These are the hard facts

This is from Vancouver's Fraser Institute.  Should be required reading for every journalist who covers native affairs.  I have blogged about all the myths repeatedly and I challenge all Indigenous people who read this to share it widely, if they have the courage to face the wrath of their fellows:

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"The federal government spends far more money for every aboriginal Canadian than it does on non-aboriginal Canadians.  Given the problems faced by First Nations and First Peoples both on- and off-reserve, that fact is probably justifiable.  But the point is, it’s a fact.  Yet aboriginal activists still frequently claim their communities are troubled precisely because they receive substantially less funding per person than non-aboriginal communities.  That’s simply not true. Still, if that misconception is the starting point for debate the problems experienced by First Nations will never get solved.

"The federal department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) alone spends $8,578 per year on every First Nations adult and child in the country.  Over the past 60 years, INAC has given $215 billion to First Nations. Health Canada has given another $41 billion. And that’s just two departments.

"There are nearly 30 federal departments and agencies that give money to aboriginal Canadians. Together, all federal spending on First Nations and First Peoples is closer to $13,000 per capita.

"The entire federal budget for non-aboriginal persons is $7,295 each per year.  That means Ottawa spends about 75% more for every aboriginal citizen than it spends on non-aboriginals.  Again, that’s probably justifiable.  But it is also a fact that aboriginal communities and individuals are not underfunded.

"Since the mid-1990s, the provinces, too, have stepped up their spending on First Nations, and First Nations aren’t even provincial responsibility under the Constitution.  Since 1994, total provincial spending has risen 31% after adjusting for inflation and populations growth. However, over that same period, provincial spending on First Peoples has exploded by 1,235%.  Also, in 2014 alone, Canada’s 630 First Nations reserves averaged nearly $5 million in “own-source” revenues from oil and gas, mining rights, casinos and other aboriginal businesses.

"Money isn’t the problem.  Yet our current federal Liberal government seems intent on stoking the myth that more money will make First Nations’ problems magically disappear.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said on several occasions that his government will restore the Kelowna Accord (or something similar). That 2005 agreement, cancelled by the Harper Tories, promised more than an additional $1 billion annually to First Nations.

"The trouble with building solutions based on the myth of underfunding is that it feeds the notion that First Nations’ problems are someone else’s fault; that non-aboriginals’ greed, indifference or outright racism are what’s keeping First Peoples down.  So, solutions are someone else’s responsibility.  It’s similar to the myth that racially motivated neglect is behind the murder and disappearance of thousands of First Nations women over the past 35 years.  When this first became a political hot potato three years ago, the RCMP pointed out several facts:

"The murder rate among aboriginal women has been on a steady decline since the mid-1990s and was in 2013 at least a third lower than 20 years earlier. The solution rate for murder cases involving female aboriginal victims (82%) is nearly the same as for non-aboriginal females (83%). And, most importantly, at least 70% of aboriginal female victims are murdered by aboriginal men.

"If there is a particular problem with murdered or missing aboriginal women and girls, it isn’t mostly a problem with white men preying on them and white cops ignoring it or covering it up.  Yet, because so much of federal and provincial policy towards First Nations is driven by politically-correct myth, tens of millions of tax dollars were spent on an inquiry in murdered and mission indigenous women.

"And it will be every bit as useless in the end as raising spending on First Nations based on the presumption that they are currently underfunded."