The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) says the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) should be cautious when dealing with a non-compliance motion on Jordan’s Principle brought by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.
“In this proceeding, there is a great lack of evidence,” said AFN lawyer Stuart Wuttke. “We have evidence that was tendered by the caring society with respect to a number of difficulties individuals have with respect to Jordan’s Principle, or that they had.
“But they are just dozens of those examples out of the hundreds of thousands of applications that have been successfully approved.”
The AFN is a lobby group that represents more than 600 First Nations from across the country.
The caring society, which along with the AFN filed a discrimination complaint against Canada for on-reserve First Nations child welfare back in 2007, is accusing the federal government of non-compliance of previous tribunal orders regarding Jordan’s Principle.
In particular, the caring society said, Ottawa is failing to process requests promptly and has taken a restrictive approach to what constitutes an urgent request.
By Indigenous Services Canada’s own admission, the department has been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Jordan’s Principle requests since 2016 and has been unable to process tens of thousands of requests in a timely manner including up to present day.
“From April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022, the Government of Canada’s compliance rate for urgent individual requests is 53 per cent, and for non-urgent is 44 per cent,” the federal government reported. “From April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023, the Government of Canada’s compliance rate for urgent individual requests is 33 per cent, and for non-urgent is 36 per cent. This represents a marked decrease from the previous year.”
The federal government asked the tribunal to dismiss the complaint.
Jordan’s Principle says First Nations children should have access and receive the same supports non-Indigenous children receive – regardless of where they live.
However, in an interview with APTN News, Caring Society executive director Cindy Blackstock said the tribunal’s orders are working as intended and if ISC is unable to process requests in a timely fashion that is the government’s problem.
“There should be one pathway when you are a parent,” she said. “It shouldn’t be up to you to chase down the different departments and figure out who can meet the needs of your child and there’s a serious lack of coordination which continues today.”
Wuttke also told the tribunal the caring society’s non-compliance motion paints an inaccurate picture of how ISC is managing timelines.
But this seems to contradict previous affidavits the AFN has filed with the CHRT that note ISC’s poor record of meeting timelines both urgent and non-urgent.
“At the Jordan’s Principle Operations Committee on September 19, 2023, the AFN and other committee members were advised that the BC region has a backlog of over 2000 unanswered emails,” said the AFN’s affidavit filed before the tribunal.
For her part, Blackstock said the feedback the caring society receives from First Nations consistently states the federal government is not meeting expectations when it comes to Jordan’s Principle requests.
“For us the evidence is families coming directly to us. Sending band council resolutions, writing letters, doing that type of thing. What I would say on that side is we’ve not seen one letter from a First Nation, First Nations organization or parent supporting the AFN’s position.”
The current set of tribunal hearings wraps up on Thursday.
