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Assembly of First Nations chief urges Liberals to act on funding pledge to First Nations

Bellegarde says it is time for the Liberals to redouble their efforts to raise indigenous people out of poverty and to provide the kinds of supports they wrote into their campaign platform

theglobeandmail.com

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The Liberal government has promised billions of new dollars to improve the lives of Canada’s indigenous people, but the head of the Assembly of First Nations says chiefs want to know when that money will flow.
Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has stated his desire to “repair this most important relationship,” Perry Bellegarde, the National Chief of the AFN, told The Globe and Mail in an interview on Monday that there are many ways in which the nearly one-year-old government is failing to meet that commitment.
With the new sitting of Parliament starting this week after a three-month summer break, Mr. Bellegarde said it is time for the Liberals to redouble their efforts to raise indigenous people out of poverty and to provide the kinds of supports they wrote into their campaign platform.
“On certain issues and files, they are doing good things. On others, they’re not,” Mr. Bellegarde said.
The federal budget released in March allotted $8.4-billion over the next five years to improve the socioeconomic conditions in indigenous communities. Much of that money was slated to roll out toward the end of the current four-year mandate and in the year after the next vote.
Mr. Bellegarde said he and other First Nations leaders are happy with the amount pledged but, in order for it to have a meaningful impact, it’s got to get out to the First Nations communities.
“All I can tell you,” he said, “is I have been across Canada and I have been listening to chiefs and leaders, and everywhere I go, when I start talking about the $8.4-billion, they say, ‘Well, Chief Bellegarde, yeah, that’s a really high figure, but we’re not seeing it out on the ground yet.’ We’ve got to find more effective ways to get the funding flowing out.”

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Source: The Globe and Mail

Canada

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