Canada's urban aboriginal populations.

• Author: Fenwick, Fred R.
• Position: ABORIGINAL law

In January of 2005, Federal Minister of Indian Affairs Andy Scott announced a $25 million one-time expansion of Indian Affairs Urban Aboriginal Strategy. Pilot projects are underway to try to "create innovative solutions to address local priorities" (in government speak).

So what is this all about?

Well, urban centres are where most of Canada's Aboriginal people live, not on reserves. Approximately 51% of our Aboriginal population lives in urban centres, another 29% in rural, non-reserve locations, and only 20% on reserves. This is not surprising as many of the better educational, career, and housing opportunities are in the urban centres. That is why most Canadians live there. Spending a bit more on urban strategies seems sensible, but is this amount of funding enough or too much? How to put the expansion of the Urban Aboriginal Strategy in perspective?

We could compare this expenditure on urban Aboriginal issues to the total Indian Affairs budget. This is not going to be a straightforward calculation as government budgeting is nothing like budgeting in the real world. It tends to announce programs in two and three-year periods (program spending is what it does after all) so it's sometimes difficult to figure out what yearly spending really is. However, adding the $25 million to an existing Urban Aboriginal Strategy yearly budget of $25 million ends up with $50 million per year for the urban strategy--not a large portion of the $7 billion (approximately) total Indian Affairs budget.

That would be less than 1% of the Indian Affairs budget being spent on the 51% of the Aboriginal population that lives in urban settings. Hmmm.

This obvious gap between the reality of Aboriginal life (urban versus reserve life, that is) and the federal government's response to it must be one of the next big issues for the evolution of Aboriginal law in Canada.

One of the consistent themes of this column has been about how the status quo of law and policy today has been passed down to us by the arrangements and compromises of our history. When Canada was being colonized by the Europeans, all the Aboriginal inhabitants were associated with their own Indian bands. Arrangements, treaties, reserves, and local government of all sorts were organized by the federal government and the Department of Indian Affairs through the bands and local band governments. It made some sense back then, and local government has evolved substantially through the years. Recent...