Trump confronts repeated boos during raucous Libertarian convention speech
Donald Trump was booed repeatedly while addressing Saturday night’s Libertarian Party National Convention.
The last residential school closed in the 1990s, with most phased out in the decades prior to that, but the pain that comes from family separation is still a reality for tens of thousands of Indigenous people.
Every year, thousands of Indigenous children are separated from their parents, their communities and their culture by the child welfare system, a system that, in many ways, continues the cycle of colonial violence.
jaye simpson grew up in five different foster homes in British Columbia. And in that time, they had little connection to their Indigenous heritage.
“There’s often times language about the youth-in-care system that the system is ‘broken.’ I am in firm belief that it isn’t broken -- that it’s by design, and it’s doing exactly what it’s meant to do,” they told CTV News.
As Canada began to shutter residential schools, the '60s Scoop began, a period when thousands of First Nations boys and girls were taken from their parents and placed in foster care with non-Indigenous families.
The unbroken cycle continues to this day, now called the Millennium Scoop.
“They have not learned the history of residential schools,” Cindy Blackstock, an activist for Indigenous child welfare and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada said. “They are repeating the same kind of government behaviours that led to those children suffering.”
According to the 2016 census, Indigenous children make up just 7.7 per cent of the child population, and yet 52.2 per cent of children in foster care are Indigenous.
First Nations children are apprehended by social services at 14 times the rate of non-Indigenous kids, and just under 15,000 Indigenous children under the age of 15 are in the foster care system.
Advocates say proper funding for housing, education and health care could eliminate many of the reasons governments cite for separating families to begin with.
Forty per cent of Indigenous children live in poverty, compared to seven per cent of non-Indigenous kids.
“For some inexplicable reason over the years, a system built up that just said the easiest thing to do is to take these children away from their families, and, you know, we look at that and say, that's not the answer to solving these problems,” Jane Philpott, former Indigenous Relations Minister, told CTV News.
An expansive report published last spring, called ‘Cash Back’, dove into how Canada has profited from Indigenous land while also chronically underfunding Indigenous communities.
It feeds into a toxic loop where Indigenous people are blamed if there is poverty in their communities, while receiving none of the support required to pull themselves out of that poverty. And then children are removed from homes deemed unsuitable, often because of poverty.
Yet, instead of investing more in Indigenous communities and organizations, Canada continues to fight Indigenous families in court, losing a pair of appeals yesterday on rulings relating to funding for Indigenous children.
“We want them to thrive as children, so let's funnel the monies that way,” Blackstock said. “And the good news is, for every dollar that government spends right now, it's going to save $18 downstream because healthy, happy kids grow into healthy, happy adults who don't need the level of public support as adults that someone who has been traumatized would.”
The ache that comes from being separated from family is far too familiar for many Indigenous people in this country — and it continues to perpetuate intergenerational trauma in exponential ways. Many in care today have parents who grew up in foster homes as well.
Donald Trump was booed repeatedly while addressing Saturday night’s Libertarian Party National Convention.
According to some experts, there is one type of screen time that is continuously excessive, and it's having a severe effect on our children.
A year has passed since two-year-old Vienna Irwin was found on the property of a home-based daycare in small-town Ontario, but her family says they are no closer to answers of what happened that day.
Two-time PGA Tour winner Grayson Murray died Saturday morning at age 30, one day after he withdrew from the Charles Schwab Cup Challenge at Colonial.
The family of one of the victims of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018 says they are 'thankful' for a decision by a Calgary immigration board to deport the driver of the truck involved.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has confirmed it is working with local Mounties and the BC Coroners Service after a plane crash near Squamish, B.C. Friday night.
An emotional outburst in a London, Ont. courtroom Friday disrupted the sentencing hearing of a woman who pleaded guilty for her part in the death of 29-year-old Mohammed Abdallah.
Three people have died after a vehicle veered off the road in Shediac N.B., Friday morning.
An Edmonton woman found guilty of trying to kill her three children has been denied an appeal.
When one is extended an invitation to the Royal Garden Party in London, England, there's undoubtedly no shortage of pomp and circumstance. Barrie, Ont. natives Megan Kirk Chang and her husband Brandon experienced just that as they entered the prestigious event hosted at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.
An unlikely celebrity emerged from social media to cheer on the Edmonton Oilers as they face the Dallas Stars tonight in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals.
The proprietors of Regina's sole discount theatre are aware they're carrying on a significant legacy.
When Jujhar Mann said he wanted to be a pastry chef on a grade school career project, he didn't imagine that pursuing his dream would land him on a popular Netflix baking competition.
A city known for its history, ties to outer space and southern barbecue, is also home to a Winnipeg chef dishing out dozens of perogies.
A Montreal photographer captured the moment a Canada goose defended itself from a fox at the Botanical Garden.
Public libraries in Atlantic Canada are now lending a broader range of items.
Flashes of purple darting across the sky mixed with the serenading sound of songs will be noticed more with spring in full force in Manitoba.
Catching 'em all with impressive speed, a 7-year-old boy from Windsor, Ont. who only started his competitive Pokémon journey seven months ago has already levelled up to compete at a world championship level.