NDP leader looking forward to Ipperwash testimony

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Even though there has been explosive testimony coming out of the Ipperwash Inquiry over the last few months, the leader of Ontario's New Democratic Party still believes the most interesting material is yet to come.

Howard Hampton is a veteran of Ontario provincial politics. His party had just been pushed into opposition by the Mike Harris Conservatives' "Common Sense Revolution" eight weeks before Dudley George was shot dead by Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Acting Sgt. Kenneth Deane on Sept. 6, 1995.

George and about two dozen others moved from nearby Camp Ipperwash to Ipperwash Provincial Park after it closed for the winter at the end of the Labour Day weekend. They had occupied the military base, located on reserve land expropriated by the federal government during the Second World War with the promise the land would be returned when it was no longer needed for the war effort, since the early 1990s and remain there still. They occupied the park land to draw attention to the fact that a burial ground was in danger of being desecrated. Federal records later showed there was indeed a burial ground at the site.

Deane was eventually convicted of criminal negligence causing death and trial judge Hugh Fraser said OPP officers presented false testimony in an attempt to avoid accountability. The OPP and the provincial government attempted to suppress evidence of racist words and actions by police officers during the confrontation but that evidence has been brought to light by the media and through the inquiry.

Ontario Premier Dalton Mcguinty called the inquiry, hours after he was elected on Nov. 12, 2003, under the Public Inquiries Act. The hearings began in July 2004.

The NDP and provincial Liberals kept up the questioning of the events that led to the tragedy at Ipperwash Provincial Park for years, supporting the George family's attempts to get the government to call an inquiry into the death. The inquiry was only called when the Liberals displaced the Conservatives and became the government last year. Two consecutive Conservative premiers-Harris and Ernie Eves-refused to call an inquiry and delayed it for almost nine years.

"I think the big questions still need to be answered," Hampton said when asked of his impressions of the inquiry testimony so far.

As a former Ontario attorney general under Bob Rae, Hampton said he is aware that the OPP had a "very clear protocol" governing when the tactical unit was to be used and when it was not to be used.

"It was not to be used in a situation where police really didn't know what they were dealing with," he said, adding that testimony from OPP officers has shown that the situation was far from clear at the time the tactical response unit was dispatched.

"What caused the OPP to abandon their own protocol?" the NDP leader asked. "The reputed comments of former premier Harris about wanting to get the blank-blank Indians out of the park and pushing the OPP to heighten the conflict, that doesn't surprise me. When the government took office in the summer of 1995, that rhetoric was being spewed then. The question is what power was it-who was it-that caused a very reputable police service to totally disregard their own protocols and their own guidelines for use of the tactical weapons and riot squad. That's the question that still needs to be answered."

Hampton believes bureaucrats who will be summoned to testify before the inquiry in the coming months will fill in a lot of the blanks.

"What I will be interested in is hearing the testimony of the other civil servants who had served under the NDP government and were, in the summer of 1995, charged with briefing the premier, the then attorney general, the then minister of natural resources. They have not all testified yet and I think their testimony is going to be very interesting," he said.