Stories

Re-Thinking Aboriginal Policy

Joseph Quesnel
May 25, 2016
Mass murder in La Loche, mass suicide in Attawapiskat, mass unemployment, dependency, and hopelessness in aboriginal communities from coast to coast to coast. This is the legacy of Canadian aboriginal policy, most of which was authored by Liberal governments. It’s time for a new approach, writes Joseph Quesnel, a philosophically conservative approach that respects First Nations culture and diversity, supports local political and economic autonomy, and moves slowly and incrementally towards a new and better relationship between Canadians and Indigenous peoples.
Stories

Re-Thinking Aboriginal Policy

Joseph Quesnel
May 25, 2016
Mass murder in La Loche, mass suicide in Attawapiskat, mass unemployment, dependency, and hopelessness in aboriginal communities from coast to coast to coast. This is the legacy of Canadian aboriginal policy, most of which was authored by Liberal governments. It’s time for a new approach, writes Joseph Quesnel, a philosophically conservative approach that respects First Nations culture and diversity, supports local political and economic autonomy, and moves slowly and incrementally towards a new and better relationship between Canadians and Indigenous peoples.
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter

As Canada stands poised to celebrate its 150th year since Confederation, it is high time we deal with the advancement of our Indigenous peoples, many of whom are still lagging behind other Canadians. The new Liberal government, backed by progressives generally, is doubling down on their traditional approaches to aboriginal policy, offering more money and less accountability. Conservatives tried a different approach during their decade in power, and the Liberals are now unwinding what little they achieved.

Recent revelations of a suicide pact among young people – one as young as nine years old – in the remote First Nation community of Attawapiskat in Northern Ontario has shocked the sensibilities of many Canadians. How could such tragedy exist in a highly developed nation such as Canada? While many turn to economic or geographic reasons for these conditions, few look at moral or even spiritual reasons for the breakdown in some societies.  In our overwhelmingly secular society, we are afraid to go there.

This is not to suggest that the answer is for everyone on remote Indigenous communities to suddenly practice traditional spirituality or to go to church, but we need to look at the full impact of Canada’s Indigenous policies on Indigenous peoples. For example, Indigenous writer Calvin Helin suggested in his 2006 book Dances with Dependency that the effects of widespread welfare and dependency have created cultural conditions of what he termed “learned helplessness” among First Nations. Some may argue that the worst effects of colonialism, besides the widespread dispossession, are the introduction of government dependency and the creation of a trustee relationship where Indigenous peoples are wards of the state.  Many Indigenous critics themselves point to the introduction of the Indian Act as a problem as it eroded traditional governance systems built on concepts of consensus and balance and introduced municipal-style voting systems that pitted families against families in search of influence, power and wealth. Many also argue the lack of a taxing/fiscal relationship between First Nations residents and their elected leadership distorts the governance system on reserves by deflecting attention from local leadership and disproportionately placing it on Ottawa.

Canada is not alone in experiencing serious dysfunction within Indigenous communities. In Australia in 2007, the federal government intervened in that country’s Northern Territory Aboriginal communities after allegations of widespread child sexual abuse and neglect. The intervention involved tighter restrictions on alcohol and even pornography, as well as the sequestration of a portion of all welfare payments to ensure the money was spent on children. Some even called these communities “failed states” within Australia. This is not to say that Canada has reached this level, but is a warning to be wary.

Reviving the Indian Industry

The Trudeau Liberals have adopted an approach to Aboriginal policy that they characterize as more about respecting the “nation-to-nation” relationship between the Crown and First Nations. This has largely translated into greater injections of funds into First Nation and Metis communities and an emphasis on collective goals held by Indigenous proponents, including support for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and for full adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).  At the same time, the Liberals have moved away from enforcement of the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, Conservative legislation that empowered band residents and created needed transparency for investors. It appears the Liberals are adopting policies that favour the interests of the so-called “Indian industry” – aboriginal lobbyists, lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians – over the interests of most natives living on or off reserves.

The end of the recent decade of Conservative rule should provide ideological conservatives with a unique opportunity to review and craft a coherent conservative Indigenous policy philosophy, distinct from a liberal-progressive one. Instead of just listening to the base and think tanks, conservatives should listen to traditional conservative voices like Edmund Burke or R.J. White.

In particular, modern conservatives should pay attention to the empirical conservative tradition, as opposed to the rationalist one. The empirical tradition is slow, evidence-based, prudent, and cautious. A free and stable order must pay attention to traditions and what has worked in the past. It is skeptical about grandiose proposals for widespread reform or revolution and the power of reason to create a utopian order. Traditional conservatives also emphasized the value of diversity over an imposed uniformity.  Or as R.J. White wrote in The Conservative Tradition:

“To discover the order which inheres in things, rather than to impose an order upon them: to strengthen and perpetuate that order rather than to dispose things anew according to some formula which may be nothing more than a fashion; to legislate along the grains of human nature rather than against it; to pursue limited objectives with watchful eye; to amend here, to prune there; in short to preserve the method of nature in the conduct of the state … This is a conservative.”

