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"

Is Chief Spence setting a good example for aboriginal girls by threatening suicide?

Terry Glavin makes a not insignificant point about the potential harm Chief Spence’s hunger strike might have on First Nations communities:

Aboriginal teenagers in Canada are perhaps six times more likely to kill themselves than non-aboriginal youth. Among the Inuit, youth suicide is 11 times the national average. Between 2005 and 2010, Health Canada spent $65 million on a National Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy. The kids kept on killing themselves, and in 2011 the Ontario Chief Coroner’s Office released a 215-page report on aboriginal suicides in Northern Ontario. One of the report’s key recommendations: the creation of a national suicide prevention strategy.

Then along comes Theresa Spence, the elected chief of the forlorn and remote Northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat. Since Dec. 11, Spence has been camped in a teepee on an island in the Ottawa River, threatening to starve herself to death — to kill herself — unless the prime minister and the Governor General accede to her variously contradictory and ambiguous demands ..

Read the rest: Idle No More? Let’s get serious.

Here comes Battleground. My new show for political junkies


If you’ve been watching my 6 pm show on Sun News Network for the few weeks before the Christmas break, you’ve probably got the hint that we’ve got a new name and brand for the program. Well, tonight’s the night we’re rolling it out.

Some backstory first: For the few months preceding the U.S. general election, the hour-long Monday-to-Friday show at 6 p.m. was called  Road to the White House and focused exclusively on that race. Lots of you watched (thanks!). So the new show is going to try to do something similar: Focus on political horse-races. We’ll talk about  campaign strategy, the ads, the personalities, election issues – real political junkie stuff. The new name of this new show? Battleground. (You need to say it loud with your deepest, “Ted Baxter” TV anchor voice for best effect — see video above!). Continue reading Here comes Battleground. My new show for political junkies

Reaction to resolution of U.S. fiscal cliff drama

Late last night, the U.S. Congressed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. Read more about that here.

Here’s a comment on that Act this morning from BMO Capital Markets economist Michael Gregory (my emphasis):

“The bottom line is that taxes will be going up for most Americans, ranging from a 2 percentage point increase in payroll taxes for all employees, to higher tax rates on ordinary income, capital gains and dividends for those making above $400k …[There are] more fiscal battles on the horizon. For now, however, we can relish in the fact that the fiscal cliff was averted, political compromise was achieved (yes, 85 of 236 House Republicans voted in favour), and America’s finances are starting to move to a firmer footing.”

Here’s Scotiabank’s Derek Holt and Dov Zigler in their morning note on yesterday’s theatrics in Washington: Continue reading Reaction to resolution of U.S. fiscal cliff drama

Network management geeks: Dad needs help!

This post is a plea for help from smart network administrators/geeks and/or Bob Metcalfe:

Like a lot of dads, I’m the on-site technical support for my household and while that job used to just involve keeping software updates fresh on a single desktop computer, dads like me now have a whole clutch of computers and other gadgets (DVD players, refrigerators, tablets, laptops, TVs, cameras)  — all of which have IP numbers — and all of which are used by any one of four family members to gobble up bandwidth. Like a like lot of Canadians who get their Internet service from a major cableco/telco, I have a bandwidth cap. Exceed the cap and the Akin household pays through the nose. That makes the Akin household’s Accounts Payable Manager (my wife) very unhappy with On-Site Technical Support (that would be me.)

So I need help. Let me describe the genesis of today’s plea for help: Continue reading Network management geeks: Dad needs help!