A Blockade on the Road to Recovery

Molly Whittington, Assistant Editor

November 19, 2021

The federal government has once again delayed help to Indigenous people that have suffered at the hands of government policies. The Child Welfare system is a significant component of Canadian colonization of Indigenous people that has gone understudied and under-criticized. On October 29th, 2021, the Federal government appealed a ruling that upheld an order for compensation to children and their families that were part of the child welfare system. 

A ruling made by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2016 ordered Ottawa to pay $40,000 to each child that was affected by the on-reserve child welfare system. The tribunal also ordered that parents and grandparents of children taken would be eligible for compensation, depending on the terms on which their children were removed from their homes. It is approximated that 54,000 people could be eligible for this compensation, meaning that the federal government would have to pay over $2 billion.

The Child Welfare System has been seemingly forgotten in the public discourse surrounding reconciliation in Canada. The system has been taking Indigenous children away from their families since 1960, without the consent of families or bands in the majority of cases. To this day, there remains a disproportionate number of Indigenous children in the child welfare system. While Indigenous children make up only seven percent of the youth population, they account for fifty-two percent of the children in the system. According to Indigenous Services Canada, over 9,000 Indigenous children were still "in care" in 2018, despite the history of many forms of abuse and removal of children from their families without thorough investigation.

The "Sixties Scoop", a term given to the decade in which over 20,000 Indigenous children were taken from their homes and put into the child welfare system, is well-known to the Canadian public, but there has been little official action towards reconciliation of this event. The federal government has given a settlement of $21,000 to Sixties Scoops survivors but has yet to issue an official apology. Additionally, there has not yet been an official inquiry into the Sixties Scoop. Former Canadian senator Murray Sinclair and survivors have been calling for a federal inquiry into the "policies and actions that led to thousands of Indigenous children being taken from their families". 

RoseAnne Archibald, the Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, among others, will begin talks about the compensation for Indigenous children removed from their homes, meaning as long as they were not removed because of abuse in their homes. Archibald stated that the Assembly of First Nations "has agreed to enter into these intense negotiations to see if we can get to a settlement that is fair." The talks are expected to last until December, and Indigenous leaders are hopeful for compensation. However, Archibald warns that "Compensation does not equate to justice" and that the "healing path forward together will be based upon concrete actions, more than it will be on discussions and words". 

While Prime Minister Trudeau has argued that the federal government is "committed to compensating Indigenous people who were harmed during care" and to "trying to end this harmful system", his government's appeal tells a different story. Trudeau campaigned for election and re-election on a promise to take action on Indigenous issues. His government's track record has been dismal. 

Ottawa has claimed that while they are appealing the ruling, they are pausing litigation to attempt a conclusion outside of the courtroom. Despite their promise that those harmed will be compensated, the federal government's decision to appeal signals that their financial losses are more important than the reconciliation of and attempts at healing Indigenous people in Canada. Ottawa is holding healing out of reach for Indigenous Canadians by continuing to litigate and delaying compensation. 

These negotiations are meaningful because they represent the recognition of many other aspects of colonization, besides residential schools. However, this appeal does not appear alone. It is part of a long string of decisions made by the federal government that have delayed and combatted reconciliation. The federal government waited until June 11th, 2008, to officially apologize for Residential Schools, waited until 2008 to launch the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and has yet to make much progress on the 94 calls to action presented by the Commission, even though it has been dissolved since 2015. Additionally, the Government of Canada did not launch an inquiry into the murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls until 2015. 

The federal government of Canada has continually delayed and minimized steps towards recovery and healing for Indigenous people. They must move forward with compensation to Indigenous people who have been wronged to prove their commitment to reconciliation. If the current government wants to prove that they are full of more than empty promises, it must stop delaying steps to recovery.