Bad faith is good government?

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COMMENTARY

I found it interesting to read a couple of mainstream news stories this month that weren't really related - except for the fact that they both dealt with subjects in Indian Country.

First of all, several of the major national church executive bodies told The National Post that their financial futures may be jeopardized by residential school damage claims. The mainstream paper told the story in a matter of fact way, but the editorial decision to tell that particular story at all is revealing. Having worked in the field for a while I can hazard an educated guess about the editorial motivation for monitoring, assigning, writing and publishing all the latest developments in this area.

It comes down to values. The churches are the custodians of basic Canadian values - this is basically a Christian democracy, after all.

And the damage done by the forcible imposition of Christian values on peoples who were quite comfortable with their own cultures and value systems was - in my mind, at least - a very un-Christian and un-democratic and un-Canadian thing to do.

Most Canadians of my generation were taught Sunday school morality as children and then we quickly learned those values aren't of much use in the world of business or politics. Call me naive, but I've always felt that was a hypocritical way to live. Either you have values or you don't.

What made that story newsworthy was the discomfort well-paid, that successful, conservative people in this country feel over the issue. A fundamental hypocrisy has been revealed and the Canadian establishment doesn't like it.

Residential school compensation is an issue that had its genesis in the racist, intolerant world where Aboriginal people were considered uncivilized savages who were inherently inferior to Europeans. That was considered normal and acceptable thinking in the corridors of power and influence - and elsewhere - in Canada, not too long ago. Some would say it still is. And that kind of thinking caused Canadians to treat human beings in an inhuman manner - something that is clearly contrary to everything Canadians profess to believe in.

But, since one of the most cherished values in our legal system is the idea of torts - if someone injures you, you have the right to seek compensation - there's a way to make it right.

Aboriginal people, through these lawsuits, are saying, "Canada, you claim to believe in justice. What you did to us was unjust and we're calling on you to stand by your professed values and compensate us for the harm you did to us."

That it's considered nationally important news when one group in a civil action asks another group for compensation for harm done is interesting. Is it the size of the amount of money involved or is it the challenge to old, wrong-headed and finally out-dated attitudes that's most newsworthy?

From our point of view here, the most newsworthy part of this issue (now that the national press had their kick at it and missed) is the discomfort reflected in Canada's most conservative national newspaper.

So when I then read the coverage in The Globe and Mail (Canada's second-most conservative media organ) of the Gitanyow decision and the ruling that Canada must negotiate land claims in good faith, well, it was almost too much to take. Especially when a spokesman for the federal government said, with a straight face, that the federal government believes good faith negotiations are only a moral obligation, not a legal obligation.

What does that mean? Isn't that question one that the mainstream papers should have asked? Why is it that I feel I'm on virgin ground when I ask what it means when my government says a moral obligation to behave well is less compelling than a legal obligation?

I guess I am naive but it astonished me that federal officials can state, We only have to do the right thing if someone is standing watching over us with a big enough stick and the ability and the will to use it.

What astonishes me even moe is that neither the Globe, nor the Post, nor any other paper in this country, questioned that statement. The story shows the reporters didn't ask any questions. Or if the reporters did, the editors removed the question and answer from the copy. Further, there was not and still has not been any editorial treatment of the stunning, if lamentable, revelation that Canada's government will only behave in a moral manner if the law says it must - at least when it comes to Indians.

What's up with that?