After the Crown no longer needed Indigenous peoples as military allies and especially in the immediate pre- and post-Confederation period, the policy of the government changed to containment, so-called civilization, and imposed assimilation.  While many conservatives or Tories at that time also supported these goals, it became largely a liberal-progressive impulse to “change” Indigenous people for the better.  In other words, the state goal was to impose a grandiose experiment from on top. The Indian Act imposed a one-size-fits-all system of governance on societies that were very different, rather than allow them to evolve, or to work with their traditions. The residential schools, although well intentioned and not all bad, were also about imposing a grandiose vision of uniformity.

As noted, assimilation was supported by many Conservatives, but it was the Liberal government of Alexander Mackenzie that introduced and pushed hard for the first consolidated Indian Act in 1876, far harder than the Tory government of Sir John A. Macdonald. First Nations were encouraged by the Indian Affairs Branch to give up their languages and traditional cultures and economic pursuits. This vision embraced the imposed equalizing uniformity of the liberal-progressive impulse.  Nearly a century later, the same vision informed the Liberal White Paper of 1969, which rejected Indigenous difference and rights in exchange for individual assimilation.

The eternal Canadian divide

This Conservative-Liberal split between a vision of unenforced diversity and enforced uniformity was also seen in English-French relations. In his 2010 book The Right Balance: Canada’s Conservative Tradition, retired Conservative Senator Hugh Segal calls it the Durham-Elgin Divide, where Lord Elgin, a Tory who served as governor-general, called for leaving French society alone, whereas Lord Durham, a radical Whig, called for French assimilation.

Made-in-Canada debates and discussions in 2016 between conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians about Aboriginal policy tend to fall along the collective rights vs. individual rights dichotomy. In particular, the debates focus on breaking the hold First Nation governments have over individual reserve residents and on promoting economic self-sufficiency for these communities.

For example, the Harper Conservative government focused on the interests of average band residents against their elected leadership in its First Nations Financial Transparency Act. The Tories also repealed a provision that exempted First Nations reserves from the Canadian Human Rights Act and passed legislation granting Indigenous women equal matrimonial property rights.

Think tanks inspired largely by the classical liberal tradition, such as the Fraser Institute or the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, almost always focus on solutions that empower individuals, advocating reforms to spur Aboriginal entrepreneurship and provide property rights. In the late 1980s, the Mulroney government passed an amendment to the Indian Act allowing band governments to tax real property on reserves. The conservative focus was, and remains, on aboriginal economic development, job creation, accessing mainstream educational opportunities, and moving away from government dependency.

First Nations, on the other hand, were and are talking about maintaining a treaty relationship, political sovereignty, community control over issues, revitalized languages and cultures, resource revenue sharing, and maintaining sufficient spending on reserves. In other words, conservatives and aboriginals tend to talk past each other, rather than to each other.

After the White Paper was almost unanimously rejected, the old liberal-progressive impulse to assimilate was largely abandoned by the modern Liberal Party and the NDP. Those parties focused on expanding collective rights, land claims and increased spending, and tended to support Indigenous political leadership over band residents. The assimilation or desegregation cause was taken up by the Reform Party, in a more pure classical liberal manifestation, but was tamed by the more collectivist Progressive Conservative tradition after the 2003 merger.

Harper was on the right track

The conservative focus on Indigenous empowerment and individual rights is not fundamentally wrong; it is just incomplete. Conservatives need a working philosophy on Indigenous policy that embraces empirical reality, does not seek to impose top-down solutions, respects First Nations peoples as they are, and actually achieves results.  The closest that the recent Conservative government got to moving away from only this individual-collective binary view was when Stephen Harper said the following in 2012 as part of a summit at the historic Crown-First Nations Gathering held in Ottawa:

“Our government has no grand scheme to repeal or unilaterally re-write the Indian Act. After 136 years, that tree has deep roots. Blowing up the stump would just leave a big hole. However, there are ways, creative ways, collaborative ways, ways that involve consultation between our government, the provinces and First Nations leadership and communities. Ways that provide options within the Act, or outside of it, for practical, incremental and real change.”

In saying this, Harper was rejecting a grandiose top-down alternative to the Indian Act and recognizing that First Nations had become accustomed to the Act and had made it their own in many ways. Cosmetic alterations or non-invasive operations were preferable to major surgery, which might harm the patient. In its failed First Nations Education Act, the Harper government had learned the hard way that the answer to improved Aboriginal education may not involve a national, one-size-fits-all solution.

As we have seen through examples from British Columbia and Nova Scotia, regional, incremental approaches to improving education may produce better outcomes. It accords with the conservative principle of subsidiarity to allow local authorities to tailor solutions to local, lived realities. Conservative governments should consider more pilot projects with bands to see what works. Conservative government, as well as the new Liberal one, should embrace voluntary, incremental changes, such as the First Nations Property Ownership Act, that allows individual bands that opt-in democratically to voluntarily adopt private property regimes that work for them and respect communal rights. Any government that respects empirical conservative change could also adopt regional co-operative First Nations water governance models that work on improving access to water and wastewater systems on a small scale system instead of a federal, one-size-fits all approach.  As a national organization, the Assembly of First Nations would have no role to play.

