Hon. Brian Francis, pursuant to notice of October 22, 2025, moved:
That the Senate recognize May 10 of each and every year as Bear Witness Day to honour Jordan River Anderson and his family and to raise awareness of Jordan’s Principle and the ongoing challenges that First Nations children and their families face to access products, services and supports due to inequities and jurisdictional disputes within and across governments.
He said: Honourable senators, I rise today to put forward a motion to recognize May 10 of each and every year as Bear Witness Day. It is a national day of action honouring Jordan River Anderson and his family while advocating for the full implementation of Jordan’s Principle, a legal obligation in Canada that aims to ensure that First Nations children have immediate access to a wide range of health, social and educational services.
However, the federal government has repeatedly failed to implement the full scope of Jordan’s Principle, resulting in persistent service denials, delays and disruptions that threaten the health, safety and well-being of First Nations children: the exact harms it was created to prevent.
This failure has led to an intense and ongoing legal battle spanning nearly two decades. To understand the importance of recognizing Bear Witness Day, we must also understand the history that led to the creation of Jordan’s Principle and the issues that continue to demand action today.
To start, it is important to acknowledge that Jordan’s Principle exists because a tragedy exposed persistent failures in the care of First Nations children in Canada. It is named in memory of Jordan River Anderson, a boy from Norway House Cree Nation, which is located about 800 kilometres north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was born in 1999 with a rare genetic disorder known as Carey-Fineman-Ziter Syndrome. Due to the severity of his condition, Jordan required specialized around-the-clock medical care, which was not available near his home community. As a result, he was placed in a hospital in Winnipeg since his birth.
At age 2, doctors cleared Jordan to move to a specialized foster home in Winnipeg. He should have then been discharged and provided with the necessary supports, but because he was a First Nations child, federal and provincial governments argued for over two years over which jurisdiction was financially responsible for his at-home care, including small, essential items, such as a $30 showerhead.
The dispute continued until Jordan died in 2005. He spent half his life in a hospital, not because it was medically necessary but because both levels of government refused to put his needs first. For that reason alone, he was denied a childhood that could have been spent with his family, in the comfort, love and normalcy of the family home.
What happened to Jordan is, tragically, not uncommon. In Canada, provincial governments are primarily responsible for delivering health and social services, but the federal government, primarily through Indigenous Services Canada, or ISC, both directly and indirectly delivers a wide range of services to First Nations people living on- and off-reserve.
When responsibilities overlap, First Nations children have often been caught in situations whether neither jurisdiction wants to take immediate action. Yet, children’s needs do not wait: When unmet, needs grow, change and often worsen.
Colleagues, Jordan helped expose how Canada deliberately and consistently put its own interests over the health and well-being of First Nations children, leaving many without the necessary care they should have. In the process, he sparked an ongoing national movement to uphold the rights of all First Nations children.
After his death, his family gifted his name to a promise — Jordan’s Principle — to ensure that no other child would suffer as he did.
What it proposed was simple: When a service is requested, the government or department of first contact must pay for a service immediately and resolve any jurisdictional or payment disputes later. Using a child-first and needs-based approach, Jordan’s Principle advanced a fundamental shift where the health, safety and well-being of a child comes first, regardless of which jurisdiction is ultimately responsible.
In memory of Jordan, his family and community, alongside the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and others, advocated tirelessly for the recognition of Jordan’s Principle.
In response to intense public pressure in 2007, the House of Commons unanimously adopted a motion in support of Jordan’s Principle. Despite clear political commitment, the federal government did not implement it as the family originally intended. Instead, Canada applied such a narrow definition of Jordan’s Principle that few, if any, children qualified.
For a time, eligibility was restricted to First Nations children living on-reserve with multiple disabilities who required multiple service providers. In 2007, the Assembly of First Nations and First Nations Child and Family Caring Society filed a complaint under the Canadian Human Rights Act, alleging that Canada was discriminating against First Nations children and families on the prohibited grounds of race and/or national or ethnic origin.
In 2016, nearly nine years later, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, the CHRT, found that Canada’s narrow implementation of Jordan’s Principle was discriminatory and resulted in “pain and suffering of the worst kind” for First Nations children and their families.
As a result, the CHRT ordered the federal government to immediately cease its discriminatory conduct and prevent it from reoccurring. Shortly after, the CHRT explicitly ordered Canada to comply with this order by no later than May 10, 2016. Canada did not.
Since then, each May 10, we mark Bear Witness Day as a reminder of a critical milestone we have yet to meet.
After the landmark ruling in 2016, Jordan’s Principle became a binding legal obligation with no end date for the Government of Canada. However, the CHRT has been forced to issue several other binding orders, many of them for non-compliance, and has maintained jurisdiction over the case to ensure the federal government complies with its legal obligations, presents further discrimination and achieves long-term reform.
