Bringing in the chiefs

Marci McDonald’s recent book on the relationship between the Religious Right and the Harper government, The Armageddon Factor, may have been unclear on finer points of theology, and it contained a small handful of solecisms over which the Usual Suspects snorted and slobbered. But in general it was a competent dissection of the influence that certain elements of the "faith community" would like to have on governance, and a government (Stephen Harper, that is) that has provided them with unprecedented space—while falling far short of attempting to turn Canada into the Republic of Gilead.

But at least one significant omission should be rectified: the attempts of the government to work with reactionary religious elements amongst the First Nations.

Relations between the Harper administration and First Nations have been fraught almost from the beginning. From attempting to foist Maurice "Starlight Tours" Vellacott upon the Aboriginal Affairs Committee, to its shameful rejection of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ; from its refusal for years to build a children’s school in Attawapiskat to its appointment of Chuck Strahl as Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, whose visceral contempt for the First Nations is a matter of public record. (Chuck has now moved on to become Minister of Transport.)

As for Harper’s much-vaunted “apology” to residential school survivors, he followed that bit of self-serving puffery with deep slashes in funding to aboriginal groups:

But with apology and self-congratulations still echoing, his government cut off funding in its March 2010, budget to the very aboriginal groups set up to administer to survivors. The Ottawa-based Aboriginal Healing Centre loses its last federal money — and with it, some 147 national centres and projects — in 2012.

This past June, however, I watched that same Chuck Strahl receive high honours, in person, from a gathering of First Nations people in Ottawa (actually, outnumbered in the audience by those of the European persuasion). But this was no ordinary meeting. Strategically organized to take place a week before the hapless, hobbled Truth and Reconciliation Commission was due to hold its first hearings in Winnipeg, the National Forgiven Summit, organized by Canada’s Aboriginal Religious Right, gathered to accept Harper’s empty apology.

The master of ceremonies was one Kenny Blacksmith, a former Deputy Grand Chief of the Cree nation, already rewarded earlier this year for his devotion to the Conservative cause by being appointed to the little-known Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

Kenny is a protégé of the noted young Christian Dominionist Faytene Kryskow, who featured heavily in MacDonald’s book. Indeed, she helped him set up his more recent Facebook page.

He is devout and pentacostal—not that there’s anything wrong with that. But the subversive wedding of his beliefs with the aims of our government (the Ottawa meeting featured a video clip from Harper on a big screen, and various Conservative notables were in the VIP section) is something else again, particularly given the harm that this government has visited upon First Nations people.

Now, what is wrong with this picture? A group claiming to speak for Aboriginal people, making close links with a government that, despite a so-called apology for the shameful legacy of residential schools, has thwarted them at every turn? A government that even balked at building a school for Indian kids, while providing major funding for a Christian private college, and a Christian youth center in Vic Toews’ NDP MP Pat Martin's riding, over his objections, after the vigorous intervention of Vic Toews?

The only thing the government and Blacksmith have in common, it seems, is Jesus. But one wonders whether the Latter would approve of these goings-on. Does Blacksmith work for his people, or for the government?

Jesus said, "A person cannot mount two horses or bend two bows. And a slave cannot serve two masters, otherwise that slave will honor the one and offend the other." (Thom 47:1-2)

And is he building unity or dividing his people?

"These 6 things doth the Lord hate . . . a proud look, a lying tongue . . . and he that soweth discord among brethren." (Prov. 6:16-19).

So much for the chant of Kenny Blacksmith, a biddable man who reminds me a bit of Prufrock in T.S. Eliot's eponymous poem:

[O]ne that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse...

So far, I suspect, little real damage has been done--Blacksmith and his following are just more people waiting in the wings, along with the other folks described in McDonald's exposé. But a Harper majority could change everything.

We might recall that the current government is not the first to play this game. The Lubicon Cree, still desperately trying to settle a land-claim, their ancestral lands progressively despoiled, their population ridden with tuberculosis, suffered grievously under the Liberals. And one tactic used by Jean Chrétien, was to invent two Indian bands out of thin air, hoping to lure away Lubicon members. The people of one fake band, the "Woodland Cree," were promised $1000 each if they voted for a federal offer of a pitifully inadequate reserve. They later found out that this would be deducted from their welfare payments.

But the deliberate courting of an idiosyncratic Indian leader as though he actually spoke for First Nations as a whole marks a new and dangerous political departure. The Assembly of First Nations, unsurprisingly, is none too happy with this initiative: "Forgiveness," said AFN president Shawn Atleo, "is an individual choice and a personal decision. No one can forgive on someone else's behalf."

Precisely. But this government will take what forgiveness it can get. All that's missing is repentance.

Paying the Christ tax

"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Thanks to the efficient Harper government, Canadians are doing both at once.

