Canada’s Indigenous Model is Not Sustainable

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

The stated purpose of the extra indigenous spending that has always been there, and the virtual explosion on indigenous spending since 2015 is meant to fix that problem. But these massive expenditures have now reached the point where they risk destabilizing the country.

Canada’s parliamentary budget officer, Yves Giroux has spoken out about the alarming rise in Canada’s contingent liabilities related to indigenous claims. Todays estimated 76 billion dollars is many times the 15 billion dollars it was when the Liberals took power in 2015.

This is one part only of the massive increase in spending on indigenous matters that has taken place since then.

Federal spending per indigenous person has always been much higher than spending per non-indigenous person. The higher level of spending has been justified because most indigenous people do much worse on virtually every health and social indicator than the mainstream population. Their health is poorer, and their lives are shorter.

This disparity was generally known as Canada’s “Indian problem”. That term is no longer fashionable, and the extra spending is now said to be necessary to achieve “reconciliation”. Regardless of the terms, what is clear is that since Confederation there has always existed a large rural and urban indigenous underclass that does poorly compared to the mainstream. The stated purpose of the extra indigenous spending that has always been there, and the virtual explosion on indigenous spending since 2015 is meant to fix that problem. But these massive expenditures have now reached the point where they risk destabilizing the country.

Perhaps it’s time for Canadians to ask if the “nation to nation” reconciliation plan that spending is based on is working. Is it fixing the problem?

A recent CBC report proves that it is not. Instead, the problems are getting worse.

The CBC investigated an indigenous community at St. Theresa Point where 24 people sometime share one house. Almost all of the houses in the community are crumbling and need to be replaced. Families struggle to achieve basic hygiene. Living conditions resemble what one would expect to find in a third world community, and not in wealthy, modern Canada.

St. Theresa Point is typical of hundreds of other Indian remote reserves. Most are almost totally dependent on the federal government for their survival. There is virtually no real employment. The poorest people in those communities are directly dependent on welfare checks, but even the chief, councillors and other employees receive their paycheques from the transfer payments sent by Ottawa. In reality almost everyone in the community is on welfare of some type.

Unlike in other rural communities, people on poor reserves tend not to move when economic opportunities decline. In small-town Canada, the rules are simple: If the towns or farms can’t supply enough jobs, one moves to the city where the jobs and careers are. But on remote reserves, most people stay put, even if there are no jobs or careers there for them. And most of those who do move to the city do not do well. A lack of education, poor job skills, and lack of motivation usually consign reserve residents who move to the mean parts of town where many end up in gangs, crime and prostitution. The result is that the people who stay in uneconomic remote reserves become more and more dependent. Low education levels sink even further. And succeeding generations become ever less likely to be able to provide for themselves and their families.

To make matters much worse, addiction problems are endemic. At one time, alcohol was the drug of choice. Now, amphetamines, fentanyl, and prescription drugs have been added to the list, with the family violence, sexual abuse, crime, teenage pregnancy and fetal alcohol births that inevitably follow from chronic drug use.

And reserve populations are growing. Although status Indians living on reserves currently comprise only about 1% of the total population, they are the country’s fastest growing demographic. The cost of operating these communities is crippling now, but in a few years, it will be completely unsustainable. Pretending that these desperately poor reserves are sovereign “nations” that will somehow magically become prosperous and self-supporting is a cruel joke on the young people hopelessly trapped on them. The prospect of hundreds of dependent reserves teeming with, unemployed, and largely unemployable young people, with massive social problems, is a frightening dystopia – hundreds of Gaza strips. But it is where we are headed. To make things even worse, the government-promoted false genocide and “missing children” narratives have made many of these people very angry.

Although there is no treaty right, or any other right to free housing on a reserve the reality is that if the government did not provide housing for the reserve residents, they would be unable to provide housing for themselves. The strange result is that Canadian taxpayers – many of whom will never be able to afford to buy a house themselves – pay through their tax dollars for houses for the rapidly growing reserve population. These houses deteriorate quickly, because they are considered “free” by the residents, and have to be fixed and replaced in a wasteful and expensive cycle.

And it is a national disgrace that most reserves are dead ends for most of the young people born into them.

The late Farley Mowat described northern indigenous settlements as “unguarded concentration camps”. That might be a somewhat harsh way to describe reserves, but at best most are human warehouses, plagued with social problems. The young people living there deserve some hope, and Canada’s current plan for them offers them none.

So, Canada’s current indigenous plan is clearly not working. Is there a better plan for success?

Maybe we should ask Wab Kinew, Manitoba’s new premier. He is indigenous and highly successful. How did he get there?

The formula is actually not complicated. It has nothing to do with massive welfare giveaways, “nation to nation” utopias, or incredibly expensive “reconciliation” projects. It definitely has nothing to do with staying in a community that lacks economic opportunities, and waiting for handouts. It involves education, hard work, and going where the jobs are. Kinew’s parents realized that a stable home and education were key. Wab did the rest. He worked his way up the ladder in the usual way, and went where the jobs were. He did that with his indigenous identity intact.

Not every young person has Kinew’s talent, but everyone can follow the formula that made Kinew, and many other indigenous achievers successful.

