Federal Pathway Annual Progress Report At A Glance - Executive Summary

On this page

• Introduction
• Key highlights: Culture
• Key highlights: Health and wellness
• Key highlights: Human safety and security
• Key highlights: Justice
• Key highlights: Organizational capacity and coordination
• Monitoring progress
• Looking forward
• Conclusion

Introduction

The 2021 Federal Pathway to Address Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People is the Government of Canada's contribution to the (PDF Version, 6,93 MB, 113 pages) 2021 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People National Action Plan: Ending Violence Against Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People (PDF). Both the national action plan and the federal pathway were released on June 3, 2021.

The Federal Pathway Annual Progress Report provides an account of work completed between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022. It is organized per theme:

• culture
• health and wellness
• human safety and security
• justice

In addition, it also reports on a fifth area: organizational capacity and coordination. By supporting the implementation principles from the federal pathway, as well as implementing new initiatives and programs in key thematic areas, the Government of Canada continues to work with families and survivors, Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations, national indigenous organizations, regional and grassroots representatives and with provinces and territories to ensure that the work moving forward responds to the needs and priorities of those most impacted.

This executive summary provides key highlights per theme, a brief overview of work to monitor progress and some information on what will be some future work in 2022 to 2023. We invite you to consult the Federal Pathway Annual Progress Report for full information on all of the initiatives, including scope, timeline, milestones and links to the Calls for Justice and Calls for Miskotahâ. Although there has been some progress made on the initiative in 2021 to 2022, the Government of Canada recognizes that there is a much more work ahead.

Key highlights: Culture

• The Indigenous Languages Component of the Indigenous Languages and Cultures Program supported more than 410 projects from First Nations, Inuit, Métis and organizations serving urban Indigenous populations.
• Canadian Heritage's new Indigenous Screen Office Program invested $13M in Indigenous creators and organizations.
• The first call for proposals under the Cultural Spaces in Indigenous Communities Program (CSICP) was launched in 2021-22. 14 projects were funded in 2021-22.
• Library and Archives' Listen, Hear Our Voices program distributed $739,000 to support digitization of records in Indigenous organizations, and also digitized 568 recordings on behalf of several communities.
• In 2021-22, 16 federal organizations piloted the federal Anti-Racism Framework, a "whole-of-government resource" that can be applied across all business lines to improve existing and future policies, programs, services, legal frameworks and practices.
• The Centre on Diversity and Inclusion at Treasury Board Secretariat amended the Public Service Employment Act and made efforts to address systemic barriers for Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, in addition to other equity-seeking groups, in public service staffing.
• Through its Indigenous Learning Series, the Canada School of Public Service has delivered training to more than 93,884 participants from the public service and 36,000 public servants took part in virtual events on topics related to Indigenous realities.

Key highlights: Health and wellness

• Engagement on distinctions-based Indigenous Health Legislation is underway. As of March 31, 2022, 36 Indigenous organizations were funded to undertake engagement on this legislation, including national, urban/off-reserve, regional, women's, youth, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations, and 11 engagement reports have been received.
• Budget 2021 announced the $4.3 billion Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund (ICIF) for Indigenous‑led infrastructure and housing projects in First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities. Funding is being implemented to support priorities identified by communities.
• In 2021-22, the Government of Canada provided funding to a network of over 135 community-based organizations to deliver emotional and cultural support services for First Nations, Inuit and Métis people, including cultural and motional supports, professional counselling, and assistance with the cost of transportation to access services.
• The Government of Canada made Indigenous-specific investments into First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation early learning and child care priorities, guided by a co-developed Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework.
• The Support for the Wellbeing of Families and Survivors of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People program was launched. 19 Indigenous organizations received funding for projects that deliver healing and wellness activities, programs, and services to support the healing journeys of families and survivors.
• The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) continued to work closely with Indigenous communities to build capacity for research and knowledge translation through major initiatives such as the:
  • Indigenous Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative
  • Indigenous Gender and Wellness Initiative
  • Inuit Research Network Grant developed with the Inuit Tapiriit Katanami and launched in August 2021

Key highlights: Human safety and security

• Work on 12 new cell towers along Highway 16, also known as the Highway of Tears, is now underway. When complete, the project will provide an additional 252 km of cell coverage along the road.
• As part of the Rapid Housing Initiative Round 2, close to $1.5 billion has been committed to support the creation of over 5,400 new affordable units to help address urgent housing needs of vulnerable Canadians, especially in the context of COVID-19. Of these units, over 2,400 are for Indigenous people.
• Reaching Home provided $92,098,509 in funding to 24 organizations to support community-based approaches to urban, rural, and remote Indigenous homelessness under the Indigenous homelessness funding stream.
• As of December 31, 2021, the National Housing Strategy has committed an estimated $7.1 billion towards meeting the housing needs of women and their children, which includes funding for the construction, repair and support of approximately 340,000 housing units.
• Work has begun to bolster the capacity of Indigenous women's and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations to provide gender-based violence prevention programming. A Call for Proposals was launched on January 27, 2022 and closed on March 10, 2022. Implementation of projects is expected to start by fall 2022.
• Under the Comprehensive Violence Prevention Strategy, the Indigenous Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative was announced to support the construction of 38 new shelters and 50 transitional (second stage) housing. Prior to this, in June 2021, the construction of 12 new emergency shelters across Canada for Indigenous women, children and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people escaping family violence was announced.
• The new Rural Transit Solutions Fund is making $250 million in federal funding available over 5 years, beginning in 2021, to help those who live in rural and remote areas, including Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, to get around their communities more easily and connect with nearby communities.

