Agreement hold a waste of time

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The one year moratorium on child welfare agreements between the federal, provincial and band governments has been a complete waste of time, say organizers of a child welfare conference.

The moratorium on tri-partite and bi-partite agreements between bands and governments went into effect last year when the government announced that a task force would investigate the procedure in an effort to assist both bands and government formulate better agreements.

However, Allen Benson, organizer of the Calgary international child conference held Oct. 7 to 10, said the task force was a waste of time and effort because the report had "no meat."

"All it (the task force paper) has done is to hold everything back. It doesn't help us at all."

However, despite the criticism, the report (which consists of 13 pages) does point to the fact that since bands began to take control of child welfare fewer children have been taken into care.

The first agreements were signed in 1981 and now 308 or 55 per cent of the bands in Canada, have undertaken agreements. Since then, spending on child welfare has increased from $40.5 million in 1981/82 to $80.6 million for 1987/88.

However, the study found that on average a Native child is three times more likely to be taken into care than a white child although in Alberta the figure is 1.5 per cent. And because of the various types of agreements there are wide discrepancies in the types of services and dollar allocation by the federal government.

Organizers of the conference were also angry that Department of Indian Affairs Minister, Bill McKnight refused to meet with delegates or be available to answer questions on the task force paper. Secretary of State and former Indian Affairs minister David Crombie was also in Calgary during the conference, but also declined an invitation to attend the conference.

The final report on the state of Native child welfare will not be available for another month. However, the preliminary report was released during the conference.