The Canadian government said that it had reached what it called the largest agreement in Canada’s history. It is paying $31.5 billion to fix the nation’s discriminative child welfare system and compensate the Indigenous people harmed by it.
The agreement in principle forms the base for a final agreement of several suits brought by First Nations groups against the Canadian government. The overall agreement describing 40 billion in Canadian dollars, half will go toward compensating both children, who were unnecessarily removed, and their families and caregivers, over the past three decades.
The rest of the plutocrat will go toward repairing the child weal system for First Nations children who are statistically far more likely to be removed from their families. This is over the coming five years to ensure families are suitable to stay together.
Cindy Woodhouse, the Manitoba regional chief at the Assembly of First Nations, the largest Indigenous organization in Canada said,
“First Nations from across Canada have had to work very hard for this day to provide redress for monumental wrongs against First Nation children, wrongs fueled by an inherently biased system.”
“This wasn’t and isn’t about parenting. It’s in fact about poverty,” she said at a news conference, adding that more than 200,000 children and Indigenous families are affected by the agreement.
The deal is an acknowledgment that the child welfare system was better resourced to remove children than to support them in place. The system was the product of discriminatory policies put in place and enforced over generations against Indigenous communities.
Last year, the discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves at the sites of two of those former schools added emotional urgency to the reckoning, including calls to abandon Canada Day celebrations.
