Canada pledges $35.1 billion for Indigenous child welfare

The Canadian government on Thursday offered $35.1 billion (Can$47.8 billion) to repair the "broken" Indigenous child welfare system.

After a ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal determined child welfare services in First Nations communities were underfunded, the sum offered by the government -- to be spent over the next decade -- aims to improve support for impacted families, according to the First Nations representatives who helped negotiate the agreement.

"We're trying to change a really broken system. It's going to be hard," said Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), to the applause of other chiefs at a press conference in Montreal.

"We encourage First Nations to take control back of our children, back to our homes, back to our communities."

According to the 2021 census, 53.8 percent of children in foster care under the age of 14 are Indigenous, despite comprising only 7.7 percent of children in the country.

Patty Hajdu, Canada's Minister of Indigenous Services, said the offering marks "a day that Canada moves from compensating for harm to investing in prevention."

"It's about restoring... power and control to communities and families and parents so that no child ever again will grow up without being surrounded by love and culture and language knowing who they are," she continued.

The funds will be discussed among First Nations groups over the coming weeks before going before a vote by the Assembly in September.

The money follows a pledge of $16.9 billion to benefit 300,000 First Nations children and their families who were deemed victims of discrimination by the foster care system that often uprooted them from their communities.

Canada's First Nations population experiences higher levels of poverty and lower life expectancy compared to other Canadians, and are more frequently subjected to violent crime, substance abuse and incarceration on average.