When photos of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in black and brown face surfaced, I was holding a copy of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal’s September 2019 decision awarding maximum damages to First Nations children and families victimized by Canada’s ongoing “wilful and reckless discrimination” in the underfunding of child welfare and other public services.

The tribunal dubbed it “a worst-case scenario,” contributing to the deaths of some children and thousands of unnecessary family separations. The day the photos emerged, the prime minister rightly apologized. The day the tribunal ruling came out, he was silent — not even a tweet.

I recalled how he wept hearing residential school survivors tell their stories of lost childhoods at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) closing ceremonies and, once elected, promised to implement all of the TRC Calls to Action. I was overjoyed. Finally, the government would treat First Nations children fairly and we could drop the then 9-year legal battle versus Canada alleging its inequitable provision of child welfare services and failure to implement Jordan’s Principle so First Nations kids could access other public services they needed was racially discriminatory.

Government documents mapped out horrible tragedies for children in bland but haunting bureaucratic language. Federal statistics show that since 1989, First Nations kids spent over 77 million nights in foster care — 12 times the rate of other kids. One four-year-old girl required a hospital bed so she would not suffocate when she visited her family over the Christmas holidays. The request went through over a dozen federal bureaucrats before someone said “absolutely not.” In another case, parents were forced to wash feeding tubes for their terminally ill child because Canada would not provide a sufficient number.

One of the most disturbing indictments of the federal system came in the form of a 2012 award given by then Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Michael Wernick to bureaucrats who ensured there were zero services approved via Jordan’s Principle by denying requests like the bed and feeding tubes.

It was racial discrimination of the worst kind, consciously perpetrated by a government toward children.

In fairness to Prime Minister Trudeau, this egregious behaviour is non-partisan. For more than a century, both Conservative and Liberal politicians distracted public attention from their own wrongdoings by pointing to the poor record of the other party. My heart sinks when I think of suffering children seeing leader after leader pass the buck instead of helping them.

Still, I wanted to give Trudeau a chance. At first, it looked positive when his government welcomed the tribunal’s landmark decision in January 2016. It found Canada’s inequitable provision of child welfare services and failure to implement Jordan’s Principle was racially discriminatory and ordered Canada to immediately cease its discriminatory conduct.

And yet, the tribunal was forced to issue another 10 orders (and counting) to compel Canada to begin to fix the problem. The government repeatedly issued bogus public statements declaring itself compliant while stonewalling the orders.

Eventually the tribunal’s orders piled up and in 2017, Canada began to comply by implementing Jordan’s Principle. In contrast to the zero Jordan’s Principle cases between 2007 and 2016, over a quarter of a million services were given to children under Jordan’s Principle this past year alone. It has made a world of difference for children and their families, but Canada is still falling short.

While the tribunal’s initial nine orders focused on trying to stop Canada’s discrimination, the September 2019 order was intended to compensate the children and families who were harmed by the discrimination and would not benefit from new reforms. It was a small measure of justice for lost childhoods. The tribunal sums it up in the decision, saying, “Canada’s conduct was devoid of caution and without regard for the consequences on First Nations children and their parents or grandparents.”

This flicker of reconciliation was quickly doused by Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s announcement that he would appeal the decision if he was in power, followed shortly after by the prime minister’s decision to file a judicial review (similar to an appeal). It seemingly did not occur to the government that Friday, when the judicial review was filed, was also the day of national remembrance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Seamus O’Reagan and the prime minister were quick to announce they supported compensation but wanted to “do it right,” yet their legal submissions said something entirely different. They asked the Federal Court to quash any orders for financial compensation. The politicians stated their desire to talk to “partners,” but failed to mention their refusal to mediate. In a bully tactic that runs counter to the Nation-to-Nation relationship, Canada also wants any party that opposes them to pay their legal costs.

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The most distressing message Canada’s appeal sends to victims of Canada’s discrimination: federal legal submissions argue that while the government did some harm, the federal government is the real victim and should be left alone to decide what it does to make up for its wrongdoing. The harms to the children and families are secondary.

Until federal party leaders accept full responsibility for the ongoing racial discrimination against children and reform the government so that it stops, Canada will continue to be the perpetrator of discrimination and children will continue to needlessly lose their childhoods at its hands. Blackface may behind Prime Minister Trudeau but the dark stain of federal discrimination still haunts First Nations families.

Cindy Blackstock, PhD, is the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and a professor a the School of Social Work, McGill University.

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