Chiefs' organization set to protest first ministers' meeting

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For several weeks in advance, three national Aboriginal political organizations requested a seat at the upcoming first ministers' conference on health in Ottawa on Feb. 4 and 5.

On Jan. 28, Assembly of First Nations health secretariat spokesman Bryan Hendry told Windspeaker the Aboriginal leaders have resigned themselves to the fact that the answer is "no."

The AFN, the Metis National Council and the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada want to sit with premiers and the prime minister when the talk turns to how financial resources will be allocated to revitalize Canada's health care system.

After Prime Minister Jean Chretien arranged for Health Minister Anne McLellan to meet with Aboriginal leaders on Jan. 9, there was some hope that there would be an Aboriginal presence at the conference. Hendry said McLellan made a committment to deliver the message to the Prime Minister "loud and clear," that there should be full participation of the Aboriginal organizations.

But as the days went by without word from the Prime Minister, plans were developed for a protest outside the conference.

AFN Vice-Chief Charles Fox, chair of the chiefs committee on health, said he was deeply disappointed the provincial premiers did not support including Aboriginal leaders.

"The Prime Minister has an opportunity to leave a legacy that fulfills his final Throne Speech vision of closing the gap in health status between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians," he said. "The first ministers speak of creating a health covenant with Canadians. We have our own covenant with Canada. We, as First Nations, have our treaties. If they are committed to an accord, then the first ministers should be committed to including First Nations at the table.

"The First Nations, Metis, and Inuit have a combined population of 1.4 million people, which makes us the fifth largest constituency in Canada. Our voices must be heard. We will continue to advocate for our rightful place in society today and in the decades to come."

Windspeaker asked Hendry what the AFN would have said to the first ministers had it been allowed to have a voice at the table. He said the AFN has completed an indepth review of the Romanow report and has contracted with Fiscal Realities, a Kamloops, B.C. consulting firm, to conduct an indepth financial analysis "of how Health Canada spends their money."

The draft version of the Fiscal Realities report was not yet ready for release to the public, but Hendry said it has produced some interesting findings.

"There seem to be a lot more bureaucrats involved in the development of Aboriginal services in Health Canada than there are for other Canadians," he said. "We've asked Health Canada for these numbers but couldn't provide them so we commissioned the study. They're spending so much money on Aboriginal people they should be more interested in where it's going."

Aboriginal leaders have long suspected that too much government money is absorbed by federal bureaucracies delivering services to Aboriginal people. Some have suggested there are two to three times as many bureaucrats working on delivery of Aboriginal health services as there are for mainstream Canadians.

The AFN will also apply pressure on the government to implement some of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

"There were only two recommendations on Aboriginal health in the Romanow report, but out of the 400 or more recommendations in the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples report, there were 25 recommendations related to health and healing and we'll focus on those," Hendry added.

The federal government's Romanow report detailed the poor state of Aboriginal health. Native leaders say they need to have a hand in designing any solution to address the state of Aboriginal health that's put forward.

"The national chief is always saying that any solution that's done for us will fail while any plans that are developed with us will succeed," Hendry said.

The anadian Health Coalition has supported the Aboriginal call for inclusion and the New Democratic Party passed a resolution on Jan. 26 at its leadership convention calling for Aboriginal inclusion.