Month: January 2013

Job one for the next Liberal leader: Call back the legislature, says Hudak

The last time the Ontario legislature was in session,the Leader of the Official Opposition sat across the aisle from Dalton McGuinty. But when opposition leader Tim Hudak next takes his seat at Queen’s Park, his sparring partner could be Sandra Pupatello or Kathleen Wynne or Gerard Kennedy (the best bets according to this look at the how delegate selection might be stacking up) Continue reading Job one for the next Liberal leader: Call back the legislature, says Hudak

Chief Theresa Spence: "controversial leaked audit no more than a distraction"

Earlier today, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development published, on its Web site, an audit into the finances of the Attawapiskat First Nation. The audit covers the period from 2005-2011. Theresa Spence was the deputy chief from 2007 until 2010 and since 2010 has been the band’s chief.

In a letter, dated August 28, sent to Chief Spence and which forms part of the audit, auditors Deloitte Touche said:

“…we were unable to conclude whether the claimed expenditures were in accordance with the terms and conditions of the funding agreements between Attawapiskat First Nation and AANDC and Health Canada, respectively. The lack of financial management controls to support compliance with the terms and conditions of the agreements is inconsistent with the requirements of the funding agreements with the Government of Canada. We were unable to determine if the funds were spent for their intended purpose.

There is no evidence of due diligence in the use of public funds, including the use of funds for housing.”

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan did not take questions from reporters today but issued this statement through a spokesperson: “The independent audit from Deloitte and Touche LLP speaks for itself, and we accept its conclusions and recommendations.”

Chief Spence, like Duncan, did not take questions from reporters today but, a few minutes ago, issued this statement:

For immediate release:
January 7, 2013, Victoria Island, traditional territory of the Algonquian Peoples….a controversial leaked audit (which was completed last September), is no more than a distraction of the true issue and to discredit Chief Spence who Continue reading Chief Theresa Spence: "controversial leaked audit no more than a distraction"

Letter from Attawapiskat: "We are in full support for an forensic audit"

Here’s some correspondence, obtained last year through a Access to Information request to the federal department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, that speaks to at least some dissent in Attawapiskat when it comes to the leadership of Chief Theresa Spence and her band council. Particularly relevent given the results of the audit the government released today:

Attawapiskat elders write to Department urging audit

Note: If you were the author of this letter and would like to chat more about this, feel free to call me collect!

Chief Atleo has a political problem on his hands

On Thursday, the Assembly of First Nations, which purports to be the umbrella organization representing more than 600 First Nations bands across the country, issued a press release announcing that it and its National Chief Shawn Atleo were convening a meeting of First Nations (FN) leaders on Jan. 24 and that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor General David Johnston had been invited.

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence, engaged in her own protest for such a meeting, rejected the Jan. 24 date, saying she needed a meeting to happen sooner than that, given that her protest consists of having consumed nothing but fish broth, tea and water since Dec. 11.

Less than 24 hours after the AFN issued their call for a meeting on Jan. 24, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced he would be prepared to meet with a delegation chosen by the AFN next week, on Friday, Jan. 11.

More than four hours after that announcement, the AFN issued a statement “welcoming” this news. But while Chief Spence took questions from reporters through a spokesperson, neither Chief Atleo nor any AFN spokesperson was made available to answer questions. There was no mention in the release which FN leaders would attend the meeting. Nor was there any mention of that status of the Jan. 24 meeting.

Chief Spence, though, told reporters the AFN would, in fact, include her in that delegation that is to meet Harper next week. (Harper told reporters in Oakville, Ont. today that the AFN can designate anyone it wants to meet with him and Aborginal Affairs Minister John Duncan) Spence also said she’ll continue her protest if next week’s meeting doesn’t produce an outcome she finds satisfactory.

Chief Spence is the elected leader of about 1,500 people from one community.

Chief Atleo was voted in by the 600 or so chiefs who represent not only Attawapiskat but First Nations communities across the country. He just won re-election last summer.

Who should Harper or Canada be negotiating with? Should Spence be calling the shots or Atleo?

Before you answer: Consider the tweets that have been coming forth from the account of Pam Palmater. Palmater tried to unseat Atleo as National Chief last summer with a campaign that put forward the idea that First Nations people needed to be much more militant. And while the Idle No More movement does not take direction from Palmater and other more militant FN leaders, it is clearly inspired by her call to action.

Here’s Palmater last June as she was setting up to try to defeat Atleo and change the AFN’s tone:

“The direction that the AFN is following, they seem to be following the path that the Conservatives have laid out,. To me it’s a very destructive path. And it looks like some people don’t even realize how destructive it is.”

The file, from Canadian Press, went on to say:

Palmater said [Atleo] has co-operated too closely with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and has little to show for it. She argues repeatedly on her blog that his leadership has taken First Nations down the path of assimilation.

