memorandum of understanding<\/a> was signed between the Assembly of First Nations and the federal government in 2016 to reshape how this type of funding was delivered to communities. <\/p>\nThe report found that by the end of 2024-2025, $6.5 billion had been distributed to 160 First Nations through 10-year grants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As of September 2025, 191 First Nations, tribal councils, health and education authorities were receiving funding through 10-year grants.<\/p>\n
However, Indigenous Services Canada “did not assess whether the 10\u2011year grants were helping to address the disparities and inequities between First Nations and other Canadians,” according to the report.<\/p>\n
WATCH | Auditor general calls for ‘better collaboration’:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777964408_293_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Government \u2018fell short\u2019 in collaborating with First Nations communities, auditor general says<\/p>\n
In Monday\u2019s report, Auditor General Karen Hogan criticized the federal government\u2019s attempts to transform the way it collaborates with First Nations communities, saying \u2018it took existing funding and repackaged it into a long-term, predictable and stable set of funding, but the transformative things that should\u2019ve happened are underdeveloped right now.\u2019<\/p>\n
“Last year, at my mid-mandate, I talked about the government needing to really transform the way it interacts with First Nations communities,” Hogan said.<\/p>\n
“I was hopeful that the New Fiscal Initiatives would be different, and I think that it fell short in meeting its mark.”<\/p>\n
2 key responsibilities<\/p>\n
The report said the department also did not did not monitor consistently the continued eligibility of grant recipients. <\/p>\n
The report said the First\u00a0Nations Financial Management Board assesses certain financial performance measures and produces monitoring reports. The audit found 39 per cent of the recipients’ files reviewed (14 of 36) had the required monitoring reports for all years.<\/p>\n
The audit also found that Indigenous Services Canada had not assessed the grants’ impacts on closing socio-economic gaps despite the large amount of data the department already has.<\/p>\n
The report says the government failed to meet two key responsibilities, both meant to increase First Nations’ financial management capacity and accountability.<\/p>\n
First, it did not replace its Default Prevention and Management Policy, and second, it did not establish a “mutual accountability framework” between the government, First Nations, and their citizens.<\/p>\n
![\"Minister](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777964409_669_default.jpg\")
Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty says the federal government is taking steps to address the issues identified in the auditor general’s report. (Justin Tang\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
Indigenous Services Canada Minister Mandy Gull-Masty released a statement Monday in response to the report, stating the department has “achieved significant progress” on these two commitments.<\/p>\n
Gull-Masty said the department is “continuing to work with First Nations partners to advance a renewed approach to accountability that reflects their priorities and realities,” and is “taking steps to address the challenges identified in the report.”<\/p>\n
Indigenous Services Canada agreed with the two recommendations in the report: to provide additional support to First Nations and grant recipients “to increase their administrative and financial capacity to prepare” the annual monitoring statements, and to use existing data to “measure, assess, and annually report” how the grants are closing gaps between First Nations and non-Indigenous people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-648837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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