With the federal budget coming down in a couple of weeks, aboriginal groups are anxiously waiting to see if the new Liberal government will live up to its promise to increase funding.
The Fraser Institute is also examining the issue, and has released a new study taking a historical look at the numbers. The results are quite surprising, showing a dramatic rise over six decades.
The conclusion of the report, says “despite an 800% increase in federal funding since 1950, education and employment outcomes in many aboriginal communities remain dire.”
The study’s author, Ravina Bains, says unemployment rates of 20 per cent and high school graduation rates of only about 40 per cent are common on many Canadian First Nations. She says more money is not necessarily the solution.
”There are a couple of different policy initiatives and policy ideas that have helped move certain communities out of poverty and into prosperity,” she says. “One of those is education reforms. So we have highlighted many of those across the country including Whitecap Dakota that have partnered with local school boards, with provincial curriculums to increase the graduation rates on reserves.”
Bains says an encouraging trend in the study finds First Nations generated $3.3 billion in own source revenue in 2014 – a lot of it in partnership deals with resource companies, or their own business ventures. She says that trend is part of what is going on in Saskatchewan.
“So Saskatchewan is doing a lot of things that are right, so what this report demonstrates is even when you take out government transfers, these communities in Saskatchewan are able to generate more than $300 million a year in own reserve revenue, so it’s definitely a place that people should be watching.”
Taking a closer look at the numbers, the average per capita federal funding for First Nations people was about $8,500 in 2014; that’s an increase of more than 800 per cent since 1950.
The average per capita funding for other Canadians was about $7,300; an increase of about 400 per cent during the same period.
Meantime, the Assembly of First Nations says on-reserve students get about 30 per cent less in funding than their provincial counterparts. The AFN hopes to see that funding gap closed after the March 22 budget.