NDP Leader Singh brings campaign to residential school grave site in Saskatchewan

New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh will be focusing the federal election campaign Friday on the hardships facing Indigenous communities in Canada.

Singh will make the campaign’s first stop in an Indigenous community when he visits the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan.

The First Nation announced in June a preliminary finding of 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school. Singh plans to visit the gravesites.

Late last month, Singh became the first federal party leader to meet with Indigenous chiefs at the site of the former Kamloops Indian School, after the discovery of what is believed to be the remains of 215 children.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was forced to address the issue as he kicked off the day with an announcement of new funding to support the safe return to work and school amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said Justice Minister David Lametti continues to work with Indigenous stakeholders “to look for consequences and to seek to seek accountability in every possible way” for what has occurred at residential schools.

But Trudeau stressed that work is being done by police and prosecutors who are independent of the political process.

The leaders of the two largest parties are converging in Winnipeg Friday, where leaders of the two largest parties will be holding events.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was to hold an event in the Manitoba capital later in the morning, where his campaign plans to highlight a promised hiring incentive in his party’s platform.

On Thursday, the leaders battled over the right prescription to help the country’s health-care systems and how much more funding provinces require to meet their needs during and after the pandemic.

O’Toole said he would boost federal funding for provincially run health-care systems by six per cent annually. Speaking in French at a stop in Ottawa, O’Toole left the door open to offering more money if the national economy grows faster than expected, which would give federal coffers extra cash to potentially splash around.

Speaking in Victoria, B.C., where he outlined plans to improve wages and conditions in long-term care facilities, Trudeau said the country needs to invest more in health care and that his government would be there to increase provincial transfers, although he did not detail when or by how much.

Singh took aim at Trudeau over the Liberal government’s track record on health-care spending during a campaign stop in Edmonton where he highlighted his party’s pledge for a $250 million fund to help train and hire 2,000 nurses.

The NDP leader said the Liberals criticized the previous Conservative government for cutting funding to provinces in 2014, only to turn around and maintain funding increases at that level once in office.