Cautious optimism here

Page 5

Just simply telling you what the leaders said at the Canada-Aboriginal Summit on April 19 is really not enough.

What the prime minister and the Indian Affairs minister said was, essentially, that things are going to change. Martin was asked "When?" And he said "as early as tomorrow."

Spin doctors make us form mental images of what we think they're telling us so we'll like them at least until it becomes clear that we heard something quite different from what they actually said. And the key is that we can't figure out what it was that was really going on until it's far too late.

Given the history, it's only prudent of us to assume we're being spun. In order to convince us that that's not the case, here's what we think the change will have to look like if the government's actions at the April 19 summit in Ottawa are going to match their words.

Canada Customs and Revenue Agency will immediately stop issuing policy bulletins that erode or ignore the tax-exempt status of First Nation people.

Even as the prime minister was saying all those progressive sounding words at his summit about housing and self-government and education, we were receiving calls from around the country from Native people who are being told their post-secondary education allowances are now considered taxable income.

That's not exactly a fit with this new era of partnership and detailed consultation, unless the government managed to find a First Nation person who told them he's not paying enough tax.

And Justice is going to have to stop employing "expert" witnesses who get well paid to put forward 19th century, colonial-minded ideas to Canadian courts that are weighing points of law that affect Aboriginal rights.

Canada's going to have to stop plotting to limit Indigenous rights and attempting to maintain the nation-state's supremacy over Indigenous peoples at the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

Ottawa's going to weigh in courageously the next time a province tramples on Aboriginal rights or Aboriginal people. The inquiry into the wrongful death of Dudley George started around the same time as the summit. The inquiry could have started years ago if the federal government had called it a day after the Ontario government refused.

The Treasury Board review of Aboriginal funding should stop right now. Since Martin and Mitchell both admit the way things work right now is not good, the idea of further restricting the flow of funding to Aboriginal issues is just plain wrong.

The government's going to have to scrap and review its self-government policy and its comprehensive claims policy. They're out of date with current court decisions and they represent the "old way of thinking."

Canada's going to have to tell the resource companies that they must consult with First Nations before harvesting natural resources on traditional lands and that the stockholders must share a significant part of the wealth generated from that harvest.

There should already have been some major work started to make sure that the Aboriginal partners have the same constitutional legitimacy in the Canadian system as do the feds and the provinces.

Paul Martin said some truly progressive words and so did Andy Mitchell, finally, after circling the issues for months without landing. If Aboriginal people could take them at their word, then people across this country might consider sharpening their voting pencils in anticipation of the day they could vote to give Martin his new mandate. But we're all too cynical for that. We sure hope electioneering wasn't at the heart of what April 19 was all about.

We'll remain cautiously optimistic that this isn't a pre-election strategy or an exercise in optics; that it isn't another big lie. The fact that no new money accompanied the new announcements is a big concern because we know nothing the government does comes cheap and they say they're going to be doing quite a lot.

But we'll wah and wait and ask questions and by and by we'll issue a little report card of our own.