Ottawa failing to meet Jordan's Principle deadlines for First Nations kids' care most of the time

Indigenous Services Canada is taking longer to respond to urgent requests to get First Nations children access to medical care and social services and it's putting lives at risk, critics say.

Under a program known as Jordan's Principle, the federal department is supposed to process such urgent requests for medical care and social services within 12 hours. Experts say many children are likely to face irremediable harm if they don't get assistance within that window.

New data shows the department often fails to provide this type of timely urgent care and met the 12-hour deadline only 33 per cent of the time during the 2022-23 fiscal year — a drop of 19 per cent since the year before.

The federal government provided the numbers in response to an order paper question submitted by NDP MP Charlie Angus, who shared the information with CBC News.

"This government is completely failing First Nation children," said Angus, who represents the northern Ontario riding of Timmins—James Bay.

"When we have an urgent case, that damn well better be a priority. And it doesn't seem to be."

More recent figures filed by Ottawa with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal confirm the decline in service.

Indigenous Services Canada's (ISC) compliance rate dropped to 24 per cent for urgent cases and 29 per cent for non-urgent cases between April 1, 2023 and Feb. 29, 2024, according to the tribunal documents.

The data shows a downward trend in ISC's ability to assist First Nations children, whose families and care providers are turning to the federal government for help in preventing developmental delays and saving children's lives.

"To see such low levels of compliance for the most needy kids is really, really concerning," said Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.

Jordan's Principle is named after Jordan River Anderson of the Norway House Cree Nation, who died in 2005 at the age of five in the midst of a two-year battle between Manitoba and Ottawa over who would pay for his care.

In 2007, the House of Commons adopted the principle in River's name and Ottawa launched the Jordan's Principle program in 2016 to compensate qualifying families for their children's health and therapeutic services.

In 2017, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered Canada to process Jordan's Principle requests within a 12 to 48 time frame.

In response to a challenge from Blackstock over the government's compliance issues, ISC lawyers are now asking the tribunal to extend Jordan's Principle timelines and, in some cases, eliminate them.