AFN still looking for governance deal

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The national chief's idea of how the Assembly of First Nations should work on First Nations governance reform with the Indian Affairs department was delivered to the minister's office on Sept. 7.

The AFN's workplan was an ambitious 11-page document that proposed the two sides should "draw on the solid foundation" of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples report.

Under the heading "objectives," several goals were listed, each containing a subtle criticism of the department's current approach: implementing the inherent right to self-determination; honoring the true spirit and intent of inherent Aboriginal title and rights and treaty rights as recognized by RCAP; addressing a full range of changes to the Indian Act; and addressing the need for Canada to recast its policies and institutions so they more directly support the recognition of the right to self-determination.

The document also called on the department to help in "nation rebuilding through cooperative design of meaningful community consultations."

The paper suggested the actions needed to satisfy First Nations requirements for governance reform may include constitutional changes, treaties among nations, a First Nations Royal Proclamation and a formal recognition instrument that would recognize First Nations as nations.

It was also suggested that Canada should join First Nation technicians in analyzing every piece of federal and provincial legislation in order to remake completely the governance landscape to incorporate recent court decisions on Aboriginal title and rights and to include First Nations as respected partners with the provincial and federal levels of the Canadian system. A review of funding levels was also suggested, an indirect suggestion that considerably more money should be spent.

The work plan was in many ways a repeat of volumes one and two of the RCAP report. Those volumes have been largely ignored by the federal government since the report was released in 1996. The Indian Affairs minister of that era, Ron Irwin, dismissed the recommendations as too expensive and impractical.

Irwin's successor, Minister Robert Nault, told Windspeaker the work plan was not what he and the national chief had agreed to in previous meetings. He sent a letter to Coon Come on Sept. 20 suggesting they meet again and try to come up with something else.

"The work plan itself is a long way away from what we had talked about at the meeting at the end of July when we agreed we would meet very quickly within days to sit down jointly on a work plan. That work plan, of course, would include our interest in getting a better understanding of some of the other issues that the AFN and the national chief himself speaks of, in particular, issues that deal with the speech from the throne," he said during a phone interview on Sept. 26. "We indicated that we see that as an important discussion but it's separate from the work plan on governance. What came instead of that process is sort of a grab-all of issues that the AFN seems to be interested in. It's not something I'm surprised about, but it certainly doesn't meet the interests and the needs of what we talked about to move forward on an issue that is extremely important to First Nation people and that is, of course, their governance structure under the Indian Act, which is virtually nil."

AFN sources admit they developed the workplan independently, even though it had been agreed they would work jointly with the government. But they say First Nation technicians tried to contact Indian Affairs officials after the July 31 meeting, but were unable to convince them to meet. Nault heatedly denied that.

"Just so we get by this particular spin that the AFN seems to want to put on the fact that my officials were not available. Well, that's pretty weak in my view, and if that's the best excuse that somebody can find, I think you better look a little deeper to find out why people couldn't get a work plan between July 31 whe I met with Matthew and two of his vice-chiefs and Sept. 7," he said.

The minister said he was committed to developing a joint work plan, but the AFN couldn't get its act together.

"I agreed publicly within a week to get together and that Herb George would lead the initiative in British Columbia," he said. "We went out there, thinking we would spend days if necessary, spent one afternoon, ended up with a whole pile of people coming from the Ontario region to hijack the meeting. It turned out to be complete waste of my staff's time and my deputy minister's time, who was there. We did then say, 'Once you get sorted out who's in charge of this file, let us know.'

"Because it became, I understand, an internal battle between the vice-chief from Ontario and the vice-chief from British Columbia. I give you that as the background of what's been going on here. I don't, quite frankly, think the AFN knows where they want to go on governance."

Nault chose to focus on the way the work plan was delivered rather than the contents, which he believes are outside of the scope of the present governance consultations.

"I've indicated to the national chief if he wanted to talk about poverty, building an economy, housing, education, those kinds of issues, certainly they're all part of the speech from the throne. A reference group of ministers has been formed by the prime minister to sit and look at the speech from the throne and our commitments to move forward on the Aboriginal agenda across Canada in trying to deal with the poverty and how far behind Aboriginal people find themselves and how we can improve upon that. That to me is a joint initiative and discussion we can have, but it's not one that should be hooked and connected to the governance initiative," he said.

"The governance initiative, and I want to re-iterate, is an opportunity for us to recognize that we cannot be successful in building a socio-economic society without good structures, without good institutions, geting the fundamentals right. That's really the issue. Are we getting that done at the self-government tables? I would say that, if we are, it's moving extremely slow and we need to find a way to move the agenda much quicker for the sake of all those people who are relying on us. Especially that young population that's coming in to the age of wanting to be involved in the mainstream economy. That's the urgency of it. I don't see them as incompatible with our other work. It's just that people have had difficulty getting their head around the inadequacies of the Indian Act and why it's important to look at making change."

AFN officials say the scope of the Indian Act reform is narrow and suits only the government's agenda. Nault said he was prepared to expand that scope after the initial changes are passed.

"If we can find a way to constructively make changes to the Indian Act, this would be the beginning of a series of amendments to the Indian Act that we would have to look at. We would have to look at membership. We will certainly have to look at the whole issue of institutions of governance and part of that would have to be the whole issue of membership, of things like education, land management, because we have a First Nation Land Management Act that people have been asking us to open up and include more First Nations. All these things I have made very, very clear that we're prepared to do. But if we can't even get to having a discussion and consultation on two or three items that are obvious to us all, I don't know how we would get to those other matters," he said.