Nunavut's politicians unanimously voted on Thursday to pressure Ottawa to keep funding the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, saying up to a dozen programs in the territory are at risk of ending after the national organization's funding dries up at the end of this month.
The federal government did not renew its funding for the foundation, which provides money to 134 community-based healing programs across Canada for former students of Indian residential schools. As a result, the foundation's current funding will expire on March 31.
Instead, the government has committed $65.9 million over two years for mental health and emotional abuse support services for former students and their families. The funding will support programs run by Health Canada.
But many aboriginal groups, including those across northern Canada, fear that dozens of healing programs will soon have to be terminated.
Nanulik MLA Johnny Ningeongan, who presented a motion calling on Ottawa to restore the foundation's funding, said it has been less than two years since Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to former students for the government's role in the residential school legacy.
"Yet here we are, already facing the end of our critically important federal programs specifically aimed at providing funding for the very same healing that the prime minister spoke of," Ningeongan said in the territorial legislature Thursday.
"To cease the funding now would seriously interrupt the progress that is being made towards health and well-being. The termination of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation funding would leave many Nunavut programs in limbo."
Quttiktuq MLA Ron Elliott seconded the motion, noting that about 12 programs in Nunavut currently receive funding from the foundation.
"The momentum and everything that these organizations have worked towards will be interrupted and in some cases terminated," said Elliott, who represents communities in Nunavut's High Arctic region.
After some of the 16 MLAs present — some of whom attended residential schools — spoke to the motion, all of them voted in favour of it.
Earlier this week, Elliott urged the Nunavut government to step in and provide funding to the foundation.
More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were placed in more than 130 residential schools across Canada from the late 1870s until the mid-1970s.
At the church-run schools, which were funded by the federal government, many students experienced physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Many also reported being forbidden from speaking their native languages or practicing their cultures.
The Ottawa-based Aboriginal Healing Foundation was established in 1998 with a $350-million grant from the Indian and Northern Affairs Department to help former students who were physically or sexually abused in the residential school system.
But Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl has said the foundation has run its course, and new programs will ensure residential school survivors are supported.