Since 2008, there has been a spike in Christian funding by the feds--using our tax money. As reported in Straight Goods this past February (subscriber wall), Human Resources and Skills Development has been ladling out dollops of cash to right-wing evangelical groups:

In the period July 1 - September 30, 2009, for instance, 22 out of 173 grants made went to faith-based organizations, for a total of $889,016. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, by contrast, there were no grants to faith-based organizations meeting the search criteria (including in their names the word "Christ," "Christian," "Church," "Pentecostal," or "Baptist").

While many of the faith-based organizations that received funding do not fall into the religious conservative category, most do. The Word of Truth Christian Centre in Pickering, ON, for instance, received $192,033 for a project last year. (Shouters) National Evangelical Spiritual Baptist Faith International Centre of Canada in Toronto received $198,951. Eastside Church of God, Fresh Start Program in Swift Current, SK got $84,110.
--
For some reason, since the Harper Conservatives came to power, faith-based organizations with extremist views suddenly have become responsible for delivering local employment programs in many Canadian communities. [emphasis added]

Wycliffe Bible Translators slurped up a hefty $495,600 of your money and mine. But that was dwarfed by the $3.2 million awarded to an outfit called Youth For Christ--and, while children living in poverty on a reserve in Attawapiskat have been denied a new school for years, Edmonton's Newman Theological College was recently awarded $4.2 million of Harper's largesse.

We're all tithing in spite of ourselves. And you needn't take my word for it:

For Christian universities, “It’s a historic change, and nothing short of amazing,” says Justin Cooper, president of Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ont., which received $2.9 million. The funds will help cover costs of increasing research and energy sustainability initiatives across campus.

Education funding is a provincial mandate, and Christian universities generally aren’t eligible, so they welcome the change. (Alberta and Manitoba are the exception: private colleges there have long been eligible to receive about half what a public institution might get for capital costs).

Christian universities that benefited from (the federal government’s Knowledge Infrastructure Program) include: Redeemer and Tyndale University College and Seminary in Ontario; Trinity Western University in British Columbia; The King’s, Concordia, Canadian, St. Mary’s and Ambrose University Colleges plus Newman Theological Seminary in Alberta; Providence College and Seminary and Canadian Mennonite University in Manitoba; and Atlantic Baptist University in New Brunswick.

Here's blogger Dennis Gruending, making connections:

A story that the mainstream media both covered and missed was the Prime Minister’s promotion of two individuals to senior positions in the PMO in March 2009. Darrel Reid became chief of staff and Paul Wilson replaced him as PMO policy director. Reid and Wilson have deep roots in both religious and political organizations. Reid was chief of staff to Reform Party leader Preston Manning while he was leader of the opposition. Later he became the president of Focus on the Family Canada, a conservative Christian lobby group that has worked against public childcare, same-sex marriage, and against adding sexual orientation to a list of minorities protected from hate crimes.

Wilson has worked for Trinity Western University, which is based in Langley, B.C. and is one of the largest evangelical educational institutions in Canada. Trinity established an Ottawa “campus” in 2001 in an old mansion near Parliament Hill. It houses the Laurentian Leadership Centre, which places students as interns with Ottawa-based organizations, predominantly with MPs. Wilson co-ordinated that internship program but when the Conservatives won election in 2006, he left Trinity Western to become a senior policy advisor to Vic Toews, then the justice minister. Wilson later served in a similar policy role for Diane Finley, the minister of human resources.

Of course, we've been watching this shoddy theocratic drama play out for months in microcosm at Rights and Democracy. And--not to belabour the point--we're paying for it.

Meanwhile, women die, while Harper's conservative base celebrates. Welcome to Gilead.

[H/t Canadian Cynic]

4...3...

Four settler nations voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007: the United States, Australia, New Zealand (Aotearoa) and Canada.

It took a change of government in Australia--the replacement of the racist John Howard regime by that of Kevin Rudd--but that country signed on in April, 2009.

Now New Zealand, a year later, has endorsed the declaration as well. Kātahi nā ka tika!

So we're down to two holdouts. And they're still mousing around:

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice is scheduled to address the forum on Tuesday and will announce that "we will be conducting a formal review of the declaration and the U.S. position on it," according to an excerpt from her prepared text obtained by The Associated Press.

"Our first nations face serious challenges: disproportionate and dire poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation, health care gaps, violent crime and bitter discrimination," Rice says. "We recognize that, for many around the world, this declaration provides a framework for addressing indigenous issues."

The Canadian government said in a speech by the governor general [sic] last month that it would take steps to endorse the U.N. declaration "in a manner fully consistent with Canada´s constitution and laws." Indigenous groups have urged the government to embrace the human rights instrument without conditions or limitations.

I'll believe it when I see it, but perhaps, as the Declaration is not legally binding, the Harper government will grudgingly sign at some point. When it comes to the First Nations, after all, words for this government are cheap: they tend to be far preferable to deeds.*

______
*Not that federal governments, Liberal and Conservative, have been sleeping on the job. For example, it took the people of Attawapiskat First Nation a mere ten years, but now they have an actual promise of a school for their kids. And in just a few more years they might actually get one, too.

