While out in Saskatchewan recently, I heard an interesting rumour to the effect that INAC was investigating the possibility that substantial sums of PSSSP money – that is, money paid to individual First Nations for use by their members for post-secondary education – was either going unused or being used for purposes other than post-secondary education.
Assuming this is true, one shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that fraud is at work (though obviously that’s possible). It’s not unheard of for bands to temporarily plug holes in their finances by moving money from one account to another if funds from Ottawa arrive late or if there are temporary cost overruns elsewhere in their budget. Viewed from one perspective, this is “misuse,” but from another (arguably more reasonable) point of view, it is a pragmatic approach to dealing with the byzantine colonialist financing system with which Ottawa has saddled First Nations bands.
It’s also quite possible for bands to innocently fall afoul of Ottawa’s rules, especially at smaller bands where administrative capacity isn’t very strong. Remember, some First Nations only have a couple of hundred members, and yet they are expected to “control” funding for education, health, housing, social services, etc.
Imagine what would happen in mainstream society if we handed student loans over to municipalities. How many errors or cases of “fraud” would we have, especially in small rural municipalities? I’m certain there’d be more than a few. And I’m also certain the policy response would be to re-centralize delivery at a level more likely to have acceptable administrative capacity rather than to bring in rafts of new “accountability measures.”
There’s also the possibility that there is simply a mismatch between where Ottawa sends PSSSP and where it’s needed. Remember, PSSSP isn’t a national program to which students can apply centrally; it’s a transfer program, with money being doled out via individual bands. Hence, it’s quite possible to have insufficient funds in one First Nation while money goes unused in another.
The answer to problems of distribution and administrative capacity are the same: PSSSP simply shouldn’t be delivered by individual First Nations. That’s not to say it should be administered by INAC or the Canada Student Loans Program or anything like that. Rather, what’s needed is a new type of Aboriginal organization, working at the level of a province or treaty area, providing professional services to many different First Nations (for those of you who’ve been paying attention to the National Panel on First Nations Education, what I’m talking about is a student-aid equivalent to the First Nations Education Organizations that it recommends).
Retain First Nations’ control. Improve First Nations’ capacity. A recipe for a better PSSSP.
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I’m sorry but I am reasonably new to Canada (5+ years) but every time I hear about problems with funding Aboriginal activities and hear that there is a problem, we get told that they do not have the skills or the numbers to handle these types of funds. Well if you can’t do it, what is the normal thing to do – ask for help? Maybe it is time this type of funding was centralized to ensure 1) the money is used correctly and 2) that the students who wish to study get the funding to do so. We can’t keep hearing about the lack of funding, aboriginals not getting the opportunity to partiticpate in PSE and then be told $300+ million are spent each year. The author is right these problems would occur in other communities if they were given such funds to control – that is why it doesn’t happen, but the aboriginals do not want third party help, they want to do it by themselves, but continually complain that Ottowa and the ‘tradiitional’ canadian person do not understand their problems, These types of funds need professional management, and even if this costs money, it will hopefully elimate the waste thus paying for itself.