The Conservatives also found that voluntary laws such as the First Nations Land Management Act (which was originally passed by Liberals), which removed bands from just the land management provisions of the Indian Act, yielded positive socio-economic results. Amendments to Section 83 of the Indian Act, another voluntary move, allowed bands to develop own-source revenues. The Conservative First Nations Elections Act was yet another piece of voluntary legislation that improved upon existing Indian Act election regulations. All voluntary measures have worked without destroying the Indian Act.

Rather than embrace the progressive uniformity model of old, conservatives must opt for incremental change that embraces Indigenous traditions and wisdom while respecting principles of individual and economic empowerment. One example is to promote and respect the growing tendency among First Nations bands to adopt local constitutions. These documents lay out the governance structure of the community, while respecting local culture. Most of these documents respect many individual rights, such as the right to free expression and assembly. Many also include strong protections for democratic and economic rights, such as provisions allowing for the removal of elected leaders, legislative oversight, and investor protection.

Historically the Reformers and libertarians within Canada’s conservative family tended to criticize the idea of Aboriginal self-government as illiberal or unworkable. However, it is time to accept that self-government is a step towards First Nations taking responsibility for their destiny, which surely is a conservative objective.

Studies by the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board and the C.D. Howe Institute, among others, suggest that improved outcomes accompany many of these self-government agreements, albeit with some caveats. Conservatives need to accept that Indigenous peoples are not rejecting Canada when adopting these agreements; they are just embracing multiple identities and loyalties, which is a tribute to the conservative value of diversity.

Our federalism that respects provincial autonomy should extend to First Nations’ need for political space to be themselves. And if conservatives want to see a reduction in suicide and other social pathologies that disproportionately plague Indigenous communities, they should acknowledge the value and importance of sustaining strong aboriginal cultural practices and traditions, including language.

~

Joseph Quesnel is an independent public policy analyst, with a focus on Aboriginal policy and property rights issues. He has worked in the past for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, where he led the organization’s flagship Aboriginal Governance Index, which measured perceptions of governance and services on First Nations communities. At present, he is a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute and a research associate with the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS). Neither organization endorses this piece.

Love C2C Journal? Here's how you can help us grow.

More for you

The Housing Market Isn’t Racist. Blame Your Parents Instead

Diversity may be our strength. But it is now alarmingly commonplace in Canada to blame any perceived diversity in outcomes between racial groups on vaguely-defined “systemic racism” or “white supremacy”. Case in point: the Federal Housing Advocate’s allegations of rampant racism in Canada’s housing market, and the need to address it with outlandishly disruptive policies. Delving deep into Statistics Canada’s ample supply of race-based data, Peter Shawn Taylor considers the evidence for racism in Canadian housing, education, income and poverty statistics, and finds a more convincing explanation much closer to home.

Young Offenders: Meet the Angry Socialists Poisoning Our Politics

Social media is widely blamed for poisoning the public conversation on a range of topics – especially politics and contentious social questions. But there’s a possibly even more dangerous force growing on the internet: an online community of YouTubers and livestreamers spouting far-left dogma, praising political violence and denigrating their opponents as evil, far-right fascists. Using fallacious arguments, psychological manipulation and overheated rhetoric, they seek to radicalize young people and convert them to their cause. Millions are tuning in, and mainstream “progressive” politicians are jumping on their bandwagons. Noah Jarvis profiles three of these socialist crusaders and explains why they are such a threat.

The Worrisome Wave of Politicized Prosecutions

Shaping criminal charges, bail decisions or prison sentences around an accused person’s political or religious beliefs is utterly odious – a hallmark of tinpot tyrannies and totalitarian hellholes. Such practices have no place in any constitutional nation, let alone a mature democracy that presents itself as a model to the world. But that is increasingly the situation in Canada, writes Gwyn Morgan. Comparing the treatment of protesters accused of minor infractions to those of incorrigible criminals who maim and kill, Morgan finds a yawning mismatch that suggests political motivations are increasingly a factor in today’s criminal justice system.

More from this author

Canadian mystery novel provides truth about Aboriginal life

Novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote that the truth can be found in fiction. This is evident in Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul, a 2011 novel by Canadian writer David Adams Richards. While ostensibly a murder mystery involving a New Brunswick First Nations reserve, Incidents uncovers truth about human nature and our preference for easy answers. Joseph Quesnel reviews this novel and also discusses how it elucidates Native-newcomer misunderstandings.

Q&A with Joanne Marcotte

c2c’s Joseph Quesnel interviews Joanne Marcotte, a pioneer in Quebec’s freedom movement, a co-founder of the Réseau Liberté Québec and author of the recently-released Pour en finir avec le governemama

Share This Story

Donate

Subscribe to the C2C Weekly
It's Free!

* indicates required
Interests
By providing your email you consent to receive news and updates from C2C Journal. You may unsubscribe at any time.