More compassionate conservatism

Kudos to Cameron Holmstrom for exposing yet another Kontemptible Kanadian Konservative to the odium he rightly deserves.

The people of Kenora are poorly served by Con MP Greg Rickford, who ridiculed the desperate cry by residents of Attawapiskat First Nation for a school for their kids and attacked the local NDP MP, Charlie Angus, for making such a fuss about it. After all, it's just Indians.

To Rickford, educating Aboriginal youth is a zero-sum game: if Attawapiskat gets a school, some other community will suffer. He was thoughtful enough to forward his revolting little screed--for which you and I paid, incidentally--to the residents of Attawapiskat, just to rub their faces in it.

I see that both CC and I have picked up the juxtaposition habit. So long as there's tax money to lavish upon private Christian academies like Newman Theological College, the argument that there are no funds to build schools for Native kids in their communities is not only thin, but bordering on the fraudulent.

Sometimes these people do a better job of showing what they're made of than any progressive opponent possibly could. Greg Rickford: yet another conservative boil on the body politic. High time, methinks, for a good political lancing.

"Bring on your Mohawk brothers!"

That was a lippy pencil-neck from Indian and Northern Affairs, squaring off in a meeting with a delegation from Attawapiskat, a remote northern Ontario reserve where living conditions have been going downhill for years. The members of the delegation had come to ask for help.

Life is not easy in Attawapiskat. The kids there have been fighting for a new school for years--the old one was built over a contaminated site. But under the "leadership" of Minister Chuck Strahl, who wears his contempt for First Nations people on his sleeve, nothing has moved.

More recently, 90 residents, whose homes have been flooded with sewage, had to be evacuated to Chapleau on the band's own nickel because INAC won't admit that there is a problem--even though Health Canada disagrees.

Today in a press conference in Ottawa, Chief Theresa Hall described the meeting yesterday with INAC officials in Toronto, during which they put their case for badly-needed assistance:

We were putting down our short term and long term goals, of all the issues that face Attawapiskat, but when I asked for the financial assistance for the evacuees they flatly said no. And then we decided there was no use sitting there trying to go on with the meeting. And someone made reference to someone, I believe it was Greg (Shisheesh) because he has family that’s Mohawk… he has Mohawk children. He then made reference to that family, that that family can’t visit him in Attawapiskat because he doesn’t have a home. And that’s when one of the INAC officials said "Well, bring on your Mohawk brothers." [emphasis added]

Asked to repeat, the official did so.The reference to Oka and Akwesasne was clear. Given Strahl's pathetic performance as Minister, it is no wonder that his own officials now feel emboldened to abandon all pretence of professionalism, and openly mock the people that INAC is supposed to be assisting.

Know what? Maybe the Mohawks should travel north--and stop in at Strahl's office on the way. Free coffee and fry-bread at my place. You listening, Shawn Brant?

[H/t Cameron]

Second-class citizen mocked as he died

After the recent controversies about dark-skinned Canadians and their treatment by the Harper government, there can be little further doubt that more than one class of citizenship exists in Canada at present. Too often, however, this truth pits the "native-born" against "immigrants," or as some folks on the Right like to call the latter, "citizens of convenience."

But "jus soli"--the "right of the soil"--is insufficient if you are Native rather than, well, "native." Just ask the kids in Attawapiskat, trying to get themselves a school but effectively being given the finger by Indian and Northen Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl, who has let it be known that he simply doesn't care about First Nations people.

This relegation to less than first-class status, however, is not solely a hallmark of the Conservative government in Ottawa, nor, to be fair, of previous Liberal governments. It can be found at every level of governance in the country, and, perhaps more importantly, is widespread amongst the general population of electors. If you are an Aboriginal person in need of social services, you might simply end up dead as a result of racism and indifference.

Check out the story of Curtis Brick. Brick was an Aboriginal man living rough in Vancouver, who had once a self-sufficient labourer until he suffered a head injury. He collapsed in Grandview Park on one of the hottest days of the summer--34°C. He was allowed to lie in the sun in the busy park for seven hours, where he slowly began to die of sunstroke. No one bothered to help him. No one bothered to call for assistance until the late afternoon.

Finally a bystander*, who had seen him earlier, returned to the park, found the man convulsing, and called an Aboriginal agency, which brought down wet blankets to cool Brick off. But paramedics took their sweet time arriving, and once they did, they began to taunt the dying man.

"That's what you get for drinking Lysol all day," they told him. And then, when a number of Aboriginal children had gathered to observe, the bystander was told to "get his [Brick's] children out of the way." He died in hospital that evening.

Canadian citizenship means very little, we have discovered recently, if you get into trouble abroad and happen to possess the wrong skin colour. But here at home it can mean even less if you're a descendant of the original peoples of this land. When the chips were down, it didn't count at all for Brick.

For the busy throngs in Grandview Park, and the racist medics who arrived too late, he was simply not part of society. Hidden in plain sight, Curtis Brick died profoundly alone in the midst of a crowd of his fellow-citizens for whom he had never existed, even while he lived.

