Manitoba advocate hopes for healing for First Nations kids in care after court decision on compensation
CBC
A Manitoba advocate for kids in care hopes a recent Federal Court decision will mean not just compensation, but also healing, for thousands of First Nations children affected by inequality in the child welfare system.
Last week, the Federal Court dismissed an application from the federal government for a judicial review of a landmark human rights tribunal compensation order for First Nations children.
In 2019, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered Ottawa to pay $40,000 — the maximum amount allowed — to each child apprehended through the on-reserve child welfare system since 2006.
Manitoba has about 10,000 children in care, approximately 8,000 of whom are First Nations children, says Cora Morgan, the First Nations Family Advocate in Manitoba for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
"So the statistics are very high," she said. "The percentage of kids in care [is] dramatically higher than any other province in the country."
The human rights complaint, first filed in 2007 by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, was intended to address the inequalities First Nations children on reserve face when seeking care.
"If you're a child 15 years ago, when you're born with any type of special needs and if you're living on reserve and the health-care system on reserve didn't have an ability to respond, the typical reaction was to put the child in care," said Morgan.
Indigenous communities throughout B.C. are mourning the death of former premier John Horgan, a man who many knew long before he began his career in politics.
A group of former leaders and climate experts say the annual UN COP climate talks are no longer fit for purpose and need to be reformed, publishing a critical open letter mid-way through what has so far been a fractious summit.
This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
A decision over how the provincial government regulates moose hunting in a First Nation's traditional territory now rests with a Manitoba judge, whose ruling will be precedent-setting, lawyers in the case say.
A teenager diagnosed with bird flu in British Columbia is the first domestically acquired human case of H5N1 avian influenza, the Public Health Agency of Canada says.
The Manitoba government made a "political compromise" in its decision to issue a reduced number of moose hunting licences to non-Indigenous hunters in northern parts of the province earlier this year, a lawyer representing a First Nation in the area has argued in court.
If it weren't for a stem cell transplant — less than half a cup of blood from a stranger's umbilical cord — four-year-old Tristan Ford would almost certainly have died as an infant, his parents say.
A Métis saddle from the early 1800s is at the centre of an exhibit that opened last month at a Swiss museum, along with contemporary beadwork created by other Red River Métis artists.
A dome-shaped device floating in Halifax's Northwest Arm could easily be confused with a buoy, but it is actually a contraption meant to turn ocean water into fresh water.
As of Tuesday, there are limits on the number of bottles of spirits a person can buy at the B.C. Liquor store in Tofino, a move that leaders of the Ahousaht First Nation were pushing for.
This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.