ONE MINISTER GETS BOTH ENERGY AND INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

The biggest change Premier Doug Ford has made to the shape of his cabinet is putting one minister in charge of energy, northern development and mines, and Indigenous Affairs: Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford. Those were three jobs under ex-premier Kathleen Wynne and not small ones. The same person is now responsible for multiple major Progressive Conservative campaign promises: getting the Ring of Fire mineral deposits in Northern Ontario mined, getting electricity prices lowered by 12 per cent, and firing and replacing the board and chief executive of Hydro One. He’ll also be in charge of the provincial government’s dealings with Indigenous people. The Ipperwash Inquiry into the police killing of protester Dudley George in an Indigenous occupation of a provincial park in 1995 concluded that divided attention was dangerous — that Native Affairs, as it then was, should be its own ministry. Technically, it still is: Rickford will have three deputy ministers heading up distinct bureaucracies and officially Indigenous Affairs remains distinct. But the potential conflicts of interest and massive demands on his time are obvious.

“I am disappointed that there is no longer a Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation,” Chief Rose Anne Archibald, just elected as the new leader of the Chiefs of Ontario, said in a written statement Friday. “However, I am heartened by the fact that Greg Rickford will include the portfolio in his other responsibilities.” Rickford, a federal Conservative MP for seven years, did a short stint as Canada’s minister of natural resources. He’s a former nurse who worked in remote northern communities, and he’s a lawyer with an MBA from Université Laval. He’s “by far the best choice to work with our Peoples,” Archibald said, and has important knowledge gleaned from years of personal experience. The Algonquins of Ontario, meanwhile, are in a yearslong negotiation to settle a land claim that encompasses much of Eastern Ontario from North Bay to Hawkesbury, including Ottawa. They and the province have an agreement in principle to transfer 117,500 hectares of Crown land to Algonquin ownership and set up a $300-million development fund, but years of work remain to be done on the details. “I think Mr. Rickford should be congratulated on his new post,” their chief negotiator, Toronto lawyer Robert Potts, said. “I also think the government that Mr. Ford is premier of is going to have, in my opinion, a real interest in the Indigenous matters going on in Ontario.” The negotiations with the Algonquins of Ontario involve numerous energy resources and potential developments and having the same minister responsible could be helpful, Potts said. Ontario in 2018 has different relationships with Indigenous people from the ones it had in 1995, he added. “I think things have changed considerably in the last 20-plus years. And I think the people who are part of the government, Mr. Ford and his team, they are very cognizant of the issues and what’s at stake,” he said.