Leadership of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation signs an agreement with Minister Carolyn Bennett while AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde looks on. Photo courtesy Minister Carolyn Bennett, Facebook.
The federal government says a Friday announcement of additional funding to support child and family services on a number of remote Northern Ontario First Nations is a step toward fulfilling a ruling by the Human Rights Tribunal.
The tribunal ruled last year says the federal government was discriminating against against 163,000 First Nations children and their families by providing flawed and inequitable child welfare services.
Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said the real goal is to substantially reduce the number of Aboriginal children in government care.
“The real report card on this is the number of kids in care. And so if you’ve got 50 per cent of the kids Indigenous at four per cent of the population, those are the numbers we’ve got to really turn around and keep track of, that this is to us a way of keeping these kids out of the system,” she said.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde was also at the Friday morning news conference.
He congratulated the federal government for starting the process, but urged more action from both the federal and provincial governments.
“What’s happening today with this northern piece here is part of the puzzle, but there’s a bigger puzzle that we must focus on and really is the implementation fully of Jordan’s Principle. And then there’s a key player that’s missing here: provincial governments are missing,” Bellegarde said.
He said thousands of First Nations children are currently in provincial care, which means all systems need to be making progress.