KELOWNA, British Columbia - Canada on Friday pledged $4.3-billion in a landmark deal with Indian and northern Inuit communities to help lift them from the poverty and disease that have plagued their neglected reservations for more than a century.
The agreement commits federal funding over the next decade for widespread improvements in housing, health care, education and economic development for the nearly 1-million aboriginal peoples of the North American nation, namely Indian tribes known as First Nations and Inuits, the aboriginal Canadians of the northeastern and Arctic territories.
Prime Minister Paul Martin and the premiers of Canada's 13 provinces and territories announced the deal after a two-day summit with five Indian groups.
"Aboriginal Canadians have no desire for more rhetoric; they have needs and those needs demand attention. It's as simple as that. We all know that there are serious problems in too many aboriginal communities and it's heartbreaking to hear the stories of lost promise," Martin said in Kelowna, a western frontier town whose name means "grizzly bear" in the local Indian tongue.
Canada's reservations are dramatically short of housing and safe drinking water, their high school graduation rate is just over half the national average, and life expectancy for Indians is five to seven years lower than for nonaboriginals. The infant mortality rate is 20 percent higher among First Nations, suicide rates are threefold and teen pregnancies are nine times higher than the national average.
Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, praised the agreement and said he would demand that federal officials follow through.
"We will close the gap in the quality of life between our people and other Canadians. That will be our legacy for the coming generations," he said.
Among other pledges in Friday's final agreement:
--Close the educational gap so that by 2016, the high school graduation rate for aboriginal students is the same as other Canadians.
--Change housing policy to improve access to emergency shelters and improve the ability of Indians to own homes off reservations.
--Reduce infant mortality, youth suicide, childhood obesity and diabetes by 50 percent in 10 years by doubling the number of aboriginal health care workers, improving delivery and access to provincial health care, and establishing health promotion and prevention measures on reservations.
Some worry, however, that any progress made at the conference could vanish next week, when opposition parties in Parliament are expected to topple Martin's minority government in a no-confidence vote, forced after he refused to call early national elections.
