Advice to the PM-elect

Page 5

Windspeaker Editorial

Liberal insiders in the country will recover from the shock of Jan. 23 eventually, and realize their ride on the entitlement merry-go-round is over and the circus has left town. The Canadian electorate has spoken. Stephen Harper will be sworn in as Canada's 22nd prime minister.

Windspeaker suspects that things are going to be very interesting in the foreseeable future. A lot of the people who may become central players in the new government are well known to us, and not because of their enlightened understanding of human rights, minority rights and-especially-Aboriginal rights issues.

We are trying not to prejudge this new government, but we must admit we are wary. That's the only responsible way to be. The Conservative Party of Canada is the choice of the Canadian voters, so we have to give them an honest chance.

There are a few questions left over from the campaign, however. And the party's reluctance to answer them before Canadians voted is, in and of itself, questionable.

First of all, we saw clearly that one of the Conservative's key strategies in the campaign was to hide the extreme views of many of its candidates from the public. Hiding opinions that could shape key policy directions because you know they will not be palatable to the electorate goes well beyond making the usual empty campaign promises. The moment those hidden values emerge, the new government will be open to the accusation that it lied by omission in order to get power. That accusation is pending. Here's hoping there's never a reason to level it.

We'll expect the Conservatives to govern according to the values they espoused during the campaign, not the ones they chose not to mention. That latter set of views is not included in their mandate to govern, simply because it was not mentioned. Any attempt to introduce those ideas is out of bounds and would be a violation of the electorate's trust that would surpass even the worst ethical shortfalls of the Liberals.

Those views are mostly related to neo-conservative, far right, religious fundamentalism. No one knows more than Canada's Indigenous peoples how dogma and evangelicalism can lead to hateful, ignorant and hugely harmful actions.

The pundits tell us that Mr. Harper has a reputation for being disdainful of political tricks and journalistic shallowness, that he is a true intellectual who only barely tolerates the excesses of politics because it's the only game in town. That's good news. A little clear-headed decision-making that isn't handcuffed by colonial era ideology can only improve the way things work on the Indian Affairs front.

We're told Mr. Harper plans to clean up Ottawa. Once again, we welcome that. Now if someone will explain to us how Conservative MP Inky Mark threatening reprisal against the Manitoba Metis Federation for supporting the Liberals is any different from the crimes detailed in the Gomery Report, we'd love to hear it. Punishing your opponents and rewarding your friends are just two sides of the same coin, we say. That's supposedly the old Ottawa.

On this point, a close relationship between the Assembly of First Nations and the Metis National Council had developed with the Martin Liberals. The MNC came right out and endorsed the Liberals; the AFN was subtler, but the end result was the same.

We're not going to start in on whether or not that was an example of smart, long-term planning on their part. That's another editorial for another day. But we do believe that a clear sign that political retribution will not be visited on those organizations because of their Liberal ties should be one of the first things we see from the new Conservative government. Reconciliation between the Indigenous and the other peoples in Canada is too important to be tossed into the blender of party politics.

We also noticed Mr. Prime Minister that the former Reform Party wing of your party (Monte Solberg) disagreed sharply with the forr Progressive Conservative faction of the party (Jim Prentice) over the future of the Kelowna Accord and Aboriginal policy in general. We need a clear sign during your government's earliest days of which political approach is going to dominate. Canada did not elect the Reform Party, plain and simple. Over and over again it was rejected. We urge you to remember that at all times.