Senate committee to study urban Native problems

Page 15

Senator Pat Carney, a former journalist turned politician, tried her best recently to get the mainstream press and the Ottawa establishment to take a look at some of the problems faced by urban Native people.

She'll have to try again, she reported to Windspeaker with frustration.

After her speech to the Media Club of Ottawa on April 23, stories appeared in newspapers across the country that detailed Carney's objections to political correctness. She believes history is laundered and important lessons are lost because of censorship done in the name of political correctness. But Carney's main topic-Bill C-31-was the important lesson lost on the media that day.

"My punch line was to say that the most blatant problem with political correctness is it allows us to perpetuate gross injustice such as what's being done to . . . the position of Aboriginal women and children in Canada; i.e., Bill C-31," she said. "And then I talked about, in general terms as you do in a speech, Bill C-31 and the impact it has had, and the only part of the speech that never got reported anywhere-except in Victoria, B.C.-was the section on Aboriginals."

Carney said what she has been trying to do, with limited success, is to get this issue before the public.

"Not just discussed in the Aboriginal community and the Aboriginal press, but to try and get Ottawa people [interested]. (National Post reporter) Jane Taber covered my speech and never mentioned Aboriginal women. So I wrote her a letter saying, I guess living in the white, male-dominated reserve of Ottawa, this is not a subject of interest to you, but you better pay attention," she said.

During an interview in Edmonton while on a promotional tour for her recently released political memoirs, Trade Secrets, Carney revealed she has been added, at her own request, to the Senate's Aboriginal affairs committee, chaired by Metis Liberal Senator Thelma Chalifoux.

"We agreed that probably one of the biggest reasons for the migration to the city is Bill C-31. So while the [committee's] study is on problems of urban Aboriginals, one of the aspects we're studying, we'll be hearing evidence on, is Bill C-31. We're now in the process of collecting information," Carney said.

Senator Janice Johnson of Manitoba is the vice chair of the committee. Former chief Aurelien Gill will look at youth issues. Lois Wilson, a former moderator of the United Church, who sits in the Senate as an independent, is also on the committee. Task forces are being struck as committee members talk to Aboriginal people to draft their agenda. The committee expects to begin calling witnesses in the fall.

Carney requested that Windspeaker contact the committee chair for comment, saying it should be Senator Chalifoux who announced the work of the committee. A call placed two weeks before deadline to Chalifoux's office was not returned.

"I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in Aboriginal politics," Carney said. "I'm just saying I want to help have this issue taken to the mainstream. And you can see how hard it is with this speech. They print everything but the last two, most important, pages," she explained.

The issue came to her notice after the Nisga'a Final Agreement was passed. Native women in British Columbia, the area Carney represents, approached the Senator with their concerns about Bill C-31. The BC Native Women's Association has sued the government because, under the Indian Act, the marital assets of women are not protected in the event of divorce. They worry women's rights are also vulnerable under self-government agreements such as the Nisga'a. Carney believes the matter is not being pushed by federal negotiators because they don't want to be seen to be telling First Nations leaders how to conduct their affairs. Carney sees this as an example of people remaining silent in the face of injustice because of political correctness.

"Essentially, brutally, C-31 women and children who are Canadian citizens have ben stripped of their Charter rights under the Canadian Constitution in the name of political correctness. I realize that's a generalization. Bill C-31 has been wonderful for a lot of women, but it has not been wonderful for other women. It did restore status but it also has caused the second generation cut-off. I'm advised that some bands may become extinct because of the second generation cut-off. And here we are in British Columbia.

We're negotiating hundreds, sometimes thousands of hectares and hundreds of millions of dollars in treaty rights to bands that may become extinct? Let's think that through. How useful is that to the Aboriginal community?" Carney asked.

"When the Nisga'a treaty came forward with the situation that in the 12 or 14 areas in Nisga'a where Nisga'a law prevails over federal law, over provincial law, some of the Native women came to me and said, 'We're a little worried about this because we're worried we will lose our rights,'" she said. "But, and this is the hypocrisy of the Canadian system, when I went to the treaty commissioners and met with them and their lawyers and Tom Malloy and the top negotiators to say, 'Clarify this for me and tell me what the situation is,' I was told in Pollyanna tones that there was no problem because under Nisga'a it had been arranged that B.C.'s Family Relations Act applied on matrimonial break-up to the division of property. So I thought, 'That sounds pretty good.' But then the Aboriginal women told me that since, by custom, their matrimonial rights were never recognized in the male-dominated bands in the first place, it didn't matter about the provincial law because if you couldn't get your matrimonial rights recognized within your Aboriginal community, on marriage break-up there was nothing to divide."

There is also a personal reason for the Senator's interest.

"I was also one of the 16 women in the House of Commons who was an MP in 1985 when [then governor general Jeanne] Sauve organized us to supportBill C-31. I voted for it. We thought we were heroes-heroines," she said.

"Sixteen years later we find this is still a ticking time bomb. Bill C-31 still has flaws in it and there are Aboriginal women who, we fear, in practice are losing their Charter rights.

In Ottawa, I was told by various legal counsel that in law they haven't, but if we're going to sign treaties recognizing Aboriginal law as prevailing over federal and provincial law in these kind of areas, there is a danger that they will lose their Charter rights."

Although the Senate committee will look at many issues, Carney will focus on Bill C-31.

"If Aboriginal law discriminates against women and you're going to make that law prevail in a treaty over federal and provincial law, these women are never going to get recourse. My argument is: Why do they have to go to court to sue to get their Charter rights? Why should they have to have bingo games and quilt parties to raise the money when this should be their right? But the non-Aboriginal community sweeps this under the rug by saying, 'Go back to your band councils. We cannot interfere in Aboriginal matters. If we are going to practice the principle of self government for Aboriginal people we have to leave--I've heard this for 20 years, by the way-we have to leave them to make their own mistakes,'" she said. "I say no. I will not have a situation where one Canadian woman is disadvantaged for any reason and that's not politically correct."