No answers for Jordan’s Principle delays

Community members are experiencing severe delays in receiving Jordan’s Principle funding after Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) suddenly stopped processing Onkwata’karitáhtshera’s requests, leaving the community in the dark about the cause of delays and timeline for resuming approvals.

Onkwata’karitáhtshera, Kahnawake’s health and social services agency that is responsible for submitting the community’s Jordan’s Principle requests, have been let down by ISC, said the agency’s manager, Karonhiaroroks Picard.

“There’s been no communication from them. They went from approving within two to three days to no responses. No approvals. No nothing,” said Picard. “If there’s an issue, fine, but no communication is unacceptable.”

Picard said that the breakdown in communication started at the beginning of July, with requests submitted from July 2 onwards stuck as “pending.” Prior to that, requests were being approved quickly, with ISC taking slightly longer to approve requests over $10,000 or more unique applications.

Once the requests began to build up, Picard emailed ISC and received no response when asking why there was a delay. She emailed again, requesting a meeting, which she said ISC initially agreed to, but no meeting came to fruition.

Around a week ago - multiple weeks after the delays began - Onkwata’karitáhtshera received an email from ISC stating that they were experiencing issues beyond their control. They said that processing requests could be delayed by up to six weeks, with non-urgent invoice payments and reimbursements delayed for up to three months.

“There are no details about what the challenges are, and at my level there should be transparency,” she said. “This is where communication is key, and if they’d communicated, I could have sent this information out to the community a month ago and families would have been aware of the situation.”

ISC declined The Eastern Door’s request for an interview but said in an email that the department is working to improve operational and technological efficiencies, including hiring additional staff, measures to manage staff retention, and using new technology solutions.

They also did not provide an estimate for how long communities can expect the delays to last.

Delays to accessing health services was the reason Jordan’s Principle was founded. The program is named in memory of Jordan River Anderson, who passed away in a Manitoba hospital having never spent a day in his home community of Norway House Cree Nation while the federal and provincial governments argued about who should fund his at-home care.

Jordan’s Principle was intended to prevent situations like his, with the government of first contact paying for the service upfront. But Brittany Mathews, director of reconciliation and policy at the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (FNCFCS), said that ISC has failed First Nations communities, the lack of transparency causing further trauma to Indigenous families.

“We’re hearing from a lot of families across the country that they haven’t been able to get in contact with folks at ISC, they’re having difficulties asking for updates on their requests, and in some cases, it’s taking months,” she said. “We’re seeing situations where families and kids are not receiving medical services because of these delays, and unfortunately we’re seeing increasing harm come to kids.”

FNCFCS has submitted a non-compliance motion to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT), stating Canada has failed to meet the CHRT’s orders on Jordan’s Principle. During the submissions for that non-compliance motion, ISC revealed that as of March 2024 there were between 40,000 and 82,000 backlogged Jordan’s Principle requests across Canada.

“We’re seeing situations where communities are owed millions of dollars from the Government of Canada for approved Jordan’s Principle services,” Mathews said. “It’s becoming a tremendous problem and concern for families.”

Picard said that the delays can take so long that non-urgent requests inevitably become emergencies.

“When you’re waiting six weeks, it might not have been deemed an urgent situation before, but now you’re pressing into the urgent time frame,” Picard said, giving an example of families who may have alternative schooling funded by Jordan’s Principle.

“If the school needs payment by August 9 and I have 20 kids whose applications are delayed, I’m having to actually connect with the administrator for some of the schools and ask for a list to try and solve the problem internally,” Picard said.

“How do we address this? Do I just take all these students and send a mass file marked as urgent? They need approval.”

The hearing for the non-compliance motion will take place from September 10-12. For now, Onkwata’karitáhtshera is still submitting requests to ISC, but they don’t know when delays will be resolved.

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