The most powerful aboriginal in Canada
Federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was marked for great things early. Her grandmother gave her an indigenous name, “Puglaas,” which meant “a woman born to noble people” in Kwak’wala.
She was in her early teens when her father Bill Wilson, a First Nations leader, took to a dais to push for amendments that would enshrine aboriginal rights in the Canadian Constitution. Wilson testified before then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau himself.
His two children “for some misguided reason” wanted to be lawyers, Wilson explained to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently.
“Both of whom want to be the prime minister,” he said. “Both of whom, Mr. Prime Minister, are women.”
Trudeau said he’d “stick around until they’re ready,” a response that garnered guf- faws in the room.
That exchange, caught in a video clip, went viral soon after Wilson-Raybould, from the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation in B.C., was named justice minister in November. The appointment made her the most powerful aboriginal woman in Canadian history.
Even before, Wilson-Raybould, 44, could boast a remarkable career.
After earning a law degree from the University of British Columbia, she was called to the bar in 2000. Soon after, she began serving as a provincial crown prosecutor, overseeing one of the country’s most notorious districts, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside — an area known for drug use and poverty, and one that disproportionately attracts First Nations men and women.
She was elected head of the We Wai Kai Nation, where she spearheaded attempts to scrap the Indian Act and introduce a more sustainable model of First Nations governance. In 2009 and 2012, she was also elected a regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations.
In 2013, the Idle No More protests prompted her to run for office under the Liberal banner. Then Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper had offered a milquetoast response to ending the Indian Act after meeting First Nations leaders — even though Wilson- Raybould herself has long championed a potential alternative to the colonial-era act.
“We had the opportunity to sit down with ( Harper) and some of his key ministers and officials,” she said in Montreal soon after the election. “My perspective in sitting there, in what I heard, was that our solutions weren’t being listened to.”
She easily won the riding of Vancouver- Granville, also a hot spot for marijuana legalization, another item on her to-do list.
Given her background and professional achievements, Wilson-Raybould was quickly tapped as a cabinet hopeful.
Her father was worried she would be pigeonholed into becoming minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, telling the CBC he feared she would be relegated to the “asshole of cabinet” and made “useless.”
Wilson-Raybould laughed off her dad’s candour, but she must be relieved. Justice minister is no symbolic portfolio. She will oversee two of the Liberal government’s most contentious and highprofile priorities: the missing and murdered women inquiry, and the plans to legalize marijuana.
She will also be at the forefront of crafting the new federal law on euthanasia, after the legislation was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada in February.
Her performance suggests she has already mastered the political art of deflection and delay. Her answers to questions on these files tend toward the evasive. But then, this government is new, and so is she.
Her reputation as someone with a talent for consultation will undoubtedly be sorely tested in the face of such tricky political and moral files.
WE ACT ALMOST LIKE WE’RE EMBARRASSED
BY IT AND THAT BOTHERS ME GIVEN WHAT
(THE ENERGY) SECTOR HAS DONE FOR
THE ECONOMY.
— PREMIER BRAD WALL