Indigenous parents forced to give up children for better access to healthcare: opposition MP – RCI
The federal government is denying opposition claims that Indigenous parents in Canada continue to face the impossible choice of either keeping their children or surrendering them to the country’s “badly broken and badly underfunded” foster care system so they can receive healthcare services that are not available on Aboriginal reserves.
New Democratic Party MP Charlie Angus, the NDP’s critic for Indigenous youth issues, says thousands of First Nation children are being taken into the foster system because the federal government has not invested the necessary resources in the Indigenous communities to help families at risk.
“It is one of the most shocking things for Canadians to learn that some Indigenous families are being denied services to the level that they have to actually give their children away to the foster care system,” Angus said. “Parents are having to make the choice to give their children to the foster care system to get them provincial medical services that are being denied them on the reserve. And that is unconscionable in a country as rich as Canada.”
