Letter to the Editor

We read with dismay the letter Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote to the editor of the Calgary Herald in mid-July announcing that he would initiate a judicial inquiry into the decline of the Fraser River salmon fishery.
The decline of any irreplaceable natural resource should be the subject of a far-reaching and non-political inquiry. There should be no sacred cows, no no-go zones. No corner of government or industry should be exempt. If the Aboriginal people of British Columbia are found to have contributed to the problem, they should be held accountable for their share of the damage.
But only their share.
In our opinion, however, Mr. Harper should wait for the facts to come in before he makes any kind of judgement. That would be fair and sensible. But it doesn’t look like that’s what is going on here. Judge for yourself.
“Let me be clear—in the coming months we will strike a judicial inquiry into the collapse of the Fraser River salmon fishery and oppose racially-divided fisheries programs,” Mr. Harper’s letter states. It really does look like he has linked the two issues together without providing any kind of substantiation or explanation. If he has either to offer, we challenge him to provide it.
Linking Aboriginal fisheries to the decline of salmon stocks without providing clear and indisputable proof was only the prime minister’s first mistake. (The cod stocks, which were also managed by the Canadian government declined to the point where an entire industry was shut down. Doesn’t it make more sense to look at causes other than Aboriginal fishing in light of that fact?)
The second error is even more disturbing. The term “racially-divided” sounds a lot like “race-based,” a familiar refrain from the good old days of Reform. We believe that’s a wrong-headed, narrow-minded, verging on racist way of looking at the issue. The right of Aboriginal people to fish for food is just that, a right—a legal right, to be more precise. A right recognized and created by no less a body than the Supreme Court of Canada. If Mr. Harper is picking this issue as the one on which to take on the role of the judicial branch in the Canadian system of governance, we’d like to know why. Why start with Aboriginal rights? Is it reasonable to deduce that with all the areas where social conservatives might disagree with the so-called “left-leaning courts” or “activist judges” the message Mr. Harper sends by selecting the field of Aboriginal rights as place to start the battle is that he does not believe in Aboriginal rights?
With the shameful move by Canada in voting against the draft declaration on Indigenous rights at the United Nations, backing away from the Kelowna agreement, relegating the battle against poverty in First Nations communities to the end of the line of government priorities and other disconcerting moves, it does look like the Conservatives don’t care about Aboriginal peoples.
Grand Chief Doug Kelly, a Stol:o Nation chief who knows a bit about fisheries, wants to know just which constituency Mr. Harper is reaching out to with this kind of anti-Aboriginal message. It looks like he’s reaching out to the non-Native voters of British Columbia who are in competition with Native fishermen for the declining resource. Has he decided to throw one group of Canadians over the side in order to win the favor of another group of Canadians (of a different race, we note) who just might help him get his majority? If that’s what’s going on here we fear for what Canada would become if Mr. Harper ever got his majority. And we’re not afraid only on behalf of Aboriginal peoples.
Aboriginal fisheries are not race-based. They are rights based. They are based on the same Indigenous rights that Mr. Harper’s representatives tried to scuttle and undermine in Geneva. Indigenous rights are based one thing: Indigenous people were here first.
Indigenous peoples on the West Coast based their entire culture, their entire way of life, on fishing. The Supreme Court ruled that the right of Indigenous people to have a culture, to not be forced to submit to cultural genocide by way of assimilation, means that they get a position of priority when it comes to this resource. To say that a relatively small segment of the B.C. population carries a relatively large share of the blame for the decline of this resource requires proof. Without proof, Mr. Harper’s words and insinuations are not only wrong but troubling and, we’ll say it because someone certainly needs to, very un-Canadian. Unless Mr. Harper means to change the definition of what it means to be Canadian.