Kids’ case under way

OTTAWA — After a seven-year legal fight waged by aboriginal-children’s advocate Cindy Blackstock and the Assembly of First Nations against the federal government, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is finally hearing a case about the welfare of on-reserve aboriginal children.

The hearings began on February 25, and will run a total of 14 weeks. At issue is whether discrepancies in welfare-services funding between on-reserve aboriginal children, whose care is paid for by the federal government, and off-reserve, which is funded by provincial and territorial governments, is tantamount to discrimination.

The Canadian government has spent about $3 million to try and get the case dismissed. On March 11 it lost yet another court appeal. Meanwhile the hearings had already started.

It all began back in 2007, when the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society filed a human-rights complaint alleging that on-reserve child-welfare services, which are paid for by the federal government, amounted to a good 22 percent less than those for other children. The complaint was filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which referred it to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, over which it has jurisdiction, the following year.

Recent studies have shown that the number of children in foster care is greater than the number of children brought into Canada’s residential schools system during its 150-year period of operation. 

Blackstock says that 30 to 40 percent of the numbers of children in foster care are indigenous, while that segment comprises just five percent of Canada’s child population at most.

This article originally posted April 15, 2013.