First Nations losing faith in federal Liberals
The hereditary chiefs from four British Columbia First Nations had flown to Canada’s capital Monday for a Tuesday meeting with Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc.
They were going to make a last-minute plea to LeBlanc to spike the massive Pacific Northwest liquefied natural gas project.
But when they arrived, they were told that the meeting with LeBlanc was cancelled. LeBlanc, along with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, were bound for Vancouver where, Tuesday afternoon, they would announce approval for the $36-billion project.
The chiefs couldn’t believe it. They had jetted from the west coast to meet the fisheries minister only to find out after landing that LeBlanc was in Vancouver.
“Isn’t that insulting?” said John Ridsdale, one of those chiefs, in a telephone interview Friday after his return home.
“We just sat there, looking at each other, shell-shocked,” he said, adding that if LeBlanc and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were members of a B.C. First Nation and did something like that, they would have to publicly atone for it.
“If he was in our territory, he would have to throw a shame feast because he’s done that to high chiefs.”
Nine months ago, no leader was calling on the prime minister to give a shame feast. It was quite the opposite. He was being honoured and celebrated by First Nations leaders clearly relieved to have seen the last of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.
In early December, barely a month after being sworn in as prime minister, Trudeau was honoured with a traditional blanket ceremony in front of hundreds of aboriginal leaders at the annual meeting of the Assembly of First Nations.
At the gathering, in a conference centre in Gatineau, Que., Trudeau’s speech was interrupted several times with applause and no line won louder cheers than this one: “Our government will immediately — as part of our first budget — lift the two per cent cap on funding for First Nations programs.”
PERCEPTION OF MISPLACED FAITH IN THE TRUDEAU GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN RISING
That cap on the annual escalator for funds given to band council or education, health, and other programs had been in place for 20 years and its removal was the top priority for AFN leaders.
Trudeau’s first budget came and went. The cap remained in place and is still there. But First Nations leaders remember that, in December, the prime minister had used the word “immediately” in his promise to lift that cap.
“We’re already moving into the second fiscal year of this Liberal government and we still don’t even have the two per cent cap clearly defined,” said Isadore Day, the Ontario regional chief for the AFN.
“There just really is no room for diplomacy around communicating concerns on this one. I think we’re angered that this government has not taken the effort to act responsibly in a fiscal process sense. We need to see results.”
Day was in Ottawa last week for a meeting of the AFN executive. National Chief Perry Bellegarde and his regional chiefs gather once every few months at the AFN’s Ottawa office, near the prime minister’s office in Langevin Block on Parliament Hill.
During the Harper era, the AFN would invite cabinet ministers to attend its executive meetings, but none came. Last week, not just one but four ministers accepted the AFN invitation.
That kind of attention from the Trudeau government continues to earn it goodwill among First Nations leaders.
“I think the verdict on the Trudeau government so far is there is a big vision and a big new relationship that the Trudeau government wanted to establish with First Nations and all the communities,” said Morley Googoo, the AFN regional chief for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
“And I believe we’re still on course toward that. However, rolling it out has come maybe not as quick to some, but it’s such a broad plan, to implement it properly, it wasn’t just going to be overnight that money falls into our laps and things would go perfect.”
But for many indigenous people across the country, examples of what some described as misplaced faith in the Trudeau government are piling up.
For example: A First Nations child in Alberta is in pain every time she eats or talks. She needs $8,000-worth of orthodontic surgery. The Trudeau government wouldn’t pay. A lawsuit followed. Ottawa, so far, has spent $32,000 on lawyers’ fees defending its decision to avoid paying an $8,000 dental bill.
That case goes hand in hand with a series of Canadian Human Rights Tribunal directives that ordered the federal government to take steps to improve child welfare on reserves. Those directives have, so far, been ignored.
Back in B.C., the Pacific Northwest LNG decision is not the only one that has angered First Nations leaders there.
This month, five Nuuchah-nulth First Nations dismissed federal fisheries officials from their territory on Vancouver Island’s West Coast. They had been trying for seven years to negotiate new commercial fishing rights. Seeing that the Trudeau government’s response was no different than its predecessor, one band councillor said neither Trudeau nor government officials would be welcome on Nuu-chahnulth territory until they were ready to negotiate in good faith.
In B.C.’s interior, many First Nations leaders are upset about the federal government’s Site C dam decision. The Trudeau government signed off on a proposal to build a dam on the Peace River in northeast B.C. that would flood the banks of the river for an 83-km-long stretch, much of it in the territory of the West Moberly First Nation. In 2012, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was then the AFN regional chief for B.C., demonstrated against that project, insisting that First Nations must be consulted.
Then she became part of the federal cabinet that approved the decision. Not only that, she has largely refused to answer questions about the project put to her in Parliament or by reporters.
“We were hopeful, being that Jody was appointed to the justice file, ” West Moberly First Nations chief Roland Willson told CBC Radio’s As It Happens recently. “With all the promises that Trudeau made, (saying) there’s no more important or higher relationship than the relationship with the indigenous people of Canada … Site C should have been pulled off the shelf and thrown away.”
At the AFN executive meeting this week, Wilson-Raybould was asked why her government had not, as promised, implemented the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Her office did not respond to requests for an interview for this article.
“Our First Nations communities are remaining optimistic that things are going to change,” Day said. “We have to acknowledge some of the good that has occurred with this government. But we have to separate the issues. Let’s take our rosecoloured glasses off now and look at the reality of what we’re dealing with today.”
Ridsdale, who holds the hereditary title of Chief Na’Moks, a title that has been passed down for generations through the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, thought the Trudeau government would be different.
“We thought, well, here’s a breath of fresh air. We’ve got a brand new prime minister and he’s made promises to the First Nations and to all Canadians but we’ve not seen him make a real decision,” Ridsdale said.
In Ridsdale’s view, the Trudeau government has been more about empty displays of showy symbolism.
“He keeps touting the Haida tattoo he’s got on and he should be ashamed after what he did,” Ridsdale said, speaking of the Site C and Pacific Northwest decisions.
Trudeau had a design by Haida artist Robert Davidson tattooed on his left shoulder in 2013, just before he became Liberal leader. It is an image of Planet Earth inside a Haida raven.
“He should have that removed. He’s not done no favours for the Haida.”