CANADA
Whitehorse Star
By Candice O’Grady
While a new federal government program has promised almost $2 billion toward compensation and healing for former students of Indian residential schools, it’s not clear where the money will come from.
The program looks like a good beginning, according to Joe Linklater, chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin Chief First Nation. However, he warns, promises like this have been made before.
There have been funding announcements in the past, he said, that turned out to be a combination of new money and old money re-titled.
“We’ve heard the announcement that all of this money is going towards residential school compensation and programs and so on,” he said in an interivew.
“But it remains to be seen whether that is all new money or just money re-profiled from other programs,” he said.
The Star was unable to contact anyone from the office of Anne McLellan, the deputy prime minister and member of the Commons’ aboriginal affairs committee, before the federal government fell in a non-confidence last week.
No one from her office will speak to the media about the money trail at this time due to rules involving what can and cannot be said during election times.