THE RISE OF THE VILLAGE TYRANT
If Harold Cardinal was angry when he wrote The Unjust Society in 1969 (and he was), he was livid when he wrote The Rebirth of Canada’s Indians eight years later. His plan for community control of programs, so carefully laid out in the Red Paper, had been turned on its head, as Indian Affairs imposed its Ottawa-designed development programs upon reserves. It was a fiasco of failures.
The Red Paper had been clear that socio-economic programs “must be completely controlled by the Indian people themselves. In this way, they can literally lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.”1
It appeared, however, that bootstrap-lifting was not on IA’s agenda. It was determined to micro-manage programs of its own design. Of course, this was hardly a surprise to people living on reserves.
In the 1950s, the Civil Liberties Section of the Canadian Bar Association raised the alarm about the dangerously dictatorial powers held by the IA minister. He — and it had always been “he” up until Ellen Fairclough was appointed IA minister in 19582 — had exclusive power. His decisions were not subject to review or appeal, nor was he bound by law of precedent or statute. The minister had complete control over anything happening on reserves, including all matters dealing with schools, infants and “mentally defectives,” the election of chiefs and councillors, and “matters testamentary.”3 In other words, the minister had total control of an Indian’s life from the moment of birth to the execution of her Last Will and Testament. No wonder legal minds concerned with civil liberties were alarmed.
IA’s shift in the 1960s from a policy of assimilation to one of devolution of programs and services to band governments quickly picked up steam. By 1971, only 16 percent of bands had taken over the administration of IA programs and services. By 1982, that number had jumped to 50 percent.4 However, IA was “granting” responsibility for administration to band councils but without the accompanying authority. IA bureaucrats just couldn’t seem to let go.
Mi’kmaq (Micmac) researcher Lynda Kuhn Boudreau described in the 1980s how core funding and devolution of programs affected chiefs and councils.
“Political organizations and Band Councils which had been actively fighting bureaucratic assimilation were now unconsciously becoming the tools of the Department of Indian Affairs as, with control over funding, the Department had increased control over economic, social, educational and political affairs of the Micmac people.”5
The focus of Indian politicians turned increasingly to figuring out how to acquire more money, thereby perpetuating a system of “government grantism” on reserves.6
It amazed Harold Cardinal that ordinary Indian people couldn’t see that the chiefs and councils had been turned into puppets of Indian Affairs. The department, he said, was subjugating an entire group with an illusion that it was delivering democracy by allowing elected chiefs and councils some small administrative duties.
“It’s a hell of a frustrating thing to explain to people that what is being played on them is a cruel and deceptive trick… Indian Affairs knows that it can give them bits of programmes; a few dollars here, a bit more power there; without ever making any substantial policy changes or having to deal with the desire to bring power back to the community level. This is undoubtedly one of the best orchestrated propaganda campaigns ever launched by a government.”7
The increased funding of band governments and the increased number of programs that bands were allowed to administer did not lead to community empowerment. Rather, it led to the kind of power struggles on reserves that had not been seen when the Indian Agent held all the cards.
When a new chief and council were elected on a reserve, said Cardinal, “they would be full of public zeal and look every way in which to perform their duties to the most benefit of the community. Then gradually another motivation strikes their actions. The chiefs and council members grow to like the power their jobs give them… Other power groups form to try to displace what has now become the establishment. Because of the way local government has been set up, a political confrontation develops. Each side seeks power and authority over the reserve.”8
It is not illogical for people who feel disempowered to seek vehicles to enhance their sense of self. This was particularly true of men, who had ceased to have much of a role in their communities after the fur trade collapsed and farm labour jobs became scarce after the 1950s. Indian Affairs had already usurped their roles as leaders and providers. Why wouldn’t they see the power imbued by the elected office as a way of reclaiming some dignity and personal empowerment?
Cardinal realized that many Indians retained a long-held respect for the chiefs chosen in the traditional way, the wise men who had signed the treaties as the best way to look after their people. They had transferred that continuing respect onto the elected chiefs.
“Some people still think that the chief and council hold the power because they signed the treaties… Nor are they aware that at the time of treaty-signing, the Indian tribal system had its own way of choosing leaders; its own way of keeping checks and balances on those leaders, and this has been lost.”9
Selecting a chief the traditional way involved extensive consultation within the community until a consensus on the most worthy candidate was achieved. The electoral system on reserves, as with all elected political offices in Canada, imbues the office itself with worthiness, and the person holding the office just “borrows” it for a while. On reserves, elected officials could only borrow that power if Indian Affairs approved. IA had, and continues to have, the authority to unilaterally nullify election results and replace elected officials as it chooses. This, alone, reveals how thin is the power of elected officials on reserves.