“Being extra nice to the Conservatives isn’t actually advancing our interests,” she said in the interview, pointing to funding cuts. “We’re making things worse.”

So, as word of this meeting between Harper and a delegation of leaders picked by the AFN emerged today — and as some Northern Ontario First Nations leaders told reporters in the National Press Theatre that all First Nations people were united at this point, here’s some excerpts from Palmater’s Twitter feed (this was current at 6 pm ET Friday, she had not tweeted or re-tweeted anything in the prior 24 hours that  could remotely be described as supportive of National Chief Atleo or the AFN):

 No mention of Atleo (or Chief Spence, for that matter). Do click through for Twitter bios of this “dream team”.  (Should you do so, you will discover that one is a reporter for CBC’s The National and that reporter gave a “+1” to this post — an indication that he approves of and endorses the suggestion.)

Here’s University of Victoria political science professor Gerald Taiaiake Alfred:

  

 

  

Another academic, Niigaanwewidam Sinclair is a professor at the University of Manitoba:

Tanya Kappo’s Twitter bio says she is a Treaty 8 Cree woman from Edmonton:


On top of all that, here’s a press release from Chief Fox of the Onion Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan saying, basically, that Chief Atleo and the AFN do not speak for his band.

I believe the AFN chiefs — not only Atleo but also his executive committee — have their own political problem on their hands. If Canada negotiates with First Nations leaders, which are the First Nations leaders that can claim to be the legitimate leaders of their peoples? Is it a leader who wins a majority of votes from a handful of chiefs? From one chief who wins a majority of votes from one in his or her community? Or from those with more Twitter followers than their opponents?

Harper has his majority government and the full power of the Canadian state on his side at least until 2015.

 

Want to be a journalist? You'll make more walking dogs

It’s tougher, I would argue, for those trying to make a career as a journalist in the U.S. than it has been in Canada. Why, you ask? Well, newspapers, for one thing, rely heavily on ads from the real estate sector and from financial institutions. Compared to the U.S. over the last five years, Canada’s housing market and banks have done much better than American’s housing market and banks. Canada had no real estate bubble which  burst and Canada, along among G7 countries, never had to bail out its country’s banks by taking an equity/ownership position in those banks.  Which means firms in those sectors in Canada kept buying advertising in newspapers in Canada while their U.S. cousins cut ad budgets and, in doing so, helped kill newspapers there.  Still, this exchange of e-mails, on a listserv for investigative reporters, is a bit sad for those in my biz: Continue reading Want to be a journalist? You'll make more walking dogs

Video: Former BC Finance Minister Colin Hansen pitches in to fight off Adrian Dix and the NDP

Colin Hansen had the good fortune/misfortune to be the finance minister of British Columbia when his boss, then Premier Gordon Campbell, told him to merge the GST and BC’s PST to create BC’s HST. Any number of economists (and a certain federal finance minister named Jim Flaherty) will tell you that an HST is more efficient, better for the economy, etc., etc.,

But British Columbians hated it at least because Hansen announced the plan to move to an HST within weeks after the last BC provincial election, an election in which Campbell’s Liberals made no mention of the HST.

The backlash was ferocious, so much so that Campbell eventually called it a day (and was sent, by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to London where he is Canada’s High Commissioner to the UK) and was replaced as leader and premier by Christy Clark. Clark subsequently sent Hansen to the backbench in the Victoria legislature. Then she held an HST referendum and after campaigning half-heartedly in its favour lost that ballot and resolved to go back to a PST and an HST. Hansen, meanwhile, had been relegated by Clark to the backbenches in the legislature and so, after 17 years in that institution, got the message and, last September, announced his retirement as MLA for Vancouver-Quilchena (a riding which is the eastern neighbour, incidentally, of Clark’s Vancouver-Point Grey riding).

But Hansen is still a force in the party, taking on the duties of deputy campaign manager for the upcoming election. His task will be to to convince voters that Clark is Campbell’s heir to the free enterprise coalition that has been governing BC for an awful long time now. Here, on Battleground, we ask him about the election and the role the HST will play and what he’ll be doing to help Christy Clark overcome Adrian Dix’s Socialist Hordes. ™

Video: Martha Hall Findlay: Fiscally, "I'm arguably more conservative than Stephen Harper"

Federal Liberal leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay, former MP for the Toronto riding of Willowdale, on my new politics show, Battleground last night, makes the claim that “It’s a bit odd, but in terms of fiscal prudence, there is an argument to be said, that I’m arguably more conservative than Stephen Harper. These guys have been spending like crazy.” Continue reading Video: Martha Hall Findlay: Fiscally, "I'm arguably more conservative than Stephen Harper"