Why Ottawa nickels-and-dimes Indigenous Peoples

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This article was published 20/11/2024 (343 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Something has been really bothering me lately. Back in July, the governing Liberals decided to quietly announce that it was cutting funding to Indigenous searches for unmarked children’s graves around residential schools.

Indigenous communities were initially offered up to $3 million per year to help defray the costs of identification. However, the federal government chose to cap those funds — in the absence of any consultations with Indigenous leaders — at $500,000. Thankfully, the Trudeau government reversed course in August and restored the original funding allotment of $3 million.

It is instructive to note that Ottawa has constitutional competence for our First Peoples and thus a fiduciary responsibility to Indigenous Peoples in Canada. So all of this got me thinking about one of the most enduring features of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in Canada — namely, the federal government’s obsession with pinching pennies when it comes to our Indigenous communities.

One of the critical areas of investigation around this topic is to fully understanding its key drivers. Why would monetary considerations be top-of-mind for colonial and Canadian governments for hundreds of years? What should we infer, moreover, from that fixation on dollars and cents?

Significantly, I’m not talking here about budget constraints, lower reserve costs, special circumstances or an increase in wealthier Indigenous communities. No, I’m suggesting that there has been a deliberate and ongoing mindset or framework in Ottawa that starts with the following premise: how do we find ways to cut funding for Indigenous Peoples?

The whole point of colonial and Canadian government policies toward Indigenous Peoples was to assimilate them and, if that didn’t work, to eradicate them outright. That way, the federal government’s “honour of the Crown” and its fiduciary commitment would come to a screeching halt. Crudely put, the costs associated with “Indian status” would no longer be necessary.

Just look at residential schools in Canada: they were intended, among other things, to sever the bond between Indigenous children and their parents and reserve community. As they assimilated into white society, this would eventually lead to fewer First Nations people on the government’s payrolls.

The schools themselves (many were of poor construction and deadly firetraps) were a case study in cost-cutting: Indigenous children constantly complained of being hungry, cold and often went without proper medications. Even when children died at these schools, the government refused to pay the costs of returning these kids to their Indigenous families.

Similarly, the horrible ’60s Scoop was an outgrowth or a continuation of this same line of thinking: force Indigenous kids into foster care and foreign adoption to reduce costs over time. In fact, in the late 1950s, the federal government turned the care and welfare of Indigenous children over to provincial child protection services with the express intention of saving money.

With respect to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the Trudeau Liberals have been excruciatingly slow to implement many of the final report’s 231 “calls for justice.” Indeed, only five per cent or so of the government’s promise to spend $724 million to support Indigenous women and girls with new shelters and transitional housing has been spent.

Let’s be honest, from the advent of colonial governments in Canada in the mid-1700s, each one has sought to reduce expenditures for Indigenous Peoples.

Officials in the old department of Indian Affairs — long before its current iteration as Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada — were always crunching the actuarial numbers to identify when payments to Indigenous communities would finally end. And don’t forget the cost-savings sought through violating solemn treaties, withholding annuity and land dispossession payments, building low-budget “Indian hospitals” and even denying benefits for returning Indigenous soldiers from the First and Second World Wars.

Much of the cutting of Indigenous monies is consistent with a colonial mindset or project that has devalued, dehumanized and degraded Indigenous Peoples from the very beginning. The racist rationale was simple: they were only going to die off anyway; they would forever be “uncivilized,” pagan “savages”; they would never be smart enough to know what to do with the land and financial resources; and, lastly, they would always be expendable, largely invisible, and most assuredly worthless.

As a political scientist, I can’t help but wonder if Ottawa’s saving obsession doesn’t have an electoral angle to it. To wit, it was viewed as good politics to demonstrate the government’s ability to scrimp at the expense of Indigenous communities.

At any rate, I’m sure I’ve missed many other useful examples of damaging government cost-cutting. But one common theme that is painfully obvious is that Canadian governments have indeed historically sought to short-change Indigenous Peoples.

In the end, our First Peoples just weren’t worth spending government money on. So when you add it all together, you have to conclude that the real power brokers of this country never really accorded them much value from the outset.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.