Tue Jun 22, 2010, 9:05 PM
By The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - Aboriginal Peoples Television Network says it is appealing a decision by the chairwoman of a human rights tribunal to exclude cameras from hearings into whether the Canadian government discriminates against First Nations children through its funding of on-reserve child welfare agencies.
APTN CEO Jean Larose said in an interview broadcast Tuesday the case "goes to the heart" of aboriginal communities across the country.
"The number of children that are in care is way out of whack with the rest of Canada," he said. "For the chair to decide there is no role for our cameras in the room to me smacks of the same type of paternalism that we have had to deal with from governments for hundreds of years."
Tribunal chairwoman Shirish Chotalia ruled late last month against allowing television cameras in to record the tribunal's hearings into the complaint against the federal government launched by the Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.
Chotalia ruled that having cameras present would be disruptive to witnesses, including officials with the Department of Indian Affairs.
"I find that camera access will inevitably compromise the privacy of hearing participants to an intolerable degree and introduce an element of distraction which is detrimental to the hearing process," wrote Chotalia in her ruling.
Larose said APTN believes the chairwoman made some errors of law in the ruling, adding the network is also mulling a much broader argument to overturn the camera ban.
"We are having discussions on a couple of other elements that we think applies to the tribunal as it does to any other court and they are linked to recent Supreme Court decisions on how agencies and other must deal with aboriginal peoples."
The assembly and the Caring Society contend that Indian Affairs underfunds on-reserve child and family services by about $100 million annually.
Their human rights complaint argues the department discriminates against First Nations children by not funding their agencies to the level available to comparable off-reserve agencies.
Indian Affairs funds child welfare services on reserves through its First Nations Child and Family Services Program, created in 1990, and through a separate agreement with Ontario called the 1965 Indian Welfare Agreement.
The department is responsible for more than 100 First Nations agencies that deal with about 160,000 children and youth across the country.
The department's funding has more than doubled over the past decade, going from $238 million in 1998-1999 to about $523 million in 2008-2009.
Critics, however, say the department has stuck to an outdated funding formula which is based on each agency having six per cent of on-reserve children in care.
B.C. Children's Minister Mary Polak wrote Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl stating that the province was overwhelmed with the number of First Nations in care. She said First Nations children make up 54 per cent of those in care.
"This is a fundamental issue of equity, and there is no justification for differential treatment of children on reserve to those living off reserve," wrote Polak.
In New Brunswick, the province is considering taking legal action against the federal government over perceived chronic underfunding.
A 2008 report by Canada's auditor-general found that up to 28 per cent of on-reserve children could be found in care at any given time.