Have a Heart Day 2026

The Loving Justice National Plan

First Nations children are being taken from families who love them and who they love. They are being taken away from their families, their communities, the places they grew up in, and their cultures, and put into the foster care system.

There are many reasons this is happening. Firstly, there is a lot more poverty and trauma in First Nations communities because of the historical and ongoing racism, discrimination, and genocide. Secondly, social services on reserves - such as healthcare, education, housing, financial aid, etc - are of much worse quality, and even off-reserve services are not adequate and culturally appropriate. One of the main reasons children are being taken is that child and family service agencies do not have the funding, resources, and capacity to give families the help they truly need.

Many families cannot pay for the necessities they need to take care of their kids. Or they have a physical or mental illness they can't access treatment for which makes it harder to take care of their child, or their child has an illness they can't access treatment for. It's the job of child and family services agencies to give the families the help they need so that they can give their kids what they need. But without funding and other resources, they cannot do that.

A lot of First Nations communities are starting to make their own child and family service agencies, run and governed by them. This is good, because it means that they can ensure that the people in these agencies and the way that the agencies are run are non-discriminatory. But there is still a large funding shortage, as well as many other problems.

Canada must change its behaviour if we are to see progress. In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that Canada has been discriminating against First Nations children. Despite many orders from the Tribunal, Canada has not stopped its discriminatory behaviour.

The Loving Justice National Plan was made by First Nations social services experts, in equal partnership with First Nations communities throughout Canada. It is based on the best available evidence from the past thirty years. It is aimed at putting structures in place to stop Canada from discriminating against First Nations children and to prevent the reoccurrence of discrimination, which will keep families together.

—Purpose:—

-Creating enduring protection that ensures that mistreatment, discrimination, and bad outcomes don't happen in the future.

-Creating substantive equality, which means that there will be equal outcomes for First Nations and non-Indigenous children.

-Protecting and nurturing the holistic wellbeing of children - mind, body, emotions, and spirit. This means that the basic needs of children are met, that they have a good education, and that they have a sense of belonging and attachment, among other things.

-Ensuring all children are connected to their family, community, culture, and environment.

-Ensuring that contemporary and historic disadvantage are considered on both an individual and systemic level.

-Ensuring that disabled children can fully participate in their family and culture.

-Ensuring that children have their views and desires considered in decisions affecting them first and foremost, and that secondly families and communities also get their views and desires considered in decisions affecting them.

-Creating a system that adapts to changing, community-specific needs to protect the best interests of children.

-Respecting the sovereignty of each community and of First Nations in general. This means that First Nations communities should be the ones defining key terms like like "safety" "wellbeing" "family" "child" "kin" "cultural continuity" "culture-based safety" "inter generation equity" "substantive equality" "wellbeing" and "structural drivers." It also means that communities and the experts they trust should define their needs. It also means that First Nations communities determine their legal mechanisms, instruments, information, resources, and processes in the jurisdiction of services, while having accurate information to do so.

-Restoring and transmitting the culture, language, spirituality, traditions, and knowledge of each unique culture, and fighting assimilation.

-Following and implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Committee's Calls to Action and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls' Calls for Justice.

—Governance:—

First Nations communities and especially people with experience in the child welfare and foster care system should be the leaders when it comes to the child and family service system both on a local and national level. They should be actively involved in governance and decision making, both on the local and national level. All the people in the system should ultimately be accountable to them, including the Canadian government.

Experts in the field of child and family services, social work, and First Nations communities should advise and provide research and information. But they should not be decision makers, because the community themselves know what outcomes they want for their children and families.

Each community's child and family service agency needs to be run and lead by the community, according to the laws made by the community.

There needs to be a National Oversight Council led by rights holders, with representatives from each community chosen by each community. This council will decide what the design of reformed child and family services in Canada would be. They would also manage and control the implementation of the reforms, and continue to manage and control the child and family services system once the reforms have been put in place. They will, most importantly, compel Canada to act in accordance to the needs and wants of First Nations communities when it comes to First Nations child and family services. They will also ensure that Canada properly funds child and family services. They will consult with and report back to communities, ensuring that the Canadian government is accountable to communities and human rights.

