The elephant in the living room

Page 5

People, most notably Gary McHale (see story page 8), are upset that the Ontario government and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) are not doing anything about the occupation at Douglas Creek Estates in Caledonia, Ont.

The police are not moving in to crack heads and enforce the letter of the law as many of the people who joined a recent Sunday march would like. That, with the exception of the OPP incursion into estates on April 20, is undeniably true. And that relatively modest show of force by the OPP in April was a reaction to the order of Justice David Marshall, an order the Ontario Court of Appeal has since revealed to have been of questionable legality.

At the time, by the way, we heard from very good sources that the OPP did not want to conduct that raid but saw no way to avoid it. We know for a fact that lawyers for both the police and the government tried to talk Justice Marshall out of forcing them to use force to break up the occupation.

Premier Dalton McGuinty and his Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Ramsay have made the occasional comments that were critical of the people at the occupation site, but invariably those comments followed behavior that resulted in criminal charges and those comments were not out of line at all, in our opinion.

We're here to tell you that we read the apparent inertia of the province and the OPP as an implicit admission that the people at the occupation site-those who are there to force Canadian authorities to deal with the land issues-are right.

What other reason could there be?

The OPP is the biggest and best armed "gang" in Ontario. They are not afraid to take action and move in. If they thought that was the right thing to do, they would be there already.

And the Ontario government would not spend millions of dollars trying to prevent an unpleasant couple of days in the media if they thought they were right to take action, would they?

The people who occupy the highest places in the government of Ontario and the others who make the politically charged decisions at the top of the OPP power structure have chosen to simply keep the peace as best they can. Why that-and only that-reaction from these powerful people? Simple. They know "the Indians" are right. There's no other reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the set of facts that are displayed before us.

So how is it that no one else can see it? Not one person has looked at the possibility that the reason these powerful people in Ontario have not pulled the pin and brought a sudden end to this occupation (and risked dozens if not hundreds of lives) is because, say it along with us all you advocates of military intervention, "the Indians" are right.

Ask Mike Harris if he'd recommend using force. What did Ipperwash do to his career? He might be sitting in the Prime Minister's Office today if that albatross hadn't been hanging around his neck since that fateful day back in 1995.

Dalton McGuinty and former OPP Commissioner Gwen Boniface were hung out to dry by the federal Conservative Party of Canada, which is still AWOL on the Caledonia matter and on most Aboriginal issues in Ontario and around the country. Justice delayed really is justice denied and justice has been withheld quite intentionally by federal authorities from Six Nations and others with legitimate land issues for decades, for centuries.

All this brings up one last, incredibly crucial point. We noted on Oct. 15 that there are more angry people in Caledonia than there were in May. And the cops-who we feel compelled to praise for their professionalism and composure in Caledonia-can't go forever without at least one person breaking and making a mistake. So time is of the essence. The federal government needs to take action to resolve this mess fairly.

That action needs to happen right now. Lives are at risk. The clock is ticking. No more studies or consultation processes or any other make-work bureaucratic charades. Get someone on it and get it dne immediately. Federal delay caused this problem and, if tragedy results, the feds will get the blame.