12

TESTING A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA

 

Leona Freed was back in Ottawa in November 1999 for the second reading of Bill C-222, the First Nations Ombudsman Act. Reform MP Myron Thompson delivered his pitch to fellow parliamentarians, but the debate Freed was listening to on the floor of the House of Commons was not encouraging.

The Liberal perspective was encapsulated in the argument of MP Steve Mahoney, who said it was up to First Nations to ask for an ombudsman if they wanted one, not the opposition Reform Party. Further, the solution to any problems was the pursuit of self-governance, as led by the Indian Affairs minister, which would bring self-esteem and democracy to reserves.1

The Bloc Québecois immediately made it clear that it would vote against the bill because there were no problems that required an ombudsman; even suggesting that an ombudsman was needed was deemed a form of paternalism.2

Certainly Indian Affairs and politicians looking for something positive to say about Canada’s reserves could point to successful bands like the Osoyoos First Nation in British Columbia, with its winery and eighteen-hole golf course in the Okanagan valley, or the new Casino Rama on the Rama First Nation near Orillia, Ontario, or the thriving businesses in Saskatchewan’s Lac La Ronge First Nation selling mushrooms and wild rice to international markets. Unfortunately, such success stories were notable for being the exceptions, not the rule.

Some federal MPs might have decided that there weren’t any real problems on reserves, but Freed knew differently. She and the Accountability Coalition had collected the stories they heard from band members about corruption and election fraud on their reserves, and put it together in a 200-page report that she had delivered to the Senate.

“I told them the elections were rigged,” Freed told a New York Times reporter. “The chiefs pay for the voting. They bribe the people. They intimidate the people. The same crooks get in, year in, year out… The chiefs were so mad.”3

The chiefs were very angry with Freed and the other noisy women who persisted. Even with international publicity about allegations of band corruption and the number of investigations initiated by the RCMP, politicians in Ottawa seemed almost eager for any excuse to justify doing nothing to address the problems head on. The Assembly of First Nations, representing the chiefs, continued to dismiss complaints by the First Nations Accountability Coalition, accusing them of fuelling anti-Indian sentiment. A spokesperson for the AFN said they wanted the Coalition to “refrain from using innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations, and stop wallowing in a negative attitude.”4

Freed, in turn, dismissed the AFN as too busy going after more money to worry about the lives of ordinary Indians, and suggested that perhaps chiefs were unnecessary, too.

“We need to eliminate welfare for all status Indians. We’ve got to get out from under the chiefs’ thumbs. Welfare dollars are being used to control us. The ones fighting us now are not just government, but our own aboriginal leaders. I’m going to start saying that we don’t need chiefs.”5

The following spring in April 2000, the Ombudsman bill was up for the third and final reading, after which MPs would be voting. It wasn’t often that a private member’s bill made it to the third reading, and Freed was back in Ottawa for the vote.

Myron Thompson acknowledged the supporters of the Ombudsman bill who were watching proceedings from the Visitors’ Gallery, and Freed specifically.

“I would like to salute Leona Freed and her colleagues with the First Nations Accountability Coalition. In one year this group has brought aboriginal accountability to the forefront and has worked tirelessly to correct this inequity. Leona held meetings for grassroots people last summer. The purpose was to hear concerns about living conditions on and off reserve. The grievances were many and were extensively documented. Many had proof of mismanagement of tax dollars, illegal and corrupt activities and electoral irregularities, just to name a few.

“In the words of Leona, unless the ‘grassroots natives’ concerns are addressed and thoroughly investigated, a new relationship with band members cannot exist and self-government will not succeed. Leona, I salute you.”6

She received a standing ovation. It was the high point of a tense day. Passing the bill was not going to be a miracle cure for what ailed Indian communities, but it would mean that the politicians — the people who had the power to change laws and policies affecting Indian lives — were actually listening to what ordinary First Nations people had to say.

During the substantial debate that followed that afternoon, the Bloc again opposed the bill, and the Liberals reiterated the party’s belief “that First Nations can be trusted, that they are responsible and that they deserve to run their own lives. Our preference is for partnerships not paternalism, and for co-operation not control.”7

Thompson then made a final impassioned plea for members to pass the bill that evening.

“I encourage honourable members to support these people and I encourage them to remember that the basis of all of this is a plea for accountability. A no vote means no to accountability.”8

The vote split along party lines, with the Canadian Alliance (Reform) voting for it, and the Liberals and Bloc voting against it. The bill went down to defeat. For Freed and the other ordinary Indians who had fought so hard to be heard, it was a crushing disappointment.

When the Liberal government insisted that “they” were responsible and “they” deserved to run their own lives, who were the “they” they were talking about? The people whose pleas for help that had just been dismissed? When the Liberals said they preferred partnerships, who were the partners they wanted to work with? The answer is easy. “They” were the same chiefs and councils the Coalition had been accusing of corruption. And the partners were the Aboriginal Representative Organizations, as always.

Despite the retribution that the women like Leona Freed had endured by standing up to Aboriginal leaders, despite the demonstrations, marches and RCMP investigations, and despite the clear evidence that there were angry, upset First Nations people across the country, those with power apparently could hear only the soothing reassurances from Indian Affairs and its chosen AROs. Steps were being taken, they said, to address accountability issues, audit procedures were improving, and besides, the complaints were just a few problems blown out of proportion. There was no need for an ombudsman.

Why did a large majority of parliamentarians vote down the ombudsman bill? Politicians are not particularly brave people. They are motivated by the primary objective of getting elected, and the secondary objective of staying elected. If a political stance threatens those objectives, why would they risk their finite amount of political capital?

Politicians were not deaf or blind to the deluge of media stories about band corruption and election fraud playing out across the country, whether on CBC, in The Globe and Mail, the New York Times, or on local talk radio. Their political calculations, however, would measure the disadvantages of going up against the Assembly of First Nations publicly and against Indian Affairs senior bureaucrats behind the scenes.

The AFN had learned to play political hardball, and its leaders knew that most non-Indigenous Canadians knew little of what was going on in Indigenous politics, except what they, too, might hear in the media. The general public, confused about contentious fights over land claims, Indigenous rights and other issues they didn’t understand, would just stop listening or throw up their hands in disgust, and move on to issues that they could understand.

Politicians were no different. If anything, they were justifiably afraid of the AFN. They knew that if the AFN went after them, they would have no means of defending themselves that the public would understand. Politicians also had good reason to be afraid of Indian Affairs. The department seemed immune to criticism, sloughing off efforts by minister after minister to “fix” the department.

The Reform Party was always an unlikely ally of angry First Nations women, but the crusade by Freed and the Accountability Coalition fit with the party’s strong belief in government accountability for how taxpayers’ dollars are spent. And the party hadn’t been around Ottawa long enough to learn the hard lesson about going up against the immutability of Indian Affairs.

Politicians should never be mistaken for Don Quixote; if an issue does not serve the primary or secondary objective, what would be the point of tilting at windmills?

 

Jean Allard was a politician, but he was not immune to playing a Métis Don Quixote. He was still promoting the idea of individual empowerment through a modernized annuity in the fall of 1999, and still working on the manuscript for “Big Bear’s Treaty.” But he’d run out of money to finish it. He decided to send the nearly finished draft, typos and all, to selected politicians and other public figures to see how people would react to his idea of increasing annuities from $5 to $5,000 based on increased land values. He wanted to get a discussion going, and maybe shake a few dollars loose to finish the book. The response to the draft of the book came quickly.

Allan Blakeney, the former NDP premier who had been a force in Saskatchewan since serving in Tommy Douglas’s cabinet in 1960, promptly wrote back in November 1999 that he considered the book to be a solid piece of work.

“The idea of paying out a substantially greater amount as treaty money going directly to individual registered Indians with a reduction of the amount that goes to bands is an ingenious idea.”9

He added, “It is important that after the individual treaty payments are made, there be enough money left to fund health services, education services, and welfare services, but I suspect that there would be a substantial amount left after treaty payments are made, even if the payments are of the general level that you have suggested.”10

Blakeney’s main concern was about paying an increased annuity to off-reserve Indians, since he figured the federal government would resist the idea of ongoing substantial payments at a time when it was clear the government wished to reduce its financial commitment to Aboriginal people.

Frank Price had lots to say about Allard’s book. Price had served as a business adviser to the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood when Dave Courchene was president, and later an adviser to Indian Affairs regional directors.

“The proposed change in the delivery of treaty money, as an alternative method of distributing funds in meeting treaty obligations and those services that have developed beyond the treaties, is in my opinion an exciting departure from the autocratic control currently vested in Band Councils.

“The opportunity to require that councils secure the support, financially as well as politically, of those they would hope to represent would bring true accountability for the use of those funds. Democracy in the truest sense would be possible.”11

Price liked the idea of each family unit having a monthly income, which would reduce the need for welfare and other services directed at addressing poverty. He did, however, wonder about the learning curve needed to figure out how to handle income after so many years of welfare dependency. It might not go well, and it might result in stories of mismanagement and waste.

