Shrewd election for Chretien

Page 5

I would first like to wish all of my faithful readers out there in Indian Country and beyond season's greetings and wishes for a better year for you and your extended family.

Now that the federal election is in the books and we have the federal Liberals back as the "natural governing party" for Canada we can get on with the business of advocating for our people's rights. As predicted by a lot of people, the Liberals have a sizeable majority to work with and the Canadian Alliance threat has been beaten back by shrewd Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

By calling an election only three years into his mandate, Chretien caught the Canadian Alliance Party offguard and unprepared to fight. The Alliance people were basking in the good feelings and self-congratulation of electing Stockwell Day as their leader who would lead them out of the electoral wilderness of Western Canada.

It wasn't to be and we have the Liberal Party to thank for being much more skillful and smarter about what it takes to be elected leaders of this country.

The Canadian Alliance supporters here in British Columbia started whining the day after the election about pulling out of Confederation and moaning about the election having already been decided back East by those chicken Eastern Canadians. What a big pile of stinking baloney!

Can you imagine what would have happened if the Canadian Alliance won the minority government that they were aiming for? I shudder when I think of their platform on Aboriginal rights and their assimilationist views on what to do with us. Their colonial views are pre-1850s, simplistic and not even legal.

The Canadian Alliance is too right wing and ideologically based on Christian principles to ever appeal to Eastern Canadian sensibilities where the real power in Canada resides. Stockwell Day and all of his phoney stunts to show he was hip and cool were a facade over top of a scary, scary guy. How can anyone vote for someone who really believes that people walked with the dinosaurs?

Their intolerance was glaring on occasion and they paid for it with lost votes. The most glaring example was the infamous comments by Betty Granger who was campaigning for the Alliance in Winnipeg and her "Asian invasion" reference to Asians putting a strain on housing prices and universities here in B.C. She would later apologize for this stupidity and say she was quoted out of context. How can you be quoted out of context when it was recorded by television cameras?

Locally, I volunteered my services and organized an all-candidates forum for the Kamloops riding and was shocked by the lack of knowledge about basic Aboriginal issues by all candidates. There were about 85 people who showed up for the forum and it was about 60 per cent First Nations people in attendance.

My primary objective in organizing the event was to educate the candidates about Aboriginal issues and as the moderator I gave extra time to the Aboriginal people who had questions from the floor to flesh out their concerns. I also made sure I had it on reserve where we could let everyone know they were on our turf. I had a welcome song performed by John Jules and a welcome by one of the sponsors for the forum from the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council.

It was announced that Alliance Member of Parliament Betty Hinton (Kamloops) would be the critic for Indian Affairs. She is the person who called the actions of local Shuswap people in asserting our jurisdiction up at a local ski hill "economic treason." To her credit she showed up at the local all-candidates forum and was under constant heat for her lack of knowledge.

The next couple of years will see whether or not the Alliance will truly become a national party or not by moving more to the centre and leaving behind their redneck, narrow view of the world. I don't hold much hope for that happening. I hope they continue to attract those people to their party and electing leaders who are on the fringe...hat wy weknow where they are out in plain sight. That's the way I see it anyways...putucw.