Chiefs blind-sided on voting rules

Page 9

The Assembly of First Nation (AFN) came close to self-destructing during the early hours of its December 2003 Confederacy in Ottawa. A fight over how business is done at AFN meetings broke out shortly after the assembly began, and the dispute brought the organization dangerously close to the edge of a cliff, with either one of the two largest regions ready to call the AFN quits.

The clash, which took up a good chunk of the first day of the Dec. 9 to 11 national gathering, began innocently enough.

After the national chief's opening address, the meeting's co-chair, Ted Quewezance, began reading the assembly's rules and procedures. The document is not usually read in its entirety, but this time was different. Quewezance read all six pages aloud, and it was moved, seconded and the motion that the rules and procedures be adopted was passed.

The significance of the rookie co-chair's actions soon became apparent, when Sowalie First Nation (British Columbia) Chief Doug Kelly, who had moved that the rules and procedures be adopted, gained the floor.

"How many registered delegates are here?" he asked the chair.

He was told there were 110 chiefs or proxies in the room.

"How many are voting? The charter says there's only 73 votes," Kelly said.

He was correct. The problem was that the AFN, by accepted practice going back at least 15 years, had always allowed all registered chiefs and proxies to vote on all questions requiring a decision, despite the fact that the organization's rules and procedures limited the votes to so many per region.

British Columbia chiefs, who represent close to one-third of the First Nations in Canada but a smaller percentage of the First Nation population, had clearly come to Ottawa to force a reversion from that accepted practice to return to the letter of the AFN's constitutional law.

The issue behind this maneuver was simple. Since most meetings are held in Ottawa, Ontario chiefs can stack the meetings and gain control of the assembly. The motion to accept the rules and procedures would deny many of them their votes.

The co-chair called for a five-minute break so each region could consult and decide who would be the voting delegates for the confederacy and who would not.

But the Ontario and Manitoba caucuses spent their time coming up with a way to counter the B.C. maneuver.

Chief Tina Leveque of Manitoba's Brokenhead Ojibway Nation said to reverse long-standing past practices was "a complete surprise." She told the chair "you cannot change rules in the middle of a meeting."

She made a motion to rescind the earlier motion to adopt the rules and procedures as written. Gull Bay (Ontario) Chief Wilfred King seconded.

Vice-chief Rick Simon argued against Leveque's motion.

"I don't know what all this jockeying is about here. I have an idea but, to me, anybody getting up and trying to say the charter doesn't apply, well it comes back to what [Kettle and Stoney Point Chief] Tom Bressette said. 'Rip the charter up and let's have a free-for-all.'"

Simon admitted discussions to limit the number of voting delegates had come up at the AFN executive meeting the night before.

"We talked last night at the executive. We looked at it and we said, 'OK, let's apply the charter. Why not?' That would be my question: Why not? Any chiefs that's sitting here registered, they can talk as much as they want. At the end of the day, the idea is to have some semblance of fairness for all the regions of the country, not just the two big regions," he told the chiefs.

Fontaine interjected to deny that he or his executive was behind this initiative.

"I just want to make one point here, because it's been suggested that somehow this issue came from the national chief or the executive. As you all witnessed, it came from the floor. It came from the floor. It didn't come from me and it didn't come from the executive. True, it was discussed last night and we reached an understanding that this issue was an issue that wuld be discussed at the Confederacy of Nations meeting," he said. "It's not an attempt on the part of my office, me personally or the executive, to manipulate the confederacy. That isn't the case.

Absolutely not. Any suggestion that is being made here that we are somehow imposing this on the confederacy is absolutely not true. That is not true. This is an issue that was made from the floor. It was a motion introduced by one of the delegates. It was a motion duly moved and seconded."

But some suggested Fontaine was protesting too much. British Columbia Vice-chief Herb George had attended the AFN executive meeting where the issue was discussed. That next morning, George passed on the vice-chief's torch to Shawn Atleo. George wears a second hat as a member of the Summit's three-person executive board. Kelly is a member of the First Nations Summit. Some chiefs saw the Summit behind Kelly's move, and wondered about Fontaine's claim that the motion to limit voting to regional representation didn't come from the AFN executive.

Quewezance asked Kelly to amend his motion and allow for the status quo "for this assembly only."

"No," said Kelly.

Chief Rod King from the Lucky Man Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, the seconder, also said, "No."

Quewezance decided that Leveque's motion to rescind Kelly's motion was in order and had to go to a vote.

Chief Simon Fobister of Grassy Narrows (Ontario) told the assembly that's the way it had to be.

"If you're going to follow rules and procedures and that's the way it has to be done, then if it wasn't done in the past then all the motions we've passed as chiefs are null and void. You're going to have to go back into your records and strike out all those resolutions," he said.

Mississaugas of the New Credit (Ontario) Chief Bryan LaForme suggested there was another knotty problem presented by Kelly's motion. "If you're putting this other motion to a vote on the floor, who's going to be entitled to vote on that motion," he asked.

Ted Qewezance made a decision.

"For this confederacy, we will follow the status quo of the way we've been operating. But we put each and every one of you on notice that for the next confederacy the implementation of the charter will have to happen," he said. "... I'm presenting this from the chair. That's the ruling. We will operate per the status quo from the assemblies for the last 10 to 15 years. Does anybody object?"

Doug Kelly answered him.

"You don't have the authority Mr. Chairman to overturn a properly passed resolution," he said.

Six Nation of the Grand River (Ontario) Chief Roberta Jamieson demanded the vote be held immediately.

She chided the executive for what she saw as an attempt to ambush the chiefs who have opposed their agenda.

"There are two ways that rules come about. One is you adopt them, the other is you practice them. In this case, what we have is a charter that was adopted 15 or 20 years ago with a set of rules. Over time, another set of rules has come about as a result of the practice," she said. Jamieson, a lawyer, raised the spectre of legal trouble for the assembly if chiefs were not allowed to vote. She said the lack of notice that this item would be on the agenda could become a legal problem.

"The standard [for providing notice] is much higher if you're taking rights away from people. And that is effectively what's happening here. If last confederacy any chief or proxy could vote and this confederacy they can't, folks, we are taking people's rights away that they, by practice, have come to expect to exercise," she said. "It's serious. So with those couple of words of caution, I'm going to call [the] question."

Quewezance huddled with AFN legal counsel Roger Jones.

The B.C. chiefs backed off. With 104 votes needed to carry the question a majority of the B.C. delegation voted in favor of Tina Leveque's motion to rescind Kelly's motion. It carried 109-14.

Kelly also voted to rescind his motion, saying "Merry Christmas" and "You're on otice" for next time to the chiefs, though no resolution was submitted that would change the voting practice for the next meeting.