Tories unfazed by UN criticism of Attawapiskat

More international embarrassment for Canada. This time it’s from the United Nations, which this week took to task the federal government for its failure to deal with a desperate housing crisis at northern Ontario’s Attawapiskat Indian reserve.

Predictably, Ottawa’s reaction was to shoot the messenger. A government spokesman accused James Anaya, the UN’s special rapporteur on indigenous peoples, of grandstanding.

The government also gleefully pointed out that Anaya directed his query to former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon rather than the current occupant of the post, John Baird. It argued that this shows the UN doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

In fact, given the reality on so many Canadian reserves, the UN official’s statement is mild.

He states the obvious — that conditions at Attawapiskat and many other native communities are “dire.” He expresses the UN’s concern, which is his job. And he asks the Conservative government to comment.

Incidentally, this is not the first time that the UN has criticized Canada for its handling of aboriginal issues. In 1990, the world body’s human rights committee famously accused Canada of violating the rights of the Lubicon first nation in northern Alberta in order to encourage oil, gas and lumber extraction.

The UN continues to chastise Canada for its handling of the Lubicon issue, most recently through a statement issued this September by the world body’s high commissioner for human rights.

Intriguingly, however, Ottawa absolutely refuses to countenance any of this criticism.

No government has clean hands when it comes to aboriginal issues. Attawapiskat was a sinkhole when I visited it in 1990. According to all reports, it remains one today.

Indeed, to say that nothing works there is an understatement.

In 1990, some 95 per cent of homes in Attawapiskat used outdoor latrines. To fix that, the government eventually constructed a system that linked indoor toilets to sewage lagoons.

But the flat coastline of Hudson Bay is prone to flooding and those lagoons soon backed up, inundating homes with raw sewage.

Many of these failures occurred under Liberal governments. What makes Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives different, however, is that they seem almost gleeful in their obduracy.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, who is paid to be on top of these issues, apparently knew nothing about the problems at Attawapiskat until late in the game — and then blamed Charlie Angus, the local New Democrat MP, for failing to keep him up to date.

Harper responded to the crisis by accusing the band council of wasting money, which, even if true, did nothing to meet the immediate needs of those living in tents or slopping about in raw sewage.

In fact, the first to deliver assistance to Attawapiskat was not the federal government but the Red Cross — another embarrassment.

So now the UN is involved. That’s unlikely to bother Harper, who finds the UN useful only as an organization able to authorize wars such as NATO’s attack on Libya.

Otherwise, as he demonstrated recently in his handling of the Kyoto accord on climate change, he has nothing but disdain for the world body.

But it is odd for Canada.

Over the decades, this country has been an enthusiastic backer of international organizations. When the UN chastised Canada over the Lubicon in 1990, the news was shocking enough to merit front-page treatment.

Now, however, we’re so used to being on the outs with the rest of the world that this week’s UN broadside was treated as a ho-hum event. Some newspapers didn’t even bother reporting it.

Original Article
Source: Star