reprinted from The Press Independent Sept. 27 1991 p.5
A plan to set aside 12 seats in the House of Commons for native people to
correct their chronic under-representation may be promoting a kind of apartheid
system, says NDP justice critic Ian Waddell.
"I am open to be persuaded. I have to acknowledge the poor representation
in the House since Confederation," Waddell said in an interview with _The
Globe and Mail_. But the MP from British Columbia said he feared the creation
of a fractured political system.
"Where does it end?" Waddell asked. He said the same argument might be used
to push for guaranteed seats for francophones outside Quebec or to make up for
the unequal representation of women in Parliament.
A committee of current and former native MPs has proposed the creation of
a number of Aboriginal Electoral District parliamentary seats corresponding to
the native population in Canada overall.
With native people now making up four per cent of the population of Canada,
the proposal would give them 12 seats in the 295 seat House of Commons.
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While this is not at all apartheid it seems certainly to be an attempt for
the Government of Canada to give token representation to native peoples
instead of recognising their self-governing communities on reserves and
in the North. The proposals to create two native dominated provinces in
the NWT is probably the best possible option. This was what the early
pre-Stalin Soviet government also attempted and what Siberian native
activists now wish to have restored.
Does anyone have any comment about how the system of guaranteed represent-
ation works in New Zealand?
-dave
DGA11@phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk