Manitoba Liberals vow to return money taken from children in care

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This article was published 12/09/2023 (752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Liberals will return nearly $338 million in federal benefits for thousands of children in care that was clawed back by the provincial government.

“For over a decade, the Manitoba government took Indigenous children from their families, took their money, and abandoned them on the street,” Liberal leader Dougald Lamont said Tuesday in a press release touting the campaign promise.

A Manitoba court ruled last year that between 2006 and 2019 the province violated the constitutional rights of Indigenous children who had been taken from their families and placed in care by seizing their Children’s Special Allowance.

The practice, which started under the NDP and continued under the Progressive Conservatives until the government ended it three years ago, seized the benefits intended for children from foster families and child and family services agencies and put the money into general revenue.

More than half the people who are homeless on the streets of Winnipeg spent time in CFS care, according to the Winnipeg Street Census 2022.

Sixty-eight per cent of respondents identified as Indigenous, with nearly nine out of 10 staying in unsheltered locations, such as vacant buildings and encampments. Of those who said they were former CFS clients, most cited aging-out of care and a lack of money as the cause of their homelessness, the street census found.

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“This is a colossal wound that we all need to work to heal, and that other parties cannot even bring themselves to mention,” said Lamont, the incumbent candidate for St. Boniface.

“So as long as the silence around this issue continues, these children will be denied justice. As best we can, we need to start making it right. That has to start today.”

After the 2022 court ruling, Families Minister Rochelle Squires struck a working group to examine and inform future policies and legislation related to Indigenous children in care. At the time, she said returning the money in some form, and the amount that needs to be returned, would be up for discussion within that group.

On Tuesday, PC spokesman Shannon Martin credited his party for ending the clawbacks initiated by an NDP government after it assumed power in 2019, saying the Tories “worked hard to right the NDP’s historical wrong. We started by ending their clawbacks and increased investments in social services across government. Most importantly, we continue to work with First Nations to transform the child welfare system and transition services from provincial agencies to Indigenous communities.”

The NDP said Tuesday that if it forms the next government it would “work quickly with families and First Nations leadership to properly compensate children who were denied access to the CFS federal children’s special allowance benefits.”