Some communities have shunned band elections. Mohawk council elections on Kahnawake First Nation near Montreal are lucky to draw a 30 percent turnout, as traditionalists believe that participating in band council elections undermines their sovereignty.10 And most members of the Six Nations Confederacy in Ontario, which considers itself the oldest democracy in the world, refuse to participate in Indian Act elections. Only about ten percent bother to vote. Rather, the confederacy has its own council that operates outside the control of Indian Affairs.11
The authority and power on reserves lies with the IA minister, not with the elected band council. There are sections in the Indian Act that define the decision-making framework for band councils, but those rules maintain the overriding authority of the minister.12 Remarkably, the Act is silent about the responsibilities of the chief and council to the people who elect them, or how the people are supposed to participate in band decision-making.13 The band councils might be elected by band members, but they are not accountable to band members. They are accountable to Indian Affairs, the source of their power and their money.
However tenuous that power might be, chiefs and councillors are nonetheless in positions of great power over residents on reserves. The IA funding for almost everything flows through their hands, the exception being any wages earned off-reserve and the $4 or $5 treaty annuities paid out each year. When the elected officials control the reserve, they control its wealth, however modest it might be, so that the faction or kin group that wins the election wins everything. It didn’t take long for many reserves to develop into a two-tier society — the wealthy elite and the powerless poor. This income disparity was even more noticeable on reserves with oil and other resource wealth.
Cardinal lamented the fact that the traditional ways that include checks and balances and the laws that governed tribal communities had been lost.
“Because contact with those laws has been lost for so long, it is nearly impossible for the Indian community to create, or even apply, any system with which to check the excesses of its own leaders and its own members.”14
The model is not entirely lost. In his unpublished manuscript “Big Bear’s Treaty: The Road to Freedom,” Jean Allard held up Big Bear as the model of a wise and thoughtful leader at a time when the traditional culture was fast coming to an end in the face of waves of incoming settlers. A generation before Big Bear was born, Allard’s voyageur great-great-grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière, was trading in the Northwest, and Big Bear was but an infant when another of Allard’s ancestors was constructing Fort Langley on the Fraser River.15 Change was coming.
Big Bear (Mistahimaskwa) was groomed to succeed his father as a hereditary chief, and his leadership qualities were recognized early on.
“A leader’s success,” said Allard, “was measured by the number of lodges in his tribe. Leaders who abused their position, who made poor decisions about where to hunt or camp, quickly lost their tribe. A family would simply pack up their lodge and move on. A chief did not order his people to follow his wishes. He advised them of his plan, and if people disagreed with him they were free to make their own decision about whether to follow him or to join a different tribe. It was an effective check and balance on the power of leaders.”16
At the height of his leadership, Big Bear counted 400 lodges in his band, or about 3,000 people. Big Bear was one of the last major Plains leaders to sign on to Treaty 6, and he held off signing for four years while he tried to figure out the best thing to do for his people. When he did finally sign in 1882, little more than 100 people remained with him.17 His people were facing starvation while Big Bear sought (and failed) to create a coalition of Cree bands to press the Crown for contiguous reserves in the North West;18 they voted with their feet.
Of course, that option no longer existed for Indians after the imposition of the Indian Act. The Indian Affairs branch registered Indians (thus giving them Status) based on their belonging to particular bands. There was little provision for free movement between reserves, even within the same tribe. On the Prairies where Big Bear’s people had once roamed, band members required a pass from the Indian Agent to leave their reserve. The pass system was a departmental policy instituted to prevent Indians from joining the 1885 North-West Rebellion, but the policy continued well into the 1940s. Indians caught off-reserve without their papers were subject to arrest by the police.19 Since the Agent also had to power to refuse entry of visitors or any other outsiders, exercised at his own discretion, there was little point in packing up the family and moving to a better reserve, only to be turned away.
In the 1970s, Cardinal seemed to be pleading for course correction to address the distorted power dynamics on reserves under the Indian Act elections.