Since 2016, the CHRT has issued significant clarifications — legally binding orders — that are related to the implementation of Jordan’s Principle. For example, the CHRT confirmed that all First Nations children are eligible under Jordan’s Principle, regardless of where they live or their status.
Additionally, the CHRT confirmed that Jordan’s Principle covers a wide range of health, social and educational services, supports and products that First Nations children need. To ensure needs are met without delay, which is central to Jordan’s Principle, the CHRT has also set specific timelines for processing requests structured around urgency. For example, there is a 12-hour requirement for cases where there is a serious or immediate risk. For urgent group requests, the timelines are set to within 48 hours.
The CHRT has repeatedly emphasized that Jordan’s Principle is grounded in substantive equality, serving as both a legal right and a mandatory remedy owed to First Nations children to address and prevent the reoccurrence of discrimination. It has also ordered that had Jordan’s Principle must be centred on the best interests and needs of the child, and account for their distinct circumstances. This holistic approach recognizes that the health, safety and well-being of a child are deeply interconnected with their culture, family and community. That means that more or different services tailored to their specific historical, social and geographical disadvantages are often needed to achieve equitable outcomes.
Colleagues, Jordan’s Principle exists to ensure substantive, equal access to services, supports and products to First Nations children, but that is not what is happening today. Despite being a legal obligation, not a voluntary program or policy, the initiative is in a state of crisis, putting the health, safety and well-being of First Nations children at risk.
There is no doubt that Jordan’s Principle has profoundly improved the lives of countless First Nations children and their families. Between 2016 and 2025, nearly $10 billion in federal funding was committed, and more than 10 million services, supports and products were approved between 2016 and 2025. Even so, the implementation of Jordan’s Principle continues to face significant ongoing problems.
Although there are legally mandated timelines for the processing of requests, in February 2025 ISC estimated that Jordan’s Principle had nearly 135,000 backlogged requests, a decrease from the nearly 140,000 in December 2024. Within this backlog, approximately 10,000 requests had yet to be entered into the system.
In November 2024, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, or CHRT, ordered immediate action to address the massive backlog of requests for services needed by First Nations children. However, according to the federal government, doing so is “not operationally feasible.”
In the meantime, tens of thousands of requests are sitting unopened at Indigenous Services Canada, or ISC, inboxes while children are left waiting for essential, often urgent, health, social and educational services, sometimes for months or longer. The federal government attributes the backlog to a surge in demand and costs that have overwhelmed administrative capacity, explaining that the number of requests approved increased from 614,350 in 2021-22 to almost 3 million in 2023-24.
As a result, ISC introduced major and unilateral changes to Jordan’s Principle, most notably, through the release of an operational bulletin in 2025, citing the need to ensure the long-term sustainability of Jordan’s Principle.
Yet, critics have noted that the backlog is not accidental, but the result of how Canada has implemented Jordan’s Principle, pointing to an overly complex application and approval process compounded by years of mismanagement.
In May 2025, ISC itself released an internal audit covering between 2022 and 2024, which found that prior changes implemented by Canada to simplify access to Jordan’s Principle became unsustainable due to weak management controls and inconsistent decision making.
Following a review of internal documents, APTN reported on September 2025 that the changes that ISC introduced that same year in February caused internal confusion and inconsistent decisions.
It appears that the department made unilateral changes to established processes with little communication. There was no planned rollout. There were also warnings regarding the administrative burden and its impact on efficiency.
These combined factors meant that staff were left to grapple with vague criteria, shifting eligibility rules and an unclear approval process, which likely contributed to an already high employee turnover.
The federal government has also made allegations of potential misuse to defend the need for the operational bulletin in 2025. Yet, which requests were approved or denied were ultimately at the discretion of the department.
So even if misuse occurred in a small number of cases, it likely stems from Canada’s failure to adequately manage and fund Jordan’s Principle rather than from widespread wrongdoing.
The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and other First Nations organizations have strongly opposed the operational bulletin from February 2025, arguing that it represents a significant unilateral departure from CHRT orders.
These changes have exacerbated the growing backlog and mean that critical and life-sustaining supports and services needed by First Nations children are being disrupted or outright denied.
To give an example, there is a new requirement for families to demonstrate that a child has experienced gaps, delays or denials before the department considers a request. That is yet another administrative hurdle that clearly contradicts the child-first approach that the CHRT ordered a decade ago.
Similarly, without providing any evidence, the federal government has also restricted the scope of the services available unless explicitly required to meet “substantive equality,” which lacks a defined matrix.
While the immediate impact of these changes is evident, the long-term consequences have yet to be fully understood.