Key highlights: Justice

• As a first step in implementing the UN Declaration Act, Justice Canada launched a consultation and cooperation process, which includes support for Indigenous-led engagement. This step will help shape the initial draft of an action plan and identify potential measures for aligning federal laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
• Justice Canada expanded the Indigenous Justice Program to provide funding to Indigenous-led community-based justice programs to provide family mediation services and expanding the Indigenous Courtwork Program to include Indigenous family court worker services to better support Indigenous families navigating the Canadian justice system.
• Justice Canada is supporting Indigenous-led engagement to inform the development of the Indigenous Justice Strategy.
• Public Safety has established relationships with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the First Nations Chiefs of Police Association and First Nations Police Governance Council (FNCPA), and set contribution agreements with AFN and FNCPA, to support the co-development of a legislative framework for First Nations policing. In their work toward addressing sex-based inequalities in the Indian Act, ISC has received 45,663 applications, processed 37,438 of those applications and found 28,152 newly eligible persons.
• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police's 2021 Missing and Murdered Campaign, which uses social media to seek the public's help on solving cases, profiled 11 cases over 11 weeks, beginning on October 4th to coincide with the Sisters in Spirit Vigil.

Key highlights: Organizational capacity and coordination

The new Supporting Indigenous Women's and 2SLGBTQQIA+ Organizations program was launched with a Call for Proposals. This 2021-22 call resulted in 20 project funding agreements with 4 national organizations and 13 regional and community-level Indigenous women's organizations and 3 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations.

Monitoring progress

Data in all forms (quantitative and qualitative) are important to monitor what is changing, and how. There have been some improvements in the data landscape but there are still many challenges, especially when it comes to information about Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people.

To start to address these challenges, there are several projects and initiatives that focus on expanding disaggregated data as well as supporting prevention-based data and strengths-based approaches including:

• The Indigenous-Led Data Research Projects Program funded 19 new data research projects across the country, inclusive of all distinctions, were funded to advance innovative and Indigenous-centred methodologies to better understand the issue of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people.
• The Government of Canada released the Disaggregated Data Action Plan.
• The Federal-Provincial-Territorial working Group on National Indicators of Overrepresentation in the Criminal Justice System was launched.
• National engagement with Indigenous and racialized partners, communities and organizations was undertaken to advance the collection of data on Indigenous identity of victims and accused through national police-reported crime statistics.
• Work has begun on developing a Canadian Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS) that will be a national public health information system based on case-level child welfare (child and family services) data, aiming to gather disaggregated, distinctions-based data about First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children, and non-Indigenous children.

We invite you to consult the full Annual Progress Report for more information on these and other data initiatives.

Looking forward

As identified by Indigenous partners, there is still much work to do. This includes addressing gaps and partner priorities in several areas, including:

• the need to develop strong oversight and accountability mechanisms
• more programs and initiatives that will improve access to education, job training and economic opportunities for Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people
• programs and initiatives for Indigenous youth
• programs and initiatives to support healing and wellness for family members, survivors, and all Indigenous people, including support for grass roots
• programs and initiatives to improve services for family members and survivors navigating the justice system
• public awareness campaigns that uphold the honour and respect for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people
• data improvement and development specific to Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people
• increased collaboration between jurisdictions, including federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous governments

In addition, some of the specific initiatives planned for 2022 to 2023 include:

• Culture:
  • enabling inclusion and stability
  • increased funding for professional arts training organizations
  • renewing Canada's Anti-Racism Strategy (CARS)
  • creating a National Action Plan to Combat Hate
• Health and wellness:
  • distinctions-based mental wellness strategies, to maintain trauma-informed, culturally-appropriate, Indigenous led services to improve mental wellness, and to support efforts to co-develop distinctions-based mental health and wellness strategies
• Human safety and security:
  • enhancing Reaching Home to provide longer term certainty for the organizations doing vitally important work across the country and ensure that communities have the support they need to continue to prevent and address homelessness
  • ending chronic homelessness by 2030
  • addressing critical housing needs by implementing initial steps to ensure stable and sustainable housing
  • rapid housing initiative
  • Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committee – Trans Mountain Expansion and Existing Pipeline (IAMC-TMX) Temporary Work Camps & Influx of Workers Initiative
• Justice:
  • enhanced funding to support effective implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act for Indigenous partners to continue to collaborate on the implementation of the Act
  • funding for increased criminal legal aid supports
  • Increase in public education and outreach activities in collaboration with the Government of Nunavut to increase awareness and accessibility for the process of making complaints against the RCMP
• Organizational capacity and coordination:
  • advancing a national action plan to end gender-based violence
  • LGBTQ2 national action plan
  • Increased funding to implement the Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families, for Indigenous communities for coordination agreement discussions to support the exercise of First Nations, Inuit and Métis jurisdiction as well as funding for internal resources to support Indigenous communities.

Conclusion

Since the launch of the Federal Pathway on June 3, 2021, federal organizations have been working on the commitments. Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people have the right to be safe and the Government of Canada is committed to doing its part to ensure that its programs, services meet the needs of those who they are intended to serve. Moving forward, the federal government, its departments and agencies will engage in ongoing discussions with Indigenous partners, families and survivors to collaborate better, to further identify areas of future work, and to monitor what is working.

The Government of Canada remains committed to the vision of a transformed Canada where Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, wherever they are, live free from violence, and are celebrated, honoured, respected, valued, treated equitably, safe and secure.