Liberal MP proposes Aboriginal parliament

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The Member of Parliament for Churchill River (Saskatchewan) conducted a workshop during the Indigenous Bar Association's annual meeting to pitch an unusual idea and ask Aboriginal lawyers if they could help him make it work.

Rick Laliberte wants to create a formal place for Indigenous leaders within the federal system. He first floated the idea in a speech in the House of Commons on March 19, but attracted little attention.

As the 125th anniversary of the Library of Parliament approaches next year, the government backbencher sees an opportunity to make a dramatic move.

The library will be emptied out in December with two to three years of renovation work scheduled to follow. Laliberte thinks it should be converted into a home for the third house of Parliament, the Aboriginal house.

The library, a circular stone structure at the rear of the Parliament buildings, looks like a tipi to Laliberte. He sees the 14 flying buttresses that support the building as tipi poles.

"Fourteen tipi poles when they're used for a lodge is a sacred lodge," he said.

He points out that Section 35) 2 of the Constitution Act gives the Prime Minister the right to call a constitutional conference and he believes, should Indigenous nations be able to form a united front, he can convince his party leader to call such a conference to examine the idea.

Laliberte told the delegates the library was the only part of the original Parliament buildings that survived a fire in 1916. He believes that's because the spirits saved the building, knowing it is fated to be the place where final reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and those who come from other lands will be made.

Even though he's Metis of Cree heritage from the prairies, living in Ottawa has given him the opportunity to learn of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) Great Law Of Peace, an accord developed among the nations of the east to end wars amongst its members. The MP wants to use the concepts of the Great Law and confederacy governance structures as the basis for a third house of parliament that would allow all Indigenous nations to sit in council as part of the federal government.

He sees it as a way to solve many of the difficult issues that currently divide the federal government and Indigenous leaders.

"If the government wants accountability and transparency as we see in the governance debate now, why can't . . . if they say they spend about $7 billion, why can't you put $7 billion here," he said, pointing to a drawing of the library, "like they do in the provinces and the provinces distribute it to the municipal governments or whatever? It's a third order of government. Why can't we be accountable here? Put the main budget here. That way, wherever we live, we're accountable to our nations. Not to a minister of Indian Affairs or to a provincial minister," he said.

He said he's prepared to lobby the ministers in his government to speed the process along, but it will be a fight to get Ottawa to look at this concept because something like it was recommended by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the government did not embraced the idea.

"I thought it was an original thought - Rick Laliberte, snotty-nosed kid from Beaver River, had a good idea. I came back to work in January and the first thing I got out of the library was the volumes of the royal commission. The royal commission had already worked on it. So what's stopping us?" he asked.

While admitting the obstacles are immense on both sides, he sees the idea as a perfect fit that would end much of the antagonism between Native and non-Native people in Canada and be a more respectful approach than Canada's current way of dealing with First Nations.