Tory leader visits Valley
Andrew Scheer slams Liberals for failure to improve lives of Indigenous Canadians
Splitting up the federal department responsible for Indigenous affairs is a far cry from the Liberals actually doing something with the file, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said Monday following a speech to supporters at Lang Vineyards in Naramata.
“They do a lot of things that may send signals or are symbols, but when it comes to actual, practical policies that improve the lives of Indigenous Canadians, they haven’t done anything,” he told reporters afterwards.
“Changing titles, changing letterhead doesn’t actually improve services for people.”
As part of a small cabinet shuffle Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was beginning the process of dividing the ministry now known as Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.
The new departments will be the Ministry of Indigenous Services and the Ministry of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, with responsibilities spelled out quite clearly in their titles.
It’s just one of the issues on which Scheer, who was elected Conservative leader in May following an 18-month race to replace Stephen Harper, took aim at the Liberals during a stop on a summer tour that’s meant to introduce him to Canadians ahead of the fall sitting of Parliament.
Scheer spoke without notes for 10 minutes Monday to a supportive crowd of about 75 people, riffing on themes like immigration and fiscal conservatism.
Under their former leader, the Tories lost two seats in the Okanagan, which has traditionally been a Conservative stronghold. Scheer said his listening tour is the first step toward retaking the territory in the 2019 election.
It “gives me an opportunity to hear from people and find out, if people didn’t vote for us last time, what were the reasons and what are some of things that we need to do,” explained Scheer.
He promised he would be “coming back with some exciting policies” that will balance environmental protection and job creation.
“The two can go hand in hand,” Scheer added. “I think the Liberal approach is building a regime to get to no . . . . Instead of trying to incorporate concerns, they just want to deny and reject proposals.”
He also sounded off on the Liberals’ proposed changes to the small-business tax regime, which have been billed by the government as a way to close tax loopholes exploited by the wealthy.
According to Scheer, the proposed changes are merely tax grabs that will kill jobs, and are “angering a lot of people all across the political spectrum.”
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used a mid-mandate mini-shuffle Monday to shore up his cabinet in two areas where his government has fallen far short of his soaring campaign rhetoric: veterans and Indigenous affairs.
In the most dramatic move, Trudeau split Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada into two separate departments and appointed one of his most reliable, competent ministers, Jane Philpott, to one of them — a move billed as ending the “colonial” approach to Indigenous Peoples, with the ultimate goal of encouraging self-government and doing away with the “paternalistic” Indian Act.
He also named a personal friend, rookie MP and former television host Seamus O’Regan, to the veterans affairs post, replacing Kent Hehr, who has been heavily criticized for dragging his feet on the Liberals’ promise to restore lifelong disability pensions for injured ex-soldiers.
But nowhere were Trudeau’s campaign promises more likely to come back to bite him than on the aboriginal file. Upon taking office, he raised sky-high expectations with his assertion that “no relationship is more important to me and to Canada than the one with Indigenous Peoples. It is time for a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous Peoples, based on recognition of rights, respect, cooperation and partnership.”
But since then, his vaunted inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls has gone off the rails before really getting started, the suicide crisis in some First Nations communities continues unabated and the government has been denounced by some Indigenous leaders for its failure to ensure the same level of services for aboriginal children as is available for non-aboriginal children.
With criticism coming from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and many Indigenous leaders starting to lose patience, Trudeau made the dramatic gesture of announcing that he’s splitting up Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.
“There’s a sense that we’ve pushed the creaky old structures around INAC about as far as they can go,” he told a news conference after a swearing-in ceremony that was punctuated with Indigenous prayers and singing.
Philpott leaves the health portfolio, where she showed her mettle negotiating new health-care agreements with the provinces and stickhandling the emotionally charged issue of medical assistance in dying, to take charge of a new department of Indigenous services.
INAC Minister Carolyn Bennett becomes minister of CrownIndigenous relations and northern affairs, with a new focus on accelerating self-government and establishing the promised nation-to-nation relationship.
The shuffle was prompted by Judy Foote’s resignation last week as minister of public services and procurement. O’Regan’s appointment ensures Newfoundland and Labrador’s continued representation at the cabinet table and puts a professional communicator in charge of the problem-plagued veterans’ file.
Another rookie backbencher, New Brunswick’s Ginette Pettipas Taylor, takes over the health portfolio.
Hehr, who was paralysed in a drive-by shooting when he was just 21, replaces Carla Qualtrough as minister of sport and persons with disabilities while Qualtrough was promoted to fill the vacancy left by Foote in public services.