This could be the year for the Metis, according to the president of the Metis National Council.
In an interview with MBC Radio, Clem Chartier says he expects federal budget funding, a resolution in the Ile-a-la-Crosse boarding school dispute and an inclusion of Metis children in the Sixties Scoop settlement.
Clem Chartier says Metis people have almost come to expect they will be excluded in the reconciliation process, but he says times are changing. He says Metis now have the ear of the prime minister and the Indigenous Affairs Department, and the backing of the Supreme Court, which in 2016 gave Metis the same constitutional rights as status Indians.
Chartier wants to see long-term transfer agreements with Ottawa, where the money flows to Metis Nations for things like social programs, housing and education.
“Those are the kind of things we are working on, and seems we have the ear of the prime minister, he tells me he understands that and that is something they are willing to look towards,” he said.
Chartier has also been part of the push for a settlement in the Ile-a-la-Crosse boarding school dispute, where students were excluded from the residential school settlement. He was a former student there and has been fighting for compensation since 2006.
“They know that unless they are willing to deal with all residential schools, whether for First Nations, Inuit, or in our case the Metis, they know that if they don’t deal with it, it is going to keep festering and it will still be there, but they want to do what is right,” he said.
Chartier is also confident the federal government will extend the Sixties Scoop settlement to include Metis children, who were not included in an out-of-court settlement last October that awarded about $800 million in compensation to First Nations children who were adopted under the program.
Both the Sixties Scoop and the Ile-a-la-Crosse boarding school dispute are still subjects of ongoing court battles.
(PHOTO: Clem Chartier. Photo courtesy of Metis National Council.)