May 9, 1991
Enclosed for your information is a copy of an editorial on the cost
of Canadian Government failure to achieve a satisfactory political
accommodation with Canada's aboriginal people.
re-printed without permission from The Edmonton Journal, Monday,
May 6, 1991
EDITORIAL
THE HIGH COST OF OKA
The price-tag for the confrontation last summer at Oka is finally
being toted up and it runs into the hundreds of millions of
dollars. It should make apparent, on financial as well as human
grounds, the failure of policies and attitudes towards natives that
are based on neglect and conflict.
Public Security Minister Claude Ryan told the Quebec legislature
recently the standoff at Oka between police and Mohawk Indians cost
the province's taxpayers more than $112 million. Most of this,
about $71 million, was in overtime costs for police who set up
round-the-clock surveillance during the 77-day confrontation.
About $20 million more was paid in compensation to nearby residents
whose lives were disrupted.
These costs are separate from the $83 million spent by the Canadian
Armed Forces after Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa requested that
the army come in and deal with the blockade by armed Mohawks. The
costs also don't include the estimated $50,000 a day the Quebec
police say it costs to patrol around the Kahnawake and Akwesasne
reserves even now. Far from resolving the crisis, the police and
army action merely created a lasting animosity. The police patrols
go on.
These figures total more than $200 million and are rising. To put
the cost of the crisis in some sort of context, it is about 10
times what the federal government budgets for land claims
settlements each year. It is more than half the $355 million that
Prime Minister Mulroney grandly promised recently to spend over
five years to speed up the land claims settlements. It is,
needless to say, far more than the land claimed by the Mohawks (and
sought by the town of Oka for a golf course) is worth on the
market.
The daily, demoralizing stupidity of the standoff at Oka was
apparent from the beginning. It represented, for all the world to
see, the failure of political solutions in Canada. It also cost
hundreds of millions of dollars, we now learn, which puts a sort of
price-tag on that failure.
--- FD 1.99c
* Origin: Lubicon News Station: Edmonton, Alberta Canada (89:682/432)
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Terri Kelly - via IMEx node 89:681/1
Terri.Kelly@f432.n682.z89.onebdos.UUCP