Wasting Public Money (by not) Preserving Indigenous Languages
Another billion dollars down the drain
I hope it’ll be obvious that I’m as happy as the next guy to hear that some endangered Indigenous language has been rescued from extinction. Language is the cornerstone of culture and why shouldn’t I celebrate cultural success?
But I’m not quite so agreeable when I discover massive federal government spending being poured into programs that target - but fail to solve - the problem. To be clear, I’m not talking about spending on clean water for First Nation reserves or for training and healthcare. This is just about languages.
How much money is on the table? Allocations related to the Liberal government's Indigenous Languages Act of 2019 have totaled at least $1.5 billion so far. Just the grants and contributions to the Indigenous Languages Program that are included in Main Estimates documentation added up to $181 million in 2024-5, $177 million in 2025-6, and $167 million in 2026-7.
So what to we have to show for all this generosity? Well sadly, we won’t see key data from the 2026 census until at least September 2027, but 2021 results showed that 4.3 percent fewer people could hold a conversation in an Indigenous language in 2021 than in 2016. That was the first decline recorded since 1991.
Did federal spending programs come with statutory outcome reviews or audits to identify progress measured outside of census data? None that I’m aware of.
However, as University of Manitoba associate professor Patricia Ningewance told CITY News recently, the Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages recently spent $10 million hosting a four-day conference in Ottawa. There were, according to Ningewance, no tangible recommendations and no apparent follow up. In other words, there was no chance for anything useful to come from the exercise.
“Can you imagine,” Ningewance was quoted asking, “for that amount of money, how many students could have been made fluent?”
It’s also possible (although unclear) that money from the Indigenous Languages Program could have been used to help bankroll the recent scandal involving the APTN1 and CBC-funded Northland Tales that involved trying to humiliate guests after luring them under false pretenses. The odds are, however, that most of that money would have come from the Indigenous Screen Office ($13 million in annual federal funding) and the CBC (upwards of $2 billion in annual federal funding).
Aspirational goals are great. This particular cause certainly represents a noble ambition. But over the years, The Audit has discovered many aspirational programs whose deep funding was, from the start, an exercise in futility.
Understanding the value of this particular program isn’t rocket science. Anyone with a Social Insurance number and a pulse back in 2019 could have told you how this would end. There are some things that only governments can do. There are some things that governments can’t do well, but can get away with. And there are many, many things at which - as predictably as night follows day - governments will always fail.
This looks like one of those things.
Which I assume stands for Aboriginal Peoples Television Network - although I couldn’t find any confirmation of that on their website.
I'm reminded of an event from around thirty years ago when on the drive home every night from my job of managing the forest engineering department of a large Vancouver Island forest operation. I noticed bark stripped from juvenile Red cedar trees and was told that the local Indian band was doing the damage. Having done the requisite SCOC mandated consultations for years, I knew the band manager and asked him about it and he put me in contact with a young lady who was in charge of the re-discovery of their culture and she told me they had started up traditional basket weaving with cedar bark. I told her of our concerns and set her up to visit where our polling contractor was working, pre-logging the cedar poles selectively to save them from potential damage and improperly bucked lengths of final harvest. She got back to me and thanked me as she had acquired enough bark from the poler's landing to supply their needs for the next ten years in one trip. The point being the federal government no doubt paid for this program and many like it and it calls into question of the importance of such activities that people totally unrelated are on the hook for it and given fiscal incontinence, with interest.
Accountability - a poor concept in what appears to be another opportunity for corruption using tax payer money to fund some meaningless ideological goal meant to appease the guilt that a segment of the population feels is theirs to blame at our expense for some alleged wrongs their ancestors may or may not have done to the ancestors of those who may or may not have been victimized. All ultimately supporting the culture of victimhood.