Treat native Canadians with respect & equality

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11 December 2011

David Krayden

When NDP MP Charlie Angus brought his video camera to the Attawapiskat Native Reserve in Northern Ontario, he probably didn't want to begin a national debate on the reserve system in Canada, but he may well have done that. Angus may have had some good intentions when he toured this piece of land that more resembles no man's land between the trenches of the Great War than it does Canada in 2011. He was also hoping no doubt to embarrass the government and specifically Stephen Harper for not doing enough in the area of aboriginal affairs. To the wheezing outrage of Liberal leader Bob Rae, Harper responded that the government has funded the reserve with $90 million since 2006. The government has also placed Attawapiskat under "third-party management," meaning there might finally be some accountability as to where those millions of dollars have gone - certainly not enough has gone to the people living in freezing construction trailers.

There are just 2,100 residents living at this reserve. Can you imagine if your community received an envelope of $90 million in taxpayer funding over the last five years? One should surely ask, "Where did the money go?" But if that question is asked then one is also obliged to wonder where has the money been going on a score of reserves for the past three, four or five decades. This query makes Rae's latest volley at the government very intriguing: "Are you going to put the entire North of Canada under trusteeship, because Attawapiskat is not the only community that has this level of a problem?" he asked during question period on Wednesday.

Well, maybe the government should, because clearly the reserve system in Canada is not working. Corrupt leadership often ensures that taxpayer funds are not being distributed to the needy. Border reserves across Canada are sites for the production and sale of illicit tobacco. As the Oka campaign illustrated, reserves often breed radical and violent responses to perceived grievances. The Liberal and NDP solution to any problem is to entrench government hegemony and to disperse government spending. This "solution" has proven to be part of the problem in so many other areas of Canadian life, but they - and all defenders of statism - insist that natives are suffering because the government is not spending enough money.

Putting First Nations people on reserves was and is a form of apartheid. That racist system was condemned and dismantled in South Africa, yet liberals and socialists are loath to censure the same kind of racial ghettos in Canada. It is time to dismantle the reserve system to incorporate native people into everyday Canadian life. They can keep their culture, their religion and their language just like every other ethnic group in Canada.

Do natives have much to resent? Have they experienced injustice? Of course. But surely to goodness it is time to move on and live together. To continue to blindly ignore the malaise of the reserve system is to ignore a very pertinent fact: the plight of natives is specifically due to government control and spending, and not due to insufficient federal funding. Let's stop treating our First Nations as generational welfare recipients who are incapable of supporting themselves, their families and their communities. Let's treat them as we should treat every Canadian: with love, respect and equality.