children, and young people like Tina Fontaine, who’s family was one of those families with a multi-generational trauma that didn’t get the help, and that she herself ends up in child welfare care, and then sadly, is one of the murdered and missing Indigenous women who’s found dead on the side of the Winnipeg river. And then, even after Canada was found to be responsible for discriminating against these kids in 2016, in order to stop, it chose not to, and in 2018, Canada’s non compliance was linked to the deaths of at least three young girls, the community had heard of a suicide pact among the young girls and called Canada and said, You have to implement the order and give us mental health treatments. So we can we can help these children and help their families. And it sat on someone’s desk, and the children die of suicide months later. And when it comes to public attention, the Government of Canada said, well, that proposal came at an awkward time.

Jordan Maybe you can talk a little bit about the 15 years from from the filing of the complaint, to now. And in particular, I guess I’m, I’m interested in the transition of federal governments, you know, I can only imagine, in this long struggle, you hope for something to change and hope for new people to come to power that will take a different tack. And it seems like that might happen. And then,it just doesn’t.

Cindy Blackstock Yeah, I think that was one of the major mythsof this is.That some political parties with somehow see the light? I mean, this is such an obvious wrong, right, is giving children less because of who they are in public services. Like it’s just such an obvious wrong, I could never wrap my mind around how this is defensible under anybody’s political watch, regardless of party. But there are those who believe that some parties are more friendly to First Nations than others. But what I saw is in common with all the governments over this long history of the case is an instinct to protect themselves to portray themselves indeed, as the victims, I, where are the ones that are being victimized as the government because a tribunal is exceeding its jurisdiction versus thinking about the children that I spoke about? They also would be looking for a lot of thanks for their discrimination, they would they would acknowledge that, yes, quote, more work needs to be done. But they would often say, Well, we’ve done more than anybody else, or we did more than the other party did, or these are good first steps, all of that stuff was a continuing colonial thread throughout all the governments.

Jordan Why do you think that it took so long and faced such pushback from multiple governments? I mean, to your point, I think it’s pretty clear that the wrongdoing is evident. And, you know, yes, I guess when you look at this settlement, you could say that it’s a lot of money. But you could also look at the amount of money our government spends on everything else and say, like, this is actually not a lot of money, compared to all the wrongs that have been done here. So it just kind of staggers me why it would take us so long to get here when this is probably where we were going to end up anyway.

Cindy Blackstock Yeah, and in fact, one of the things 40 billion is a lot of money. But had they solved this, when we first produced that report showing the 70 cents on the dollar, it would have been hundreds of millions of dollars to solve. And it would have there would have been no compensation paid because there would have been no victims, meaning children’s childhoods, and indeed their lives could have been saved. This is really a story about how colonialism can infuse a government to blind it from doing the absolute obvious, right thing. And where the public was really fed a whole pile of propaganda that First Nations we’re actually getting more than everybody else, not less. And so this whole toxic potion in the way that this issue was cast continued to tranche alon and pile up on the hopes and dreams and lives of kids. I think things started to change when well first of all the survivors told their truths and that opened up some of the Canadian psyche and held governments more accountable, but also in the repeated legal losses.

Cindy Blackstock You know, you can fake it you can do a lot of dog-whistling as a government for a long time, especially if the public’s uninformed. But when you bring those dog whistles and you’re tested into courts, they really fall away quite quickly. And what we saw in this case is Canada lost over 30 legal rulings at all levels of court other than the Supreme Court. Where we’ve never been yet, but everyone else, looking at the facts decided against Canada, that and the children in the unmarked graves and how that awoke the Canadian consciousness that created the opportunity for change.

Jordan It was amazing, as I learned more about this case, to be frank, probably late at the same time, as a lot of Canadians did. To hear it put so starkly as we were dealing with this that, you know, the government is taking First Nations kids to court. Yeah, it seems hard to believe that we could have ignored a case like that for so long, until something really shook us up.

Cindy Blackstock Yeah, it is hard. And in fact, we even had the prime minister as recently as this fall, saying that they weren’t taking kids to court. And that was completely at odds with the factual record, you could go onto a webcast in federal court and watch the hearing yourself. I think it really speaks to this idea of really denying accountability for the wrongs that are very close to the same kind of wrongs we saw on residential schools, but happening on our watch, we don’t want to think that, we somehow we want to think we’re better than that. Thar we’ve evolved from that, that that was all quote, dark chapters stuff. But the real opportunity of leadership, it seems to me is to really embrace what hurts on your watch, to really look at the problems in real-time and take the steps necessary to address the injustice is that are being perpetrated right now.

