Leaders reach agreements

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Five accords and a truckload of promises later, the much anticipated federal cabinet policy retreat with Aboriginal leaders has come and gone.

The leaders of five national Aboriginal organizations and their executive members attended the four-hour sit down in the cabinet retreat room in the Lester B. Pearson Building on the evening of May 31. Representatives of the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Metis National Council, the Native Women's Association of Canada and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples met with the members of the cabinet committee on Aboriginal Affairs. All 10 provinces and the three territories were also present with observer status.

Each of the Aboriginal organizations signed a political accord with the federal government during the process. At the end, all parties had very positive things to say about the discussions.

But in the days leading up to the meeting, documents surfaced that showed there were concerns amongst Assembly of First Nation (AFN) staff and at least one executive member.

A briefing document prepared by AFN officials in preparation for the retreat reflected concern that Prime Minister Paul Martin had lost his enthusiasm for the "transformative agenda."

Afterwards, National Chief Phil Fontaine said those fears have been put to rest.

"I sensed that if anything the prime minister is now more determined," he said. "He made that very clear during a private dinner we had."

With all the excitement over whether the Liberals would survive as a government as the Conservatives tried to bring them down on a confidence motion, Fontaine joked that the prime minister "might have been a little distracted for the last couple of weeks."

A memo to the Quebec chiefs authored by Quebec Regional Chief Ghislain Picard suggested he was not pleased by the amount of information made available by the federal government in the days leading up to the retreat. He told the Quebec chiefs that details were in short supply during a conference call meeting of the national AFN executive on May 20. Picard told the chiefs that the prime minister had promised that "never again would policies which affect us be developed without our participation."

"In spite of this personal commitment from Prime Minister Martin, we have to realize that the exercise as a whole is lacking transparency," Picard wrote.

In a phone interview on June 15, the vice-chief explained his comments to Windspeaker.

"What we meant to say is, really, the process is too fast. Much faster than we would like, and I'm speaking for my region. Early on I said to my colleagues that if there's a process in place and we are to be part of the menu then obviously we should be able to control the agenda. We should be able to control the pace of the process which, in my view, has not been the case," he said. "I know this is the same for other colleagues across the country that don't have the capacity in terms of human resources to be able to tag on to this process."

The national office in Ottawa has been growing rapidly over the last two years as the Fontaine administration has secured funding for many new initiatives. Picard was asked if the regions will get their share.

"That's certainly something that we will try to lobby for. I know many of my colleagues have expressed frustration in the past regarding the unbalance between what the organization gets to raise its capacity and what regions have been able to access. >From our point of view as a region, there will have to be equity in terms of access to financial resources," he said. "I think it's clear that building a national Indian government is not, as we speak, a part of AFN's mandate. So there's clarity there. But we can always be taken in that mode as well and it's up to the communities to be vigilant. The fact that the national organization is building its capacity in terms of accessing more dollars for programs has been an issue and I fee it still is."

John Watson, head of the Aboriginal Affairs secretariat in the Privy Council Office had to fill in for Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott for a while on June 1 before a media briefing about the retreat. Scott was detained in the House of Commons after question period and was late for a conference call with the Aboriginal media.

Watson presented a report on the events of the previous day's meeting.

"The objective going in... was to create a shared national vision with shared responsibilities and to ensure Aboriginal peoples are full partners in building the socioeconomic fabric of a modern Canada," John Watson said.

Watson said Andy Scott promised the federal government "would renew its policies and processes for the implementation of self-government, the resolution of Aboriginal land rights and the implementation of both historic and modern treaties based on a new set of principles that were characterized as principles of recognition and reconciliation.

The government is also "committed to strengthening the capacity of Aboriginal organizations to contribute more effectively to public policy making, by really giving effect to the commitment that the prime minister made that no longer will policy be decided in Ottawa and passed on to Aboriginal people. We want to, in fact, jointly establish new public policy together," Watson said.

Treasury Board President Reg Alcock also made promises.

"He made commitments to disclosing federal objectives in spending on federal Aboriginal programs and to the greatest extent possible, breaking these expenditures down by First Nations, Inuit and Metis, which had been a request that was made at the sectoral sessions. He also made a specific commitment that this would be done no later than the tabling of Canada's performance report 2005, which is traditionally done in November in Parliament," Watson said.

Industry Minister David Emerson talked about a plan to bring together Aboriginal groups, provincs, territories and the private sector to develop an Aboriginal economic development framework focused on key pre-conditions for economic development.

"Those conditions included access to capital, infrastructure, capacity building and natural resource development and conducting a legislative and regulatory review-what one might refer to as 'smart regs'-to review current barriers to economic development," Watson said.

Minister Scott led the way when it was time to talk about another initiative: "a single window for early childhood development and First Nations and Inuit early learning and childcare."

"What this means is that four programs that are currently delivered through three different departments on reserve, plus early learning and childcare, will be consolidated into this single program," Watson said.

Scott also said the federal government "will support discussions on First Nations' jurisdiction in education. It will support the development and enhancement of regionally-based First Nations education systems for kindergarten to Grade 12 schools on reserve. This means building regional, potentially tribal, education systems across the country," Watson said. "Currently the department of Indian Affairs provides funding essentially for the operation of a school, but does not provide funding for what are commonly referred to as second level services, things like student assessment, teacher assessment, those kinds of things that are traditionally provided by a school board or ministry of education."

With all this activity, Windspeaker asked the minister if there would be more money for Aboriginal organizations to hire people to do the work.

"Certainly there was a commitment on the part of the government to look at the funding issue relative to this. If we're inviting them to be partners in public policy discussion, but the balance between the resources that are available to me and the resources that are available to the other side, to the community,there's just no way they're comparable," Scott said. "We did not commit to specific dollar amounts because, in keeping with the spirit of yesterday, we're going to work together to figure out the best way to do this. But certainly there was a commitment made to resource as necessary to make sure that the relationship can be meaningful."

The minister was asked if all the attention paid to K to 12 education was a way of avoiding the sticky treaty right to funding for post-secondary education issue.

"I can safely say that we'll have a specific post-secondary education announcement very soon," he replied.

When asked directly if post-secondary education is a treaty right, he provided this answer:

"I think we're going to see movement on post-secondary education in terms of the tax treatment, which I think you're referring to, and also, but probably more importantly, a comprehensive plan for making more money available for post-secondary education students. I think we have work to do in terms of recruitment, in terms of transitional programming. Those are all things that came up during the roundtable discussions and we decided, very specifically because you can't solve all the problems at once, to focus for this round on early childhood development, childcare and K to 12. But I said last night, and I repeat now, that we are now moving to the next phase which would deal with post-secondary education and adult skills development."