indigenous

Saturday December 5, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday December 5, 2020

Justin Trudeau won’t escape his election promise to lift water-boil advisories in First Nation communities

October 21, 2016

Five years after their election promise to lift the water-boil advisories in every First Nation community by March 2021, the federal Liberals have officially admitted they won’t meet that goal.

It was an embarrassing concession reluctantly made this week after much media prodding. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau deserves the barrage of criticism coming his way from Indigenous leaders who are disheartened and disappointed by the news.

It is unacceptable that any resident of any First Nations community must wait a day longer for what almost all Canadians routinely take for granted: being able to fill a glass with safe, clean water when they turn on a tap in their home. 

Trudeau has previously taken heat for breaking campaign promises to overhaul the electoral system and balance the budget, He should take his licks for failing to keep this pledge, too. 

February 20, 2020

But for all that, thank goodness he made it. The federal Liberals have, in fact, made significant progress in ensuring Indigenous communities have a safe supply of water, one of life’s essentials not only for drinking but bathing and cooking. 

When they came to power in 2015, there were no fewer than 105 long-term water-boil advisories in effect across Canada. Their efforts resulted in 97 of those advisories being lifted. The Liberals remain committed to getting the job done, too, and appropriately announced $1.5 billion in this week’s mini-budget to make that happen.

Yet, as they made advances in some First Nations communities, new problems and new advisories appeared in others. That’s why today, 59 long-term water-boil advisories remain in effect. That’s why there will be at least another dozen water-boil advisories in effect going into next year, the year everything was supposed to be fixed. 

July 23, 2019

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said this week the pandemic is partly responsible for these delays, which seems a reasonable explanation — to a point. But Miller also said the Liberals didn’t initially understand the “state of decay” in infrastructure in many First Nations communities.

So is what we’re left with a case where non-Indigenous politicians see a half-full glass on the safe-water front while Indigenous people see one that’s half-empty? Perhaps it’s both. 

First Nations communities have every right to be angry that another promise to them has been broken. The Neskantaga First Nation in Northwestern Ontario, for instance, has been living with a drinking-water advisory for 25 years and was evacuated in late October after an oil sheen was discovered on its reservoir. Today, more than 250 band members are living in hotels in Thunder Bay 400 kilometres away

June 3, 2015

Can anyone seriously imagine a non-Indigenous community, for instance in southern Ontario, going more than a few days with a contaminated municipal water supply? Anyone who remembers the Walkerton, Ont., water crisis of 2000 will know how quickly authorities responded to a deadly E. coli outbreak in the town’s water supply, and how that led to more stringent water standards across the entire province.

Despite all this, the current federal government can still be credited for doing far more than its predecessors — Liberal as well as Conservative — and going a long way to ending an intolerable situation that should have been remedied decades ago.

No, the Liberals won’t meet the deadline of their campaign promise. But they should eventually keep the rest of the pledge to make safe First Nations water systems. That promise, even if critics say it has been broken, spurred necessary action and held the Liberals accountable in a way previous governments were not. It was a promise worth making as well as keeping. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday February 20, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 20, 2020

Force won’t fix Canada’s blockade problem — but that won’t let Trudeau off the hook

The most evocative image coming out of this week’s protests against the Coastal GasLink pipeline was that of a Canadian flag hanging upside-down outside the provincial legislature in Victoria, with the words “Reconciliation is dead” scrawled across it.

February 13, 2020

Because it’s 2020, that phrase was a hashtag, too.

Between the declaration of reconciliation’s demise and competing claims that Canada has fallen into “chaos” or “mob” rule, there is a yawning vacuum that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might need to fill — to make the case again for a reconciliation project he embraced of his own volition.

There is more here than can be conveyed in a sound bite or tweet.

“Contemporary events have two-hundred-year-old tails,” Harry Swain, a former deputy minister with Indian and Northern Affairs (as the department was then known), wrote a decade ago in his book Oka: A Political Crisis and Its Legacy.

