Ex-PM links Attawapiskat crisis to failed Kelowna accord

Former prime minister Paul Martin says the housing crisis in the First Nations community of Attawapiskat exemplifies the problems his abandoned Kelowna agreement on aboriginal quality of life was meant to address.

“The Kelowna accord was set up to deal with this very issue,” he said Tuesday in an interview with CBC News. “As well as with education, clean water, accountability and health care.”

In November 2005, Martin, the premiers and aboriginal leaders met in Kelowna, B.C., for the First Ministers Conference on Aboriginal Affairs. The meeting resulted in a five-year, $5-billion plan to improve the lives of First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples.

But within days, Martin’s minority Liberal government was defeated, triggering an election won by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

“Unfortunately, the government simply walked away from agreements that had been made with the First Nations and aboriginal leadership and all of the provinces and territories. And they confiscated the $5 billion that the government set aside for it, and that was really most unfortunate. We lost five or six years,” said Martin.

A private member's bill put forward by Martin calling for the accord to be honoured eventually received royal assent, but such bills cannot compel the government to spend money, and the Conservatives decided to take their own course on native issues.

Martin said the crisis in Attawapiskat was “unequivocally clear.”

The northern Ontario First Nation near James Bay declared an emergency in late October as winter approached while some members of the community of about 1,800 huddled in unheated tents, condemned housing and portable trailers.

Harper said his government has given Attawapiskat around $90 million over the past five years, though critics noted most of that money went to infrastructure and services unrelated to housing.

The government ordered an independent audit of the community’s finances and appointed a third-party manager to oversee spending, a move the band and Chief Theresa Spence viewed as an insult.

When the third-party manager Jacques Marion arrived in Attawapiskat on Monday, he was promptly asked to leave by the band, which said his presence was unwanted.

Reserve issues have 'plagued' Canada: Atleo

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan said on Monday that Marion left the community, wishing “to respect the volatile situation,” but remained in control of the First Nation’s funding.

The former prime minister said he could not understand why the government was making an issue of third-party management.

“The community has been sending the required numerous files to Ottawa on a regular basis. The $90 million, whatever the minister quoted, when you look at 2,000 people over a five-year period in a community in the far north where everything is twice as expensive as in the south, [it] should not be creating that many red lights.

“If they want the facts, the government has them. The real issue is: Deal with the personal and human tragedy.”

Spence was in Ottawa Monday to meet Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo, along with several other First Nations chiefs who are in the capital to set their agenda for the next year.

Atleo touched on the reserve's issues in a key speech on Tuesday and in a scrum with reporters later, suggesting the crisis could be a turning point.

“We have many Attawapiskats,” he said. “It’s an issue that has really plagued this country, and for the first time, Canadians in a really significant manner have really had, right in their living rooms, through the reports coming out of Attawapiskat, what our people have felt day in and day out for a long, long time.”

Atleo supported the chief’s decision to kick out the third-party manager. “Spence is doing what an elected leader in any community must do: stand up strong for her people,” he said.

“We can’t accept externally imposed solutions. That has given us the status quo that we have now.”

Origin
Source: CBC