Canada must adequately fund the National Oversight Council as much as it needs, and give it the power and independence it needs to do its job.

As well as the National Oversight Council, there needs to be a National First Nations Child and Family Services Technical Table. It will be composed of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, which is a nonprofit that has fought for the rights of First Nations children for years, as well as experts from each region. The National Technical Table will work with Regional Technical Tables to advise the National Oversight council. They will review all the policies, legislation, regulations, bulletins, and budgets made by the government of Canada and by Indigenous Services Canada (which oversees service provision to Indigenous communities). They will see what the likely outcomes of all the laws, regulations, policies, budgets, etc are and they will make recommendations to the National Oversight Council, which will have the power to change things that are bad.

There are also other jobs the National Technical Table will do. They will develop, implement, and evaluate an impact assessment tool to see how the system is impacting children and families, and whether children and families are being harmed or helped by the system. They will communicate their findings with communities. They will work with youth and people with experience in care to support their participation in research, consultation, and governance. The Table will work with the National Secretariat and with Regional Technical Tables, and will help the Regional Technical Tables develop the capacity to do their work well. They will also help First Nations communities to set up their own Child and Family Services agencies governed by the communities.

Canada must fund the National Technical Table however much they need in order to do their job, and will allow the Table to do their job independently and without pressure.

There will also be a National First Nations Child and Family Secretariat. This position will be comprised of one or more apolitical First Nations-led nonprofits appointed by the National Oversight Council and rights holders. They will be tasked with collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data about outcomes, best practices, and other information. They will educate professionals and the public about best practices and other research. They will use the Measuring to Thrive framework to look at the data they collect. The Measuring to Thrive framework helps us learn whether or not children and families are thriving and whether they will be thriving in the current and planned future systems. The National Secretariat will help groups and communities around the country to convene and to get knowledge. They will support the National Oversight Council and the National Technical Table, and will help Regional Secretariats build capacity to do their jobs. They will help and support youth and people with experience in foster care to participate in research, consultation, and decision making. And they will support the dispute resolution and accountability processes.

They will also help with and support the Public Funding Review. The Public Funding Review will be done every five years by independent, non-political experts with experience in finance, First Nations, and Child and Family Services in order to ensure that the funding approach and the conduct of Indigenous Services Canada (the government department responsible for Indigenous people) is meeting people's real and holistic needs.

Canada must fund the National Secretariat as much as it needs, and allow it to function independently and without pressure.

There also needs to be National Technical Advisory Committees, composed of experts assigned by the National Oversight Council, to provide advice on the design, implementation, and evaluation of child and family services.

There needs to be Regional Technical Tables, which are composed of First Nations from the region who are experts. They will look at all the legislation, policies, regulations, agreements, budgets, and conducts of the federal government and Indigenous Services Canada to ensure that they are in line with what their region needs and wants. They will review data and research from the Regional Secretariats to make recommendations, getting extra expertise if needed. They will support the participation of youth and people with experience in child welfare in all matters related to child and family services. And they will meet with Indigenous Services Canada. They will report to and be accountable to the communities that they serve.

The government of Canada must fund the Regional Technical Tables however much they need, and must also help with any capacity building they ask for help with. They must allow the Tables to act independently, without any pressure from the government, financial or otherwise.

Finally, there should be Regional Secretariats, which will be apolitical independent First Nation-led nonprofits authorized by their communities. They should support the design, delivery, evaluation, and capacity building for prevention services, alternative care, post-majority services, and band representation consistent with the Measuring to Thrive framework. They should also support needs assessments, which find out what the community needs.They should support and coordinate inter jurisdictional service delivery, so that services given by First Nations themselves, by the provinces and territories, and by the federal government all work smoothly together.

The Regional Secretariats should, like the National Secretariat, be a centre for the community to convene, and a centre point for public and professional knowledge mobilization. They should support the Regional Technical Tables and support the participation of youth and people with experience being in child welfare to participate fully in decision making and research.

The Canadian government must fund the Regional Secretariats as much as they need to be funded and should also help them build capacity when asked. The government may not pressure the decision making and activities of the Regional Secretariats, through financial means or otherwise, and must respect the independence of the body.

All of these organizations must be set up and fully operational within six months of the reform plan being approved. Additionally, Canada must work with and listen to First Nations youth in order to set up and fund youth advocacy and empowerment organizations.

Canada must be legally required to fully cooperate with all of these bodies. This includes providing information to the bodies promptly and without delay. It also includes implementing all of the National Oversight Committee's decisions on current and future child welfare measures, completely and without delay. Canada must get rid of all plans, policies, regulations, decisions, bulletins, processes, etc that were made without the approval of the National Advisory Committee or the National Children's Chiefs Council (the representatives currently leading the negotiations with Canada).

—Funding:—

As it stands today, child and family service agencies are heavily underfunded, which means that they cannot help families with what they actually need and instead are pushed towards tearing families apart. There are many other problems with funding, with Indigenous Services Canada denying many requests without reason and creating long delays. The baseline funding determined by the federal government in 2018 doesn't account for the actual needs of communities, agencies, and children, and it has not improved since then. Indigenous Services Canada's behaviour makes it so the current system of claims-based funding is not adequate or appropriate. Children and families with complex needs, especially, do not have the funding needed to actually help them and keep their families together.

The Reformed Funding Approach was made in partnership with the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy to ensure that First Nations get the funding they need to keep families together. It will be implemented, and then it will be assessed for impact and how it can be improved. Once the assessment is done, we will know how to make an even better funding system and thus will develop and implement the Fully Reformed Funding Approach. The Fully Reformed Funding Approach must be an improvement to the Reformed Funding Approach. Canada cannot do anything that leads to less funding (accounting for inflation) or a worse funding structure than the Reformed Funding Approach.

The Reformed Funding Approach must be guaranteed and must not be dependant on which party is in power. It must only be replaced by the Fully Reformed Funding Approach, under the authority of the National Oversight Council and the communities said Council is accountable to. The Reformed Funding Approach must be statutory, as must be the Fully Reformed Funding Approach. And Canada must not be allowed to use any other legislation to try to justify not adhering to either funding approach. The same goes for the Fully Reformed Funding Approach. It must be statutory and not dependent on which government is in power, and Canada cannot do anything to justify not adhering to it.

The Reformed Funding Approach (and its successor) must be interpreted and implemented in adherence to the Canadian Human Rights Act and UN human rights declarations. It must ensure that all child and family service agencies are fully funded as much as they need to be in order to holistically safeguard the multifaceted needs of every child. It must also ensure that all funding is predictable and timely, leaving no agency to wait for funding. There must be long term funding guarantees all communities can depend on.

Canada must not be allowed to reallocate funding from other services, such as housing, to increase funding for Child and Family Services, either directly or indirectly. The funds need to be placed in a Special Purpose Allotment so that they cannot be used for other purposes.

There will be baseline funding for each agency serving First Nations communities. The baseline funding will be however much the community and agency asks for, and will go towards the cost of providing services. It will need to be adequate to provide all the services children need, especially prevention services that keep them with their families. Along with the baseline funding, there will be top up funding that will also be adequate and what the agency and community asks for. It will go towards things like information technology, data and results collection, poverty funds, capacity development, emergency funds, capital maintenance, additional money for prevention services, resources and funding to account for communities that are remote, insurance, cultural programs, and cultural sensitivity training. On top of that, there needs to be emergency funds for situations such as natural disasters or other emergencies. And there needs to be additional funding for procuring, building, and maintaining physical infrastructure, representative services for individuals, families, and communities, post majority services including family reunification, the development of agencies controlled by First Nations, planning funds, and funds for special circumstances.

All of this funding will be block funding. That means that there won't be funding for each specific aspect, such as a separate fund for prevention services and a separate fund for protection services, or a separate fund for information technology and and a separate fund for capital maintenance within the top up funding. This will give agencies the flexibility they need to spend their money on whatever their actual needs are. One agency could need more money for one aspect of their work versus another, while another agency has different needs. If any funding request is not granted within thirty days, the National Oversight Council needs to get involved, and there must be interim funding for the agency's request while the matter is being resolved. If Indigenous Services Canada does deny a request, which they really shouldn't do, then they will need to give clear reasons as to why and interim funding must be given while the matter is resolved in the Dispute Resolution Mechanism.