Jordan You’ve been advocating for the rights and for equity for First Nations kids for a lot longer than just 2007. Your track record goes back to the 90s. Here you are now this is I mean, again, it’s it’s a horrible situation. So putting a positive spin on it maybe doesn’t feel right. But this is this is a huge win. How does it feel to be on this stage? Getting these billions of dollars that are so needed?

Cindy Blackstock Well, you know, a lot of people have asked me that, and I’m actually not sure I can say how I feel I, I always measure change at the level of children. So for me, this isn’t the time to pat ourselves on the backer or to celebrate, because these are just words on paper, it’s a non-binding agreement. And governments have over the years said many nice things. But they failed to deliver it. And in fact, they’ve used those nice words to protect themselves to try to deflate public pressure. So what I’ll celebrate is really when I start to see things really change for children and their families, when those support services are there to help them recover from the trauma residential schools, when we start seeing the government seriously tackle instead of making excuses for First Nations children not having water, clean water to drink. And when we’re able to better support the young people who have been in care and those who are in care right now. So that they can recover a bit of what was lost to them.

Jordan In a moment, we’ll get to the non-binding resolution stuff and waiting essentially, for the government’s check to clear. But before we talk about that, I’m interested in the practicalities, you know, there’s $20 billion as compensation and there’s $20 billion for long term reform of the on reserve child welfare system. Where is that money going? What’s it going to buy? What are we going to do with it?

Cindy Blackstock Well, if you first talk about the compensation, and that’s for the families that I was talking about, right, that, in some cases lost their children, in some cases, lost their childhoods. And we have actually been working with First Nations youth in care of themselves, to really not be able to inform the rollout of that compensation. And what they’ve told us is that that money needs to go to things like for example, they could for the first time, get an apartment in a safe neighborhood where they don’t have to be scared anymore, where they could actually get access to kind of post-secondary kind of education, get cultural supports and all the rest of that. And in that compensation, they also said, Look, we need to be careful on how it’s rolled out. It needs to have mental health supports and others because as a result of all this trauma, some people are living in vulnerable conditions. And when you think about $20 billion dollars is an astronomical amount of money. But it’s only that high because so many people were hurt. When we look at the number of children, for example, who could have had a chance to stay safely in their families. Canada to give an equitable support between about 2006 and 2019, we’re talking about 60,000 Kids, that’s more than the population of a good number of Canadian cities. Imagine that number of people being dislocated from their families. So that’s on the compensation side,

Cindy Blackstock On a go forward side. It’s really about, for example, having culturally based services to deal with the multi-generational trauma. It’s about having addiction services, because that trauma, because it’s not been addressed has resulted in some families really struggling with addiction. So let’s get those services in there treatment options for the community and for the family. And for young people in care, we’ve actually talked to them, as I’ve said, and some of the things they’ve said is, we want to have systemic change where young people are supported who have had these experiences. And in some cases, we need services, for people to teach us what we ought to have learned when we were with our families. So basics, like getting a driver’s license, you know, learning how to cook, how do you open up a bank account, those are some of the supports that people need to have, in order to kind of live the lives they wish to have. But this discrimination made much harder to get.

Jordan When you speak about this as a non-binding resolution. It sounds like you’re still holding your breath. And if that’s the case, When will you be able to exhale? Is there a deadline? Is there a point when this becomes official? I’m honestly serious when I say like, when does the cheque clear?

Cindy Blackstock Yeah, exactly. Well, there’s been a lot of NSF checks from the government over the years, I think we’ll see the first indication at that April 1, where they’re supposed to re-roll out these services for these young people in care and those leaving care. Because before what would happen is when you’re 18, and you’ve gone through the child welfare system, you are literally just dumped out on the streets with no support. So this will provide, you know, some support for housing for emotional supports, for cultural supports to bridge them into young adulthood. It’ll also provide more prevention services to help this families get over the multi-generational trauma. That’s the first tranche of money that should be in place on April 1. And then we need to see something else happened to and that is that the government needs to be fixed itself.

