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Native poverty must end
PM: Feds propose $2-billion plan to improve life for aboriginals

Peter O'Neil
Saturday, August 20, 2005

OTTAWA -- A first ministers conference aimed at dramatically improving the lives of Canada's aboriginal people will take place this November in Vancouver.

Prime Minister Paul Martin is expected to make commitments of at least $2 billion to trigger "transformative change," particularly in housing, education and health, according to federal officials who confirmed the location of the meeting Friday.

Among the expected initiatives will be the creation of a national housing plan to work with the private sector and provincial governments to expand on- and off-reserve housing construction.

Bands will be encouraged to take advantage of recent legislation that will allow them to move away from communal band ownership and towards the fostering of greater individual home ownership, a key source of wealth creation for most non-Native Canadians.

The goal, according to one official, is to stimulate the formation of a large Native middle class.

The federal government is also talking about a so-called Marshall Plan for education -- a reference to the massive and successful U.S.-led program to rebuild a devastated Europe after the Second World War.

A federal education fund will help create regional school boards to assist on-reserve schools, which currently have no outside support to assess students or recruit teachers.

The fund would also encourage and fund innovative steps such as the establishment, through provincial education departments, of so-called "magnet schools" that are open to both off-reserve aboriginals and non-aboriginals.

The magnet school concept, already implemented successfully at the Amiskwaciy Academy in Edmonton, follows provincial school curriculum but includes courses in aboriginal history, literature and culture.

The November first ministers meeting, which will include the full participation of leaders of the five major national aboriginal groups, may lead to a 10-year plan that will include an agreement to measure progress regularly.

Martin, who has said publicly he will have failed as prime minister if he hasn't made tangible advances on the aboriginal file, has insisted the meeting will be about more than rhetoric.

Native leaders, including Assembly of First Nations grand chief Phil Fontaine, have cautiously participated in and endorsed the initiative -- even though they say they have heard many lofty political promises that never materialized.