Proceedings of Expert Forum on First Nations Social Assistance Reform, September 3, 2019

• Main Authors: Metallic, Naiomi, Wien, Fred
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Schulich Law Scholars 2019
• Subjects: Social Policy; Indian Act; First Nations; Canada; Administrative Law; Constitutional Law; Indigenous; Indian; and Aboriginal Law; Law; Law and Politics; Law and Society; Public Law and Legal Theory; Social Welfare Law
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/scholarly_works/1601; https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/context/scholarly_works/article/2581/viewcontent/Metallic_Expert_Forum.pdf

Social assistance, whether directed to the mainstream population or to First Nations, is not – according to Forum participants -- a sexy topic. Specifically, with respect to First Nation persons living on reserve in Canada, it has been largely a neglected field except for those directly responsible for administering it. Despite its substantive importance, it has not received a lot of attention from the academic research community, for example, nor is it usually near the top of the list of priorities for political leaders and governments. Why is this the case? Perhaps it has to do with the history of providing assistance, which for colonial and federal governments has been seen through the lens of limiting government expenditures. Indeed, the major historical study of this social policy area has the title Enough to Keep Them Alive: Indian Welfare in Canada 1873-1965.1 It may also have to do with the stigma associated with being on welfare, the legacy of the English Poor Laws and their division of the population in need between the deserving and the undeserving poor. As Naiomi Metallic points out in her presentation reproduced below, providing social assistance on reserve also does not rest on a very firm legal foundation. It was in 1964 that federal officials were first given formal authority to allocate funds for assistance, but this was only through a Treasury Board Directive, not through legislation backed by Parliamentary approval. In addition, social assistance is normally provided to Canadian citizens by the provinces, and indeed federal officials in the 1960’s were busy trying to get the provinces on board to deliver assistance on reserve. They were unsuccessful in all cases except Ontario, with the result that “social” has been funded by the federal Indian Affairs department with delivery devolved to individual First Nations. The 1964 Treasury Board Directive tied social assistance to the policies and practices of the provinces and thus did not develop the legal, policy and administrative infrastructure ...