Aboriginal languages centre dumped from budget (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Nunavut News
November 10, 2006

Aboriginal languages centre dumped from budget
Tories re-jig dormant program

JIM BELL

[photo sinet - Mary Simon, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami,
said this past Tuesday that ITK deplores a decision by Bev Oda, the
Heritage minister, to cut $160 million earmarked for a aboriginal
languages centre and replace it with $40 million in program funding.
(FILE PHOTO)]

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.