Cindy Blackstock This is a repeat offender when it comes to First Nations kids, first with residential schools, then with the 60s goop now with the willful and reckless as the tribunal calls it discrimination that is led to the deaths, of children and unnecessary family separations of 1000s, we can no longer rely on itself to reform itself. We need to have an external ventilation of the government, and then have it retooled in ways that hopefully protect another generation of kids being hurt by the government. That is some of the important work that we have ahead.

Jordan As you’ve had recent discussions with the government around this agreement, do you and you know, I’m not asking you to give them credit that they don’t deserve or anything like that. And like I’d like an honest answer, do you get the sense that anything has changed? Do they finally get it? Did they, do you get the sense that that people in the government of Canada had the same awakening that so many Canadians did, around the time that we began discussing the unmarked graves?

Cindy Blackstock I think some of them did. And I will go back even further. In this case, since I’ve been around in the late in the 90s, kind of dealing with this issue. There were always people who are much more aware of the circumstances and we’re fighting for change within the government. The problem is, is that the system itself, and the political decision-making really was calibrated towards the perpetuation of injustice. And I don’t think that seriously changed. I don’t think that they totally appreciate, for example, the harm that they the government did, they are finally saying, and this is something that actually was a big encouragement for me to even go into this negotiation space. Because I’m very skeptical of those spaces. They’re often news for delay. But when the government finally this fall, acknowledged that the discrimination is ongoing, meaning that’s happening on their watch, I thought that was finally a breath of fresh air. That’s the kind of honesty we need to see, because you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. And up until then they were in denial phase 100%. But I don’t think they fully appreciate what was done. And I don’t think they fully appreciate how colonial the department is, and how colonial the government remains.

Jordan What needs to happen between now and April 1, to make sure the money comes through to make sure you know, you mentioned at the beginning, they would often promise things and then hope that you know it would fall into the new cycle. How do we make sure that this happens?

Cindy Blackstock Well, I think that the encouraging part of this story is that I think we got to this place because the public did not look away. We’ve seen public compassion from Canadians when the headlines come up on, for example, murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, but then the new cycle dies. And Canada continues in justices. What we what we need to do now is they had their press conference, we need to be clear with Canadians that nothing has changed for children, keep watching the government keep the government accountable until it ends its discrimination, not only in this case, but more broad sweeping in terms of ending the inequalities of water and other areas too. That is really essential.

Jordan The last thing I want to ask especially because you spoke so passionately about the people that you’ve been fighting for in the past is what do you want this generation of First Nations children and the next one and the next one after that, to know about their future in Canada, I guess, for better or for worse, with or without this agreement.

Cindy Blackstock You know, one of the children that we’re working with it was standing up for justice said to me that discrimination is when the government doesn’t think you’re worth the money. And ever since confederation, the federal government has acted as if First Nations children weren’t worth the money. I want a generation of First Nations kids to grow up, knowing that they don’t have to spend their childhoods fighting for the basic services that everyone else takes for granted. I want them to not just dream about getting clean water, but to dream about their the contribution that they can make in their communities to walk with their heads held high to be proud of who they are. And to know that, you know, it wasn’t just multi generational trauma that was passed down to them. They have been gifted with something far more powerful. And that’s a multi-generational strength of their communities. And that’s a gift for them. And it’s a gift to the world. That’s what I want to see.

Jordan Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. And please keep in touch over the next few months. And if it feels like they’re trying to back out of it sound the alarm so we can all scream about it.

Cindy Blackstock Oh, I will be here. You know, one time I wrote 10 years ago, I said I felt I was screaming into silence. I no longer feel that way. I feel that there’s somebody listening to the children and that the First Nations kids have an opportunity now to never be alone again. But let’s keep watching. Let’s remain curious. Keep asking questions.

Jordan Cindy. Thanks again.

Cindy Blackstock Thank you very much for having me.

Jordan Cindy Blackstock, one of the reasons the Canadian government is finally reluctantly, stepping up. That was the big story.

Jordan For more from us, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. Find us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. FPN talk to us anytime via email, thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]You can get us in any podcast player you like Apple or Google or Stitcher or Spotify. I will remind you, most of you have already reviewed us on Apple but if you happen to use Spotify, you can do it there too, and we will very much appreciate it. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow