Have a Heart Day 2026

Indigenous Services Canada Reform

Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) is the Canadian government department that funds services for many Indigenous people. In addition to funding many services, they also directly provide many services. People living on reserves get the funding for their social services and some social service provision from Indigenous Services Canada (ISC). The department also provides and provisions Jordan's Principle services annd other services to Indigenous people in all parts of the country.

There are many problems with this department. They underfund everything, they are inefficient and badly organized, and they are racist and discriminatory. They try their best to provide as few services as possible, to make those services as inadequate and underfunded as possible, and to make it as difficult and confusing as possible to provide services. This causes a lot of trauma and inequality for Indigenous people.

There are many programming, service, oversight, and accountability issues in ISC that need to be changed and reformed. The Expert Advisory Committee, which is an independent body accountable to Indigenous people and made up of experts in many relevant fields, is trying to reform Indigenous Services Canada. In order to do that, they need to have the power to demand, enforce, and oversee the necessary changes. As it stands now, ISC hasn't been doing ongoing discussions with the Expert Advisory Committee and is generally uncooperative. For example, the Expert Advisory Committee is not being given enough time to reflect on and talk about the information ISC gives them.

The "old mindset" of ISC, which is paternalistic and racist, can be changed in many ways. First of all, they need to cooperate with the Expert Advisory Committee in order to implement the necessary reforms. First Nations communities, youth, and elders need to play a key role in the reform process. Control and provision of services should go to Indigenous partners. If a service is being given to Indigenous people, the Indigenous communities being served should also be the ones leading and controlling the service. This doesn't change the fact though, that ISC needs to adequately fund the service. As well, the non-discrimination courses being given to employees are not cohesive or adequate to prevent discrimination, and that needs to be changed. They need better training, policies, executive responsibilities, staff performance measures, and many other things.

One of the major problems is that ISC is operating on an unsustainable crisis-based model. They don't give help to people or allow others to give help to people until things get so bad that a crisis is already happening. Then they focus on (badly) managing the crisis. If they allowed people to provide services and help that prevents crises from happening in the first place, that would lead to much better and more sustainable outcomes for the population. One of the ways they can start to do this is by funding more healing centres, of which there are currently not nearly enough. This would help people start healing their trauma and mental health so that they can create more stable, less traumatic lives for themselves.

There needs to be good accountability measures for staff and the whole department. There needs to be a critical incidence reporting system, which reports and deals with racism and discrimination from the staff, from the system and organization of ISC, and from any policies, regulations, etc in place in the department. The Expert Advisory Committee needs to monitor and oversee this mechanism so that they can ensure that it is effectively dealing with discrimination. Acts of discrimination done by staff need to be monitored to understand and resolve why exactly the person did this, which is not happening now. ISC needs its own Human Resources department to deal with issues that arise with the staff, and this Human Resources department needs to follow an Indigenous organization model rather than a Western one. Finally, youth advocacy, empowerment, and care organizations such as the Assembly of Seven Generations need to be incorporated into the third party evaluation of ISC.

And there definitely needs to be an Indigenous-led joint governance body that governs ISC and has the authority to give legally-binding orders. This will ensure that the organization is accountable to the Indigenous people they are supposed to be serving.