INAC consultation methods denounced

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The Department of Indian Affairs' First Nations governance consultation methods were not only inadequate, they may have ruined any chance of success for any further attempt at consultation, said Dr. Peter Douglas Elias, an academic who was hired by the Chiefs of Ontario to analyze the government's consultation process. His report was released on March 11.

Recently retired as a full professor in the University of Lethbridge's faculty of management, Elias told Windspeaker Indian Affairs' methods were poorly devised, of little scientific value, had reporting methods that were inconsistent from one session to the next, cost a minimum of $1,250 for every person consulted and were sabotaged early on by the minister himself. Close to the beginning of the consultation, Minister Robert Nault said he would continue with the consultations whether the First Nations leadership boycotted the sessions or not. Elias believes that invalidated the process.

"Well, ask yourself, if I told you that your opinion is of no value to me, whatsoever, would you even walk across the street to let me know what your opinion is? People aren't crazy," Elias said. "The minister, very early in the consultation, saying that the results of consultation weren't going to influence the outcome, well, ordinarily, I would take that as a bad sign for the process."

Minutes of a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Advisory Committee (JMAC)-hand-picked members of government bureaucrats and some Aboriginal organizations asked by the minister to give advice on proposed changes to the Indian Act-show the committee came to doubt the value of the information the department gathered, he said.

"There was a suggestion that the DIAND policy support team provide reports on the consultation inputs," the minutes read. "However, concern was expressed that the consultation inputs would likely not be valid as a result of a number of issues, including, the objectivity of federal consultation documents, knowledge of the issues that First Nations were being consulted on, the lack of ability to distinguish the input of First Nation/non-First Nation participants, etc."

Chiefs attending the Inherent Rights Coalition's two-day governance conference in Winnipeg in mid-March said the government should be held accountable for spending $10 million to consult 8,000 people, only a small fraction of whom can be proven to be First Nations people. Elias said they have a point.

"Divide 8,000 into $10 million. The last count on [Indian Affairs'] Web site and in their public releases, DIAND [is] saying they consulted with 8,000 individuals and in another document they boast that this initiative is going to cost $10 million," he said. "But I notice that they no longer put a dollar figure anywhere in their public releases, which kind of implies to me that they might have spent a lot more than $10 million. So it's kind of hard to say exactly what they spent."

Statistics Canada's latest figures (1996) show there are 1,101,955 Aboriginal people in Canada and 488,040 registered Indians (227,285 live on reserve). Eight thousand people represents less than one per cent of all Aboriginal people (0.72 per cent) or 1.6 per cent of registered Indians.

That comes out to a cost of at least $1,250 for each of the 8,000 people the department claims it consulted. But that figure should be adjusted significantly upwards, Elias believes, because the number of Aboriginal people the government consulted is inflated. He said the government can't prove how many of the people consulted via the Internet were Aboriginal.

"Certainly, if they're counting in, which they are, their Web page consultation, there's no way of knowing whether those are Aboriginal people or not," he said. "If you're eliciting a certain kind of information, namely the thoughts and opinions of First Nations people with respect to changes in the Indian Act, and you're claiming that you're going to be speaking to First Nations people, you'dlike to be pretty sure about that. Otherwise, you've got seriously flawed underpinnings in your research method."

Some chiefs have accused the government of staging a sham consultation. Elias wasn't prepared to go that far. But the retired professor said there were only two possible explanations for the way the consultation process unfolded: either the government dropped the ball or the suspicions of a sham were accurate.

"Yes. If their intentions were entirely straight up and honorable, they failed. Either they were being cynical about it or they failed in the task. They did not succeed in getting the information that they claimed they needed-insisted they needed-in order to move the process along," he said. "So if they don't have what they claimed was very vital information coming out of First Nations communities and First Nations people, what information are they using to make their decisions? Clearly it can't be the product of their so-called consultation exercise."

The professor said the method for gathering data employed by Indian Affairs confused probability (polling) methods with non-probability methods. Non-probability or non-quantifiable research is more akin to what anthropologists would do when performing an in-depth study of a different culture. It requires detailed, long-term study by observers with very specialized skills and training.

"If you're looking at data that's coming out of a probability type of research, ordinarily it's replete with statistics and indicators of possibility of error. Well, you don't see any of that in the consultation process. In fairness to [Indian Affairs], they don't claim that it was that kind of research. " he said.

"Probably I can see where Indian Affairs was coming from on that: How do you reduce something as complex as revisions to the Indian Act to a series of questions that are going to be meaningful. The parallel these days is in British Columbia where they want to do that referendum and they want to achieve ome kind of probability on the basis of questions that, as far as I can tell, nobody agrees that they have any validity. Even if you have a number-87 per cent of the population says this-so what?"

The information gathered at the consultation sessions, as described on the Indian Affairs Web site, was anything but scientifically significant, Elias said.

"Some of these meetings were just minutes long. Well, if I was a First Nations person and I went all the way into town, and most of the meetings were held in town and not on the reserve, in good faith to contribute something to this, and I got a minute? Now you're really slandering me and offending me by treating me that way. The loss of good will. There must be a lot of people thinking this was a total waste of time. In fact, I know there are a lot of people that think that," he added.

He believes the process offended or angered many Aboriginal people and created a lot of hostility and/or disinterest among grassroots people. Elias believes the final consultation numbers show Indian Affairs can't reasonably claim to have consulted anyone.

"That would certainly be my opinion. If we look at two of the meetings in particular, the one that Bob Nault was at himself only lasted 40 minutes and there were about 15 or 20 people there. Well, this is the minister, this is God himself come to talk to the peasantry. And that's all you get?" he said. "And then Roy Bird, who's the co-chair of JMAC at Montreal Lake. Gee, the meeting there was only a few minutes long and a mere handful of people showed up. He's got one of the largest bands in Saskatchewan there and nobody shows. I don't know, you tell me. Does that sound like a whole-hearted, enthusiastic response? I would say not."

Windspeaker asked Elias what he would say to people who accused him of coming to conclusions that suited the agenda of the people who commissioned his study.

"I could think of people who you could say have thrown their head, their heart and their hans totally and uncritically behind everything Aboriginal people are doing. No Indian wants me to move in with them, eh? They get in touch with me to do work and they expect me to do a professional piece of work and base my opinions solely on the evidence that I can find or that's set before me. They're remarkably uninterested in my opinions of what they are or are not doing. All they want from me is a professional response to a question that they pose. That's what happened with this one," he said. "They did not ask me what is my opinion about self-government or governance or changes to the Indian Act, totally uninterested in my opinions on those matters. What they wanted to know was, is this an adequate piece of consultation, i.e. data production for management purposes, and the answer is no. I don't think it would matter if you worked for the Indians or worked for [Indian Affairs] or worked for a newspaper. I think that any sensible person would agree that it just didn't work. Why didn't it work? It could be evil people, could be cynics, could be that bad things happen and that's the way it goes."

Asked if he had any suggestions on how DIAND could change the system to ensure that there was real consultation, he said he wasn't sure that was possible.

"That's a real problem there. Once you've thrown the dead donkey down the well, how do you get the water clean? It's a real problem now. How would they clean up this mess, having engendered suspicion and hostility? How would they clean that up and go forward? I really couldn't say. I think they're probably going to have to, and probably will, take their chances and move forward, come up with an agenda for change and see if they can persuade people to go along it or, failing that, cram it down their throats," he said.

Without proper consultation the government could be in legal trouble once any changes to the Indian Act become law, he said.

"I think they're on very weak ground. We've seen a couple of court decisions