“We can set up in our laws a system of responsible local government that distributes power fairly between the chief, the council and the people on the reserve. We can set up legislation that guides, that guarantees, that protects the basic rights of the individual.”20
Otherwise, he warned, they would end up with “a national system of village-level tyrants.”21
Was anyone at Indian Affairs listening? Apparently not. In Manitoba, “partnership” on economic development between the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood (MIB) and Indian Affairs had turned into a farce. MIB president Dave Courchene was thoroughly fed up. Between the frustration of failed development projects and the pressure on band councils to deliver more IA-managed services, Courchene realized with great bitterness, “We are administering our own people’s misery.”22
Working on the inside
After nine years as president of the Indian Association of Alberta, Cardinal finally wearied of the never-ending conflict with Indian Affairs, and often with other Indian organizations and band councils. He decided in 1977 that if he couldn’t effect change from outside IA, he’d try to do it from the inside. Cardinal became the first Status Indian to be appointed to the post of regional director general of Indian Affairs in Alberta. (Phil Fontaine followed suit shortly after, and moved to the Yukon in 1978 to become the regional director general there.)
There is an old saying that the best way to silence a radical is to turn him into a bureaucrat. Cardinal took up his new job in Edmonton in April 1977. In November, he informed Indian Affairs minister Hugh Faulkner that he suspected there was a kickback scheme going on involving economic development money that might implicate senior bureaucrats in IA in Alberta.23 Faulkner responded by immediately firing Cardinal. So much for silencing the radical. The staffers Cardinal had brought into IA with him on contract were let go, too.24 The firings resulted in about fifty Indians occupying the IA’s Edmonton office,25 and the adverse publicity forced Faulkner’s hand. He turned to the department’s favourite fixer, Jack Beaver, who had just retired as president of the Churchill Falls power company and had a bit of time on his hands.
At issue was a $10 million loan from Alberta’s allocation of the Indian Affairs economic development fund. Given that Cardinal had just moved from president of the Indian Association of Alberta to a senior management position in the Alberta IA offices, he appeared to have already had some suspicions about inappropriately cozy relationships between some chiefs and IA bureaucrats.26 Cardinal’s allegations of financial mismanagement triggered an immediate backlash from his former colleagues at the association, who denounced him as being abrasive and arbitrary.27 They were unhappy with Cardinal, who had been trying to rein in the growing abuses on reserves by documenting problems such as non-repayable “loans” to band officials, and warning chiefs that he might go to the police.28 Following Cardinal’s firing, IA denied there was any wrongdoing, maybe just a little sloppiness in the paperwork while Indians were learning the ropes about development loans. Beaver disagreed. After a three-month investigation, he called in the RCMP.29
In an interim report released by IA minister Hugh Faulkner at a news conference in mid-February 1978, Beaver called the controls in place after loans were made as “completely inadequate and should be unacceptable to any responsible person in any form of economic development.”30
Beaver told The Canadian Press that he was continuing to work with the RCMP. “There is significant data to indicate poor judgement and management of several, if not the majority of, projects involved.”31
Faulkner pointed out that there was a world of difference between misuse of funds and poor judgement, but promised that financial controls at the Alberta regional Indian Affairs office would be straightened out quickly.32 The “straightening out,” it seems, took the form of tidying up the whole mess by retroactively approving suspect transactions.33 The investigation promptly ended with no charges being laid.
It’s not hard to figure out what kind of message such “tidying” sent to Indian Affairs bureaucrats, the Indian political organizations funded by IA, and the chiefs and councils that handled the money flowing to reserves from IA. If someone as respected as Harold Cardinal could be run out of town for attempting to address the odour of corruption surrounding large piles of poorly controlled money, what was the point of complaining about suspected financial mismanagement on reserves? It signalled to the growing number of “village tyrants” that they were unlikely to face any penalties from IA or the justice system for their bad behaviour either.
Harold Cardinal, at the age of thirty-three, walked away from a decade in Indian politics in disgust. Jack Beaver, however, was appointed Special Adviser to the Indian Affairs minister on April 1, 1978.34
Beaver barely had time to tidy up his files on the Alberta IA investigation before Faulkner had another job for him back in Ottawa. Beaver was to undertake a comprehensive review of the same troubled IA socio-economic development program, but on a national scale. He would be working with the National Indian Brotherhood, with an eye on how best to transfer control of the economic development funds to Indian organizations.35 That suited the NIB president, thirty-four-year-old Cree Noel Starblanket, because the NIB felt that it should be in control of the millions being spent on development projects on reserves.
The new National Indian Socio-Economic Development Committee was jointly sponsored by IA and the NIB, and was headed by Beaver, who had a three-year mandate to develop a holistic approach to Indian economic development that included sensitivity to cultural and community needs. The committee’s board met for the first time in December 1978. Beaver was fired three months later.
Beaver had been promised independence, but the NIB wanted his work to be under its own economic development sub-committee. Beaver refused, and in March 1979, the NIB executive called on its provincial and territorial counterparts to boycott Beaver’s consultations, and requested that all band councils in the country submit resolutions confirming that they would not deal with him either.36
Beaver was not deterred by such a public show of political shunning. Besides, the horse was already out of the barn and across the pasture. Being independently wealthy, Beaver had not waited on funding from the new committee to get started on his consultations. He’d spent much of the summer and fall of 1978 holding more than seventy meetings with Indian people and their organizations, and another seventy with non-Indigenous people involved in socio-economic development. He already had most of his work completed when he was fired.37
Why did the NIB want Beaver out? It might have had something to do with his examination of the flow of funds from IA to Indian people and an evaluation of band governance. He was prying the lid off a box in which its inhabitants had started getting comfortable with the easy way money could flow in the dark when there was no one watching too closely. And Beaver was also looking again at that pesky question about the legitimacy of Indian political organizations to speak for ordinary Indians.
The NIB was ready this time. Chiefs and regional organizations had been chafing for a while about having to work politically through the provincial Indian organizations, and complained their voices were not being heard. While Beaver and Starblanket were still battling it out over Beaver’s control of the development committee, Starblanket called for an “All Chiefs Conference” to be held in April 1979. It would be the first of its kind in Canadian history.38 It was also the first step in NIB becoming the Assembly of First Nations. If the chiefs were the legitimately elected voices of their people, then an organization representing the chiefs could legitimately claim to be “the one and only voice of Indian people in Canada.”
After Beaver was fired, he decided to finish the job he’d taken on and “exit with voice.” He produced a final report called “To have what is one’s own,” generally referred to as the Beaver Report, and submitted it to Starblanket and the newest Indian Affairs minister Jake Epp in October 1979.
Perhaps because Beaver had already taken a deep dive into the messy complexities of the tangled relationship in Alberta between IA and Indian organizations, he took a hard line on how both sides were making a mess of economic development programs. IA bureaucrats wanted control of its programs and how they would be delivered. NIB, aware that its existence depended on IA funding, wanted to demonstrate its independence by fighting IA every step of the way. The result was that, even where they had common goals, they couldn’t get out of their own way.39
For Beaver, the way to untie this Gordian knot was to cut IA and Indian organizations out of the process and to give Indian bands the authority and responsibility of developing their own policies for development specific to their community, with their own definition of what constitutes “development.”40
But first, Beaver outlined the problems on reserves, with IA policy and with Indian organizations.
On reserves: “Indian people have lost control over their lives. They have lost their traditional capacities for healing, caring, learning and providing food and shelter. Instead, increasingly large numbers of Indian people are heavily dependent on welfare; large numbers of children are neglected and relegated to the care of Children’s Aid Societies; and large numbers of adults are dependent on alcohol… The tragedy is that there is no evidence of improvement in this intolerable condition in spite of increasing Government expenditures.”41
On IA policy: “Indian Affairs has taken on exclusive control over the definition and the purported satisfaction of almost all the basic human needs (healing, teaching, provision of food and shelter, burying the dead) to the point that it prevents or inhibits the natural competence of people to provide for themselves.” This radical monopoly of a captive clientele, said Beaver, revealed itself in the attitude of government officials “that Indian people are somehow not competent enough to decide for themselves.”42
On Indian organizations: The NIB legitimately defines itself as a political entity, said Beaver, (although not the legitimate “sole voice” of Indian people) but its constant posturing “practically guarantees the collapse of all joint efforts [and] it has impeded, and in many cases prevented absolutely, the search for innovative and pragmatic solutions to the real problems on reserves.”43
Beaver also provided possible solutions. He had long been pushing for Indian self-government, depending on how ready various bands were to undertake such responsibilities. He called for a transformational change in band government, from being agents of IA to being political organizations, with issues decided for and by Indian people, and endowed with the power and responsibility to do so.