July 14, 2005

“Flashpoints like Oka occur when Indian people believe that governments have violated treaties or their own laws, when a long struggle to right the wrong has been unavailing, and when a government crystallizes matters by licensing a further insult or alienation,” he added. “Land is always at the heart of the broken promises.”

On those terms, historians might file the Wet’suwet’en protests against the Coastal Gas Link project alongside events like Oka, Ipperwash, Caledonia and Gustafsen Lake.

But those examples also point to the great danger involved in attempting to resolve such disputes with force. In Oka and Ipperwash, people died. Wherever there is violence, there is lasting trauma. And the last thing the relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples needs now is more trauma.

September 1, 2006

Even if calls for Trudeau to immediately intervene seem either to understate the difficulty of doing so, or to promote a potentially dangerous course of action (one commentator this week invoked Margaret Thatcher’s handling of the miners strike in the United Kingdom, a violent year-long conflict, as a laudable example of leadership), Trudeau’s government can’t be absolved of its duty to safely end this standoff as quickly as possible.

On Friday, Trudeau said that the government’s focus was on “dialogue” and “constructive outcomes.” A day earlier, his government announced that Carolyn Bennett, the minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, was being dispatched to British Columbia, while Marc Miller, the minister of Indigenous services, will get involved in trying to resolve the blockade in Ontario.

But in the post-conflict analysis, there will be questions about whether the Liberals should have intervened directly sooner. (CBC) 

 

Thursday February 13, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 13, 2020

Rule of law must prevail in gas pipeline dispute

A common misconception about the blockades and protests disrupting business and travel across Canada this week is that they are taking place with the support of the majority of Indigenous people. Obviously, some people — Indigenous and non-Indigenous — support Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in their efforts to stop the construction of the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline.

February 6, 2020

But to suggest that the chiefs, or their supporters across the country, speak on behalf of Indigenous people in general is misguided.

Consider the situation among members of the Witset First Nation in the area of the pipeline.

All 20 elected band councils along the pipeline route have signed benefit agreements with Coastal GasLink and support the pipeline. Some of the communities held referendums that showed majority support. But, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who oppose the pipeline say those councils were established by the Indian Act and only have authority over reserve lands.

CBC’s “As It Happens” interviewed Wet’suwet’en resident Bonnie George who said, in part: “There’s quite a bit of support for this project. But people are afraid to speak up because, in the past few years, people that (have) spoken up were either ostracized … ridiculed, bullied, harassed, threatened, and being called a traitor — a sellout … People are afraid to speak up.”

April 23, 2006

Another resident, Philip Tait, told Global News: “Right now, this is probably got to be one of the biggest job creations in the province here, and we want to be part of it,” he said. “The hereditary chiefs’ office, they don’t speak for the whole clan.”

And yet, here we are. The chiefs’ protest has become a cause celebre across the country, with supporters blockading roads and railways, disrupting service. Some of the consequences are merely inconveniences, but others have serious economic impact. The lack of propane delivery, for example, threatens agricultural businesses that rely on it to heat barns during winter.

The pipeline project has met all environmental requirements. It has all the requisite approvals. It has the official support of Indigenous communities along the route.

And it has the potential to serve an important purpose, aside from the obvious one that it moves liquid natural gas from point A (Dawson Creek) to Point B (Kitimat).

Pipeline cartoons

The natural gas moved through the pipeline will end up at a huge complex in Kitimat. From there, LNG will be moved by ship to markets around the world. Some of those markets will include large nations like China and India that still produce a great deal of their needed energy by burning coal. LNG, while not perfect, is much less harmful to the environment as coal energy. So the LNG that comes from the $6-billion, 670-kilometre Coastal GasLink pipeline has the potential to make a significant impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.

But for that to work, the gas has to get from its source to market. And the best, safest, way to do that is by pipeline.

Given that construction has all official approvals to proceed, governments were left with little choice but to issue injunctions demanding protesters leave the area. When they refused, RCMP removed and arrested some. RCMP were operating under the rule of law, just as police in other jurisdictions, including Ontario, are doing by following legal direction to remove blockades on rail lines, ports and roadways.