_________________________
* UPDATE: And this was no random passer-by, as reader Candice informs us, but Canadian Aboriginal actor Eric Schweig.

Now is the time at the Dawg

...when we juxtapose!

• Edmonton’s Newman Theological College has been given more than $4 million in federal funding for expansion projects that include a new research library and additional classrooms.
  

• For 8 years, Attawapiskat children have had no school. In 2000, the grade school was closed because children were getting sick from a massive diesel spill under the school. The spill happened in 1979 while the government of Canada was operating the school. Since then, 400 students have had to rely on portables. The community has worked hard to get a new school built. They have developed clear plans for a proper school and have arranged funding agreements with banks. THREE federal Indian Affairs Ministers have committed to moving ahead with the project. In December 2007, however, the new Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl arbitrarily cancelled the proposed school. The government claims there is no money for schools for the next five years.

[H/t Paulitics]

The only good Indian...

We'll let Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl complete that apothegm in the time-honoured way.

Fellow blogger Cameron Holstrom has been chewing away at the Attawapiskat school scandal for some time now. A while ago I joined a blogburst about the Conservative government's refusal to build a new school for this impoverished First Nation, whose children have been having to make do with portables in all weathers since 2000, after diesel fumes made their local school uninhabitable.

Minister Strahl's attitude towards aboriginal people has always been negative. Some quotations give the flavour of the man's antipathy:

On gravel excavation by the Cheam Indian band: "I do not even think the land they scalped the gravel from is theirs." (The Canadian Index, May 17, 1999, Volume: Vol. 10, No. 14)

On aboriginal fisheries: "In a recent Chilliwack Progress article, Strahl compared Cheam band members to 'children.'" (Canada News-Wire, September 13, 1993)

On concerns that aboriginal programs for substance abuse, anger management and family violence were not being offered at a prison: "Strahl said he has little empathy for [this] position. Strahl said there is plenty of attempts to be sensitive to aboriginal culture in prison to the point at which other inmates, who are not aboriginal, are bitter about it. "If I got a letter like that, I wouldn't put it on my high-speed to do list." (Chilliwack Times, November 22, 2002)

On aboriginal fishing rights: "The government has an obligation to all of its citizens, not just to select groups," said B.C. Reform MP Chuck Strahl. "It cannot allow the courts to draw racial boundaries through Canada's national resources." (Windsor Star, October 16, 1999)

On the Nisga'a agreement: "Let us look at this Nisga'a treaty one more time. First of all it creates a state within a state, an idea which I think the Bloc Quebecois would find fairly palatable. This is sovereignty association in the heart of British Columbia." (Chuck Strahl, Hansard, May 4, 1999)

But Strahl is more a symptom than the disease itself, which is the traditional Conservative (and to be fair, Liberal) disregard for Native people. The case of the Lubicon, for example, continues to stand as a living testimonial to decades of racism and neglect by successive Liberal and Conservative administrations.

In any case, last month the government began to tear down the abandoned school. That released enough diesel fumes, containing benzene (a known carcinogen), to permeate the portable classrooms and make the children sick.

Plans are now underway to evacuate the kids, who stand to lose their school year. And this will be on the Attawapiskat First Nation's nickel, according to the capable Grand Chief Stan Louttit of the Mushkegowuk Council, which represents seven First Nations including Attawapiskat. The federal and provincial governments are simply refusing to help.

Meanwhile Susan Bertrand, spokesperson for Indian and Northern Affairs, tells us there is no immediate threat to the community. What are a few headaches, nosebleeds and cases of nausea, after all? They're just...Indians. Let 'em all live on floodplains and die of TB and have their kids pass out in school portables from diesel fumes. Strahl himself is quite willing in this instance, it seems, to sacrifice a few Indian kids just to save face. But let's be optimistic: maybe some time in the future some Prime Minister or other will offer up another empty apology.

The Ontario government, at present, is waiting for Ottawa to take the lead. That could be a long wait indeed under the current Minister.

Markers: 2008

It's nearly the end of the year, and some of us seem to be compelled to say something about that, as though there were something materially different about the change of day when it's from December 31 to January 1.

There isn't. The foofaraw is a bit like the noise created by dimestore prophets as they made their forecasts about the new millennium. These temporal crossing-points are all artificial marks, borders, conventions. They have no independent ontological status. They can be a hell of a good excuse for a party, though.

And a year is a good arbitrary chunk of time about which we can take stock, assess, then promise to do better, and hope for the best. So here's another artifice--the list of ten highlights and lowlights of that chronological territory called 2008, cheerfully non-chronological. Do with them what you will.

High:

• Ineffectual Liberal leader steps down. I was genuinely embarrassed for Stéphane Dion, whose obvious lack of people skills--and a serious language barrier--provided so much fodder for the image-makers and spinmeisters who create "politics" today. A decent and intelligent man with an unyielding moral compass, in the wrong place at the wrong time, Dion finally got in touch with his core during his last few days in office. But it was too little, too late, and an appallingly amateurish video sealed his historical fate.
  