A lot of First Nations haven't yet developed a child and family service agency that runs under their guidance and their laws. They need to be given the resources, support, and funding in order to do so. They need to plan and create the agency, but they also need the time, support, and funding to build capacity so that they can provide the necessary services to keep families together and create the best outcomes for children. They need the necessary support to build a culturally sensitive and culturally educated workforce. All the funding and support must come from an evidence-informed model where the communities themselves get to determine the support and resources they get.

There needs to be enough funding to provide good post-majority supports for young adults as well. Post-majority supports help young adults who aged out of the foster care system, and other young adults who had contact with child and family services as children, to get the support, resources, care, and education they need in order to build a good life for themselves. One of the most important post majority supports is family reunification for young adults who have been taken from their family. Eventually, the National Oversight Council will develop an evidence-based plan to deliver post-majority supports in a way that ensures equal outcomes for First Nations youth compared to non-Indigenous youth, and the Public Funding Review done every five years will also guide post-majority supports. In the meantime though, funding will be what agencies ask for.

When it comes to capital funding, aka funding for physical buildings and vehicles and stuff needed to provide services, there needs to be a plan to improve the system. The plan will be developed based on First Nations data, by First Nations capital and service experts, and approved by the National Oversight Council and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The plan needs to be evidence-based, culturally appropriate, creating equal outcomes, accounting for each community's distinct needs and circumstances, and in line with the Loving Justice National Plan.

Both before and after the capital funding plan, Canada must meet all capital funding requests fast and without gaps, delays, or denials. First Nations and child and family service agencies need to be believed and listened to when they report their needs, and those reported needs must be met. If any capital funding takes longer than 30 days to be delivered, the National Oversight Council and National Technical Table needs to get involved. If Canada does deny a request, they need to provide clear reasons for doing so and that denial will go to the Dispute Resolution Mechanism. If a project is in the Dispute Resolution Mechanism, Canada must provide interim funding so services can continue being delivered.

Canada must fund an independent First Nations-led Family Wellbeing Research Fund. This fund will do research into the structural drivers that cause child and family service contact, such as poverty. They will find long term reforms that address these structural drivers. They will check the quality of services and whether the orders of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal are being followed. This research fund will allow for culturally-grounded research and solutions.

Funding needs to increase in accordance with inflation and population. Inflation must be calculated based on the Consumer Price Index, and must on top of that upwardly adjust for local inflation. Indigenous Services Canada's current system for determining population is terrible, and the National Oversight Council, National Technical Table, and the groups suing Canada must create a better census system in three years, which is an endeavour Canada must support and listen to.

There needs to be flexibility for First Nations and service providers to get extra funding on top of the Reformed Funding Approach if that's what they need.

Canada must fund and implement the transition to the Reformed Funding Approach. And after the Fully Reformed Funding Approach is in place, Canada must continue funding representative services at actual cost for 180 days. After the 180 days, representative services will be funded according to the Fully Reformed Finding Approach.

There is something that is inadequate about the Loving Justice Plan, which the makers of the Plan clearly highlight. The Plan does not incorporate funding for First Nations children and families living off reserve. Any funding approach must ensure that First Nations groups can themselves give all the same services to their children and families off reserve as what their on reserve people get. There also needs to be enough funding so that every child and family recognized by their community gets the same services, regardless of whether or not they qualify under the Indian Act, because the Indian Act leaves a lot of people out who are recognized by their communities.

—Accountability:—

Canada, First Nations, and child and family service providers all need to be transparent and accountable to the communities. Said communities should be the ultimate authority on decisions of policy and funding regarding child and family services. All decisions made need to be clearly communicated to everyone involved. Indigenous Services Canada especially should have accountability to fund things properly and in a timely way and to behave in a way that is fair to First Nations communities.

