Auditor-General slams feds on First Nations public-safety funding

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Auditor-General slams feds on First Nations public-safety funding – Penticton Herald

by ahnationtalk on March 28, 2024225 Views

Canada’s Auditor-General found ‘serious issues’ with funding of First Nations policing services and public safety, but those haven’t changed since another auditor’s report a decade ago, the chief of Kahnawake’s Peacekeepers said.

“We had another auditor general’s report come out in 2013 that said the same thing, and where are we now? Nowhere,” Peacekeeper Chief Dwayne Zacharie said. “The Viens Commission, the (national inquiry) on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, they all came out and said it’s important the government invest further into First Nations policing and public safety, but it’s still really hard to get funding. Sure, they have funds that get us a car or a new truck, but I have no bodies to put in that truck.”

Auditor-General Karen Hogan’s scathing report said Indigenous Services Canada spent three-and-a-half times more money on responding to and recovering from emergencies than on supporting the communities to prepare for them.

“Until these projects are completed, First Nations communities are likely to continue to experience emergencies that could be averted by investing in the right infrastructure,” Hogan wrote. “Many issues have not improved since we first identified them in our 2013 audit of emergency management on reserves.”