Friendship centres' budgets slashed

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Native Friendship Centre staff are reeling from news of a whopping 20-per cent cutback in federal funds over three years announced in the Liberal budget.

"For me, it's frustrating beyond belief. People are burnt out. We're stretched to the limits," said Marc Maracle, executive director of the 111-member National Association of Friendship Centres, based in Ottawa.

"We're handcuffed, we're down on our knees, we're being kicked and we've still got a smile on our face."

The Heritage Ministry will give 99 of the centres $16.4 million in core funding this year - a cut of five per cent. The following year it will be worse - 10 per cent is cut - and the year after that, another 6.5 per cent will be chopped.

Twelve newer friendship centres have yet to be granted a penny in core funding.

When the Liberals were elected in 1993, Native Friendship Centres were hopeful the new government would give them a respite from three years of financial strangulation by the Mulroney regime, which stripped 10-per cent of their funds in three years.

Instead, friendship centres got a hold of a leaked government document last November that revealed Liberal policy-makers were considering deep cuts to their funding. In the document, even Heritage bureaucrats were anxious about the effects of another round of budget gouging.

They feared the "loss of a recognized, experienced and respected urban Aboriginal infrastructure," and worried that if the cuts went too far, this would further "marginalize" Canada's 700,000 urban Natives, provoking "increased political activism and increased social costs."

Native Friendship Centres were kept in the dark for three months about how bad the cuts would be, only learning the extent of the cuts when the budget was announced Feb. 27.

"We've almost become sensitized to the cuts," said Maracle, who also spoke of a lack of parity between funding to First Nations communities and urban Natives. Each year Ottawa spends under $900 on each urban Native compared to about $12,000 for on-reserve Natives. But even that figure isn't anywhere near what's spent on the average Canadiam, according to calculations by the Grand Council of the Crees.

Urban Natives are also being hit from another direction. Federal transfer payments to the provinces are being heavily gutted, which will trigger provincial spending cuts in justice, social assistance, education, social housing and health care that inevitably will affect urban Natives and other disadvantaged groups, hardest.

As more people migrate from reserves to urban centres and social programs are choked, Natives are in for rougher times, Maracle said.

"The ability of friendship centres to fill that void will be severely challenged."