Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Chair, and thank you, honourable committee members, for taking this time to learn about a great opportunity that's before us as Canadians--that is, to make a difference for this generation of first nations children and young people. I understand that when Canada comes

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  For the report, we asked first nations agencies to report on jurisdictional disputes that had happened within the last calendar year, between May 2004 and May 2005. It's also important to understand that was in 12 sample first nation agencies. There are over 115 in this country,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In Jordan's situation, had he been non-status, he would have gone home at his second birthday and the province would have picked up the tab.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Right, off reserve and on reserve. And because he was resident on reserve and because he was in child welfare care, that's where the piece stepped in where this started to really be a buck being passed between the respective levels of government.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's right. And also an important note is that in that 2000 report there was a recommendation to resolve those types of disputes and it was never implemented. Had it been implemented, Jordan would never have found himself in this situation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, it's a large concern, and I'm just going to lay out a little bit more landscape for people. Off reserve, in general, child welfare services to aboriginal children are delivered by the provinces in most cases. There is some development of aboriginal services for child welfa

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's right. And the other piece is that our data from Dr. Nico Trocmé show that first nations children are in far greater need of child welfare services than non-aboriginal children. In fact, they're overrepresented by a factor of two at every stage of the assessment process,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One of the key pieces we saw is that many first nations agencies would like to enact their own traditional laws in keeping with child welfare, and many are actually beginning that particular road. The value system underpinning child welfare law as a provincial entity really is in

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Just to clarify, the number at the beginning was from four sample provinces, comparing what proportion of children were in child welfare care by cultural group. So what we were able to find out is that 0.67% of non-aboriginal children in those four sample provinces were in child

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The $109 million would apply to children on reserve only. Unfortunately, we do not have good data in all regions on the level of funding that is necessary and on how it should be distributed for child welfare services off reserve at this particular point in time. In terms of th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You understand it correctly. There was actually a great study done by Bowlus and McKenna on the costs of child maltreatment to the Canadian taxpayer, which suggests the immediate costs of the child maltreatment, as well as the costs due to things like over-involvement in justic

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, we weren't able to get into those things in this study. I think the savings would be astronomical if we really looked at it in those terms, especially when we know that aboriginal young people are the fastest-growing segment of the population. If we were to collectively as

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No. There is a lot of cohesiveness in that report. One of the things that's important to understand though is that the Province of British Columbia, in that particular instance, said they're going to make an investment in aboriginal children in the child welfare system, which i

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Exactly.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, it's an important point. There is a remoteness adjustment in the current formula, but we're recommending that be changed somewhat. The part that is population-sensitive is the operations portion, which funds prevention services. So if you happen to be in a small community,