Healing money soon committed

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There is a sense in Aboriginal communities that something's wrong with the way the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was operating, but the foundation's executive director, Mike DeGagne, says it's simply the fallout that comes from doing a tough job.

"Part of our problem, if you really want to break it down into rough estimates, is we've approved about a quarter of what we've received. That means one-quarter happy customers, three-quarters not very happy customers," he said. "That's based on the facts that we only had so much money to go around and we had criteria to follow that was mandated for us in our agreement."

Many people called this publication over the last few months to complain that the foundation had promised to be in business for 10 years, but instead announced that its money will soon be gone just five years into its mandate.

DeGagne said that's the way it was always planned to be. Other well-placed sources, speaking on condition they not be named, said there was a lot of misunderstanding and even some sour grapes from individuals and groups that did not receive funding, but no evidence of any wrongdoing.

"People will say, 'I heard those guys are out of money.' And they'll call us and we'll say, 'No, we're not out of money at all.' By Oct. 5, we will have committed all our money," the executive director explained. "In other words, we will have made agreements or be in the process of making agreements. Our board will have approved enough projects that will consume all of the rest of the funding we have. And that's right on time. We had a mandate: one year to get ready and four years to commit all our money. Which we did. The rest of the time, the next five or six years, we will have to honor those commitments. We will have to disperse the money and that sort of thing."

So there will be an office open for the next five years?

"That's right. It's just that we will have no more money to commit. It'll all be tied up with commitments we've already made. There will be contracts in place and we will just be honoring those contracts by flowing money to those people," he said.

The foundation's will carry on with related activities, he added.

"To evaluate what we're spending; to monitor that the projects are on track, and then we've got a little bit of a research agenda that we also have going," he said.

The foundations chair Georges Erasmus and his board and management staff have been lobbying the minister of Indian Affairs to extend the time period of the foundation's mandate and top up its funding, so far to no avail. DeGagne said the lobbying has been intense and included an aggressive letter-writing campaign.

"Furiously from year one," he said. "This has been a long, on-going process. We had a couple of different ideas. After the first year, after we got our money going and after some results started to come back to us, let's say a year-and-a-half after we first opened our doors," he said. "We suggested to the government that instead of having to spend the whole $350 million plus interest, that we could treat that $350 million just as an endowment and we could only spend the interest and we could probably operate in perpetuity. We couldn't give out as much every year, but we could make that money grow and grow and last much longer. Then we wouldn't reach the point that we're going to reach next month where we're essentially fully committed."

Mike DeGagne believes the government didn't see it to be in its political best interest to continue funding the foundation.

"I think there's a real sense that the government has a dual agenda. The first part of their residential school program was to provide healing for the 10-year period, which they've done. The second part would be to launch a way to reduce the litigation and the pending lawsuits, which they've now done as well," he said. "So first you have the healing. Secondly you have a process of alternative dispute resolution which would clear up the bcklog of 12,000 legal cases currently before the courts."

Was he saying the minister refused to extend the funding because the number of lawsuits didn't decrease?

"No, I never heard it put quite that directly. I think that, among other things, the government probably suspected that once healing started that fewer people would be interested in launching lawsuits, that they'd be more invested in their own healing, that money doesn't heal. I think that was probably a pretty strong consideration," he replied. "But remember, government's had a lot of experience with these well-funded and broad strategies. For example, the family violence strategy they launched probably 10 years ago now. Some observers expected that once you launch a family violence strategy that family violence would go down and you'll find less reporting of family violence. Well, the opposite is true, right? I mean, you put money into a community, you sensitize people to the issues of domestic violence and people are now aware and they report it in fact more frequently. So all of a sudden you put all this money into domestic violence and boom, the numbers go through the roof. It's something that you can expect. Things have to get worse before they get better."

He can understand why there may be negative feelings in the communities about the foundation.

"It's a very personal thing to apply and be rejected. It isn't just that 'you've rejected my project. It's you've rejected me and my aspirations for my community.' People took it very, very hard because a lot of the time we'd say 'I'm sorry but your project is not something that we can fund' or there are stronger projects in the area," he said. "That's a tough thing to say to people. And right away they'd say, 'Well that's because you don't like me.' We try to say, 'It's because of your project. It's not because of you. You have worthy goals here, but we have to fund people that we think have the best shot at a workable project.'"

The very last few ecisions on who gets further funding will be made in early October.

"We've got a small amount left. We'll make our final commitments in October. We've got about $30 million, which sounds like a lot but out of $425 million it's virtually nothing. It will be committed in an hour. After that, we'll do our best to make sure that people know that a lot of healing's just started," DeGagne said.

He said the foundation has kept costs below the average rates for administering programs so that most of the money would go to the programs.

"We offer our projects 15 per cent for admin. We probably come in at about 12 or 13 [per cent] as an organization," he said.

DeGagne said the $170 million that Heritage Canada will provide over the next seven years for Aboriginal language and culture rejuvenation could provide an opportunity for more healing.

"We're really gratified by the idea that there's now a parallel strategy around language and culture rejuvenation. So in the end that may be what's phase two for the foundation," he said. "Hopefully, it may follow the type of model that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was developed around. Instead of having it as a government program you give it to an arm's length board of directors, Aboriginally controlled and operated, and let them do what the community says."

Former Skeetchestn Indian Band Chief Ron Ignace has been a prominent figure in the fight for funding for language and culture. He is seen as the probable choice to be the chairman of any new organization, DeGagne said.

"My sense is they are going to choose a chairman and a chief executive officer, both of whom will be Aboriginal people. Then it will be very likely an all-Aboriginal board and they'll move forward from there," he added.