Friendship Centres Storm the Hill

Because they have not seen an increase to their core funding budgets since 1996, the National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) took many of their members to Ottawa on November 17 to deliver their message straight to where it counts – the Feds.

Forty delegates from Friendship Centres across the country, along with regional and provincial members and members of their youth council, took to Parliament Hill for a day of lobbying. Jean Crowder, NDP MP for Nanaimo-Cowichan and the party’s Aboriginal Affairs critic, also helped organize and participated in the event. The idea was to ensure that Friendship Centres were not once again left out of the next federal budget.

Since 1996, the Aboriginal Friendship Centre Program has received only $16.1 million annually to keep 125 facilities running across the country. With that funding, the Friendship Centres manage to deliver 1,300 programs and services worth almost $108 million to almost one million participants. On average it costs about $300,000 annually to operate a Friendship Centre.

The additional funding they receive comes through whatever each centre’s executive director can leverage through other provincial, territorial, regional and municipal governments, but it is the lack of core funding that is threatening the jobs of these directors. Without an increase in their core funding which comes through Canadian Heritage, the Friendship Centres cannot retain their core staff.

According to Peter Dinsdale, Executive Director for the NAFC, the day on the Hill was a tremendous success.

“We briefed around 80 MPs, including all of the leaders of the opposition. We got support from across all of the party lines. The MPs recognized the incredible challenges that Friendship Centres are faced with and offered to do what they can from their positions,” said Dinsdale.

Throughout their day of lobbying, the NAFC also did their best to recruit MPs to their newly formed Friendship Centre All-Party Caucus that was launched following the day on Parliament Hill.

With an actual caucus in place, the Friendship Centre movement can more easily communicate with the MPs who have joined and remind them of the importance of Friendship Centres.

Crowder and Chris Warkentin, Conservative MP for the Alberta riding of Peace River, are the caucus’s new co-chairs.

Though Crowder said she was impressed with how well the day of lobbying went, she is still very concerned that the Friendships Centres could possibly lose their core funding. This is because the Friendship Centres have been so effective at acquiring outside funding that Crowder sees this as a reason for the government to cut their funding all together.

Crowder said a large part of why the movement has such a hard time with the government is because she feels it is funded by the wrong department, Canadian Heritage.

“Friendship Centres have their funding placed in Canadian Heritage which makes no sense. It is not a good fit and it doesn’t reflect the importance of the Friendship Centres,” said Crowder.

Crowder believes that Indian and Northern Affairs would be a more appropriate department to fund the Friendship Centres because they fund the vast majority of Aboriginal programming in Canada. Because of jurisdictional issues however, INAC only funds on-reserve programming. This means Friendship Centres receive hardly any funding for them because they located in urban areas.

With over 50% of Aboriginals now living in urban areas, a great deal of them lose out on programs and services geared towards them as most INAC programs are only available to those on reserves.

At the same time, many Aboriginals are leaving their reserves to seek out higher education or to flee their communities in search of better living conditions as the federal government tends to severely underfund reserves. Once off reserves, these individuals are no longer the responsibility of the federal government which, Crowder says, makes underfunding them more justifiable.

Though Crowder said she was really thrilled that the day of lobbying resulted in the federal government extending the Friendship Centres’ Youth Council program by another six years, she is not confident that the core funding will come through. They will only know in February or March when the 2010-2011 budget is announced.

“You’ve got the Minister of Finance sending out signals last week that they are going to have to take a look at their spending so that does not give me a lot of confidence,” said Crowder.

“The NAFC people have been presenting a strong business case for the last three years but they keep getting the brush-off. So, I don’t know if they will get the increased funding they need. We will continue to push for it,” said Crowder.