OTTAWA REPORT

Page 2

What do you call an Indian in a sleeping bag underneath a tree on Lyall Island?

The answer: A Haida bed.

That's not a bad joke. Most of my Indian friends got a big laugh out of it. But when I told them who's been telling it around Ottawa these days, their feelings changed. The comedian on Parliament Hill is the minister of Indian Affairs, Bill McKnight. When my friends heard that, they said things that would not be fit for family reading. The common feeling seems to be, I guess, that it's one thing for Indians to tell jokes about one another but it's another thing entirely for the minister of Indian Affairs to do the same thing.

I wondered what the Haidas themselves thought about the joke so I phoned them for their reaction. The administrator of the council of the Haida Nation, Mike Nichol, already knew the answer to the joke. He also thought it was funny. But when

I told him that Bill McKnight was telling it on Parliament Hill, he thought that was even funnier. I guess that shows the Haida still have a pretty healthy sense of humour.

Personally, I'm glad to hear that Bill McKnight has found something to joke about. After all, he has not exactly been a barrel of laughs since the June cabinet shuffle. And who can blame him? He did get the most thankless ministry in government. But he has been the minister for almost five months now and it's time to review his performance.

It's clear, firsr of all, that Bill McKnight is tied more closely to the bureaucracy than David Crombie was. For example, Bill McKnight chose to learn about the issues in his new job by listening to his bureaucrats rather than travelling to Indian country and listening to Indian leaders. When the Manitoba funding crisis got ugly last spring, David Crombie asked an independent auditor to investigate. When the crisis exploded this fall, Bill McKnight asked the Treasury Board and the RCMP to get involved.

Bill McKnight has been busy putting out other brushfires as well. The auditor-general's annual report gave the department its annual black eye and the Quebec Crees embarrassed the department with their campaign to get Ottawa to live up to the James Bay agreement.

The funny thing is that Bill McKnight has been trying to defuse controversies he didn't create. Of course, he is in the process of creating his own controversies that will undoubtedly explode sometime in the future.

In the meantime, though, many Native and northern leaders say they like the way he does business. They say they know just where they stand with the new minister. When he says he'll take action, they trust him. When he says "no," they say he means no. (He's been saying no a lot lately.) That's a round-about way of saying that David Crombie never said no to anything.

That illustrates the different attitudes that Crombie and McKnight have about the job. It's clear that Bill McKnight still lacks the enthusiastic commitment to Indian advancement that David Crombie displayed. Bill McKnight's strict, letter-of-the-law approach makes him look heartless and insensitive, even though he is following many

of the same policies that David Crombie had.

Sometimes Bill McKnight goes out of his way to emphasize that he's different

from David Crombie. He likes to describe himself, for example, as just a dirt-farmer

from Saskatchewan. He still gets up with the chickens, I'm told, and he's usually on the job by 7:00 a.m. But don't be fooled. Bill McKnight is no country bumpkin.

In fact, he seems to know more of the details of his portfolio than his big-city predecessor did. For all his good points, David Crombie was sometimes fuzzy or just plain wrong when it came to facts and details. Bill McKnight, on the other hand, has obviously learned his ministry and it's apparent - at least to Ottawa reporters - that he knows the facts and the details.

Lately, it's become increasingly apparent, that Bill McKnight is more comfortable with his portfolio. He's less tense now and more easy-going

In fact, the Haida-bed joke may be a sign that he is growing into the job. Or it could just be a sign that he is taking some old federal advice. At one of the constitutional conferences a few years ago, a federal paper was leaked which revealed the government's strategy in dealing with the Native groups. The paper said Native leaders are especially fond of jokes and funny stories, so government ministers were strongly advised to yuk it up.

I don't know if there's any connection, but it is good to see Bill McKnight cracking jokes. Whatever the Haida may say, though, I think Bill McKnight should be careful about the jokes he tells. They can easily backfire because not everyone will have the same sense of humour as the Haida. If you don't believe me, just look what happened a few years ago to Senator Richard Donohoe when he said Canada would be better off if all the Indians had been killed and then tried to pass it off as a joke.