Beaver’s recommendation for Indian Affairs was to get out of the way, stop meddling in everything and limit itself to a supporting role in band development.44 And what of his suggestion for Indian political organizations like the NIB and its provincial and territorial counterparts? Change the associations, he urged, to better reflect the interests of its members, and look to its constituency for funding instead of IA.
Forgotten in all the pushing and pulling between IA, Indian political organizations and band councils were ordinary people on reserves. Even Beaver overlooked them. The focus was on empowering the collective, and nobody was talking about empowering the individuals within the collective or trying to figure out how an impoverished constituency was supposed to find the money to fund political organizations.
Jean Allard’s plan to use his position in the Manitoba government to make “substantial changes to the lives of impoverished Indians on northern reserves” got off to a strong start in 1971, but collapsed under the weight of a government agenda moving in a different direction. In frustration, he quit the NDP party the following year to sit as an Independent,45 leaving him plenty of time to brood about poverty and powerlessness on reserves.
When the dust settled at the end of the 1970s, Harold Cardinal had left Indian politics behind him and become a director of an oil and gas company.46 Jack Beaver put a great deal of distance between himself and the messiness of Indian politics — half a world, in fact. He became a vice-president of Atomic Energy of Canada in 1979, in charge of the construction of a CANDU nuclear power plant in South Korea.47
So much had changed over a decade from the “great thunderclap of ’69” when Cardinal had led the successful challenge against the Trudeau government’s plan to eliminate the Indian Act and the treaties, and to shut down the Indian Affairs department. The Act was still a bone of contention and the treaties still had no constitutional protection. The big change was the flourishing of Indian political organizations funded by the government and the increased politicization of band governance. Life on many reserves was not getting better. It was getting worse.
Harold Cardinal didn’t stay away from Indian politics for long. In 1980, Pierre Trudeau had begun the process of repatriating the constitution, and as soon as it became apparent that there was an opportunity for treaty rights to be enshrined in the constitution, Cardinal returned to the fray. He was elected chief of the Sucker Creek band in 1982, and he added his efforts to constitutional reform as vice-chief for the Western Region of the Assembly of First Nations.48
The plan to include the right to self-government in the constitution was stirring up a lot of controversy in Ottawa between cabinet ministers, Indian Affairs and the National Indian Brotherhood.
The federal government’s objective was to roll out Indian band government legislation in 1982 that would enable bands to begin a more organized move to self-governance after the constitution was repatriated, and it included significant money for economic development. A report from the Indian Affairs department on band governance that same year noted that the Indian Act was an impediment to strengthening band governance:
“The terms of the Act are such that Bands can be little more than administrative arms of the Federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, administering programs which react to poverty on Indian reserves rather than to respond to traditional Indian socio-economic and political standards.”49
There was a very real fear, however, that if the legislation was not handled properly, it might feel like a repeat of the 1969 White Paper, and nobody wanted that. The Standing Committee of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was to address only governance at the band level, and avoid straying into regional and national Indian government discussions, as that would raise constitutional concerns.50 There would be official consultations so that Indian organizations would be sure to feel like they were participating in the constitutional issues affecting them, and the Canadian public would see for themselves that this time Indians were being properly consulted.
This move for visible consultations was happening under an IA department that viewed itself in 1982 as “the official representative of Indian and Inuit peoples,”51 where the department “assumes an active role as policy maker, arbiter of land claims, protector of Indian and Inuit interests and advocates on their behalf vis-á-vis federal and provincial governments.”52 At this point, IA’s client base consisted of the 71 percent of the 317,000 Status or Registered Indians who lived on reserves, and 23,626 Inuit, about half of whom lived above the tree line.53
The sticking point on the tactics of consultations was how to fund NIB to take on most of the workload, while at the same time dancing a two-step around the issue of NIB’s questionable legitimacy to speak for all Indians.
IA had three options in front of it. One was to give the NIB a pile of money so they could get on with the consultations. It would have the benefit of not disrupting the status quo, and would avoid the potentially unwieldy problem of having to deal with a range of different Indian groups with different opinions. Or the NIB could be given the funding on the condition that they had to consult with other Indian groups. Or, the government could fund other groups to speak for themselves, but this would be an open admission that the government knew very well that the NIB did not speak for all Indians.54
The government actually considered bringing in Jack Beaver to sort out the various confusions and entanglements. He was back in Canada, but had his hands full running the commission in charge of supplying electric power across the country, north of the 60th parallel.55 Besides, Beaver’s clash with the NIB might have still been too fresh a wound for that to have worked.