The alternative – spending ever increasing amounts on a steadily increasing list of demands from a growing dependent reserve population is not an option. We don’t need the parliamentary budget officer to tell us that it is not sustainable.

As for remote, uneconomic reserves, like St. Theresa Point, they should be gradually and humanely closed down. It has been recognized for many years that reserves long ago had served their purpose, and should be phased out. As far back as 1911, it was said:

“Department officials were increasingly coming to the view that reserves had outlived their usefulness. Frank Pedley suggested that they resulted in the isolation and segregation of Indians, and thereby hindered progress…and encouraged the tribal form of government.”

The reserve system was not ended in 1911 because the chiefs and ruling families refused to give up their privileged positions. It isn’t happening today for the same reasons. We still have the same Indian Act and reserve system that has held indigenous people back for almost 150 years. (Senior Ontario lawyer, Peter Best, describes the toxicity of the reserve system in his important book, There Is No Difference)

So, the long-term plan should be to find a way to overcome that resistance, and find a fair way to phase out reserves, and the antiquated Indian Act. The reserves that are economically viable can merge into existing rural municipalities, or become stand-alone municipalities. Opportunities should be made available for young people from uneconomic communities to move to job centres, and receive help to succeed there.

In the meantime, the example of Wab Kinew is proof that there has never been a better time or place than today’s Canada to be an educated and ambitious young indigenous person who is willing to study, work hard, and go where the jobs are.

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge and senior fellow at Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Watch Brian on Return to Reason here.

Related Topics:#BrianGiesbrecht #Canada'sIndigenousModel #FrontierCentreForPublicPolicy #ParliamentaryBudgetOfficer #YvesGiroux

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Indigenous

No accounts on $7.9 million dollar ‘Truth’ Fund

Published on May 24, 2024

Todayville

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Blacklock’s Reporter

The First Nation prompted an international outcry in 2021 when it announced the discovery of 215 children’s graves hidden at the Kamloops Residential School. It said remains were found using ground penetrating radar.

Cabinet at the time lowered the Peace Tower flag at half mast for 161 days, approved $3.1 million for a national Residential Schools Student Death Register and another $238.8 million for a Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund.

The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has confirmed it spent millions to uncover the “heartbreaking truth” of unmarked Indian Residential School graves in Kamloops, B.C. No remains have been recovered to date and no accounting of what became of the $7.9 million has been disclosed.

“The community had received $7.9 million for field work, records searches and to secure the Residential School grounds,” said Carolane Gratton, spokesperson for the department. “Details of initiatives taken by Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation are best directed to the community.”

The department has not released financial accounts under the Access To Information Act. The First Nation said in a statement it “continues to grieve children that are in our care and are focused on the scientific work that needs to be done” but would not discuss the $7.9 million.

The 2021 funding was to document the “heartbreaking truth,” according to a 2022 department briefing note. “Our thoughts are with survivors, their families and communities as the heartbreaking truth about Residential Schools’ unmarked burials continues to be unveiled,” said the note.

“Funding is available to support communities, survivors and their families on their healing journey through researching, locating and memorializing those children who died while attending Indian Residential Schools,” said the note Indian Residential School Sites: Unmarked Burials.

“If pressed on Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Kamloops Indian Residential School site, the Government of Canada has provided $7.9 million over two years to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation to support the community in conducting this important work,” said the note.

The First Nation prompted an international outcry in 2021 when it announced the discovery of 215 children’s graves hidden at the Kamloops Residential School. It said remains were found using ground penetrating radar.

Cabinet at the time lowered the Peace Tower flag at half mast for 161 days, approved $3.1 million for a national Residential Schools Student Death Register and another $238.8 million for a Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund. The Fund expires in 2025.

“I think Canadians have seen with horror those unmarked graves across the country and realize that what happened decades ago isn’t part of our history, it is an irrefutable part of our present,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier told reporters.

No remains have been recovered at the Kamloops site to date. A Senate committee in a 2023 report described questions regarding documentation of the 215 graves as “Residential School denialism.”

“Denialism serves to distract people from the horrific consequences of Residential Schools and the realities of missing children, burials and unmarked graves,” said the Senate Indigenous peoples committee report Honouring The Children Who Never Came Home. It recommended “the Government of Canada take every action necessary to combat the rise of Residential School denialism.”

Published with kind permission from Blacklock’s Reporter. First published here.

Blacklock’s Reporter (founded October 2012) is an Ottawa-based Internet publication covering Canadian government administration.

Frontier Centre for Public Policy

The Great Canadian Hoax exposed

Published on May 21, 2024

Todayville

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Colin Alexander

Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) edited by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan, Truth North and Dorchester Review, 343pp, $21.99) is a companion volume to Frontier’s From Truth Comes Reconciliation, which was published in 2021 (second edition is forthcoming). The two reviews published here are by Colin Alexander and Peter Best. The book demonstrates that there is no forensic evidence of Indian Residential School children that have been murdered and buried in residential school yards. There are a number of reasons for not believing the claim that children were murdered in these schools. Canadians are anxious to know the truth about the schools, and this book along with Frontier’s book go a long way to dispel the myths that have developed about the murder of residential school children. The book has been a top seller on Amazon since it was published in early January 2024.

