Government sets training agencies at odds

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Now that the federal court as ruled that off-reserve Aboriginal people have been discriminated against when it comes to skills and training funding, what has the federal government done to remedy that discrimination?

Pit on-reserve people against off-reserve people in a scrap over money, say two women associated with a Toronto Aboriginal employment and training agency.

Nancy Martin, executive director of Miziwe Biik, and consultant Barbra Nahwegahbow say Human Resources and Skills Development Canada officials informed the on-reserve employment and training bodies they would have to cut their own budgets in order to free up money to fund the off-reserve agencies.

"And they were told that they had to decide [where to cut] or the department would decide for them," Martin said. "This is not good because the government is pitting us against each other. It creates chaos and animosity for no reason."

The difficulties stem from a court ruling almost one year ago. Federal Court Justice Francois Lemieux ruled that the federal department responsible for employment and training had been discriminating against a number of off-reserve Aboriginal communities by providing a superior level of service to on-reserve organizations. The case is known as Misquadis.

The judge made no specific order on how to remedy the discrimination. He left it up to the various parties involved to sort things out. That process has been interesting and promises to become more so over the next few months.

The Misquadis case dealt specifically with Toronto and Winnipeg urban Aboriginal communities, as well as the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, an Aboriginal community of 500 people in the Ottawa Valley that is not recognized under the Indian Act. Those groups claimed to constitute distinct Aboriginal communities, despite the fact they don't fit into any existing government category.

They claimed that having to deal with the bands of which they are members to access employment training funds, even though they live far away from those bands and may never have actually visited their home territories, left their off-reserve Aboriginal communities with no local control of the funding.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada had designed a program that allowed the Aboriginal communities it recognized to exercise significant local control over their programs, so Roger Misquadis and a few other co-applicants asked the judge to rule they were being treated differently; something that is expressly prohibited in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada challenged Lemieux's decision in the Federal Court of Appeal and lost. They could have continued on to the Supreme Court of Canada but chose not to push the case forward.

Martin said Human Resources realized they weren't going to win in court and had to create a program that would give the off-reserve communities their own locally controlled program, but no new money was allocated to fund these newly recognized bodies.

"The government of Canada did lose a court battle and they have a policy that was found to be discriminatory and at this point one of the ways of remedying that is to have additional dollars for the communities that are impacted by the Misquadis case," she said.

She was asked if more money is the only way to remedy the situation.

"Yes, because otherwise they would just be robbing from the First Nations. It wasn't the First Nations that lost the case. It was the government of Canada. Why should the First Nations be penalized?" she asked.

Nancy Martin reached out to the chiefs in Ontario, telling them she would not accept money carved away from First Nation budgets. The chiefs responded by passing a resolution at an all Ontario chiefs' assembly in June that called on Human Resources to put more money into the pot.

Martin said that resolution was ignored by the government. "That inflamed the situation,"' he said. "The chiefs can't afford to lose any money from their budgets."

Barbra Nahwegahbow called the government approach "punitive," suggesting the off-reserve groups were being punished for beating the government in court.

"The chiefs are trying to create a government-to-government relationship but the federal government wants a government to client relationship," she said. "They keep talking about 'partnerships,' but the only time they want to pursue real partnerships is when they're short of money. And then they say you decide where to make the cuts."

Gina Wilson is the director general of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada's Aboriginal Affairs branch. She conceded there was a problem finding money to comply with the court decision. "That was a problem. We have one funding envelope in Ontario for First Nations, Metis, Inuit, every Aboriginal program and service going on in Ontario. We were at a point in time about six months ago where that is all we had," she said. "So we were trying to find ways to respond to Miziwe Biik, who had a legitimate demand for more resources. While we were trying to find ways to do that we talked to the other First Nation [training agencies] and posed the question to them. Can we find a way of redirecting some resources to Miziwe Biik to support their additional clientele? The overwhelming response was 'No, this is your problem and you need to find the money elsewhere.'"

After several months of intense political lobbying, some new money has been injected into the program. Just over $1 million was paid to Miziwe Biik. The money was freed up from a budget that was not used by another province. Wilson said her department changed Miziwe Biik's contract to make it broader and that allowed the funding to be re-directed. The money will cover things up until the end of the current fiscal year, March 31, 2005.

One clause in Miziwe Biik's agreement was removed, Wilson said, because it limited who could or couldn't e served and that was discriminatory. She said that was as far as the government really needed to go to comply with Misquadis. "This was the remedy in our view," she said. "The additional funding, $1.1 million, was just a common sense response to the change in their agreement. Now they could serve and would be pressured to serve more Aboriginal clients so they should be afforded some additional funding to respond. It was just for Miziwe Biik because we changed their agreement."

Elvera Garlow, executive director of Six Nations' based Grand River Employment and Training, Inc., said Nov. 9 that work is progressing towards a more long-term plan.