05.02.2022

Canada Pledges $31.5 Billion to Settle Fight Over Indigenous Child Welfare System

The Canadian government agreed to pay $31.5 billion to repair the country's discriminatory child welfare system and compensate Indigenous families. “This is the largest settlement in Canadian history. Half will go toward compensating both children who were unnecessarily removed, and their families and caregivers, over the past three decades. The rest of the money will go toward repairing the child welfare system for First Nations children — who are statistically far more likely to be removed from their families — over the next five years to ensure families are able to stay together. Canada has been grappling with its colonial legacy since 2015, when the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission deemed that the historic removal of Indigenous children from their families over a century, when they were sent to residential schools, amounted to “cultural genocide.” The commission issued dozens of calls to action, the first of which was to reduce the number of Indigenous children in state care. Last year, the discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves at the sites of two of those former schools added emotional urgency to the reckoning, including calls to abandon Canada Day celebrations. An estimated 150,000 Indigenous children attended the boarding schools, the last of which closed in 1996, where hundreds died. Many were physically and sexually abused.
​Credit: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM