Stephen Harper should pick special envoy for talks with native leaders

Theresa Spence was never a good fit as the public face of aboriginal discontent in this country.

The Attawapiskat chief essentially hijacked the Idle No More movement that had begun about a month before she started drawing the wrong type of attention to her fast on Victoria Island.

Her demands began shifting and there were already questions about spending and accountability in her James Bay community.

Television clips of her hopping in a car for a nap and a shower at a nearby hotel provided ammunition for her enemies on the right and the parade of opposition MPs and former prime ministers to her teepee began draining attention from a larger issue.

It culminated with an unsurprising leak of a damning audit showing a lack of accountability with taxpayers funds; a leak that just as predictably became fodder for her supporters who accuse the government of a smear campaign.

All of this is a sideshow. This was never only about Attawapiskat, certainly never all about Theresa Spence.

Instead, a Friday meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a handful of key cabinet ministers and a delegation of First Nations leaders must move beyond the conflicting layers of this saga because the stakes are huge.

They are huge for both sides and there is reason for hope because both sides need the other.

Harper may not be looking for a legacy but he has been pushed to a place in which such a legacy could be forged, or his well-honed reputation as the reliable, steady hand on an economy that has held firm as all hell breaks loose around him could be trashed.

Likewise, native leaders need to prove that they are indeed capable of representing their constituency and can make strides in protecting treaty rights, safeguarding the environment on their traditional lands and garnering their fair share of revenues from the riches beneath the Canadian terrain.

Harper has oil he wants to move and minerals he wants to extract. He has staked Canada’s economic future on such a strategy. Without a more equitable arrangement with First Nations, that strategy will fail.

First Nations populations need proper education and the jobs that will flow from that. A younger generation, understandably frustrated, cannot be further marginalized, and Harper needs them to be part of his economic solution — not working against him.

As 2013 dawns, the two sides are suddenly symbiotic.

This is a file for Harper, a man who has shown us he likes to take control of the bigger challenges to his government.

Everyone else on his side Friday will be window-dressing.

Of the many theories and trial balloons floated in search of a solution to this latest iteration of aboriginal discontent, the most intriguing I have heard involved Harper appointing a special envoy to negotiate the many hurdles between First Nations and a government now seen as the enemy.

Harper would be wise to choose a representative to handle negotiations, issue-by-issue, going forward from Friday’s meeting, someone from outside cabinet who would report to only him and would be beholden to no one else.

Names have been floated. Former Indian affairs minister Jim Prentice is one, but a man who may harbour leadership ambitions may not be eager to take on such a loaded file.

Senator Hugh Segal is one of the nation’s best progressive thinkers. Stephen Lewis may be 75 year old, but shows no sign of slowing down. Former prime ministers Paul Martin, whose championing of native rights may put him at odds with the pragmatic thinking in the prime minister’s office, and Joe Clark have been mentioned.

But maybe the man for the job is already in Harper’s office.

Nigel Wright, Harper’s chief of staff, is still technically on leave from Onex Corp., but it is a leave he has extended.

Wright has a solid reputation as a man who can get things done, a man who leaves his ideology at the door if a deal can be struck.

But the Friday meeting must also make one thing clear.

Who is speaking for First Nations in this country?

It is not Spence. There is no shortage of those in the Idle No More movement who have publicly stated that Shawn Atleo and the Assembly of First Nations does not speak for them.

If the government is to start a dialogue with clear goals — as it must — it must know who it is dealing with on the other side of the table.

Original Article
Source:  the star
Author: Tim Harper