Harris government suspect

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The opposition parties in the Ontario legislature are convinced that Premier Mike Harris' Progressive Conservative government made a horrible mistake in the early months of its mandate - a mistake that led to the death of Dudley George.

A steady stream of government documents has been surfacing in recent weeks which suggest that the police and the government were working at cross-purposes in the hours leading up to the fatal shooting of Dudley George.

The pressure on the Ontario premier to call a judicial inquiry into the death of the Aboriginal man involved in a land claim protest has so far produced no action; Harris said he will not call an inquest until all legal proceedings in the criminal case are complete. The opposition parties, the George family and their lawyers, and many editorial writers in the province see this as a stall by the government.

Both lawyer Andrew Orkin and researchers employed by the Ontario NDP caucus said the government is reluctant to call an inquest because the findings will be extremely unflattering for the Tories and the Ontario establishment they represent.

Orkin said that court documents and segments of a police activity log prove that government lawyers had notified the court and the police that they intended to ask for an ex parte injunction at 9 a.m. the day after the shooting. Seeking an ex parte, or one-sided, injunction would have allowed the Crown to ask a court to order the protesters to leave the park without the protesters being present in court to present their arguments. The judge's order, if granted, would have given the police little choice but to remove the protesters by any means necessary.

Ontario Liberal member of parliament Gerry Phillips said it is clear proof that the government was exerting an indirect influence on the police and that the threat of the injunction may have forced the OPP's hand or at least influenced the provincial police service's activities.

Orkin said the evidence leads him to believe that the government made a conscious decision to get tough on the protesters.

"It's the arrogance of a new government," the lawyer said. "They decided they were going to send a message that there were not going to be any more occupations. They wanted to show Ontario and show Indians in particular that it was the dawn of a new day. To me, that's as plain as day."

The Harris government was elected on June 8, 1995. Just shy of three months later, a group of Chippewa protesters occupied lands adjacent to the Kettle and Stoney Point Reserve, claiming that a sacred burial ground was located on the lands which are now a provincial park. On the third day of the occupation - Sept. 6 - at just after 11 p.m., provincial police officers mounted a military-type assault on the park. During that altercation Aboriginal protester Dudley George was fatally shot by Acting Sgt. Kenneth Deane, second in command of the OPP's Tactical Response Unit's officers involved in the operation.

After a long investigation by the Special Investigations Unit (or SIU, a branch of the Ontario Attorney-General's Ministry which looks into all cases where injury or death results from police action), Deane was charged with criminal negligence and later convicted by a judge who said he and several fellow officers lied on the stand to justify the shooting of an unarmed man.

Bud Wildman, the NDP minister responsible for Native affairs in former Premier Bob Rae's cabinet (now the Native affairs critic for his party) said that the failure of the present government to commit to hold a public inquiry is a strong suggestion that it has something to hide.

"We're not even asking that they hold the inquiry now," the New Democrat MPP said. "The premier says he wants to wait until the courts are done with the case. That's fine. But why not give a commitment to hold an inquiry at that time. That's all we're asking. It seems to me that if they were not afraid that something damaging to them would be reealed they would do so."

Wildman said government records obtained under freedom of information laws prove that it was the Harris government which decided that the protesters had to be removed from the park.

"At Ipperwash the OPP took a different approach," he said. "The policy before the Harris government was elected was that the OPP wouldn't negotiate substantive issues while the blockade was in place. They would negotiate the end of the blockade and generally the policy was to be patient. There was no policy of confrontation.

"During the first two days of the blockade in this case, it was evident that the OPP approach was in line with previous policy. But it subsequently changed. The decision was made to get them out of the park. The government has said that the police were given discretion but it's clear that they were given discretion about how to remove them not whether to remove them."