UNDRIP

• Today, Boann Social Impact LP announced its pioneering investment as part of the Government of Canada's $755 million Social Finance Fund (SFF).
• The Raven Indigenous Outcomes Fund (RIOF) is a first-of-its-kind fund (C$50M) that manages outcomes-based financing instruments to address priority issues in Indigenous communities.
• The Raven Indigenous Outcomes Fund is part of the group of funds on the Raven Indigenous Capital Partners platform, the first Indigenous-focused private equity firm in Canada and the United States.
• This is the first investment through which Boann Social Impact will help advance social finance in Canada.

• The Government of Saskatchewan announced its revised framework for consultation with First Nation and Métis communities in August 2023.
• This framework sets out the provincial government’s latest approach to fulfilling its constitutional duty to consult and accommodate Indigenous Peoples.
• Some Canadian jurisdictions are making efforts to break away from colonial mentalities by developing policies in true partnership with Indigenous Peoples.

Sticking with the status quo

• Timelines have been tweaked, a new chart has been added and a central role for the Ministry of Government Relations has been clarified.
• Yet stepping back from the minutiae, the provincial government’s approach to Indigenous consultation largely preserves the status quo — a standard that is out-of-step with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and broader trends in Canadian and international law.
• It also fails to acknowledge or make any concessions to the distinct perspectives of the Indigenous Peoples of this land.

Leaving it up to the courts

• But the framework purports to serve a more ambitious goal: facilitating “mutually beneficial relationships” with Indigenous Peoples.
• Case law and legal precedent reflect specific disputes based on the specific facts that give rise to them.
• When it comes to the duty to consult and accommodate, the courts define the minimum legal standards within which other branches of government must operate.
• Courts cannot and will not design the laws and policies that are required for a positive, just political relationship.
• It is up to the federal and provincial governments to work with Indigenous Peoples to build a harmonious relationship or miyo-wîcêhtowin.

Implementing UNDRIP

• The case law it relies on shifts and the policy itself can be challenged before the courts.
• For example, the Métis Nation—Saskatchewan is actively challenging the policy’s restriction against consultation on Aboriginal title claims.
• Saskatchewan can follow B.C.’s lead by negotiating nation-specific, consent-based processes in line with UNDRIP.
• UNDRIP reflects key principles of customary international law, which are directly binding in Canadian courts and therefore highly relevant to Canadian policymaking.

• There will be many meaningful conversations about ways we can each engage with and support reconciliation.
• However, one issue that doesn’t get enough attention is how transportation continues to be a serious challenge for Indigenous communities.
• This is concerning as it undermines our pursuit of true equity for all and runs the risk of misallocating public funds.

The roots of transportation injustice

• Though each jurisdiction in Canada has its own settler-colonial origin story, the roots of transportation within this are inseparable.
• This was a dark period of extreme poverty and housing insecurity, the impacts of which continue to marginalize and harm Métis people today.
• Under this system, police were authorized to arrest and imprison Indigenous people who were found off-reserve without a pass.

Lack of investment

• They impact the ability for Indigenous communities to respond to emergencies and climate disasters, complicate the unity of Indigenous families and more.
• Some of these impacts may be more acute in rural, remote or isolated communities, but local governments lack an understanding of how urban Indigenous communities experience transportation and mobility.

Anti-Indigenous racism

• Indigenous communities experience systemic racism in policing, with disproportionate amounts of ticketing and overrepresentation in arrests, with rates as high as 10 times that of white people in some areas.
• Read more:
  How colonial racism fuels Saskatchewan's criminalization of Indigenous men

  The impacts of colonization are gendered, as evidenced by the disturbing rate of violence against Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, transgender and gender-diverse people.

• Land dispossession and a lack of adequate housing and transportation options also enable disproportionate rates of human trafficking of Indigenous women and girls.

Right to security

• Many of the factors underpinning these issues violate the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), including the right to a life free from discrimination; to life, physical and mental integrity, liberty and security of person; and the right to improve economic and social conditions.
• It’s time for planning professionals, municipalities and transport agencies to recognize that transportation is a reconciliation imperative too.
• There are things we can do to embed reconciliation in our work more meaningfully: Be diligent about the truth.
• Such actions are uncovering the ways municipal institutions and structures have dispossessed and violated Indigenous Peoples, and illuminating the path forward.

• Additionally, the letter asserts that this exclusion is an "attempt to further colonize and assimilate our communities, who represent all Aboriginal distinctions, including off-reserve status and non-status Indians, Métis, and Southern Inuit Indigenous peoples."
• It urges the government to:
  Uphold the rights of CAP's communities and ensure equitable access to the measures outlined in the UNDA Action Plan.
• Take action on all measures provided by CAP and its communities that were not included in the final UNDA Action Plan.
• The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples represents the interests of Métis, status and non-status Indians, and Southern Inuit Indigenous People living off-reserve.