  We are not at the stage yet, and may never be, when we deconstruct the notion of "leader" and re-define what we mean by "politics." In the current context, Dion, whatever his gifts, was unable to deploy them to any effect. His démission, long overdue, was a good thing for his party--and, I suspect, for him and his family.
  
  
• Brenda Martin released from Mexican hell-hole. A Canadian citizen in Mexico is swept up by that country's corrupt and impossibly complex judicial process, and spends two years in the clink without a trial. Public and media sympathy (excepting certain right-wing commentators) helps to keep this case on the front burner. Some back-stage manoeuvering by Foreign Affairs officials and the government achieves her repatriation after a face-saving "trial" by a Mexican judge finally finds her guilty of something.
  
  
• Harper apologizes to the Native people of Canada. An apology to Canada's Aboriginal people for decades of ill-treatment is finally delivered, by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The words were unsparing, and the apology was well-crafted.
  
  
• More government accountability promised. Well, that was actually in 2006, with the passage of the Federal Accountability Act, but a seasoned public servant, Kevin Page, was appointed this past March as Canada's first-ever Parliamentary Budget Officer. Mr. Page brings to this office years of experience, first at Finance Canada, then in the Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board, and the Department of Finance.
  
  His job is to be a demanding one:
  

  The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (OPBO) provides authoritative, non-partisan financial and economic analysis to support Parliament and parliamentarians in exercising their oversight role over the government's stewardship of public funds and in ensuring budget transparency.

  The OPBO’s primary mandate is to support the work of parliamentary committees, including the Senate National Finance Committee and the House of Commons Committees on Finance, Public Accounts, and Government Operations and Estimates.

  Based on feedback from parliamentarians and best practices of peer organizations, the OPBO will use an open and transparent operating model. Specifically, this means that its analysis and advice will be published and subject to stakeholder scrutiny to ensure rigour in the methodology and impartiality in the advice.
  
  Nay-sayers claimed that his $2.5 million budget is too small to permit him to be effective. But Page disagreed:
  
  I think the resources that are set aside are reasonable, they are prudent and, you know, down the road one can look back at it, but I think just from looking at the resources set aside and having worked in some economic and fiscal shops, in central agencies, there is a lot that we can do with the resources that have been set aside to support Parliamentarians in my role as Parliamentary Budget Officer.
  

• Dr. Henry Morgentaler is awarded the Order of Canada. And about time. This dedicated humanist put his body on the line for Canadian women for decades, enduring imprisonment, judicial injustice and assault. Henry not only believes in a woman's right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, but has assisted many of them in that choice, opening and operating abortion clinics throughout the country.
  
  Public opinion has shifted from the dark early days: a call for people to return their OoC medals in protest resulted in a tiny handful of the snowflakes, many from dead people. Public opinion polls (other than one inept "massive poll"), indicated a solid majority in favour of the award.
  
  
• Harper wins a minority. The hope was, of course, for a majority government. Suddenly we were presented with an absurdly unconvincing "new Harper," a hockey dad with a blue sweater-vest. His wooden and over-scripted television performances, dumb mistakes by aides, and Canadians' endearing capacity not to be fooled all the time, kept the brass ring just out of reach.
  
  "Stay cool," he warned his rank-and-file at the Conservative convention in Winnipeg. The Long March was nearly over. But then, as we know, he failed spectacularly to take his own advice.
  
  
• Barack Hussein Obama is elected. This election was not about Obama himself, a fairly conventional right-liberal American politician. It was a focal point for symbolic clashes of perspective and ideology, some of which have marked US politics since the American Revolution.
  
  A Black man is elected to the highest office in the land. The possibility of a "post-racial" politics--far from realized, of course--offers a way out of the racially-charged American political culture.
  
  Two parties means that binary thinking at its most excruciating will invariably come into play, and it did on this occasion. Daft talk of a Manchurian candidate and a closet Islamist, if not par for the course, was uncomfortably close to the mainstream. Obama, it seemed, was either a water-walker or the anti-Christ. His opponent John McCain was forced to assume the burden of the dark side, although he at times found it too heavy to bear.
  
  Obama's electoral triumph means that a corner has been turned in the all-important US political realm of symbols and images. And that was why I, with no stars in my eyes about the man or his politics, bought a round for the house when his victory was announced in a downtown sports joint.
  
  
• The bar stays high on freedom of speech. It was no surprise to those of us not self-brainwashed: complaints brought in various Canadian human rights jurisdictions by offended Muslims were not upheld.
  
  Looking back on it, the rough-and-tumble blogosphere has taught me that being offended is an inevitable consequence of active citizen engagement in politics, and my own views on the speech question, therefore, have moderated over the years. I'm not yet ready to jettison hate speech provisions in our various human rights acts, unless such provisions in other legislation were to allow easy accessibility and the promise of enforcement.
  