The NIB formalized its shift to becoming a chiefs’ organization in 1985 by adopting a new constitution and changing its name to the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), while retaining the NIB as its corporate entity. The reorganization did not include cutting the umbilical cord with Indian Affairs. The chiefs could have settled the question about AFN/NIB legitimacy by deciding to fund the Assembly themselves or through band member contributions. Of course, it is unlikely that the roughly 600 chiefs could have come up with anywhere near enough money to replace IA funding.
The IA policy of limiting bands to twenty-five-cents per capita for political organizing was long gone, but it was still IA money going to the band governments and still IA calling the shots. Besides, during a critical time in negotiating a self-governance framework, why would the federal government want to reduce its leverage by giving up its “ownership” of all the Indigenous political organizations? Of course, the federal government would have to tread carefully because the AFN/NIB had learned a thing or two about how to play the political game, fight for Aboriginal rights, and influence public opinion through the media.
The finalized Constitution Act of 1982 included section 35, which defined Aboriginal people as Indian, Métis and Inuit, who would collectively fall under the umbrella of Indian Affairs jurisdiction. It also recognized the existence of aboriginal and treaty rights.
However, section 35 nearly didn’t make it into the Act at all after Justice Minister Jean Chrétien stuck his oar in. Following the so-called “meeting of the long knives” in 1981, where the nine anglophone provinces worked out an arrangement, Chrétien had agreed with the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan that Aboriginal treaty rights be dropped from the draft constitution for later discussions. It immediately triggered a national outcry by Indian leaders.
George Manuel, president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (and the first president of the National Indian Brotherhood), organized two trains leaving from Vancouver on November 24, 1980, with one going the north route through Edmonton, the other south through Calgary. The trains met in Winnipeg, and the estimated 1,000 passengers went on to Ottawa, adding more supporters on their way to storm Parliament Hill.56
“Along the way,” recalled George’s son Arthur, “they raised such consciousness amongst Indigenous people that the train was literally stopped in northern parts of Ontario so people could give them moose stew and bannock as Indigenous people started to become aware that the constitutional framework was vitally important to them.”57
The “Constitution Express” train demonstration also got the attention of the Canadian public, and section 35 was put right back into the draft text of the Constitution. The inclusion of section 35 was, however, the equivalent of an empty box. The rights, including self-governance, were yet to be determined. Were rights inherent or were they dispensed by the federal and provincial governments? There were many questions yet to be answered, but Cardinal was not at the table for this debate. Once the Constitution Act passed, he left politics again. Cardinal and his wife packed up their six kids and moved to Saskatoon so Cardinal could go to university. He was going to become a lawyer specializing in treaty issues.
Four First Ministers Conferences on Aboriginal matters, with the Prime Minister, premiers, territorial government leaders, and the four Aboriginal Representative Organizations (AROs), were held from 1983 to 1987 to try to figure out what would go into the section 35 empty box. The AROs included the Assembly of First Nations (formerly the NIB), the Métis National Council (formed in 1983), Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (formerly the Native Council of Canada). The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) was not invited to participate.58 The meetings failed to produce any kind of resolution on how Aboriginal rights were to be defined.
Meanwhile, conditions on reserves continued to worsen, even as more and more money was spent, primarily to address social and economic dysfunction. In 1984, suicide rates, particularly for younger people, were six times the national rate,59 and incarceration rates, particularly for Indigenous men, were seven times the national rate.60
As the poverty and suffering on reserves grew, so did Indian Affairs. A good government department is typically defined as one that is delivering more and more programs, and Jean Chrétien was cheering on his department in what he considered its “glory days.”61 He considered the department’s rapid expansion as a boon to his political reputation and for his popularity with bureaucrats.
“In a period of expansion,” said Chrétien, “ministers are judged by how much money they can spend and how well they can extract money from the system for their projects. Spending was easy, because there was no end to the useful and imaginative initiatives bubbling up in the department.”62
By 1984, the department, which had started out with a budget for delivering Indigenous programs and services of about $131 million in 1967 (with two co-delivery partners), had seen its expenditures soar to $2.42 billion (with eleven co-delivery partners) over just seventeen years.63 Apparently, there was still no end to the “useful and imaginative initiatives,” as Jean Chrétien had called them, bubbling up at IA. Perhaps there’s a better description of this state of affairs. As Indian Affairs grew, so did the poverty and suffering on reserves.