Government policies and programs, including the Indian Act and the residential school system, have contributed to the increase of mental illness, inter-generational trauma and suicide attempts.Despite the last residential school having closed in 1996 there is still continued trauma within Indigenous communities. Currently, the efforts of the Canadian healthcare system are inadequate in addressing the short-term increase in suicides in Indigenous communities and the associated long-term issues. As you can see the 45 years and over age group in every single category has the lowest overall mental health.

For the 2015 to 2018 Budgets, the Government began to increase Indigenous investments, from in and around $11 billion to more than $16.8 billion. A bit of context about why Indigenous investments increased in 2015 is because that year Trudeau’s Liberal government came into power and Stephen Harper’s conservative government stepped down. Their efforts are reflected in the graph as they were committed to helping Indigenous people.This increase in Indigenous investments resulted in planned funding for Indigenous people growing from just over $11 billion in 2015 and 2016 to more than $15 billion in 2021 and 2022 (which is an increase of 34 per cent in total funding.) Which is a lot of change considering that there was a greater change in budget and attitude within only 5 to 6 years compared to the last decade where there was little to no change. Building on these previous commitments, The federal government’s budget for 2019 proposes to invest a further $4.5 billion over five years, in order to continue their efforts to close the gap between the inequalities between Indigenous Peoples and the non-Indigenous population and through these significant investments the government has lifted the 2 per cent cap on funding.