The Canadian Prime Minister must collaborate with First Nations to create and publish a public yearly report on Canada's compliance with the First Nations child and family services reform plan. This report will include a review on funding methods and amounts. The National Oversight Council will comment on the report, and their comments will be publicly published with the report. The reporting of outcomes should involve the voices, opinions, experiences, and desires of children, youth, and families, especially those affected by child and family services.

Canada must also publicly published the fact that their current child and family services system discriminates against First Nations. They must publicly published the cause of the discrimination, steps taken to remedy it, and, most importantly, the outcome of those steps. This must be done in a non-misleading way.

Before changing the Reformed Child and Family Services system in any way, the National Technical Table and National Oversight Council must report on the impact on children and youth. No changes can be made without the approval of the National Oversight Council.

The National Oversight Council, National Technical Table, Regional Technical Tables, elders, youth, and First Nations people with experience in foster care will work together to make a Child and Youth Impact Assessment Tool. This tool will insure that the child and family services system is helping children and youth rather than harming them, and is meeting their needs.

A lot of agencies rely on the province or territory they're in for some aspects of service delivery. There needs to be full transparency on services provided by provinces and territories, and on the terms, funding, and intended outcomes of said services. Canada needs to, in partnership with First Nations, ensure that all agreements with provinces and territories are meeting the principles and goals of child and family services reform. First Nations need to be given all the funding and support needed to fully participate in this process.

Canada must give all the relevant data to National and Regional Secretariats and Technical Tables, within ten days of being asked, calibrated to the Measuring to Thrive framework.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal must maintain its oversight and jurisdiction until reform is fully complied with and discrimination is demonstrably ended. In order for the Tribunal to cease its jurisdiction over Child and Family Services the following must happen: Canada must fully implement the Reformed Funding Approach. The Expert Advisory Committee and National Oversight Council must work with the parties suing Canada to determine whether discrimination has permanently stopped. Under the guidance of communities, Canada must amend agreements with provinces and territories to align with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's orders. And there needs to be good measures to detect and effectively stop any discrimination that happens in the future.

—Alternate Dispute Resolution Mechanism:—

The Alternate Dispute Resolution Mechanism is vital to keeping Canada accountable to communities, children, and families. Whenever the government of Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, or any other actor behaves in a way that is harmful for First Nations children, the Alternate Dispute Resolution Mechanism can stop the harmful behaviour.

The Mechanism must be:

-Independent

-Grounded in First Nations law

-Expert-informed

-Based on human rights

-Grounded in the best interests of children

-Timely

-Easily accessible

-Led by First-Nations

The Mechanism must be able to give clear, specific, actionable orders that the involved parties must follow, which are enforceable in court. It must be able to respond to and remedy both systemic and specific failures. And it must ensure that the Fully Reformed Funding Approach prevails in any disputes. It needs to be able to respond to the unique circumstances of each case, and must provide immediate interim remedy when a child is being harmed.

There needs to be effective measures that stop all retaliation against people and groups bringing cases to the Alternate Dispute Resolution Mechanism. These anti retaliation measures include but are not limited to injunctive relief and compensation.

The Alternate Dispute Resolution Mechanism must itself be accountable and transparent. This includes them being subject to mandatory periodic reviews and regular non-discrimination assessments. The proceedings and results of cases must be fully public unless the litigant asks for it not to be.

Canada and the people suing them must fund honourable, impartial, independent, experienced, and non-political staff to be part of the dispute resolution mechanism. The staff need to have not previously served a political role, and need to disclose any conflicts of interest. These staff will be chosen from a list given by the National Oversight Council, and the National Oversight Council and the parties suing Canada need to approve or deny the decision makers that are chosen.

The Alternate Dispute Resolution Mechanism cannot have the power to amend Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders or make changes in funding structures.

Canada must fully cooperate with the making of the mechanism and to the processes of dispute resolution and the rulings given.

—Regional Variations:—

Each community and region is unique, with unique needs, obstacles, history, and culture. That is why there needs to be enough flexibility in the system to allow each community to adapt child and family service provision to their own situations and cultures.

