Funding cuts ‘destabilizing’ to Indigenous Friendship Centres
By Matt Prokopchuk, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Source: NWOnewswatch.com
Starting next month, the amount of federal money available to Indigenous Friendship Centres in the province will be roughly cut in half.
That’s according to the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres. The organization “works to support, advocate for, and build the capacity of” nearly three dozen centres across the province, it says on its website.
The organization told Newswatch that the upshot of the 2025 federal budget means a 55 per cent reduction in the amount of money available to Ontario’s friendship centres compared to previous years. Its executive director, Sean Longboat, said that’s “really destabilizing” for each local centre.
“The Indigenous population living in cities and towns has been growing at a pretty rapid rate,” he said in an interview. “The funding that we were receiving was barely meeting our needs and it’s basically been cut in half at this point.”
“It will destabilize the friendship centres going forward, including the one there in Thunder Bay.”
Nationally, money from a two-year $60 million commitment to the urban programming for Indigenous peoples (UPIP) funding stream committed in the 2024 federal budget (which was on top of base program funding, Longboat said) expires on March 31, and Indigenous Services Canada confirmed in an email to Newswatch there is no new similar extra money going forward.
“It is important to note that while funding from Budget 2024 will be exhausted, the program will not expire,” Jennifer Cooper, a spokesperson for Indigenous Services Canada, told Newswatch in an email. “Instead, it will move to a new streamlined model of distribution for the ongoing annual program funding of $27.5 million.”
The program, which funds centres and initiatives across the country, did receive a $33.6 million “top-up” earlier in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, she said.
In the Northwest, the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres (or UFIFC) represents centres in Thunder Bay, Fort Frances, Geraldton, Red Lake, Sioux Lookout, Kenora, Dryden and Atikokan, it says on its website.
Longboat, as well as the National Association of Friendship Centres, said this change from Ottawa effectively amounts to a sunsetting of the UPIP program after the Liberals campaigned in 2025 on increasing funding to friendship centres.
“The impact is multifaceted, but in the immediate term it could mean overall reduction of services, it could mean destabilizing the management at the friendship centre,” Longboat said. “Ultimately, we anticipate worse outcomes overall with the reductions that we’re experiencing right now.”
Friendship centres, the provincial organization says, provide a range of services to Indigenous people who live in cities and towns, including those around healing and wellness, education, housing, employment, families and youth, and language and culture.
The Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, in a media release, said the overall reduction in funding puts individual friendship centres “into survival mode,” and warns of job cuts, hiring freezes and “ultimately more pressure on emergency services.”
The organization, in a follow-up email to Newswatch, said province-wide, there will be $5.775 million for Ontario’s 31 friendship centres.
Cooper, with Indigenous Services Canada, said all urban programming for Indigenous people funding will now go to the national and Ontario friendship centres organizations to be further distributed, as “they are the two largest, furthest-reaching organizations and have the reach and networks to provide direct and on-the-ground program and services directly to Indigenous people.”
