“A new report by Canada’s independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer says that while the Trudeau government is spending more on ‘Indigenous’ {sic} services than ever before, it’s accomplishing less.
“Over the 2015-16 to 2022-23 period, there has been a significant increase in the amount of financial resources allocated to providing’ Indigenous’ Services”,
Yves Giroux said in the report, while noting the increase
“did not result in a commensurate increase in the ability of the organizations to achieve the targets they had set for themselves”.
“In fact,
“the ability of the organizations to achieve the targets … has declined”.
“Giroux’s findings are further evidence — as if taxpayers needed more — that the federal template for spending on ‘Indigenous’ issues is broken.
{Canadian Aboriginals are ‘Indigenous’ to Mongolia and Siberia.}
“In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau split the ‘Indigenous’ and Northern Affairs ministry into two separate departments — Crown-‘Indigenous’ Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and ‘Indigenous’ Services Canada, to better deliver services to ‘Indigenous’ people.
“The government has also increased annual spending on ‘Indigenous issues’ by 115% since coming into office — from $11.4 billion in 2015 to $24.5 billion last year. But Giroux found that five years after the administrative shakeup, the two new federal bureaucracies aren’t meeting their own targets for improving the lives of Canada’s ‘Indigenous’ people, known as ‘departmental results indicators’ (DRIs).
“They cannot meet their own targets, which is surprising”,
Giroux told APTN News, adding they’re also failing to keep their targets consistent over time. Some have no completion dates, while in other cases, new targets have been created before the previous ones were met.
“Some targets are very well known — the number of long-time boil water advisories for water — others are less well known”,
Giroux said, such as the number of people on ‘First Nations’ {Aboriginal} reserves who describe themselves as in good health, where the government is failing to meet its own targets.
“He said of 42 performance targets set by ‘Indigenous Services’, only
“a quarter or less of the results are consistent with the targets the department set”.
“Giroux credited the government with increasing the number of targets and said while its increases in funding have been well-intentioned, the ‘Indigenous’ bureaucracy has had trouble matching spending increases with assessing its performance on how it spends the money.”
–‘Same old story on Indigenous spending’,
Postmedia News, May 21, 2022
https://edmontonsun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-same-old-story-on-indigenous-spending
“Since 2015, federal spending on ‘Indigenous’ programs has skyrocketed from $12.4 billion to $24 billion for fiscal year 2021/22, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
“In other words, ‘Indigenous’ {sic} federal spending increased by 94.3% since 2015 (after adjusting for inflation).
“Over a six-year period, federal spending on ‘Indigenous’ programs has increased significantly and these spending levels may grow even faster in coming years”,
said Tom Flanagan, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and author of “Fiscal Explosion: Federal Spending on Indigenous Programs, 2015-2022”.
“The study also found that settlements of legal claims have helped drive recent spending increases. For example, after a 10-year period with no settlements, the federal government since 2017 has settled five ‘Indigenous’-related class action lawsuits with more pending. In fact, for fiscal year 2021/22, Ottawa plans to spend at least $3.2 billion to resolve outstanding legal claims and settlement obligations.
“If Ottawa wants to better control spending on ‘Indigenous’ programs, it should review its approach to settlements, which have increased substantially in recent years”,
Flanagan said.
“All Canadians should want Ottawa to fund ‘Indigenous’ programs in the most efficient and effective way, so the money goes to those most in need.”
–‘Federal Indigenous spending up more than 90% since 2015’
Fraser Institute, Oct. 26, 2021
“Previous studies published by Fraser Institute have documented the remarkable long-term rise in federal spending on ‘Indigenous’ {sic, Canadian Aboriginals are ‘Indigenous’ to Mongolia and Siberia} programs since the end of World War II. Since the election of the ‘Liberal’ {Party} government headed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2015, this increase has reached explosive levels, more than doubling in the six fiscal years between Budget 2015 and Budget 2021. It may accelerate even faster now that the ‘Liberals’ have been returned in the 2021 election with another minority government, which will probably depend on NDP support to remain in power. Both the ‘Liberal’ {Party} and NDP campaign platforms contained proposals for additional spending on ‘Indigenous’ priorities.
“To a considerable extent, the fiscal explosion is driven by offers of financial compensation for past injustices. One branch of this is the settlement of specific claims for alleged violations of treaties or the ‘Indian Act’. After 47 years of payments, the number of claims continues to grow as the federal government funds research to discover new claims of past ‘injustice’. The government should follow the example of the United States and set a termination date for the specific-claims process. Half a century should be enough time to bring claims of this type.
“A more recent aspect of the fiscal explosion is the rise of class-action litigation leading to financial settlements. The prototype of ‘Indigenous’ class action was the residential schools case, which resulted in a $6 billion settlement in 2006. More recent class actions have concerned other types of schools, adoption practices known {pejoratively} as the “Sixties Scoop”, funding of foster care for ‘Indigenous’ children, treatment of patients in Indian hospitals, and long-term water advisories on Indian reserves. There have been six settlements of such class actions, with four more still under negotiation, and an unknown number in preparation.
“The process through which class action cases are settled drives spending not just through multi-billion-dollar payouts to individuals, but through declarations that past federal programs were inadequate, leading to promises to provide more funding for programs in the future {See below}. As these class actions proliferate, the ‘Indigenous’ budgetary envelope is increasingly controlled by the outcome of judicial processes rather than by official planning. Since the federal government’s policy is to prefer negotiation to litigation, the prospect of easy and quick settlements encourages more class actions to be filed.
“It is submitted that the government, instead of rushing to negotiate settlements, should contest these class actions more vigorously in court {and defend taxpayers}, through the appellate courts if necessary. These cases offer many novel interpretations of law, which deserve to be considered by Canada’s best legal minds.
“This is particularly the case as subjects of litigation have multiplied. After beginning in a limited way with residential schools, all modes of ‘Indigenous’ education came under fire. There were also class action attacks on different forms of protecting ‘Indigenous’ children and on Indian hospitals. Finally, came a class action based on the provision of water in ‘First Nation’ {Aboriginal} communities. In light of these precedents, virtually any public service would seem to be a suitable target for litigation designed to lead to negotiated compensation.
“Class actions have become a significant part of the legal business in Canada. They are a profit centre for law firms; indeed, they lie at the core of the business model of certain firms, which have built the machinery necessary to find representative plaintiffs, recruit members of the aggrieved class, and pursue action in court. ‘Indigenous’ class actions are different only in that they often depend on old grievances rather than recent events. Class actions bring compensation to individuals, but they also mean lucrative fees to law firms. Rushing to settle class actions helps the law firms that pursue them earn more money more quickly and virtually guarantees the proliferation of class actions in the future. Reducing the number of ‘Indigenous’ class actions requires making them less remunerative, thereby affecting the profit-cost calculations of the lawyers who pursue them.”
–‘Fiscal Explosion: Federal Spending on ‘Indigenous’ Programs, 2015–2022’,
Fraser Institute, October 26, 2021
♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠
#ENDRACEBASEDLAWCANADA
Websites:
ERBL inc. Canada News: https://endracebasedlaw.ca/
END RACE BASED LAW inc. Canada: https://endracebasedlaw.wordpress.com/
♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠
JOIN US IN THE FUTURE OF A UNIFIED CANADA
END RACE BASED LAW Daily News Canada 