Canada must negotiate regional variations that meet or exceed the Reformed Funding Approach, and later the Fully Reformed Funding Approach. These agreements must be made in good faith and the desires of the communities should be obeyed. These agreements must be able to be reworked to meet the constantly changing circumstances of each community. Canada must fund and support regional approaches that are effective, liked by communities, respectful of the rights and needs of children, and in line with the long term reforms outlined in the Loving Justice National Plan.

While negotiations with the regions are ongoing, Canada must report on these negotiations monthly to the National Oversight Council. Canada must submit all of the plans they negotiated to the National Oversight Council for approval, within six months of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal approving the reform plan. If Canada takes more than six months, the regions that are waiting will give their own plans to the Tribunal and Canada will follow those plans.

Canada must also fund and support independent community-based technical hubs that support community accountability, connection-building, and coordination. These hubs will help people participate in national decision making, and help with workforce training, recruitment, and development.

The Regional Technical Tables will develop plans to build the capacity of their corresponding Regional Secretariats, and Canada will fund the capacity building of the Regional Secretariats as much as is asked for.

Canada must publish on their website the full details of all existing agreements with provinces and territories. They must do this 30 days after the reform plan gets approved and 14 days after a new agreement gets made. Also within 30 days of reform plan approval, Canada must give all affected First Nations the support, funding, and resources needed to negotiate new federal-provincial or federal-territorial agreements. If any provinces or territories refuse to negotiate, Canada must fund the services that the provinces would've otherwise funded. The provinces and territories will also collect all relevant data and share it with the Secretariats, Technical Tables, community hubs, and anyone else who needs the information.

—Indigenous Services Canada Reforms:—

Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) is the government department tasked with funding services to Indigenous people. There are many problems with the organization. They take a top down, paternalistic approach that disregards communities' experiences, knowledge, expertise, cultures, and needs. The decision making is unilateral, meaning that communities are not listened to and decisions are made in an authoritarian way. This includes decisions about funding and policy. They have rigid policies that lead to the unique needs of each community not being met. And they are not held accountable for their conduct.

All of this has lead to many problems. There are lengthy wait times in the approvals of applications and in all correspondences. Each department within Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), when contacted by people, communities, or service providers, say that another department will fund the program or service. This leads to programs and services getting no funding. There are problems with staffing and regional structures. There are jurisdictional barriers preventing people and groups from getting what they need.

As we can see, Indigenous Services Canada needs major changes. They need permanent, independent, and legally-binding oversight. The first thing that needs to happen is there needs to be an Indigenous-led joint governance body that governs ISC and has the authority to give legally-binding orders. The National Oversight Council needs to also be involved in the governance of ISC. There needs to be third-party evaluation of ISC by Indigenous rights groups, including the Assembly of Seven Generations, which is a nonprofit run by young people focused on child and youth advocacy, charity, and cultural revival. ISC cannot change governance, accountability mechanisms, or performance without approval from Indigenous communities.

The Expert Advisory Committee has been formed to make an evidence-informed work plan to get rid of discrimination within ISC. Canada must follow this work plan and give the Expert Advisory Committee the funding it needs to properly carry out all of its work. The Committee itself must be transparent, public, and independent, reporting to the Chiefs in Assembly and Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The Expert Advisory Committee must determine whether there are enough safeguards in place to stop Indigenous Services Canada from discriminating again, and report its conclusions to the Tribunal and Chiefs in Assembly.

Some measures ISC needs to take:

-Removing systemic barriers such as challenges coordinating across governments

-Creating their own human resources department

-Removing proposal-based and competitive funding mechanisms

-Closing loopholes

Additionally, there needs to be an independent ombudsperson or commissioner for child rights and wellbeing. This ombudsperson/commissioner would represent the rights and needs of children and families, and would help children and families represent themselves, to enact positive change in ISC. This role will be guided by First Nations values and culture.

ISC also needs to publicly acknowledge that it is and has been very harmful and discriminatory. They must implement the recommendations and orders of First Nations communities. And they must make public commitments towards change. They must publicly report what progress they are making towards these commitments.

Ultimately, Indigenous Services Canada needs to act with respect, transparency, and accountability. They need to be based on the human rights of Indigenous people, and build healthy relationships with communities. The communities themselves should make decisions about policies, funding, and all other things that affect them. ISC should prioritize creating good outcomes for children. And they need to be led by Indigenous communities themselves.