  As Professor Richard Moon pointed out in his report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, complaints that have been upheld under Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act would have met the test for conviction under our Criminal Code. The problem, as he points out, is that the more formal procedures in that venue are not user-friendly.
  
  The procedural issue is confounded by the fact that hate speech has its defenders, and their defence isn't always principled. Campus anti-choicers comparing abortion to the Holocaust? Sure. Students wanting to set up a free-thinkers' club, defend Palestine or speak out for inclusiveness? Not so much.
  
  
• The death agony of capitalism. We toldja. I know, I know. We'll bottom out, we'll survive, we'll avoid the Big D. But only by adopting socialist measures, like nationalizing banks and pouring massive amounts of government money into the economy. Greetings, Comrade Bush--better late than never. :) But about those top-hatted CEOs...
  
  
• A new era of coalition politics. Coalitions in most industrial democracies are a fact of political life, and, with proportional representation, tend to create stable legislatures and a more collegial political atmosphere. In Canada, the notion that the folks elected by 60%+ of the population should agree to form a government was presented as virtually a treasonous act.
  
  Our PM and his media allies, trading on the average Canadian's abysmal ignorance of our political system, talked of coups and separatists and (horrors) back-room deals and cabals. A flowering exercise in political democracy was made to look so scary that Canadians got worried. A PM that they never elected was about to be toppled by three other parties, one of them separatist. (Never mind that the fear-monger in question made his own deal with the devil in 2004, and his then-party the Canadian Alliance tried the same thing back in 2000.)
  
  So the PM bolted, the Governor-General acquiesced, and Canada, by the time Parliament resumes in late January, will have gone nine months or so without passing a single piece of legislation. The coalition lost its momentum as soon as Harper padlocked the House of Commons, but coalition talk was heady stuff while it lasted--a wonderful glass of political Dom Perignon.
  

Low:

• Ineffectual Liberal leader steps down. And who has replaced him, with no intervening election by his party? Why, that gentleman scholar and US ex-pat Michael Ignatieff, a man constitutionally incapable of the common touch, a blue-blood whose ability to connect with ordinary Canadians is, for different reasons, as shaky as Stéphane Dion's.
  
  Want a coalition? Be careful what you wish for. Because with Iggy at the helm it just might just be a Conservative-Liberal one.
  
  
• Brenda Martin released from Mexican hellhole. And it was indeed heartening to see the Harper government jump to. But this merely throws into relief the stubborn refusal of that same government to act when our marooned citizens are of a different colour. Abousfian Abdelrazik and Omar Khadr come immediately to mind. And the active complicity of Foreign Affairs officials to keep the latter from returning home is, or should be, a national scandal.
  
  
• Harper apologizes to the Native people of Canada. Words are just fine, and many find them soothing. We Canadians like apologies, and indeed they can be meaningful. It's not the utterer--the words carry their own mana.
  
  Yet there is something odiously hypocritical about Harper weeping crocodile tears while his government was one of only four that voted against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, joining three other settler-states, Australia, New Zealand and the US.
  
  The kids in Attawapiskat still don't have their school. An openly racist Minister of Indian Affairs remains in place. What about an apology in the form of deeds, not words, Mr. Harper?
  
  
• Morgentaler is awarded the Order of Canada. And this has opened the door to a gaggle of anti-choice quacks and loons, from Harper's dominionist buddy "Dr." Charles McVety, to Alan Bruinooge and his throbbing "massive poll," to his brother Conservative MP Rob Bruinooge's secret Parliamentary cabal. (As CC notes, some secret cabals are apparently more acceptable than others.)
  
  Somehow micromanager Stephen Harper failed to still Bruinooge's shrill voice. Which, in itself, is worrying. He subsequently re-locked the front door, but the back door is still ajar.
  
  
• More government accountability promised. Kevin Page, as it turns out, hasn't been faring so well in his new digs. He actually performed in his job, and the government was not pleased. Remember that meagre $2.5 million that the nay-sayers were on about? That was roughly what the current interim $1.9 million budget was to rise to next year: and even that paltry amount is now being slashed. Don't mess with the mafia.
  
  
• Harper wins a minority. Which, alas, means that he's still in power. OK, he overplayed his hand a little, and provoked a political crisis. But we got a good look at that hand, didn't we? No surprises there. He took off the too-tight sweater-vest and it was the same old, same old: a mean-spirited, vengeful, petty autocrat, who has bade Parliament adieu.
  
  And what's waiting for us down the road a spell? More anti-abortion initiatives disguised as concerns about pregnant women. The gutting of pay equity in the federal public service. A likely change of heart on the Afghanistan pull-out date of 2011.
  
  And the Liberals will find ways of supporting it all. Business as usual in the House of Commons--order has been restored.
  
  
• Obama is elected. From symbol to reality: Obama has filled his Cabinet with Clintonians, turned his back on the GBLT folks who campaigned hard on his behalf, promised a troop surge in Afghanistan, and, even before the election, returned to the Senate to vote in favour of FISA. As I've said before: Change, I can believe in. Not much change so far. Maybe Iowahawk was right.
  
