Unclear agenda for chiefs, PM
Spence asks queen to force viceroy to attend
There is so much to discuss between the federal government and the First Nations that the likeliest outcome of tomorrow’s meeting might be agreeing to meet again, some experts say. Theresa Spence says she’ll skip the meeting unless the governor-general attends.
OTTAWA — With a much-anticipated meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Assembly of First Nations looming, confusion reigns over both the agenda and the invitees.
Harper’s office said Wednesday it wants treaty rights and economic development to be the main topics at Friday’s meeting, but the Assembly of First Nations postponed an announcement of its own agenda points or who would represent it.
The hunger-striking chief whose actions helped prompt the meeting said she would not attend because Canada’s governor general won’t be there. Chief Theresa Spence said she had written to Queen Elizabeth to ask the monarch compel David Johnston to be present.
To add to the confusion, the founders of the grassroots Idle No More movement planned their own, competing meeting Friday, in Saskatchewan, to discuss issues facing aboriginal communities.
Experts on aboriginal affairs said a one-day official meeting in Ottawa won’t be enough to deal even with the government’s suggested topics. Instead, Friday’s meeting will prob- ably result in one thing: agreeing to meet again.
“It’s going to be a photo-op first and foremost,” said William G. Lindsay, director of the Office of Aboriginal Peoples at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. “They’re going to come out with some motherhood and apple-pie statements that they’re going to continue working on these things.”
The most pressing issues facing aboriginal communities are landclaim issues, housing, education and health, said Queen’s University Prof. Kathy Brock, who studies aboriginal self-governance. Friday’s meeting should be used to pick representatives from the AFN and government who would determine a regular schedule of meetings to monitor improvement on each file, she said.
“If they can get something on the table in each one of those areas, it would be a success,” Brock said.
“First Nations and other Canadians alike both realize there’s been enough talk, now we need action,” she said. “And we need those problems addressed seriously.”
Lindsay said Friday’s meeting should discuss a timeline for abolishing the Indian Act, which the auditor general’s office in past reports has said doesn’t meet modern needs on reserves. “This has been talked about for years,” said Lindsay, a status Indian who has lived on and off reserve. “Now is the time. Now is the chance. Now is a key moment in the history of this country and a real legacy project for Prime Minister Harper.”
Katherine Graham, an expert on Crown-First Nations politics from Carleton University, said the agenda should include both sides better defining their respective roles and responsibilities so the current sense of discontent and disconnection, embodied by the Idle No More movement, doesn’t fester.
“I don’t think we’re going to see the navigable waters provisions of the omnibus (budget) bill pulled back, I don’t think we’re going to see announcements of pipelines being stopped. Probably the only concrete step that can be achieved is to set in place some mutual commitment to a process to work on the fundamental relationship,” said Graham, who worked for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which tabled its final report in 1996.
The AFN delayed by a day a news conference about its goals for Friday. National Chief Shawn Atleo said planning was ongoing.
The Friday meeting was largely spurred by Spence’s hunger strike; she has gone without solid food since Dec. 11 and has vowed not to eat until Harper meets with her and other chiefs to review treaty rights.
But Spence confirmed Wednesday she would boycott the meeting unless the governor general attended. Rideau Hall repeated that Johnston would not be at Friday’s get-together because it was a “working meeting with government on public policy issues.” In a statement, Spence said she had “sent a letter to Buckingham Palace and requesting that Queen Elizabeth II send forth her representative which is the Governor General of Canada.”
Spence said Canada was “not acting in good faith,” citing the release earlier this week of a scathing audit of the finances of her community, Attawapiskat, which dated back to 2005, five years before Spence became chief, “and now the Governor General’s absence at this critical meeting.”
“I will not be attending Friday’s meeting with the prime minister, as the Governor General’s attendance is integral when discussing inherent and treaty rights,” Spence said. Police thumb nose at injunctions:
Blatchford, Page A12 What do aboriginals really want?:
Coyne, Page A17