Scramble is on to extend education credit deadline
Feds announce they are working with aboriginal leaders to revisit Oct. 31 end date after fewer than 15 per cent of eligible residential school survivors apply
Cody Punter
Northern News Services
Published Monday, November 3, 2014
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Eleventh-hour lobbying by Canada's national aboriginal leadership has led the federal government to consider extending the deadline for residential school survivors to submit an application for a $3,000 education credit.
Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus announces that the federal government is considering extending the deadline for residential school survivors to submit an application for a $3,000 education credit during a press conference in Yellowknife on Oct. 30. The news came on the heels of an announcement by Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt stated that he was working with aboriginal parties to extend the deadline. - Cody Punter/NNSL photo |
The first part of the two-step application process was originally due at midnight on Oct. 31. However, two weeks before the deadline, it was estimated approximately 10,000 of the 77,111 people who are eligible for the credits had applied.
Based on those figures, the Assembly of First Nations National Chief Ghislain Picard sent a letter to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Minister Bernard Valcourt, urging him to push the date back. Picard was joined by Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus, who sent a letter to NWT MP Dennis Bevington asking him to raise the issue in the House of Commons.
After being questioned about the deadline by Bevington in Parliament on Oct. 30, Valcourt announced that the federal government is in the process of working with the AFN and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) to extend the deadline.
"We are presently in negotiation talking with our partners in order to give this extension so that the victims of the residential school who are eligible for this education credit may get it," he said.
Erasmus said he was relieved to see that the federal government was willing to listen to the AFN's concerns.
"This is very, very good news to us," he said.
The credits are being funded out of the approximately $40 million dollars which remain from a $1.9 billion settlement that was awarded to residential school survivors by the federal government in 2007.
The terms of the current education credit program were agreed upon by the federal government, the AFN and the ITK in October 2013.
However, in recent weeks the process of applying for the credits has come under fire for being unnecessarily shrouded in bureaucratic red tape. Problems ranged from complicated seven-page forms with fine print, to confusion over what the credits can be used for, all the way up to the rigorous vetting process, which has seen less than 10 per cent of those who have applied actually granted the credits.
"A lot of survivors have attested to the fact that the process has been very cumbersome," said Picard via teleconference during the meeting at the Dene National office in Yellowknife on Oct. 30.
Erasmus said he has received calls from people across the Northwest Territories with concerns that they were going to miss out on the credits in the last few weeks.
Approximately 5,000 people in the NWT are eligible for the credits, most of whom are over the age of 65. Erasmus pointed out that some of them have trouble seeing, while others are semi-literate, or do not speak English as their first language. Many people did not understand that the credits could be used for cultural and on the land programming, as well as for university or college courses for themselves or a relative, he said.
"There's many people out there that need help," said Erasmus.
As of the middle of September, just 771 people of the 10,000 Canadian survivors who applied had received their credits from the federal government.
Eugene Arcand, a residential school survivor from Saskatchewan who has been a vocal critic of how the remaining $40 million from the settlement is being managed, also took part in Thursday's press conference. Arcand accused the federal government of making the process purposefully complicated to prevent people from applying.
Arcand extended his criticism to Crawford Class Action Services, which was appointed to draft and review the application forms by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in October 2013.
"They just want you to make a mistake. They want you to be rejected," he said, during the recent teleconference in Yellowknife.
Crawford Class Action Services' media relations department did not respond to a request for an interview.
Arcand said the fact that so many applications have been denied only adds insult to injury for those who have already suffered through the residential school system. Making people use the money that was awarded to them in the settlement toward educational credits only perpetuates the government's lack of faith in aboriginal people to determine their own fate, he said.
"They still think Indians can't handle money," he said. "We're being treated like kids again."
He has heard of older survivors who do not have the money to pay for their own funerals, and suggested they should be allowed to use the money for whatever they want. He called for the terms of the agreement should be re-negotiated to allow for a broader use of the money if an extension is granted.
Picard told News/North that he would advocate for the simplification of the application process if an extension was granted. Whether the terms of the agreement can be expanded remains to be seen, Picard said.
Valcourt's office declined a request to comment on when an extension might be granted or how long it would be extended for should it go ahead. It also failed to provide information about what would happen to applications that were received after the current deadline.
In the meantime, Erasmus encouraged people who have not yet applied to keep submitting their forms.
