Regional Chief hopeful federal budget will deliver on promises

March 22, 2016.

As First Nations leaders wait for the federal budget to come down Tuesday afternoon, they also wait to see if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has kept his campaign promises and earned the ceremonial name bestowed on him by Tsuut’ina First Nation earlier this month:  “Gumistiyi” or “The One Who Keeps Trying.” 

“We’ll see after the budget,” said Assembly of First Nations Alberta Regional Chief Craig Mackinaw, who flew to Ottawa Monday afternoon hoping to sit in the gallery Tuesday to experience the first budget to be delivered by the new Liberal government. “We’ll have a better idea then.”

Mackinaw would not speculate on what the budget would contain, but said, like other Indigenous leaders, he hopes to see Trudeau’s campaign promises delivered in dollars.

“I do know that the (finance) minister (Bill Morneau) said he’d look at trying to get as much as the items discussed in the budget, so we’ll see which ones will be presented when he does the budget,” said Mackinaw.

Mackinaw says all the issues included as campaign promises – safe drinking water, improved health care and focus, improved and additional housing, education – need to be addressed with funding.

Both during the campaign leading up to the Oct. 19, 2015, general election, and in the months following, the Liberals pledged to renew the nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous peoples. The Liberals also promised to lift the two per cent cap on funding; implement all 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; hold a national public inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women; invest $2.6 billion in First Nations education over four years and $500 million over three years for new schools and improvements; and address living conditions on First Nations.

“There are so many concerns in different areas,” said Mackinaw.

For Alberta, he says it is particularly important that environmental concerns get support in the budget.

The Liberal government has begun delivering on some campaign promises with actions, which include pre-inquiry hearings to set the parameters for the upcoming national inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women, and Indigenous leaders were part of the delegation that made the trip to Paris to discuss climate change.

Mackinaw hopes to join AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde in the gallery when the budget is presented.