A proposed $47.8 billion settlement agreement for a 10-year reform of the country’s First Nations child and family services was rejected last week, after 267 chiefs and agents voted against during a special assembly of chiefs organized by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). ).

The final deal proposed by Canada was rejected in a vote in Calgary on Thursday, October 17, which saw 147 votes in favor and one abstention. It comes after two tense days of heated debate over the proposal.

The general director of Shakotiia’takehnhas Community Services (KSCS) of Kahnawake, Derek Montour, said he was relieved to see the result of the vote.

“We support the motion not to move forward with the agreement,” said Montour, who was following the meeting remotely. “Now go back to the table.” Much progress has been made so far on the agreement, but there is more we can do on behalf of our children.

He said the proposed agreement did not go far enough to ensure Canada’s First Nations Child and Family Services Program would have enough funding to operate over the long term.

“Our interest is in ensuring long-term viability and having a child and family services program that can adequately fund the services we envision,” Montour said. “In theory, this is what the agreement does, but it is also missing some key elements. »

Capital funding for new building construction was not part of the deal, he said, and would have prevented organizations like KSCS from being able to expand their services.

“You can’t increase services without having a place to put staff,” Montour said. “No infrastructure resources have been reserved.”

The chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) attended the assembly in Calgary. The band council, however, refrained from participating in the vote, choosing instead to simply observe.

“The AFN does not speak on behalf of the Mohawks of Kahnawake,” said Boyer, who sits in the Health portfolio. “These are our children, and we cannot let just anyone speak on behalf of our children and our community.”

He also said he was satisfied with the outcome of the votes, believing that the agreement did not go far enough to challenge the status quo.

Many people also expressed concerns about the lack of coast-to-coast representation among those who would have been charged with overseeing reform of the program, he said. If the agreement had been approved, this oversight would have been entrusted to the AFN, the Chiefs of Ontario and the Nishnawbe Aski Nation which represents communities in Northern Ontario. These parties negotiated the draft agreement with Canada last July.

“It was quite rushed. There was a lot of tension at the meeting, as well as lively discussion and debate on the issue,” Boyer said. “It was frustrating for everyone.”

The $47.8 billion offer follows a 2016 ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that found Canada discriminated against First Nations children and families in across the country by not providing the same quality of child protection services available elsewhere.

A separate $23 billion settlement agreement – ​​the largest in Canadian history – has already been approved to pay damages to those harmed by Canada’s discriminatory privacy policies. childhood, which resulted in an over-representation of Indigenous children in government custody for decades.

That deal was revised upwards from $20 billion after the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada (FNCFCS) argued that figure was insufficient.

The just-rejected $47.8 billion deal, meanwhile, covers costs related to reforming the Child and Family Services program.

“It was presented as a deal that provided $47.8 billion over 10 years, but a closer look showed that these amounts were subject to many discretionary decisions by Canada and that there was a system of governance which would remove the decision. First Nations,” said Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the FNCFCS, which initiated the discrimination complaint filed before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

The deal would also have expired in nine years, she said, raising concerns about what would happen afterward.

“The money was structured in such a way that it would not eliminate discrimination or prevent it from happening again,” Blackstock said.

A resolution was passed on the last day of the assembly to form a national commission of child leaders who will be responsible for resuming negotiations with Canada on the reform package.

AFN National Leader Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak was disappointed to see the deal rejected.

“This agreement posed too great a threat to the status quo and to the industry that was built by removing First Nations children from their families,” she said in her closing speech last Friday. “It’s a big deal, our children,”

She had insisted on its adoption, saying the day before that it represented “too much money to just wipe the table and leave it to the courts”.

“The results of this assembly should be a message to the Government of Canada and all provincial governments in this country: you must do better. Last year, more First Nations children were removed from their communities and families than at any other time in Canadian history,” she added.

“Canada and the provinces will need to do more to account for the harm they have caused by perpetuating a racist child welfare system that has broken so many children in this country. »

The AFN will host another special chiefs assembly in Ottawa this December.

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Miriam Lafontaine is a journalist at the Eastern Door. His work has been published in Le Devoir, CBC Montreal, CBC New Brunswick and the Toronto Star.