—Data Collection:—

There will be many ways of doing data collection, research, analysis, and reviews baked into the reformed child and family services system. These ways will ensure that all parties are acting honourably, and that the outcomes for children and families are good.

First of all, there will be a Public Funding Review every five years. This Review will be done by an independent, non political expert recommended by the National Technical Table and appointed by the National Oversight Council. The people doing the Review will be experienced in finance, First Nations, and First Nations child and family services. The Review will ensure that the funding structures, and the conduct of the government and ISC is effectively meeting people's holistic needs and creating good outcomes. Indigenous Services Canada, the federal government, all provincial and territorial governments, and all other government departments must fully cooperate with this Review and provide data within ten days of being asked. This Review will be made in consultation with First Nations communities and service providers.

The National Technical Advisory Committee will oversee the Review and provide guidance where needed. The National and Regional Technical Tables and other First Nations experts will review and comment of the draft Public Funding Review, which will then be provided in English and French to all First Nations communities for approval. The Parliament of Canada will look at and publicly report on the Review within 60 days, and implement the recommendations. Any disputes regarding the implementation of these recommendations will go to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal or Alternate Dispute Resolution Mechanism.

The Public Funding Review itself will be transparent and accountable, and will publicly post its methods, sample size, criteria, findings, and recommendations.

Another review that needs to be done is the review of the Reformed Funding Approach. In the third year of the Approach's operations, the review will be done to see what the outcomes of the Reformed Funding Approach are and how the Approach can be improved even more to create better outcomes for children and families. This will inform the Fully Reformed Funding Approach.

As said before, the census system of Indigenous Services Canada is woefully inadequate. The National Technical Table, National Oversight Council, the groups suing Canada, and the Canadian government must work together to create a better census system.

Canada must also fund a First Nations-led Child and Family Wellbeing Research Fund. This Fund will research the structural drivers - such as poverty and mental illness in the family - that cause children to come into contact with child and family services, and will also research what reforms to do to fix these structural drivers. The Fund will also check whether the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's orders are being followed and what the quality of services is.

Post majority support is another area that needs more research. A body appointed by the National Oversight Council will find an evidence-based plan for creating post-majority supports that ensure equal outcomes for youth involved in child and family services compared to other youth.

The next thing that needs to be created is a Child and Youth Impact Assessment Tool. This Tool will be developed by the Regional and National Technical Tables, the National Oversight Committee, the parties suing Canada, First Nations communities, elders, youth, and people who have had experience being in foster care and other alternative care.

The Prime Minister must consult with the National Oversight Council to publish a yearly report on Canada's compliance with the child and family services reform plan. The report will be published publicly, along with the National Oversight Council's comments on the report.

As it stands right now, there is a lack of capacity to collect all the necessary data relating to child and family services. Canada must fund the recruitment, training, and retention of staff for data collection and evaluation, and fund structures for said purpose. These structures should be led by communities and be transparent, culturally appropriate, and accountable. There should be inter jurisdictional coordination and shared regional data systems. The funding for any data collection cannot come from funding that would otherwise go towards service provision.

—Ways the Loving Justice Plan Needs to be Improved:—

The people who made the Loving Justice National Plan acknowledge that it has some shortcomings, which must be improved in the final product. First of all, communities in the North West Territories and also the Dene Nation are left out, and should instead be fully included into the Loving Justice National Plan. Secondly, children and families off reserve are left out, and First Nations reserves need to be given the funding and support to provide substantively equal services to their community members who live off reserve.

—Canada's Reform Plan—

There are many problems with the plan made by the Canadian government regarding First Nations child and family services reform. First of all, ultimate authority in that plan goes to the government of Canada and not the communities, children, and families being affected, both on a national and regional level. The funding structure doesn't do enough to ensure communities get their needs met. There's no funding for capacity building within service agencies or for legal or technical advice for communities. Canada's accountability and enforcement mechanisms are weak and do not give decision making power to First Nations, who are the people being affected by this whole system. If local communities don't reach a regional agreement with Canada, they will be forced to default to Canada's wishes.