Canada shifts to the right

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When a Liberal like Brian Tobin feels it's OK to tell the National Post about his professed worries about the mental health of Native leaders and feel he's doing the right thing by tarring Native leaders as dysfunctional drunks, we know it's time to update all the labels that identify political parties.

We used to think that left meant tolerant as well as liberal and right meant intolerant as well as conservative, that arch-conservatives would, typically, engage in social Darwinism and conclude that they must be superior because the cream always rises to the top and, since they're at the top, they must be the cream. You know, "The poor are that way because they're inferior."

We didn't get a chance to discuss the matter with Premier Tobin (through no fault of ours), but we smell paternalism and social Darwinism emanating from his comments.

So what's happened to liberalism in this country? Has Preston Manning's party (whatever it's called this week) really shifted the political spectrum that much?

Commentators in Ottawa have accused the deficit-cutting Liberals of acting more like Tories than Tories, but we thought that was just a blip caused by successful lobbying by the wealthy who don't want to pay for the social safety net for others when they can afford to look after themselves quite nicely and probably will never need that net.

We now realize the shift to the right is firmly entrenched.

Chief Stewart Phillip sees it. He reminded us that former Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney gauged the public mood in the aftermath of Oka and, in his famous four pillar speech, promised a very sympathetic Canadian public that Native issues would be addressed. Mulroney even promised all land claims would be settled by the year 2000. But Phillip also said that the British Columbia treaty process, which was initiated to help Mulroney keep that promise, was a stall. Phillip believes the bureaucrats advised that the public is fickle. Yes, Canadians were enamored with the romantic warrior figures staring down the army, but the bureaucrats said, "Give them time. That will pass."And oh boy has it.

The mood in this land now is more about resentment than sympathy and politicians don't feel any pressure to come up with real solutions to Native issues.

If Premier Tobin had spent a little time talking to any one of the dozens of specialists who attended the Indigenous mental health conference in Montreal, he would have been advised to keep his mouth shut.

Tobin is a representative of the system that caused the problems and now he is "bravely" drawing attention to it, "for their own good."

A provincial premier has ready access to any number of learned advisors. Why didn't he use them for this issue? Perhaps he did - scarier still.