First Nations a litmus test for Liberals

The tabling of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report is a new beginning, rather than an ending, said the Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the TRC.

Let’s hope he’s right, but native leaders have been let down before.

The Liberal Party has a spotty track record in following through on its promises when it comes to First Nations policy.

That is not to say the Conservatives did better — they just didn’t raise false hope by promising transformational change, as the Liberals did with their Red Book and the 1993 election platform.

Twenty-two years ago, the Chrétien Liberals said they would recognize the inherent right to native self- government in areas ranging from culture to language, from education to health.

They claimed that once in government they would support major reforms to land claims policy; establish a separate aboriginal justice system; introduce significant increases to the education budget; bring in an exemption from the GST; and negotiate new fiscal arrangements.

“The aboriginal population is an overwhelmingly young population. If we do not focus on the potential of these young people, we will face increasing costs to our social security, healthcare and justice systems and we will have lost a generation able and willing to make a contribution,” said the party’s Red Book.

That, of course, is exactly what happened, after the Liberal government introduced a two per cent spending cap on native education. In short, they didn’t get it done.

“Jean Chrétien broke or ignored most of the Liberal promises,” said Russ Diabo, who was vice president of policy with the Liberal Aboriginal People’s Commission at the time. There are high hopes that this time will be different. Preparations for the inquiry into missing and murdered i ndigen - ous women is already underway. There has been a commitment to remove the cap and make significant investments in native education. On Tuesday, Trudeau once again promised to implement all 94 TRC recommendations.

But while the fiscal pressures may not be what they were in the mid-1990s, the Trudeau Liberals are already conceding that containing the deficit to $ 10 billion in each of the next three years is a goal, not a commitment. There is no more talk of a debt- to- GDP ratio of 27 per cent by the end of their mandate.

T he Liberal platform promises incremental funding of $ 275 million for indigenous peoples next year, which will likely prove a frac- tion of what is required to fulfill all those promises (they are fortunate the $ 1 billion the Conservatives committed to native education remains ring- fenced in the fiscal framework).

At the same time, First Nations policy should be the litmus test for the Trudeau government in four years time. Canadians voted for change, and the living conditions of our aboriginal population is the area where change is most overdue. The Prime Minister has staked his reputation on ensuring that another generation of aboriginal Canadians is not lost.

“We need nothing less than a total renewal of the relationship between Canada and indigenous peoples … I give you my word, we will renew and respect that relationship,” he said Tuesday, as he accepted the final report.

But he has a lengthy list of other commitments, not least of which is the one to return the budget to balance in time for the next election.

As my Postmedia colleague Andrew Potter noted in a perceptive article last month, the Harper government considered one of its greatest successes to be its reduction of Ottawa’s capacity to launch national social programs.

By reducing the GST by two points, Harper cost the federal treasury about $ 12 billion a year and reduced spending as a portion of GDP to its lowest level in half a century. The goal, in the words of Grover Norquist, was to shrink government until it was “small enough to drown in a bathtub.”

Transformative change for First Nations is going to require more revenue and, during their years in opposition, the Liberals often mused on the source.

Back in 2007, then- leader Stéphane Dion suggested he might, if elected prime minister, increase the goods and services tax. The idea was repeated by his successor, Michael Ignatieff.

In 2010, John McCallum, the party’s then-finance critic, pushed the idea of raising the GST back to 7 per cent. “It’s an option. All I can say is that it’s consistent with our approach,” McCallum, now immigration minister, said at the time.

Just six months ago, it seemed likely the GST might be cut further — there were rumblings the Conservatives were keen to include another one- point cut in their election platform. That idea was nixed by Stephen Harper because it risked driving the budget back into deficit.

Now, all the signs point to a GST hike. I put the question to Bill Morneau after a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “I’m not at this stage considering any tax issues that we haven’t already put in our campaign platform,” the new finance minister said.

The operative words may well be “at this stage.”

This is a government that has a spending problem but thinks it has a revenue problem. Sooner, rather than later, it is going to have to find another source of cash flow, or the “new era of reconciliation” will turn into another false dawn.