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Rights panel can hear discrimination case

By: Mia Rabson

Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2013 at 8:08 AM | Comments: 0

OTTAWA -- A human rights complaint over federal funding of child welfare for aboriginals can continue after the Federal Court of Appeal denied Ottawa's request to quash the case Monday.

"Justice is coming for children," tweeted Cindy Blackstock, head of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, which brought the original complaint six years ago.

The society argued aboriginal children living on reserves were being discriminated against by Ottawa's chronic underfunding of child-welfare programs on reserves. Numerous studies showed Ottawa spent as much as 22 per cent less on child welfare for on-reserve children than the provinces did for children living off reserve.

The chronic underfunding left on-reserve kids with less access to services and programs that could help their families and meant they were more likely to end up in care than off-reserve kids. Former auditor general Sheila Fraser found aboriginal children are eight times more likely to be in care than non-aboriginal children. About 80 per cent of the children in care in Manitoba are aboriginal and at least one-third live on reserves.

The Federal Court of Appeal Monday upheld the 2012 Federal Court ruling that a 2011 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision not to hear the case was wrong. It paves the way for tribunal hearings on the case to proceed.

The case was first filed in 2007 and the Canadian Human Rights Commission agreed it merited a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing in 2008. But the federal government challenged that decision in court, arguing the tribunal had no jurisdiction to hear the case. Both the lower court and the Court of Appeal rejected this argument and the case proceeded to the tribunal.

But in 2011, then-tribunal chairwoman Shirish Chotalia dismissed the case without any hearings. The federal government's only option now is to await the tribunal findings or appeal this latest ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

A spokesman for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt said Tuesday the minister wouldn't comment.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

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