ALI funding amount?

[Heather Souter]

Taanshi, hello, Neskie,

I don't know if you saw my post to your request about funding figures
for ALI and residential school compensation.  I am including it here,
just in case it is are useful to you.  The last excerpt has Michif in
its title but addressed funding for all the indigenous langauges of
present-day Canada.

Glad people are continuing to get the word out about the pathetic
funding indignous language revitalization/re-acquisition/stablization
is getting in Canada!

Eekoshi.
Heather
Michif Language Activist,
Camperville, Manitoba

Here is an excerpt from the web site of the Merchant Law Group:

Our firm and other groups then reached a National Settlement with the
Government of then Prime Minister Paul Martin in November, 2005, which
provides $1.9 Billion in compensation for Common Experience Payments,
and we estimate an extra $3 Billion in additional IAP compensation to
Survivors who suffered sexual and serious physical abuse (which will
be paid out over the next several years based on individual
assessments).

http://www.merchantlaw.com/ResidentialSchools.html?gclid=CMbP-duYjJQCFQlqsgodjHztVw

Here is one from the Star.

Although the previous Liberal government promised in 2003 to spend
$160 million over 10 years to promote and develop aboriginal
languages, none of that money was allocated or spent. The pledge was
quietly scaled back in November 2006 by the Harper Tories. Ottawa
currently spends $5 million a year on its Aboriginal Language
Initiative.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/294114

Here is the pertainent part of my post to ILAt

Michif Language Funding by Canadian Government, Michif Language
Conferences, etc....

Taanshi kiyawaaw!  (Hello to you all!)

Just so people subscribing to ILAT do not get the impression that the
Canadian Government has taken a renewed interest in the Michif (and
other Aboriginal) languages in Canada, please know that all the recent
funding announcements are not about "new" monies being committed.

Actually, the previous government (Liberal) had promised much more
funding to become available for language revitalization (172.5 million
over 11 years starting 2002) but the present Conservative government
reneged on the commitment. Millions of dollars of funding disappeared
with a blink of an eye. Now the funding stands at 5 million annually
for ten years. (12.5 million was already dispersed before the
Conservative government made its funding cuts.)  This means that in a
best case scenario as things stand the largest amount of funding over
11 years would be 62.5 million dollars.  A cut of 110 million dollars
or 64%!   This is in spite of the fact that the Federal government
will provide more than 1 billion dollars of funding for French
language education over the four year period between 2005 and 2009!



On 6/30/08, Neskie Manuel <neskiem at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Maxine,
>
>  Thanks for responding to this.   How are you doing?   Do you know if
>  Ethan made it down to Vancouver for my Dad's conference?
>
>  I didn't know that you've done that.  I'm looking to get funding for a
>  software localization project I'm working on, but that's for later.
>
>  I thought that the Canadian government gave pretty much nothing to
>  languages.  200,000 is nothing, especially given that Canada wants
>  native people to accept an apology.
>
>  Would you like to do an interview with me about language funding in
>  Canada?  This is for my radio show Friday Edition of Operation Wakeup
>  [1].  I'm doing a piece on Language Funding in Canada.
>
>  -Neskie
>
>  [1] - http://news.ckdu.ca
>
>
>  On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 2:23 AM, Maxine Baptiste <mrb1 at email.arizona.edu> wrote:
>  > Hi Neskie, this is Maxine Baptiste (Ethan, Zoey's Mom :-)) I have sat on the
>  > committee to review proposals for ALI funding for FPHLCC that administers
>  > this
>  > fund in the province of BC. The amount of ALI funding allocated for BC is
>  > $200,000 for the 36 +/-languages in BC (numbers vary according to how
>  > dialects,
>  > etc are counted). Projects are funded up to $10,000 per proposal. This is
>  > very
>  > little compared to the millions spent on French language programming in the
>  > public/private schools in BC as well as the rest of Canada. If you go to the
>  > FPHLCC's website, you will see the amounts there as well as other funding
>  > that
>  > is available. But, the other funding is also very little in comparison.
>  > Maxine
>  >
>