New name, old ties: Federal funds for Indigenous youth linked to company previously cut off
The founder of a prominent child welfare operation cut off from federal funds earmarked for Indigenous youth was later able to access around $100,000 through the same program, Global News has learned.
Venture Academy, a for-profit company marketed as “Canada’s leading program for struggling teens,” received almost $2 million in Jordan’s Principle funding, which gives First Nations children better access to social services, before it was cut off in 2020.
Four years later, the owner of the academies, which have been the subject of a recent Global News investigation, created a new for-profit company called First Wellness, pledging “holistic care” for Indigenous children.
To date, First Wellness has received $100,000 from Jordan’s Principle.
In addition, sources allege the new facility isn’t catering to Indigenous youth. Instead, they say, the two businesses are integrated — a way for the Alberta outpost of Venture to continue enrolling Indigenous teens in its program while receiving federal money.
The revelations come as Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) attempts to tighten the rules around Jordan’s Principle amid concerns of abuse and mismanagement of the program, which some child welfare experts tell Global News is still prone to exploitation.
While no crimes have been committed, child welfare experts warn that significant funding meant for some of the country’s most vulnerable children can be accessed with little to no oversight or accountability.
“These things happen because we have a policy environment that enables this kind of activity,” says Kiaras Gharabaghi, dean of community services at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“So governments are not excused from taking a hard look at this and asking themselves, ‘How are we enabling this?’”
ISC runs and funds the program, and is charged with reviewing requests, approving funding and reimbursing costs. The federal department was set up in 2017 to enhance services to First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities, with an annual budget of about $25 billion.
In recent years, however, the ISC has been the subject of controversy — in particular, its oversight, procurement compliance and transparency.
In 2024, a Global News investigation found the department was awarding billions of dollars in contracts earmarked for Indigenous enterprises without always requiring bidders to prove they were Indigenous.
Jordan’s Principle has also been called into question.
In January, Ernest Anderson, the father of its namesake, Jordan River Anderson, posted a video on social media condemning the exploitation of the program, saying it is no longer working as intended and doesn’t serve his son’s memory well.
Jordan, a five-year-old Cree boy with multiple disabilities, died in a Winnipeg hospital in 2005 as federal and provincial governments fought over who should pay for his care at home. Jordan’s Principle launched in 2016 to ensure access to health, social or educational services for First Nations children, regardless of where they live.
The policy allows for ISC to sponsor treatment, such as mental health services, on a child’s behalf.
Venture Academy launched in Kelowna, B.C., in 2001 and has since opened two additional locations, one near Barrie, Ont., and its Red Deer campus. The company vows to address everything from family conflict, drug and alcohol use to mental health issues and smartphone addiction. Its Kelowna location shuttered in 2021 for undisclosed reasons.
It’s unclear what fees First Wellness charges Indigenous youth, but Venture costs families more than $15,000 for its first month, and it’s about $10,000 for every month after that.
ISC said it was unaware of links between the ownership of First Wellness Venture Academy until Global News informed them.
A spokeswoman wrote they were now “reviewing the situation” but would not elaborate on what that meant.
Global spent six months investigating Venture Academy, uncovering a program that, some say, promotes therapeutic rehabilitation but inflicts psychological and emotional harm instead, and finding allegations of sexual abuse and assault committed by male host parents employed by the company.
Child welfare authorities have also raised concerns with how Indigenous youth are treated at Venture, specifically at its Ontario campus, documents obtained by Global News under the Freedom of Information Act reveal.
In 2020, regional children’s aid agency Simcoe Muskoka Family Connexions (SMFC) investigated Venture’s Barrie campus for reasons the agency would not disclose, stating that Indigenous children, and those with complex histories, were at “greater risk” of emotional harm while in the program.
“Venture Academy has a lack of culturally safe, trauma-informed approaches within their program which increases the risk of emotional harm to vulnerable youth,” SMFC wrote in a letter summarizing their findings, sent to Venture founder Gordon Hay.
Venture did not respond to questions from Global News. Attempts to contact representatives for First Wellness were unsuccessful.
Venture Academy’s three locations have received $1.9 million from Jordan’s Principle since 2016, according to ISC data. But payments to the Alberta and Ontario campuses were stopped in July 2020, and to its B.C. campus in May 2021, a spokesperson for the federal department says, after ISC had “some concerns with Venture Academy’s licensing, accreditation, service delivery and professional credentials.”
The company was told it needed to “respect conditions” if it wanted to receive further funding, the spokeswoman said.
Venture’s founder, Hay, incorporated First Wellness Inc. in April 2024. Its address for service, according to its documents, is a UPS store in Edmonton.
First Wellness has received $99,722 Jordan’s Principle funding since its inception, according to ISC. In addition to sharing the same founder, the company appears to be closely affiliated with Venture Academy.
The address listed on its licence is the same as Venture’s licence and the location of Venture’s Alberta campus. First Wellness’ entry on the Alberta government website page for residential addiction treatment providers lists the Venture website under its contact information.
Global News spoke to three youths and one staff member who have attended or worked for Venture’s Alberta campus since the launch of First Wellness.
The former employee says Venture and First Wellness youth were treated the same — receiving the same education, living with the same host parents (teens are billeted to local host families while they attend the program, as they are in Venture) and attending the same group therapy sessions.