This scholarly book of essays demolishes the narrative that any children went missing from Indian residential schools (IRS), let alone thousands, or that there are mass graves. Grave Error, in fact, debunks what essayist Jonathan Kay calls “a media-fuelled social panic over unmarked graves.” Mainstream media around the world—not just in Canada—ran with this press release issued on May 27, 2021:

This past weekend, with the help of a ground penetrating radar [GPR] specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings became known – the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School [KRS]. …

To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” stated Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir. “Some were as young as three years old. …

Mainstream news media and politicians took the press release to heart, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lowering flags on federal buildings to half-mast for six long months. So debauched have the Enlightenment’s principles of inquiry become, along with those of responsible journalism, that it took outsiders to question the truth of this release.

Yes, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) found disturbed ground in the orchard near the school. That is because the land had buried drainage tiles from a septic system that had been installed in 1924. In any case, except for orphans and those whose upbringing was beyond their parents’ capacity, the IRS required a minimum age of six for admission.

No children were murdered and buried surreptitiously at night. Schools were paid on a headcount of children, so there was not a single name unaccounted for. There is a death certificate for every death, with burials either in the nearby cemetery or returned to their reserves. TB and other communicable diseases rampant everywhere caused most IRS deaths a century ago. Since the introduction of antibiotics, the death toll has been much lower. Many graves in recognized cemeteries are unmarked because the customarily used wooden crosses deteriorated over time. Despite that, in December 2021, Canadian Press called unmarked graves the story of the year!

Len Marchand’s autobiography, Breaking the Trail, provides an antidote for the horror stories at KRS. A former attendee during the time of the alleged murders and burials, he became Canada’s first Indigenous cabinet minister. The worst he says of his time there was that meals included mushy potatoes.

Essayist Ian Gentles says the juggernaut of misinformation began with the CBC program The Journal on October 30, 1990. Interviewed by Barbara Frum, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, said he had been physically and sexually abused at his school. This led to a tsunami of former IRS attendees asserting similar allegations. Unfortunately, Ms. Frum did not ask who perpetrated the abuse, whether staff or fellow students. Or why he did not make a complaint to the police. I emailed Mr. Fontaine asking those questions but without receiving an answer.

Some essayists accept the proposition that there were real atrocities. I am not sure they were widespread. There were only a few successful prosecutions reported by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There are probably some abuses at boarding schools. Was it really an atrocity to cut an IRS attendee’s hair on arrival or to exchange a uniform for an orange shirt? Essayist and former staff member at Stringer Hall in Inuvik, Rodney Clifton, has described children on their return after the summer break with their families. They were often in poor physical condition, and some were still wearing the clothing, unwashed in the meantime, that they left the school with.

Essayist Tom Flanagan scores a bull’s-eye when quoting John Ioannidis, medical researcher at Stanford University: “The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true.” With money almost unlimited for Indigenous issues, a multi-billion-dollar industry has grown out of pleading for money and telling Indigenous youth to feel sorry for themselves. By extension, the industry has prospered from laying guilt on schoolchildren and taxpayers. As shown in Lonely Death of an Ojibwa Boy by Robert MacBain, that includes what I construe to be a fraud, the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack charity.

I also disagree with essayists saying the Indigenous were dealt a bad hand, let alone that they need new treaties. What about the previously downtrodden Asian Canadians who have surpassed their white counterparts in incomes? Yes, Canada welcomed Indians into the armed forces for the Boer Wars and the two World Wars, only to treat them like dirt when the wars ended. But today there has been a role-reversal. Now Indigenous leaders can say whatever they want, and no one calls them out on saying outrageous things.

To me, the failure of Canada’s Indigenous policy derives from the excesses of the welfare state which, since the demise of the fur trade, destroyed self-reliance and work ethic—Indigenous cultures were destroyed, if you will. Now Canadians kowtow to demands for renewed tribalism and self-determination resembling South Africa’s apartheid. That would give leaders prestige and money for doing little. For followers, it connotes marginalization and second-class citizenship. No one is considering the needs of next generations living in violence-wracked settlements having no economic reason to exist, and in urban slums. It eludes notice that those who are educated and skilled and engaged in or preparing for rewarding employment seldom become addicts or commit suicide, and they seldom go to jail.

The billions paid out for the IRS and mass graves hoaxes are not delivering acceptable housing or any other help that works. I know an unemployed and all but unemployable Inuk who got a cheque for $95,000 in April 2023. By July he had blown it all and was again scrounging for cigarettes. Many billions add to GDP and salve a nation’s conscience. But enriching prostitutes and drug dealers does not address real needs.

That said, there are templates, notably in Asia, for raising Third World peoples into the First World in a single generation. I recommend Grave Error as a starting point for radically different thinking about what needs to be done to help Indigenous Canadians succeed in our country.

Colin Alexander was publisher of the Yellowknife News of the North for many years, and the advisor on education for Ontario’s Royal Commission on the Northern Environment. His latest book is Justice on Trial: Jordan Peterson’s case and others show we need to fix a broken legal system.