The Yukon Party says that if elected, it would commit $3.5 million to implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC’s) Calls to Action.

It would also commit $1.5 million to stop violence against indigenous women and support the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

As the premier has stressed repeatedly, the Yukon Party said Tuesday that it would “let Yukon First Nations lead the process” of deciding what programming is needed and how to spend the money.

The TRC Calls to Action came out 16 months ago. A national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls has been in the works since last December.

Tuesday’s announcement left some wondering why the Yukon Party waited until an election was called last Friday to make this major funding commitment.

“It’s just pretty sad to say, ‘If and when we’re elected, we’ll do this,’” said Joanne Henry, the executive director of the Committee on Abuse in Residential Schools.

“We’ve been dealing with residential school now for the last how many years? And it takes (Premier Darrell Pasloski) being elected again to do something for it?”

The Yukon NDP has also taken issue with the funding promise, suggesting the Yukon Party is shirking responsibility for the difficult work that is needed to bring the TRC recommendations to life.

“Meaningful reconciliation puts the onus on the government to put in the hard work to implement the calls to action,” NDP Leader Liz Hanson said in a statement emailed to the Star today.

“Indigenous people have been fighting to be heard for too long. It’s time for government to shoulder their fair share of the burden. It’s time for a government that looks in the mirror first.”

Hanson added that if the Yukon Party is indeed committed to reconciliation, it would not be “dragging First Nations through the courts, and they would be fulfilling commitments set out in the First Nation Final Agreements and Devolution Transfer Agreement with Canada.”

Asked today why the Yukon Party has waited until now to fund the implementation of the TRC’s Calls to Action, Deputy Premier Elaine Taylor said, “Even well before the calls to action, we had been working on a number of initiatives with Yukon First Nation leaders over the past decade.”

She pointed to the changes to child welfare legislation made in 2010 and recent updates to the territorial school curriculum to include a unit on residential schools.

“All of that speaks to the Calls to Action, so we have been funding and supporting those processes unfolding as they have been over the last number of years.”

She said the government, in collaboration with First Nations leaders, has been working on a “joint plan to address these calls” since the TRC released its initial report in 2015.

Peter Johnston, the Council of Yukon First Nations’ grand chief, was unavailable for comment before press time this afternoon.

Taylor said this Yukon Party promise is the result of a year of talks between Pasloski and First Nations leaders about how to respond to the TRC’s findings.

“(These) dollars is really committing to First Nation leadership that we’ll enable them to lead that process,” she told the Star.

The Yukon Party came to the $3.5-million figure in collaboration with First Nations leaders, said Taylor.

Yukon First Nations previously requested funding from Ottawa to help with the implementation of the TRC’s Calls to Action.

The Yukon Party’s $3.5-million commitment is “well within the ballpark” of that request, said Taylor, adding that the money would come directly from Yukon government coffers.

“It’s a substantive commitment coming from our government, should we be re-elected (Nov. 7),” she said.

There is no timeline yet for the rollout of the $3.5 million to implement the Calls to Action, but Taylor said if the Yukon Party wins the election, the funding would begin“immediately.”

“It will be in partnership with Yukon First Nations leadership. I don’t want to predetermine what that response will be,” she said.

The TRC released the executive summary of its report on the brutal residential school system, and the traumas it caused to generations of families and communities in Canada, in June, 2015.

The 527-page summary includes 94 recommendations (“Calls to Action”) to redress the damage caused by residential schools and government-mandated assimilation policies.

The Calls to Action are aimed at the various orders of government, and people. They propose ways to improve outcomes for indigenous peoples in the areas of child welfare, education, health care, justice and others.

As one of its recommendations, the TRC called on the federal government to address the “disproportionate victimization” of indigenous women and girls and carry out a nation-wide investigation into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

The Trudeau government launched the national Inquiry in to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in August. At the time, the Yukon Party government said it would fully participate in the inquiry.

Before the inquiry officially began, Pasloski said there was no need to wait for its launch or its findings to work on stopping violence against indigenous women and girls.

“We need to act now,” Pasloski said in July, after a meeting of Canada’s premiers and leaders of the National Aboriginal Organizations in Whitehorse.

“(Federal, provincial/territorial and First Nations governments) don’t need to wait for the inquiry to launch.”

On Tuesday, the Yukon Party promised it would double its funding to the Yukon Aboriginal Women’s Council, Whitehorse Aboriginal Women’s Circle and the Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society over the next five years to a total of $1.5 million.

This would be in addition to the $200,000 the government already provides each year through the Prevention of Violence Against Aboriginal Women fund.

In an emailed statement today, the Yukon Liberals said that if elected, they would work with Yukon First Nations to “implement its responsibilities stemming from the Calls to Action.”

They added that they would develop a program to train Yukon government employees on the legacy of residential schools.

The Liberals will not make a specific funding commitment “prior to working with First Nations on determining what their needs are for implementation,” Liberal spokesperson Brad Weston said in the email.

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