Human rights complaint goes to tribunal

Page 12

Jim Pankiw will soon have to explain his actions to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The decision came down in late April that the commission's tribunal will hear John Melenchuk's complaint against the independent Member of Parliament for Saskatoon-Humboldt.

The former Canadian Alliance MP who was not welcomed back into the Alliance party (now Conservative Party of Canada) after Stephen Harper replaced Stockwell Day as leader, has been sitting as an independent for more than a year. He has used his MP's budget to produce pamphlets that refer to "Indian criminals." He argues that Native people make up a disproportionate percentage of inmates in correctional institutions simply because they commit more crimes.

Melenchuk, a Metis man who is well known in Saskatoon as a Native rights activist, filed his complaint with the human rights commission after Pankiw's first mail out appeared. Nine months later, after unsuccessfully attempting to get Pankiw and Melenchuk to sit down with an arbitrator to work out their differences, the commission decided the matter would have to be dealt with by a human rights tribunal.

While Pankiw has not responded to inquiries from the Native media, he appeared live on a local radio talk show in Saskatoon in mid-May. On that show, Pankiw said he was being attacked and unfairly singled out by Aboriginal people for holding politically incorrect views.

Then he was attacked on-air by a non-Aboriginal caller who identified himself as Wayne from Saskatoon.

"Mr. Pankiw, as a businessman who's run businesses in Manitoba and Saskatchewan for over 40 years and paid taxes and watched a piece of property in Winnipeg drop from $150,000 to $25,000 because of the Native youth gangs, I would much rather my taxes be spent to give young Native people $5, 10, 15, even $20,000 a year to go to counselling or go to university and get an education and become productive citizens than put them in jail where it costs $65,000 a year to keep a young man in jail and $110,000 a year to keep a young woman in jail where they're trained to be criminals," he told the MP.

"You want to deny the treaty rights. You want to deny common sense. You have absolutely no common sense and I am insulted by you every time I hear you and by the fact that my taxes pay you $135,000 or $150,000 to spout this bull****. You have no common sense and the people who vote for you have no common sense. We need to help to educate Native people to get them off the street, out of jails and help them to become productive citizens. And it's your kind of stupidity that's stopped that. You are a racist and you are an idiot and I don't want to pay your bloody salary anymore. You have no right to spout this racist garbage."

Pankiw said he would not "lower himself to that level" when asked to respond to the caller.

"It's just an attempt to intimidate or silence anybody from speaking out and saying the things I'm saying," he said.

He was asked what he was doing as an MP to address the social ills that Native people are experiencing.

"The way you do that is to integrate Indian people into society. You allow them to be full and equal participants. You remove government policies that segregate them and keep them isolated," Pankiw said.

Pankiw has come under fire from other corners in recent weeks. In May, the National Associations Active in Criminal Justice released a letter its members had sent to Pankiw on March 19.

The organization cited a question Pankiw asked in the House of Commons on March 10.

"Mr. Speaker, government statistics reveal that Indians make up a disproportionate number of prison inmates because they commit a disproportionate amount of crime. In Saskatoon their crime rate is more than 10 times that of non-Indians. To make matters worse, the Criminal Code orders judges to give lenient sentences to Indian criminals. Just like [prime minister Jean] Chretien's regime, the government is also im Mahaffy, preident of the group, then wrote the association's members were outraged by the question.

"Your question served to perpetuate the simplistic analysis, myths and stereotypes that the only reason Aboriginal people are over-represented in prison is because they commit proportionately more crime. Your question ignores the historically documented discriminatory treatment of Aboriginal people, including the Marshall Inquiry, the Cawsey Report, the Manitoba Justice Inquiry, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the very recent report of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as well as the many United Nations reports that chastise Canada for our disgraceful history of discrimination against First Nations peoples," the letter stated. "Your question portrays Aboriginal peoples as committing a disproportionate amount of crime and suggests that the numbers of 'Indian' inmates in Canadian penal institutions supports this characterization. Your suggestion that the Canadian government supports a 'racist two-tier sentencing scheme that gives Indian criminals a get out of jail card' distorts the truth and advances racial prejudice."

The group, whose members include the Association des Services de Rehabilitation Social du Quebec, the Canadian Association for Community Living, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, the John Howard Society of Canada, the Canadian Training Institute, Native Counseling Services of Alberta, St. Leonard's Society of Canada, the Salvation Army, the Seventh Step Society of Canada, the Canadian Families and Corrections Network and the Canadian Psychological Association, told Pankiw he should apologize to all Canadians for his remarks.

"Your remarks blame a few prisoners while simultaneously ignoring entirely the social conditions that give rise to crime. The pattern of cultural dislocation has been repeated around the world with Aboriginal cultures who have had their homeland take and their culture and populations devastated by conquest and usurpation of resources. Recognition is growing globally that it is necessary for dominant cultures to understand the destructive impacts of their own development and to abandon self centered approaches to future social and economic development," Mahaffy wrote. "All Canadians, and Aboriginal people in particular, deserve an apology from you for your statements."