  
• The bar stays high on freedom of speech. Well and good, of course. And that means more divisive, hateful, plain stupid talk infecting the public discourse. Yup, it's the price of freedom and democracy, but we don't have to like it.
  
  
• The death agony of capitalism. We toldja. But besides feeling some latter-day self-justification, we obviously need to organize and build a new politics that can replace the old: a socialism for the people, not for the rich in hard times. People are being badly hurt. Golden parachutes for all of us, I say. But until we figure out how to do all that organizing, and what a new politics would actually look like, we're stuck being "progressive" in an unprogressive world.
  
  
• A new era of coalition politics. An era in which the very idea of a coalition has been tainted in the minds of Canadians who are at the same time sick to death of the antics in the Sandbox on the Hill, and nearly half of whom don't even bother to vote. We'll get, instead, the de facto Liberal-Conservative coalition we have been living with for two years, but far more artfully and professionally done this time.
  
  We dared to dream, and for a few days it looked as though democracy might erupt in our midst. Alas, 'twas not to be--for now.
  

Oh, well. Happy New Year to all of my friends, and to you other folks, too. 2009 promises to be a busy year for all of us. Party on.

Chuck Strahl's "colour-blind" racism

Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl has declared that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, intended to investigate in depth the experience of First Nations people under the residential schools system, needn't necessarily be chaired by an aboriginal person.

"The steps being taken to appoint a new chairperson to the [Commission] are based solely on finding the best person for this demanding job," he said.

Conservatives, of course, will lap this stuff up. Why should anything but qualifications matter? they will ask. Surely it's racist to hire on the basis of race or ethnicity, right? And then we'll get the inevitable out-of-context quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I listened to that speech live, incidentally, and I am fully familiar with its substance and with the context in which it was delivered. Dr. King was referring, optimistically, to a time in the future when racism would not even be a memory, a time in which all the scars of that vicious imposition had been erased.

That time is not now.

There is a difference between colour-blindness and merely keeping one's eyes shut. One doesn't have to fall into the excesses of identity politics to recognize that the effects of being racialized don't disappear overnight when overt discrimination becomes illegal. Poverty, despair, hopelessness, and major social problems including substance abuse and suicide, are all fallout from generations of ill-treatment by church and state. The playing-field isn't level, and it won't be for generations to come. It's disingenuous at best, racist at worst, to claim that it is.

Some find it convenient to blame the First Nations for the legacy of problems that Europeans left them: it's an obvious way to avoid responsibility for helping to put things right. But, on the other hand, decades of wildly shifting government policies--from assimilation to creating dependency to "benign" neglect--have made matters worse. Clearly First Nations are not the authors of their own misfortune, but they must be the authors of their own future. And this--the creation of just such a future, not the year-after-year maintenance of a Third World present--should be assisted by humane, well-crafted policies and the necessary resources.

In other words, there is some distance to go before "character" alone will determine one's social fate. We do not live in a world of equal opportunity: some of us happened to be born well behind the starting-line, and others halfway down the track. And the degree to which these accidents of birth can be traced to policies, laws and differential treatment in the past and in the present is the degree to which we must all assume our share of social responsibility.

That means, among other things, working together to get rid of systemic barriers--structures that prevent positive change, that perpetuate past inequities and hierarchies. And one of those barriers is a concept of "qualifications" that is abstract, ahistorical and inherently biased.

When I was a union official I once debated Strahl on CFRA on the question of affirmative action in the federal public service. The government of the day had brought in the Employment Equity Act to help address the obvious lack of representation of various groups within the public service and the employee complements of private employers. Strahl's view was that "merit" alone should determine who gets a job. Did that mean, I asked, that the underrepresentation of visible minorities and Aboriginals in the federal public service was entirely due to their lack of merit? I recall that he struggled with that one.

The concepts of "merit" and "qualifications" can prove to be heavily-laden value-judgements, not merely tools to assess measurable skills. "Finding the best person," were the words that Strahl used. What qualifications should be required to fill the job of chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Technical mastery of administrative detail? Analytical ability? Of course. But what about lived knowledge? Isn't it crucially important for the head of the Commission to be intimately, intuitively aware of his or her subject-matter? Or do Europeans, once again, know best?

