I agree, too. I agree with Dr. Blackstock's concerns and of course with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision around the need for funding. It can't be a principle; it can't be a “whereas” clause. There has to be a commitment with very specific guidelines about how that funding will be determined, that it will be population-based, needs based on circumstance and those kinds of things. It has to be flexible enough so that it can be negotiated but very directive so that people can't wiggle out of it, and it has to be a judiciable right. It has to be a substantive right in the legislation that we could take to court.
Part of the problem, once again, is that, if you leave it as principles or “whereas” clauses, you're asking the most impoverished people in this country, the most disadvantaged, the most vulnerable, to have enough money to go to court to sue Canada over and over again, and there are millions of dollars in these cases.
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is just one avenue, but when you're talking about court, you're literally talking about millions of dollars in experts. People who are working at friendship centres don't have enough money for that. First nations don't have enough money for that. Single moms and kids trying to address the system don't have enough money for that. To just say, “Well, you know, there's enough that maybe you can make some court arguments”, that's not it. I wholeheartedly agree with Cindy Blackstock when she says we have to be beyond first steps. We have to be beyond something's better than nothing. We have to be beyond incremental steps. You either have equality or you don't.
We're going to have to make a radical shift here. You're going to have to put the commitment in writing and make it a judiciable right for everybody, or what's the point of it? It's just another fluff policy piece so that we will have to sue again and spend many years in courts, and kids will lose their lives in foster care. We know it's not just damaging, but people lose their lives. It leads to murdered and missing indigenous women and girls, human trafficking, child porn, people getting caught up in gangs and over-incarceration. Two-thirds of all indigenous people in prison come from the foster care system. All of these problems that we're trying to deal with can be dealt with in a very radical way if we just do what we're supposed to do on this, and that's have a human rights framework and a first nations framework. It's as simple as that.