Minister says friendship centre funding is on the rise

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Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps handed out a cheque at Brantford's Pine Tree Native Friendship Centre on Oct. 11; the minister told this publication it won't be the last.

Interim funding of $898,992 was announced by the minister. The funds will assist with the delivery of programs. Eighteen friendship centres across the country will receive about $50,000 each. In Saskatchewan, those funds will be going to friendship centres in Ile a la Crosse and La Loche.

After several rounds of deep cuts in the early 1990s as the government waged war on the deficit, Copps said her department is now trying to restore funding.

"What we're trying to do now is regroup and improve," she said. "This is what I would consider a down payment on that. Part of what the prime minister's asked all of us to do is take a look at our own portfolios and see if there are areas where we can be partners in building the education skills and the economy of Aboriginal peoples and obviously friendship centres are a key to that."

The money will help cash strapped friendship centres shore up their operations.

"Lots of government agencies will give you program funding and even private sector, but it's very hard to get core funding. That's what this is about," the minister said. "It's a down payment on core funding for all the centres. What we're hoping to do is see their whole budgets increase in the next round of discussions. It's a first step."

Canadian Heritage has seen an increased interest in Aboriginal programming since Copps took over.

"I started getting agencies to create Aboriginal divisions. Now Canada Council has an Aboriginal division," she explained.

Heritage has the prime responsibility for urban Native people and the minister said she took that seriously even before the prime minister promised to make Aboriginal social issues a priority in January's Throne Speech.

"There are partners who will partner on projects, but we're actually responsible for urban Aboriginal funding. There's about $65 million in Aboriginal programming in the Department of Canadian Heritage, including about $15 million for friendship centres," said Copps. "The completion of the friendship centre system is certainly necessary, but it's part of a larger picture of looking at Aboriginal people's involvement in communities and some of the challenges they face in terms of employment and empowerment in urban centres. I'd like to think that part of this committee process and part of the Throne Speech is about taking a new direction and maybe looking at it from a different optic."

Parks Canada is one of Canadian Heritage's responsibilities and changes are happening in national parks as well.

"I was fascinated when I became minister that we call ourselves Canadian Heritage, but the heritage pretty well started with the Europeans. So I decided to try and correct that," the minister said. "We've doubled the number of people working in parks and I've given them a mandate to start doing Aboriginal interpretation, because I thought it was ridiculous that when we go to the parks we learn everything about the birds and the bees but nothing about the people."

Asked if the money being targeted to security issues after the terrorist attacks in the United States might absorb money that is currently earmarked for urban Aboriginal funding, the minister said no.

"If anything, the security issues underscore the need to build on cultural identity and cultural diversity. In Canada today we have a reputation as being a country that understands and respects different languages and different cultures and I think that's going to be really critical in the post-Sept. 11 period of transition because, clearly, religions and languages do not divide us," she said.