Jade, who Global is identifying only by her first name because she is a minor, attended Venture’s Alberta campus from April to November 2024 when she was 13, and said she lived with a First Wellness youth.
She also says they convened at the same campus, located near the town of Delburne, and that the youth was treated the same as other Venture attendees — the only difference was that she had an Indigenous therapist.
“She lived with us. She made dinners with us. She was in the van with us. She just had a different therapist,” Jade says.
“They made a huge big deal about that, ‘We’re so inclusive. We’re so welcoming.’ You’re just inviting another group of people to get traumatized.”
Another former employee, who worked at the Delburne campus before First Wellness launched, said there was a “big drive” to bring in Indigenous youth at Venture, and a senior manager at the campus would travel to the Far North to attract clients.
First Nations children in Canada are often more in need of specialized mental health services. The suicide rates for Indigenous youth, for example, are nearly nine times higher in those aged younger than 15, and about six times higher for those aged between 15 and 24, according to data from Statistics Canada.
“There are broad-based inequalities and particularly federally funded services for First Nations children on and off reserve,” Cindy Blackstock, an Indigenous activist and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, tells Global News.
“And the reason that there is such a huge mental health need relates back to residential schools and a lot of the harms that flowed from that.”
In the absence of accountability and given the high stakes for the children, Blackstock believes the program needs a more robust complaint system. “If you’ve got a bad actor, you definitely don’t want that bad actor cropping up again and raising risks for children,” she says.
Metropolitan University’s Gharabagi says for-profit companies are the worst offenders because government programs are subject to more oversight.
“There shouldn’t be a for-profit service for young people. Least of all for Indigenous young people,” Gharabaghi says.
The 2020 SMFC report about Venture’s Ontario campus, released under the Freedom of Information Act, raised several issues with Indigenous and marginalized youth attending Venture.
“Youth were not consistently connected to identity-based or culture-based programs, nor was their identity incorporated into their care. There were minimal efforts made toward inclusivity,” the report found.
The agency issued 26 recommendations to Venture as a result of the investigation. Eleven of those recommendations included reference to treating Indigenous youth or cultural competency, including reviewing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Citing privacy concerns, SMFC declined to answer most questions from Global but said the agency currently had no youth placed at Venture.
First Wellness’ website homepage features a video of a young woman with long, black hair, clad in activewear, walking towards a lake set before a mountain range. Staring at the mountains, she reaches both arms high above her head and clasps them together, lowering them to just below her chin, as if in prayer.
It’s one of the many things Leigh Sheldon, the owner of Indigenous Psychological Services (IPS), based in Edmonton, says she objected to while guiding Hay on the creation of First Wellness. Sheldon said that Hay employed her to provide cultural guidance to First Wellness, as well as to a therapist to treat Indigenous children in the program. Sources say this was the only specialized service Indigenous children received.
The therapist, who did not want to be named due to the nature of her job, says the website, which seemingly promoted a Christian religious practice while advocating services for Indigenous children, was only the start of the contradictory messages she encountered while working for First Wellness. The therapist and Sheldon say most of her cultural guidance and advice was not taken onboard.
“I wrote the website. I wanted to speak to kids about courage and wellness,” the therapist says. “And now there’s a weird image of a kid praying on it.”
Until mid-May, First Wellness’ “about us” page on its website featured extensive bios and pictures of Sheldon and the therapist. It did not name any other staff members. The page described her “leadership and guidance” as being “integrated throughout the program in design.”
But Sheldon says other team members were supposed to be listed on the website, too, and the final product looks different from the one she signed off on. She says it made her look like the owner of the company, rather than a consultant.
Days after Global contacted Sheldon, she says she asked her lawyer to break her contract with First Wellness and scrub her from the website, saying she hadn’t known she was presented as the leader of the company.
Sheldon also says that the advice they were providing was not being taken seriously.
The IPS therapist says her advice on cultural practices — smudging, cultural artifacts in host homes, talking about the Medicine Wheel every day — happened sporadically. Some children had cultural objects taken away as punishment, she says. One girl told her her beading was confiscated. Recently, a host parent took away a child’s tarot cards, saying they “weren’t welcome to bring this evil into the house,” she says.
“But it was their spiritual guide.”
She says she often heard that a child was only going home because “their Jordan’s Principle funding ran out.”
“The kids that came to see me were doing well. They should have been sent home,” she says.
“It’s sickening.”
She adds that financial constraints were typical. When she asked for a pipe ceremony to commemorate the company’s launch, Hay asked that her company pay for it, she recalls. She says she would also be asked to conduct therapy online when there were only one or two First Wellness children in the program because “Gordon didn’t want to pay for travel.”
Despite First Wellness’ resistance to their recommendations, the therapist says she stayed because she cared for the children in the program and didn’t want to abandon them.
“I really cared about those kids. But I don’t want to work for anyone who just wants a token Indian.”
The company also quoted a survey of parents and youth who participated in the program between 2016 and 2024. Without disclosing any methodology or sample size, it said 99 per cent of parents felt their child benefited from the program, 99 per cent of parents agreed or strongly agreed that their child was safe and well-supervised, and 97 per cent of youth agreed or strongly agreed that they had a positive overall experience during their time at Venture.
“When families have nowhere else to turn, Venture Academy is there, providing the hope, care, and stability they need,” the statement says.
Follow-up questions on this story to Venture, Hay and First Wellness went unanswered.
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