Tom Fennario
APTN National News
Three days of hearings into Ottawas failure to comply with an order from the Canadian human rights tribunal is underway.
The hearings are being held because Canada has not adhered to a ruling from the tribunal that said the federal government discriminates against First Nations children.
The hearing started on the same day the Liberals delivered its second budget – a budget with no new money earmarked for First Nation child welfare services.
The CRA is racist. The CCTB program targets indigenous families to take away benefits, they call it a “random review” but if youre indigenous they just act ignorantly towards acknowledging any correspondence and keep you cut off. My working class family has not recieved CCTB payments in 16 months, I have 3 children under 18. I heard of about a dozen other indigenous families local to me last year having been cut off. I have lived in the city for 20 years and have been vocal with non indigenous parents too, not one non indigenous parent had ever heard that this even happens. Every indigenous parent I spoke to knew about the CCTB review program halting benefits, and had been effected at some point (even multiple times) or knew someone who had been. This happened to my family at the same time I was the victim of a violent crime, and trying to heal a broken clavicle, that I lost my job from because I work in trades, and there is no financial support for victims of violent crimes in my province, I also have no family support because my father has dissociative disorder from the abuses of social racism, and my mother is a racist who disowned me because I wasn’t white enough, while I see news articles about the Liberals bragging about how the CCTB will help the most impoverished, and they didn’t even give me my tax return back. From being a “street kid” without access to a high school education I got into university, then got a trade, and have worked professionally in both art and metal fabrication, and now both combined, despite many many obstacles and barriers, and a lot of trauma along the way, i made it to a point as a single parent with sole custody where we were a working class family managing a budget. The CRA cutting off this support put us in a situation where I could not afford heat, we could not afford child birthday parties or Easter, I was in an emergency situation daily trying to resource meals, we lost our rental home of almost 3 years, I had to collect welfare for a month but couldn’t even afford to stay on that because they budget for families recieving CCTB payments, so I got a job immediately at 5 months of healing. While I was working full time without the CCTB we could not afford car insurance and registration to get me back and forth to work which threatened further fines, even my phone got cut off for moving costs and food, and I rebroke my clavicle. We also had to move into subsidized housing we would not have even needed were it not for being cut off CCTB, in subsidized housing I have been subjected to further discrimination and stereotyping, and the employees are known to enter tenant units illegally. I now have PTSD from feeling like I am fighting for my life and my children’s lives for 16 months after having been violently assaulted. I also get anxiety attacks leaving my apartment that makes it difficult to work because of the housing insecurity. I have lost 5 clothing sizes in the past 16 months feeding my children first (size 12 to size 7 and I’m a metal worker this is not functional for me, I wasn’t trying to be a super model, I’m 5’10” and I feel like I’m going to starve to death). This CRA program has, and currently is, impacting and impeding my ability to work and build a career. I have not been able to access any counseling for the violent attack from the emergency situation the CRA has caused in our family’s life while non indigenous families don’t even know this happens. It’s happening a lot to indigenous parents, too much to not be considered discriminatory, and the damage can be severe.