None of this, of course, will cut any ice with the minister. Chuck Strahl has never had much time for aboriginal people. Here is a sampling of comments he made before Harper gave him his current portfolio:

• On gravel excavation by the Cheam Indian band: "I do not even think the land they scalped the gravel from is theirs." (The Canadian Index, May 17, 1999, Volume: Vol. 10, No. 14)
  

• On Native people: "In a recent Chilliwack Progress article, Strahl compared Cheam band members to 'children.'" (Canada News-Wire, September 13, 1993)
  

• On concerns that aboriginal programs for substance abuse, anger management and family violence were not being offered at a prison: "Strahl said he has little empathy for [this] position. Strahl said there is [sic] plenty of attempts to be sensitive to aboriginal culture in prison to the point at which other inmates, who are not aboriginal, are bitter about it. "If I got a letter like that, I wouldn't put it on my high-speed to do list." (Chilliwack Times, November 22, 2002)
  

• On aboriginal fishing rights: "The government has an obligation to all of its citizens, not just to select groups," said B.C. Reform MP Chuck Strahl. "It cannot allow the courts to draw racial boundaries through Canada's national resources." (Windsor Star, October 16, 1999)
  

• On the Nisga'a agreement: "Let us look at this Nisga'a treaty one more time. First of all it creates a state within a state, an idea which I think the Bloc Quebecois would find fairly palatable. This is sovereignty association in the heart of British Columbia." (Chuck Strahl, Hansard, May 4, 1999)

Obviously he was just the man, in Stephen Harper's eyes, to be the overseer (if I may use that term) of First Nations peoples in Canada. In office, Strahl quickly distinguished himself by vetoing a school for aboriginal kids in Attawapiskat: perhaps he believes that education is wasted on those savages.

And now the validity of the hard-won Truth and Reconciliation Commission, already in trouble before it's even underway, is under serious threat from this same government minister. The notion that such an investigation could be led by someone who has literally not walked a mile in First Nations moccasins is spurious to the point of fraud. If it's qualifications that are at issue, it is glaringly obvious that being raised as an aboriginal is a sine qua non to carry out a job that will require the utmost in sensitivity and the keenest awareness of cultural cues, nuances and meanings.

Make no mistake: pretending that someone whose only knowledge of aboriginal life is second-hand could be the appropriate leader of this extraordinary initiative is either stupid or racist. And Chuck Strahl is not a stupid man.

More Harper hypocrisy

Stephen Harper made his phony apology to Canada's first nations back in June: at the time, I pointed out what a ludicrous example this was of not putting his money (or support) where his mouth is. It was an arrant act of hypocrisy in the context of his government's prejudicial acts against indigenous peoples, and its on-going pattern of neglect.

And indeed the shame goes on. I didn't get Cameron's memo, so I came to this issue fairly late and have little to add to the excellent commentaries already made. Briefly, the children in the Cree community of Attawapiskat just want a school. They've been fighting for one for eight years, and have been neglected by successive Liberal and Conservative governments. Recently, Indian affairs minister Chuck Strahl nixed it.

Strahl has, frankly, no time for aboriginals. A sampling of his comments, made before Harper gave him his current portfolio:

On gravel excavation by the Cheam Indian band: "I do not even think the land they scalped the gravel from is theirs." (The Canadian Index, May 17, 1999, Volume: Vol. 10, No. 14)

On aboriginal fisheries: "In a recent Chilliwack Progress article, Strahl compared Cheam band members to 'children.'" (Canada News-Wire, September 13, 1993)

On concerns that aboriginal programs for substance abuse, anger management and family violence were not being offered at a prison: "Strahl said he has little empathy for [this] position. Strahl said there is plenty of attempts to be sensitive to aboriginal culture in prison to the point at which other inmates, who are not aboriginal, are bitter about it. "If I got a letter like that, I wouldn't put it on my high-speed to do list." (Chilliwack Times, November 22, 2002)

On aboriginal fishing rights: "The government has an obligation to all of its citizens, not just to select groups," said B.C. Reform MP Chuck Strahl. "It cannot allow the courts to draw racial boundaries through Canada's national resources." (Windsor Star, October 16, 1999)

On the Nisga'a agreement: "Let us look at this Nisga'a treaty one more time. First of all it creates a state within a state, an idea which I think the Bloc Quebecois would find fairly palatable. This is sovereignty association in the heart of British Columbia." (Chuck Strahl, Hansard, May 4, 1999)

Indeed, it's worth mentioning that the Liberal record on "Indian affairs" is a disgrace to this country. But the Cons, as always, have gone one better, making a person bitterly opposed to aboriginal rights the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians. This is of a piece, of course, with his retention of Maurice Vellacott in his caucus, although his attempt to shoehorn Vellacott into the chairmanship of the Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development met with failure.

These appointments add context to the frankly racist policies of the current government. Canada was one of only four countries in the world that voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, upon the instruction of the Harper government. That adds even more context to Strahl's contemptuous thumbs-down approach to Native schooling.

How many white kids have to demonstrate to get a school? The kids in Attawapiskat are just more casualties of a government that must never be permitted to obtain a majority. Indeed, they are not alone: forty other first nations communities have no schools for their kids.

This blogburst is a fine idea, Cameron, and you'll have near-unanimous support in progressive ranks for your stance. But my question is--where are the bloggers on the other side of the room? Aren't they always yakking about how first nations should get educated and stand on their own feet? And yet, when barriers are erected against Native people who want to do just that--

*crickets*

Come on, Darcey, step up and set an example.

UPDATE: Cameron suggests ways that you can help.

UPPERDATE: Darcey, bless him, has risen promptly and smartly to my challenge.