Liberal leader Bob Rae worked up a righteous lather when he rose in the Commons this week to denounce the horrifically squalid living conditions on the Attawapiskat First Nations reserve as a disgrace to the country's reputation. And, of course, as being entirely the fault of the Harper government.
The impoverishment of the community on the James Bay shore in northern Ontario is extreme, but not uncommon on Canadian reserves. It was brought to the fore when the band council declared a state of emergency and the MP for the area, New Democrat Charlie Angus, posted a video showing large families of up to three generations crowded into rotting, fire-trap plywood shacks without electricity, running water or toilets, some even living year-round in tents.
Rae was right that the situation is a national disgrace, but not so much in his retort to the prime minister's response that his government has spent $90 million on Attawapiskat since taking office five years ago and his suggestion that the money could have been better managed. "It would seem that the prime minister is saying that it is the people of Attawapiskat who are responsible for the problems they are facing," Rae fumed.
Implicit in this statement is the notion that the band leadership bears no responsibility for the pitiable state of the community, or for improving it. (Even though the people on the reserve's payroll collected $14 million a year in wages and benefits by last count, and auditors of the band's accounts cite improperly documented disbursements from community funds.) Or that the residents bear no responsibility for holding their leadership to account.
It smacks of the kind of paternalism that is a large part of the problem in aboriginal affairs: the idea that only a beneficent federal government shovelling ever more money into aboriginal maintenance can bring comfort and prosperity to the country's reserves.
Yes, more funding is desperately needed. And yes, the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs (until lately known as the Indian Affairs Department), has done a singularly wretched job over too many years - including, it should be noted, during decades when the Liberals were in power.
Just one glaring example is the boggling disparity in federal funding to the reserves. A British Columbia band with just 16 status members, for instance, received $18 million over a three-year period late last decade, while a Quebec reserve with nearly 3,000 residents received only $5 million more. In the one case that amounted to $1.1 million per band member; in the other, roughly $8,000 per member.
The department has also been wretchedly slipshod in tracking the reserves' finances, allowing many to run up crippling debts without timely intervention. And this has happened even though the department is the fifth-largest bureaucracy in the country, whose full-time staff has nearly doubled over the past 15 years.
But it must also be noted that aboriginal governance on many reserves falls short of democratic ideals. Some bands are still led by hereditary chiefs; many are controlled by an oligarchy of local clans who systematically favour friends and family members with jobs and benefits, and discourage grassroots dissent through their control of band funds. Aboriginal women, in particular, complain of being disenfranchised in band hierarchies.
The impoverishment of the community on the James Bay shore in northern Ontario is extreme, but not uncommon on Canadian reserves. It was brought to the fore when the band council declared a state of emergency and the MP for the area, New Democrat Charlie Angus, posted a video showing large families of up to three generations crowded into rotting, fire-trap plywood shacks without electricity, running water or toilets, some even living year-round in tents.
Rae was right that the situation is a national disgrace, but not so much in his retort to the prime minister's response that his government has spent $90 million on Attawapiskat since taking office five years ago and his suggestion that the money could have been better managed. "It would seem that the prime minister is saying that it is the people of Attawapiskat who are responsible for the problems they are facing," Rae fumed.
Implicit in this statement is the notion that the band leadership bears no responsibility for the pitiable state of the community, or for improving it. (Even though the people on the reserve's payroll collected $14 million a year in wages and benefits by last count, and auditors of the band's accounts cite improperly documented disbursements from community funds.) Or that the residents bear no responsibility for holding their leadership to account.
It smacks of the kind of paternalism that is a large part of the problem in aboriginal affairs: the idea that only a beneficent federal government shovelling ever more money into aboriginal maintenance can bring comfort and prosperity to the country's reserves.
Yes, more funding is desperately needed. And yes, the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs (until lately known as the Indian Affairs Department), has done a singularly wretched job over too many years - including, it should be noted, during decades when the Liberals were in power.
Just one glaring example is the boggling disparity in federal funding to the reserves. A British Columbia band with just 16 status members, for instance, received $18 million over a three-year period late last decade, while a Quebec reserve with nearly 3,000 residents received only $5 million more. In the one case that amounted to $1.1 million per band member; in the other, roughly $8,000 per member.
The department has also been wretchedly slipshod in tracking the reserves' finances, allowing many to run up crippling debts without timely intervention. And this has happened even though the department is the fifth-largest bureaucracy in the country, whose full-time staff has nearly doubled over the past 15 years.
But it must also be noted that aboriginal governance on many reserves falls short of democratic ideals. Some bands are still led by hereditary chiefs; many are controlled by an oligarchy of local clans who systematically favour friends and family members with jobs and benefits, and discourage grassroots dissent through their control of band funds. Aboriginal women, in particular, complain of being disenfranchised in band hierarchies.
Many band leaders treat themselves to outlandishly fattened tax-free salaries for administering relatively small communities. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation recently reported that more than 200 aboriginal chiefs and First Nations councillors collect higher salaries than their provincial premiers, and of these 80 pocket more than the prime minister.
The Assembly of First Nations disputes the report's methodology and maintains that elected-aboriginal officials earn on average just shy of $37,000. But the Assembly, whose voting membership is limited to band leaders and excludes the aboriginal rank and file, has objected to legislation that is now before Parliament to make band officials' salaries available for universal online scrutiny, along with accounting for band funds.
The Assembly has condemned the measure as a heavy-handed intrusion into internal aboriginal affairs, but seems deaf to the impact that revelations of excessive payments have on Canadian taxpayers, whose sympathy it needs to spur the government to greater corrective measures. It seems to be keenly aware that bringing it all into the open might provoke a surge of community activism that would challenge the prerogatives of the entrenched aboriginal power structure.
The response to aboriginal-community disasters such as that gripping Attawapiskat is most typically a blame game, which is distinctly unhelpful. The federal government has dispatched a third-party administrator to take charge of the community's finances, essentially putting the reserve under trusteeship. The move has been furiously denounced by the band leadership. If it is any solution, it is at best a stopgap one.
Certainly there is blame to be assigned, here and for the general state of aboriginal-affairs administration. But it rightly goes all around, just as responsibility for righting things must go all around as well.
The Assembly of First Nations disputes the report's methodology and maintains that elected-aboriginal officials earn on average just shy of $37,000. But the Assembly, whose voting membership is limited to band leaders and excludes the aboriginal rank and file, has objected to legislation that is now before Parliament to make band officials' salaries available for universal online scrutiny, along with accounting for band funds.
The Assembly has condemned the measure as a heavy-handed intrusion into internal aboriginal affairs, but seems deaf to the impact that revelations of excessive payments have on Canadian taxpayers, whose sympathy it needs to spur the government to greater corrective measures. It seems to be keenly aware that bringing it all into the open might provoke a surge of community activism that would challenge the prerogatives of the entrenched aboriginal power structure.
The response to aboriginal-community disasters such as that gripping Attawapiskat is most typically a blame game, which is distinctly unhelpful. The federal government has dispatched a third-party administrator to take charge of the community's finances, essentially putting the reserve under trusteeship. The move has been furiously denounced by the band leadership. If it is any solution, it is at best a stopgap one.
Certainly there is blame to be assigned, here and for the general state of aboriginal-affairs administration. But it rightly goes all around, just as responsibility for righting things must go all around as well.
Origin
Source: Montreal Gazette
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