Leave well enough alone

Page 4

When you talk to party researchers and other political types in Ottawa for what reporters call background discussions, that is, under the condition they won't be quoted, you hear a lot of interesting things.

Some of the things you hear are pure (to use a polite word) nonsense, designed to lead gullible reporters into places that will be of help to the group or party to which the person involved belongs.

But when you hear over and over again from a variety of informed sources that something's going to happen, you have to start to take it seriously.

The word all around Ottawa these days is that a Cabinet shuffle is coming. Aboriginal people with long memories are probably already waiting for it to happen. They read Metis Nation President Gerald Morin's praise for Metis Interlocutor Ralph Goodale and they watch as National Chief Phil Fontaine makes steady progess with Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart and they think, 'hmmmm, we're starting to get somewhere, it must be time for the Prime Minister to shuffle the deck and put us all back to square one.'

It's happened many times before. In the mid-1980s, the then newly appointed Progressive Conservative (remember them?) Indian Affairs Minister, David Crombie, appointed special envoys to solve some of the government's most knotty problems and things started to hum. In November 1984, Crombie met with Lubicon Cree Chief Bernard Ominayak, read over the chief's demands and uttered those famous words, "It's time to make a deal."

Within 18 months, Crombie was toast (popped out of INAC to become minister of multiculturalism) and so were his special envoys. The Lubicon Cree are still - coming up on 15 years later - trying to find a way to make that deal.

Marilyn Buffalo is accusing the federal government of bullying her organization as a way of punishing her for not going along with the Statement of Reconciliation, the government's apology to residential school victims (those who suffered physical and sexual abuse, anyway). Buffalo's argument at the time was that it was not an apology. It certainly was not a wide open, heartfelt sincere mea culpa from the government. It was more like something a lawyer advises you to say if you've been caught breaking the law.

The NWAC president was right, as far as we're concerned, but history has shown that - in Indian Country - being right isn't necessarily a smart move.

So, if we're right about the impending shuffle, all we can say to the Prime Minister is this: leave Ministers Goodale and Stewart where they are. Tell them they can't get out until the job's done. And, to make up for that 1969 White Paper (which Prime Minister Trudeau later admitted underestimated the legal rights of Aboriginal people), why not tell the ministers the job is to obey the rule of law and do the right thing.