Aboriginal languages centre dumped from budget

The opposition says it’s a cut; the Tories say it’s not.
And the only thing they do agree on is that $160 million worth of aboriginal language money that’s lurked inside the Heritage Canada department’s budget since 2002 should have been spent long ago.

The dispute blew up last week when the Assembly of First Nations and two NDP MPs, Charlie Angus of Timmins-James Bay and Dennis Bevington of the Western Arctic, started asking questions about the status of a Heritage Canada scheme called the “Aboriginal Language Initiative,” and a $172.5 million pot of money that the former Liberal government allocated to aboriginal languages in 2002.

The Conservatives say most of that money — $160 million — was set aside for a proposed institution called an “aboriginal languages and cultures centre” — which never materialized.

“It wasn’t helping preserve a single word from any language,” said a spokesperson from the office of Bev Oda, the Tory Heritage minister.

Of the remaining $12 million, $2.5 million was spent on an aboriginal languages task force, and $5 million in each of two years for the aboriginal language initiative — the only part of that money that seems to have been spent on actual programs.

“Apart from the $12.5 million, the initial allocation of resources had not been accessed. The previous government had no plan on how to spend the money,” Oda said last week in a written response to a question from Angus.

Instead, the Tories removed the $160 million from the budget, and replaced it with $40 million to be handed out at rate of $5 million per year for eight years.

Mary Simon, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, does not appear to buy Oda’s explanation.

This past Tuesday, Simon, who said she received a “tremendous amount of feedback from Inuit on this issue” released a statement that condemns Oda’s decision.

“We received no indication that cuts of this nature were imminent. Despite the government’s explanations as to why this funding was eliminated, the result is still a massive reduction to aboriginal languages programs,” Simon said.

For her part, Oda says that unlike Liberals, who put money into the aboriginal languages initiative on a year-to-year basis only, the new money is guaranteed for eight years.

“This new money is permanent,” Oda said.

Oda’s office also says this “is not the end of the story” and will continue to look at the idea of spending more on aboriginal languages within “the wider context of the new government’s approach to meeting the needs of aboriginal people.”

But it’s not clear when, how, or if that will happen.

Oda also said her government is opposed to the creation of the proposed aboriginal language and culture centre, and prefers to give money to people at the community level.

To that end, she said her officials will now meet with Inuit, First Nations and Métis organizations to develop a plan.

“It [the former Liberal government] did nothing with that money. There were no plans,” Oda said in a reporter’s scrum outside the House of Commons this past Friday.

But those answers don’t satisfy Dennis Bevington, the NDP member for Western Arctic.

“It’s a cut. I’m not satisfied with what the government is doing with that program,” Bevington said in an interview.

The annual language agreements that Ottawa works out with Nunavut and other territorial governments, worth $4 million a year each, are not affected by the federal government’s decisions on the aboriginal languages initiative.