The Toronto Sun's Tuesday April 28th edition contained the
following commentary by Matthew Fisher (page 11):
(Note: on the facing page 10 is a larger than 1/4 page
cartoon about how hard the new provincial budget will be
on the reader's financial situation.)
=========================================================================
Matthew Fisher
FISHER REPORT
_Native_leaders_must_lead_
Canada's native leadership is vigorously promoting the notion that
this country's aboriginal peoples are members of a distinct society
and should officially be accorded such status.
A visitor to any of Canada's Indian, Metis or Inuit communities
might well conclude that these are indeed distinct societies. But
what is it about them that makes them distinct?
For starters, Canada's native peoples have more satellite dishes
per capita than just about any people on this planet.
Having visited dozens of aboriginal communities from British
Columbia to Pond Inlet to Labrador, I also know they have more new
snowmobiles, more new pickup trucks and more new boats than your
average Canadian could ever dream of.
As cashiers at reserve co-ops will tell you, it can also be reasonably
argued that many native children have more pocket money to spend on
potato chips and pop than other Canadians the same age.
Another way that Canada's burgeoning native peoples are distinct is
that they do not have to pay taxes if they choose to live on federally
funded, native-administered reserves.
Unlike other Canadians, natives are special in that they have access
to free housing, free medicine and free education up to and including
post-graduate studies.
They can take advantage of perks such as subsidized transportation,
much lower qualifying standards for the places reserved just for them
in the RCMP and special hunting and fishing privileges which make many
Canadian outdoorsmen green with envy.
The native leadership is itself a distinct society. By flying off to
a never-ending succession of tax-payer-supported meetings, inquires and
commissions, native leaders can collect more frequent flyer points and
perks than almost any other Canadian except, perhaps, a select group of
hockey writers, super salesmen and senior corporate executives.
Viewed through this admittedly narrow prism, what Canada's native
leadership says is certainly true. Canada's aboriginal peoples are a
distinct society.
No one would deny the misery that is life on many of Canada's Indian
reserves. It is to be seen everywhere.
For years now, kindly folks at the UN and less kindly folks from South
Africa have likened Canada's treatment of natives to apartheid and worse.
But even Canada's harshest critics would not claim that this country has
not set aside phenomenal resources to try and deal with some of the many
problems which confront our native people.
At present Canada spends over $5 billion a year on the 600,000 Canadians
who are descended from the country's original inhabitants. Of this money,
well more than half is now handed out as a blank cheque to the native
leadership and to band coucils. But to what end?
Instead of trying to solve some truly horrible problems where they occur,
native leaders, like many mainstream Canadian politicians, prefer going
to meetings.
Their latest gambit is to talk about how 53 native languages must receive
the same kund of help that French does in English Canada and English does
in French Canada. Meanwhile, these visionaries continue to single out
residential schools as the source of much evil. Most of these schools
haven't existed for 10 to 20 years now.
If the best way to a wonderful future is for natives to be officially
singled out as a distinct society and to have self-government, there must
also be some hope or expectation that all the money Canada spends on them
starts to show results.
Rather than continually cooking up schemes to suck even more money from
Canada's empty treasury it is time for the native leadership to show true
leadership.
As they now decide how most of Ottawa's money is to be spent it is not
unreasonable to ask native leaders to stop blaming federal officials and
whites in general for all theier woes. They, too, must accept responsibility
for the situation their people find themselves in.
=============================================================================
I would like to see their mail room flooded with letters condemning this
atrocious piece of jornalism/propaganda. The only good point I could find in
the article was the self-referential ``admittedly narrow prism'' ;-)
The Toronto Sun's Address is:
333 King St. E.,
Toronto ONT.,
M5A 3X5
CANADA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Paul D Evans | Let only good spirits guild you |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------