Some B.C. children in need are victims of 'fiscal discrimination,' watchdog says

'Fiscal discrimination' against children in care The amount of funding children in care receive depends partly on whether they live on or off reserve, according to a new watchdog report.

Whether a child lives on or off reserve, and the type of family services agency working with them determines how much funding and support they will receive, according to B.C.'s Representative for Children and Youth.

In a new report, Jennifer Charlesworth said the underlying issue was not just money, but the "human rights" of thousands of children to receive equitable treatment. When trying to look at different funding models, the team found a financial system that was complex, lacking transparency, and in dire need of an overhaul.

"The result of this hodgepodge of funding streams...is fiscal discrimination," she told reporters in a Zoom call unveiling her latest report, entitled “At a Crossroads: The roadmap from fiscal discrimination to equity in Indigenous child welfare.”

Charlesworth added with residential schools top of mind, B.C. needs to act on what years and years of reports have shown: that Indigenous children are over-represented in foster care, and that there's little transparency about how money allocated to them is spent.

Many say the child welfare system is essentially an extension of the horrendous residential school system, where children are in government care, not getting adequate supports, not linked to their culture.

The report went on to note the amount of funding varies depending on whether the child in question lives on or off reserve, and on what kind of family service agency they work with.

Mary Teegee is the B.C. representative on the National Advisory Committee on First Nations Child and Family Services through the Assembly of First Nations, and a board member of the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada. During the Zoom call, she explained that on reserve, social workers hired by the federal government worked with between four and eight clients. Off reserve it was a different story.

"You look at the provincial funding they get one social worker to 27 children...that's what their framework says but we know in some cases it's 40 children, or 50 or 60 children," she told reporters.

She made several recommendations, including better transparency.

While the province says it's working on a new funding system, it has no timeline for when that could be in place. Mitzi Dean, the minister for children and family development said the province was in Phase 3 of a plan to create a new framework, and that the ministry would look at the report's recommendations.

"We will be spending some time analyzing it in depth we see that it has some important information in it," she said in Victoria. "My ministry is absolutely committed to working on a fiscal framework."

Indigineous leaders and the representative say this isn't a new problem, and has been raised for more than a decade with both the province and Ottawa – and has played out in the courts. They say the time to act is now.