Media.Knet.Ca

It is time Prime Minister Stephen Harper make good on a promise made five years ago and convene a national summit on aboriginal issues, says Premier Dalton McGuinty.

The Harper government pledged during the 2006 election campaign to hold a summit with native leaders and first ministers within three years.

The meeting never happened.

In April, aboriginal affairs ministers from across Canada once again called on the federal government to make good on the pledge.

“There is a very strong consensus among Canadian premiers, all 10 provinces and three territories, that we should be hosting a summit devoted to our aboriginal communities,” McGuinty told reporters at Scarborough General Hospital on Wednesday.

For years, national aboriginal leaders and provincial governments have been asking Ottawa to remedy a historic gap in education funding for First Nations communities — on average about $2,000 per child — to no avail.

Some isolated Northern Ontario reserves have ill-equipped schools without libraries, computers or science labs. Some have no schools at all.

A Star investigation published last Monday revealed that seven First Nations teens who left their remote communities and moved alone to Thunder Bay to get a high school education had gone missing since late 2000.

All of the teens were later found dead — most drowned in the rivers draining into Lake Superior.

The body of Grade 9 student Jordan Wabasse was found in the Kaministiquia River on Tuesday night, according First Nations authorities. Thunder Bay police say the cause of death was drowning.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo wrote to Harper in late 2010, asking for a summit. Harper responded in a Dec. 8, 2010, letter obtained by the Star that he “remains open to participating.”

Now that the Conservatives have a majority government, Atleo said, he hopes Harper lives up to his 2006 commitment.

“It is sorely needed,” Atleo said from Kamloops, B.C.

The premiers have been consistent in supporting the call for a first ministers meeting on aboriginal issues to discuss education, the economy, and health and safety concerns such as the 500 aboriginal girls and women who have gone missing.

The fact that native youth are being sent hundreds of kilometres away just to go to school shows how woeful the situation is, Atleo said — and this after Harper’s 2008 apology for Canada’s dark history of ripping native children from their families to send them to residential schools, where they were often abused.

“We have yet to step in and remedy that 150-year-long mistake with the remedies required,” he said.

Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister Chris Bentley said jurisdictional issues are challenging. “We need all the players at the table so we can work through some solution,” he said.

“What we are lacking at the moment is the federal leadership on these crucial issues beginning on education. It’s a new dawn. There is a new government being sworn in. Our request stands,” Bentley said.