Political rivals miles apart on aboriginal rights

As a measure of the not- likely- to be-bridged gap between the B. C. Liberals and B. C. Conservatives, I give you the profound difference of opinion between Mary Polak and John Cummins.

Both have roots in the right- of- centre politics of the suburbs south of the Fraser River.

But she is also the Liberal minister of aboriginal relations and reconciliation. He is leader of the Conservatives. And nowhere in the realm of public policy is he less likely to be reconciled with the governing party than on the aboriginal file.

Polak frames the effort to reconcile aboriginal rights and title as a challenge to those of the conservative persuasion, whether large “c” or small.

“For people who very strongly believe in private property rights, it’s rather inconsistent to suggest that for first nations whose land we’ve taken — expropriated, essentially — that we wouldn’t have some obligation to accommodate them,” she told me during an interview on Voice of B. C. on Shaw TV earlier this year.

“I recognize first nations have a different cultural meaning to ‘ ownership.’ Nevertheless, for those of us who are conservatives and believe that there is a great importance on the ownership of land and identity with land, then of course — on principle — we need to consider how it is we would accommodate those first nations whose land we took.

“We didn’t make agreements with them; we didn’t purchase it from them. We didn’t offer them beads or blankets or any such thing. We simply told them we were taking it. As conservative people, we certainly wouldn’t stand for that on our own land.”

Many small- c supporters of the B. C. Liberals would agree and say, further, that she has the courts on her side. Not so the leader of the big- c Conservatives.

“I’d have to say that she doesn’t really understand the issue, or doesn’t appear to understand the issue,” John Cummins replied when I played him a clip of Polak’s views on Voice of B. C. a few weeks after she appeared on the show. “She’s talking as if aboriginal title essentially existed.”

Not in his reading of Delgamuukw, the key case involving title here in B. C.: “The Supreme Court of Canada did not rule on whether title had been extinguished. It sent it back to trial. It set the guidelines to determine whether or not title existed.”

Then there’s his reading of the Marshall case from New Brunswick: “If you look at that decision and apply the findings to B. C., you would be hard- pressed to find any band that could actually claim — legally claim — aboriginal title.”

Then there’s his emperor- has- no-clothes point: “If we, the people of the province, do not have title to the land, then what the dickens are we doing trying to make laws that apply? If natives actually have title to the land, then they should be the ones making all the choices and decisions here.” He also disparaged the Liberal practice of sharing land and resource revenues as interim measures on the road to treaty settlements.

“The resources in B. C. must be used to benefit everybody,” Cummins said. “If we go into an area in this province where there is high unemployment, it doesn’t matter whether it’s on a native Indian reserve or whether it’s in another community. The benefits that government can produce to create employment should be applied equally across the map.”

Nor is he persuaded those measures do all that much for the intended beneficiaries.

“If you look at the vast amount of money that has been spent by federal Indian Affairs and provincial governments, and try to determine whether or not it’s actually helping the folks, you find more often than not it’s not being used effectively.”

Cummins comes to this debate as one of the harshest public critics of the native- only fishery. But on other matters, he and Polak have shared overlapping political turf.

She entered provincial politics after a stint as a right- of- centre trustee on the Surrey school board. When she first sought to run for the Liberals in Langley in 2005, the retiring incumbent, Lynn Stephens, denounced the Polak candidacy as evidence that “we have shifted too far to the right.”

A year earlier, Polak and Cummins, then the MP for Delta, had joined in supporting outsider Belinda Stronach for the federal Conservative leadership against Stephen Harper. Today, Cummins lives in Polak’s Langley riding and she recalls how last time she moved, he offered to bring his pickup truck and help.

So what does she say to her erstwhile ally and his supporters, now that he may run against her in Langley in the next provincial election? “What I say is: We’re a coalition ... if you think that the B. C. Liberals are not enough of a conservative party, then get involved. There are ways to be involved without splitting the vote.”

Familiar pitch, but one that is wearing as thin as the Liberal brand. Plus there’s the inescapable nature of the disagreement between the two of them on one of the central issues of public policy over the last two decades.

She concedes aboriginal title. He says not proven. She says share resources. He sees no need. No merging those positions; the difference is fundamental.