In some regions, funding under Jordan’s Principle has shrunk dramatically and denials have more than doubled in 2025. The cuts have led to, among other things, the suspension of a rural nutrition program in the Yukon and the reduction of crisis response teams in Ontario. There are also reports that some families are being pushed to place their children into foster care, not because of a safety risk, but because respite supports promised under Jordan’s Principle are not being delivered.
This is not a child-first approach. It is a cost-shifting approach that is forcing families and communities into impossible situations.
A mother from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg in Quebec, who went into debt waiting to hear whether services for her son would be renewed after the changes made in early 2025, put it best:
The problem is they opened the doors so wide for our kids, and now they are shutting the doors . . . . What they don’t seem to understand is that there are children behind those doors.
In response to ISC’s attempt to narrow the scope of Jordan’s Principle, namely, through the operational bulletin from 2025, First Nations children and families have turned to the federal court to fight for their rights.
Last year, in Cully v. Canada, the Federal Court found ISC’s denial of a young First Nations child’s request for applied behavioural analysis therapy to be unreasonable because the department relied on a narrow interpretation of Jordan’s Principle.
More recently, in Powless v. Canada, the Federal Court of Appeal quashed ISC’s decision to deny on appeal a First Nations grandmother’s request for medically required mould remediation in the home for her two grandchildren.
Together, these rulings reaffirm that Jordan’s Principle must be applied broadly and in a manner consistent with the CHRT orders that respects substantive equality, cultural appropriateness and the best interests of the child, and that reflects their unique circumstances and real-world stakes.
These families have embodied a level of courage and strength that should never have been called upon, but will pave the way for so many other First Nations children.
Colleagues, efforts to make Jordan’s Principle more effective and sustainable are understandable and, in principle, necessary. However, Canada has disregarded available evidence and solutions. The road map has been laid in reports like the 2005 Wen:De report entitled We are Coming to the Light of Day and The Journey Continues, published by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and partners, and more recently, by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa in 2022 and 2025.
All this leads me to believe that the biggest threat to the sustainability of Jordan’s Principle is not the First Nations families attempting to care for their children. The biggest threat to the sustainability of Jordan’s Principle is the repeated failure of Canada to implement it fully, properly, effectively and immediately.
We know that Jordan’s Principle, when implemented in alignment with the CHRT orders, has been life-saving and life-changing for thousands of First Nations children and families. We know this because Jordan’s Principle was created to protect and uplift First Nations children’s rights to access timely and accessible services and supports.
However, ISC’s current implementation, including mismanagement, using Jordan’s Principle to cover shortfalls in other service areas, and its choice to not immediately address the backlog of children waiting for services and supports, despite solutions it could avail itself of, is putting children in harm’s way.
At issue here is not only access to essential care, but the violation of their rights to equal care, equal dignity and equal protection. When children must wait or go without services simply because of who they are, it exposes the failure to turn our legal obligations into lived realities.
At present, ISC maintains that it is working to return to the original intent of Jordan’s Principle. However, the narrow approach it took after 2007 resulted in almost no children qualifying for assistance for several years. The CHRT determined that this approach was discriminatory. The Federal Court agreed.
ISC’s recent narrowing has produced the same outcome as before — children waiting for and being denied critical services. Such discrimination is inconsistent with the true intent of Jordan’s Principle.
With this context in mind, I urge you to adopt this motion as soon as possible. With Jordan’s Principle facing a critical juncture, the recognition of Bear Witness Day is more important than ever. We cannot undo the harm done to Jordan and countless other First Nations children, but we can refuse to look away. To bear witness is to insist again and again that every child matters.
Over a decade ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called for the full implementation of Jordan’s Principle, and, five years later, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls echoed that call.
Last year marked the twentieth anniversary of the creation of Jordan’s Principle. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the landmark ruling by the CHRT. Let us use this momentum to move beyond words and drive real change.
Colleagues, we have an opportunity through this motion to honour Jordan River Anderson and his family for the gift of Jordan’s Principle, as well as the countless other First Nations children and families affected, to encourage more people across Canada to show support to First Nations children and families, to hold current and future governments accountable for the full implementation of Jordan’s Principle and, last but not least, to act on our shared commitment to support reconciliation.
As Cindy Blackstock, Executive Director of First Nations Child & Family Caring Society, has reminded us:
Jordan could not talk, yet people around the world heard his message. Jordan could not breathe on his own and yet he has given the breath of life to other children. Jordan could not walk but he has taken steps that governments are now just learning to follow.
We owe it to Jordan and all First Nations children to act with urgency. At the heart of Jordan’s Principle, there are children with real needs, real hopes and real futures who cannot wait. This is not only a First Nations issue; it is a national imperative.
Thank you. Wela’lin.