Saskatchewan Metis lose federal funding

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Not only has the government of Saskatchewan put a freeze on $410,000 in funding that was to go to the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan (MNS), now two federal government departments have followed suit and frozen their flow of funds to the organization.

The Office of the Federal Interlocutor for Metis and Non-Status Indians has put on hold the $1.175 million the MNS is eligible to receive to help the organization identify Metis harvesters who would benefit from the Supreme Court's Powley decision. (The decision confirmed that Metis people have a constitutional right to hunt.) And funds from the department of Canadian Heritage have also been frozen, explained Myriam Brochu, chief of media relations for the department.

For the past 30 or so years the department has provided the MNS with core funding through the Aboriginal Representative Organizations Program. The money was earmarked for operational support.

"So it basically paid for some salaries ... rent or hydro and all of that," she said.

The money being held back by Canadian Heritage is the funding installment for the period from November 2004 to April 2005.

"It's not suspended forever," Brochu said. "It just hasn't been released until they provide us with a report on positive steps that are being taken to restore the trust of the Metis constituents and the government of Saskatchewan, prior to further payment."

The funding freeze comes after a controversial election held by the MNS in May 2004. Members of the group complained about voting irregularities, and a provincial report on the election concluded that neither the Saskatchewan government nor the Metis people could have faith in the election results.

With less money coming in, the MNS has become more reliant on its volunteer to try to fundraise and get other things done, said Ralph Kennedy, secretary of the MNS provincial council.

The decrease in funding is hurting the organization, Kennedy said, but it's also hurting all the Metis people in the province. At a time when the MNS would like to be working with the provincial government to deal with issues like Metis hunting rights, the province is instead finding ways to block resources coming to the organization, he said.

"I don't know why the Saskatchewan government is hurting the Metis people so bad. They seem to be hurting the Metis people of Saskatchewan pretty bad, you know. They don't care how it affects the Metis people."

Kennedy said the executive has heard from a number of Metis from across the province with ideas on how they would like the situation dealt with. One of the suggestions involves taking over Batoche, once the site of a battle with Dominion forces that signaled the end of a Metis rebellion led by Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the 1800s. It is now a national historic site, and some want it turned into a refugee camp for Metis people, "because that's how we're being treated here," Kennedy said.

Others suggest setting up blockades on highways or organizing sit-ins.

"There's different people who want us to do different things, more on an aggressive scale, but we're trying to be as reasonable as we can," Kennedy said. "People want us to take over Batoche and call in the different foreign countries and say, 'Look at how Canada treats its people.' As soon as there's any kind of wrong-doing in some country, Canada is right there saying 'You've got to do your human rights part here, you know. You can't treat these people like this.' But yet the provincial government here can say to the Metis people, 'We don't like the way your elections are; we want to put in this person.'"

While Kennedy said it would be a fairly simple thing to have Metis people block every major highway across the province, that isn't the way the MNS wants to handle the situation.

"We're trying to approach this as reasonable people," he said.

Some Metis people on the other side of the issue don't seem to share Kennedy's views on what's reaonable. A handful of people recently staged a sit-in the office of the Metis Employment and Training Institute of Saskatoon, the Metis Employment & Training of Saskatchewan Inc.(METSI) office for Western Region IIA. Their goal was to protest the results of the recent election, and call on the federal government to take over running of the employment and training arm of MNS.

The sit-in ended when the department of Human Resources Skills Development Canada directed the METSI head office to take over operation of the Saskatoon office until the department was satisfied that client services could be maintained by local management.

Ralph Kennedy called the sit-in "old-day politics" and said the only ones hurt by it were the clients who had to endure an interruption in services.

Kennedy hopes a provincial council meeting can be held shortly so a decision can be made about where the MNS goes from here.

In the meantime, Kennedy has written letters to the Metis people who have set up another Metis council. The group is led by Robert Doucette and Alex Maurice, the two MNS presidential candidates who ran, and allegedly lost, to Dwayne Roth in the May election. The group wants to force a new election.

Kennedy believes their actions have contravened the MNS constitution and may result in their ouster from the organization.

"Some of the stuff they're doing is in conflict with our constitution and I just want to know if they want to still be members in our nation ... I understand some of them are setting up a different type of corporation and there's rumors flying through all the different news articles that they want to start their own or they want to belong somewhere else, so I sent them a letter and I asked them for a reply. That's all there is to it," Kennedy said.

So far the only response he's heard to the letters is through media reports, with some of the letter recipients being quoted as saying they don't plan to respond because they don't recognize te results of the election and therefore don't recognize Kennedy's authority as MNS secretary.