But, he said, “One of the rights that we all enjoy in a free society is the right to be wrong as well as to be right. There is no perfect solution.”12

Tom Flanagan, an Alberta professor who has been a long-time advocate of individual Aboriginal rights (as opposed to collective rights), shared his two-cents’ worth with Allard.

“Your portrait of the reserve system is devastating. It makes me wonder how long we will go on pumping more money into such a rotten system, thereby making it worse rather than better.”13

Bob Connelly, who had served in many positions in Indian Affairs, including as Manitoba regional director and Director of Specific Claims, made his opinion quite clear. He offered Allard his congratulations and declared “Big Bear’s Treaty” “the best diagnosis ever done of Indian Affairs. I feel it has supplanted Jack Beaver’s report in that regard.”14

Supplanting Beaver’s report from 1979 when he “exited with voice” was praise indeed.

“Until very recently,” said Connelly, “the main thrust of federal policy was to break up the extended family, the clan structure, to detribalize and assimilate Indian populations… The Indian people’s refusal to be assimilated is a triumph of the human spirit; it is to be celebrated, not deplored.”15

Gordon Gibson had his own particular interest in Indigenous politics. He had served for five years as an assistant to Northern Affairs minister Arthur Laing, who was Jean Chrétien’s immediate predecessor as minister of Indian Affairs. Gibson then became s a special assistant to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during the brouhaha over the 1969 White Paper. He had also sat as a Liberal in the British Columbia legislature in the 1970s, and occasionally appeared on the CBC-TV At Issue panel on The National.

Gibson and Allard met in Vancouver in the summer of 1999, and they talked about the idea of modernizing treaty annuities.

“Because he could give his ideas the credibility that came from personal experience,” Gibson said of Allard, “I expressed hope that he would write a book. He said he had already started, and I got a look at the first draft a few months later.”16

Gibson liked Allard’s manuscript. “He is a clear and original thinker, and he has personally lived with the people and events that have shaped the past fifty years of Indian policy. A Métis himself, he has been with, but not of, the Indian Industry as it has evolved. He has been close enough to know where the bodies are buried, but has avoided personal burial in the stultifying conventional ideas dominating Indian affairs.”17

It was exactly the kind of response Allard had hoped for. The next challenge was to finish the manuscript and get the book out into the public domain. That didn’t happen quite as planned. After about a year with no further progress, Gibson had a proposal.

Gibson was a Senior Fellow in Canadian Studies at the right-wing Fraser Institute, and he knew John Richards, a professor of public policy at Simon Fraser University and the co-editor of the policy journal Inroads. Gibson thought it important that Allard’s treaty annuity idea get out into the public domain; he was worrying that it might not get finished and published. Gibson and Richards proposed to Allard that an extensive excerpt of the manuscript be published in the Inroads journal. That would ensure the idea was out there where others could develop it. Or challenge it, as the case may be. The idea of modernized annuities was a debate worth having.

Allard agreed. Gibson and Richards polished and edited excerpts from “Big Bear’s Treaty” and devoted sixty pages of the May 2002 Inroads to it. Sure, it might be read only by policy wonks and academics, but it was officially on the record, and that was a win.

In an op-ed piece that was published in The Globe and Mail in July 2002, Allard spoke to a wider audience:

“Big Bear fought for a meaningful annual payment of ‘treaty money’ — payable to all individual Indians. Individual treaty money is the only treaty benefit that has, over the past 130 years, not been modernized. It was $5 annually in 1871; it remains $5 today.”18

For many Canadians, this might well have been the first time that they heard about treaty annuities, what they were intended for, and the absurdity of still paying out the same amount of money as when the treaties were signed.

“The principle is simple,” explained Allard. “Paying significant treaty money directly to individual Indians empowers individual Indians. And it honours Canada’s obligations under the treaties.”19

The Winnipeg Sun followed that up with an editorial titled “A legacy for Jean,” but it was a legacy for the prime minister, not Allard. The editorialists suggested that Jean Chrétien should return to his political roots from the time he was Indian Affairs minister — not to produce another political disaster like the White Paper — but to act on Allard’s idea of modernized annuities.

“So Allard says if Chrétien is searching for his legacy, he should update the treaty money and put it in the hands of each individual Indian… This is the kind of idea that Chrétien could quickly adopt to bring his political career full circle and end the cycle of misery and poverty amongst natives.”20

But that obviously wasn’t going to happen, not if Liberal policy on First Nations issues was that there weren’t any real problems, and if there were, they would be solved by self-government.