Discriminatory Treatment in Child Services

Privileged Aboriginal people? That is definitely not what the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations maintained in 2007 when they filed a discrimination complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) on behalf of 160,000 First Nations children. In January 2016, the CHRT ruled in their favour, finding that the child and family services provided to First Nations children on reserve were poorer than those provided to other children by the provinces. (First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada et al. v. Attorney General of Canada (for the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) 2016 CHRT 2) 

That said, the CHRT held that the funding models were structured “in such a way that they promote negative outcomes for First Nations children and families, namely the incentive to take children into care.” (para. 349) Statistics Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey gave an idea of the extent of the problem: 

The same survey revealed that Aboriginal children aged 14 and under accounted for 2.7% of all children in Québec and 15.4% of all children in foster care. (Ibid.) The CHRT ruling in this historic human rights case ordered the federal government to review the agreements entered into with the provinces, including the 2009 Canada/Québec agreement, so as to eliminate discrimination in both the funding and provision of child welfare services.