Negotiations with the chiefs are continuing, as they should. But the rule of law must be observed, across Canada. That’s of paramount national importance. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday February 6, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 6, 2020

One step forward, another one back: What the Trans Mountain ruling means for Trudeau

In sports, you win some and you lose some. In politics, it’s possible to win and lose at the same time.

Pipeline cartoons

Take, for example, yesterday’s Federal Court of Appeal ruling on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

The court ruled unanimously that the federal government had fulfilled its duty to consult meaningfully with a handful of First Nations opposed to the project, clearing a major hurdle in the drawn-out battle to build a second line to carry bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to Burnaby on the B.C. coast.

The federal and Alberta governments immediately claimed victory, putting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Jason Kenney on the same side for once.

“This project is in the public interest,” federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan told reporters shortly after the decision was released.

“We also know that this is a project that can deliver significant economic benefit to Alberta, to Canadians across the country,” added Finance Minister Bill Morneau. “And more importantly, we are going to put that economic benefit back into the environment.”

Their sense of relief was palpable. Ottawa spent around $4.5 billion in 2018 to buy TMX — a last-ditch effort to ensure the pipeline would be built after its owner, Kinder Morgan, announced plans to step away.

That price, hefty as it is, doesn’t include construction costs or any overruns the project has incurred because of the various stop-work orders that have put construction well behind schedule.

But with the victory comes a major setback in relations with those Indigenous groups who continue to oppose the $7.4-billion project, and will no doubt seek to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“Reconciliation stopped today,” said Rueben George, of the Tsleil-Waututh, his voice cracking with emotion.

The band was one of four Indigenous groups behind the court challenge. It argued that the second, court-ordered round of consultations also failed to respond adequately to their concerns about the impact the project would have on marine life.

“This government is incapable of making sound decisions for our future generations,” George said. “So we will — even for their children — we will take those steps to make sure Canada stays the way it is.” (CBC)

 

 

Tuesday July 23, 2019

Tuesday July 23, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday July 23, 2019

Silent protest draws attention to Attawapiskat at Trudeau talk

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to the Canadian Teachers’ Federation at its annual general meeting in Ottawa on Thursday, a row of teachers silently held up letters spelling “Attawapiskat.”

April 2, 2019

The demonstration comes just days after the local band council declared a state of emergency in the Indigenous community amid issues with water quality.

The group was sitting at the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario table.

The state of emergency was declared on July 9 in the northern Ontario First Nations community after potentially harmful levels of byproducts from a water disinfection process were found in its drinking water. Residents were told to limit their exposure to the water and avoid showering and washing food with tap water.

April 13, 2016

While Trudeau did not directly acknowledge the protesters, he did touch on boil water advisories during the discussion.

“We’ve done a lot,” Trudeau said on the subject of reconciliation. “We’ve eliminated close to 85 different boil-water advisories, [and] are on track to eliminate all of them on time by 2021.”

He acknowledged, however, that there is more to do.

“It’s very tempting in politics to focus on the negative, and certainly I’m more than willing to admit that like any good teacher I’ve made mistakes and I’ve learned a lot through this process, but we’re on a path of making Canada better for everyone,” said Trudeau.

June 3, 2015

His government came under fire when, on July 4 – just days before the state of emergency was declared in Attawapiskat – Environment Minister Catherine McKenna tweeted about Ottawa’s high-quality tap water.

“There’s a lot to love about Ottawa — including our tap water! Did you know it’s rated among the best in the world?” she wrote on Twitter.

The tweet prompted a swift response on social media, including a tweet from Attawapiskat resident Adrian Sutherland.

“Must be nice to have clean drinking water – thousands of indigenous people don’t even have clean water to bathe in never-mind drink. I don’t think is something to be proud of!” he wrote.

The government says it is working to bring the levels of the contaminant down in the community’s water.

“The community is concerned, and when the community is concerned we are concerned too,” said Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan in an interview with CTV News Channel on Wednesday.

“We’re working with the community right now.”

The state of emergency, in the meantime, is ongoing. (CTV)