Ontario "hits the jackpot" with resource rich remote and rural First Nations
Bryant has a long to-do list - Aboriginal affairs minister eyes progress on Caledonia standoff, economic opportunities
Dec 22, 2007 - Robert Benzie - Queen's Park Bureau Chief
Minutes after announcing at Queen's Park that Ipperwash Provincial Park would be turned over to natives who had their nearby land confiscated during World War II, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant hopped in a small plane and flew there.
Bryant, 41, is a man in a hurry.
And flying to the shores of Lake Huron on Thursday to visit the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation – who have endured the pain of losing their land to a wartime training base and the tragedy of the 1995 police shooting death of Dudley George while protesting that at the park – was a priority.
"Now, finally there's some hope that instead of it being a bad memory, it's yet again the source of something positive in this area," Bryant said in an interview from the First Nation.
His haste to resolve the Ipperwash affair – the park has been occupied by protesters since two days before George was killed on Sept. 6, 1995 and the adjacent land was appropriated by the federal government for military purposes in 1942 – is typical of the ambitious minister.
As attorney general in the Liberals' first four-year term, Bryant made headlines for banning pit bulls, seizing crack houses and marijuana grow operations, impounding and destroying street racers' vehicles, and revamping Ontario's human rights legislation.
But since Premier Dalton McGuinty shuffled him from his cherished post as attorney general on Oct. 30 in a demotion many believed was punishment for his overt leadership aspirations, some wondered if his activist wings had been clipped.
So far at least, the new department has not been a thankless purgatory for a minister who wrote his Harvard University masters thesis on aboriginal-state conflicts.
"For me, the biggest factor in advancing these issues is that the premier has put aboriginal affairs on the front burner of the government," said Bryant.
"Aboriginal Affairs ain't like Seabiscuit, where you can hold back and make a sprint to the end. The sprint will never come. There's a lot of competing priorities in government as there should be. The premier's expressed his just impatience that we move forward quickly," he said.
In that vein, Bryant has a busy to-do list for 2008, including helping the federal government to resolve the almost two-year-old native standoff at Caledonia.
Last month, he made an official visit to the beleaguered community, meeting with Haldimand County Mayor Marie Trainer and residents, and appealing for calm.
"We're going to keep providing support (to the federal government). We want a resolution. We don't have timelines. There is a serious offer on the table (from Ottawa) ... and that's positive. If there's a role for the province, we'll play it," the minister said.
"But for now it's really about making a decision by the First Nation as to whether or not to take it to their community."
Beyond Caledonia, Bryant plans to tackle a slew of other challenges, including legislative changes to help natives share in the economic benefits of mining and other resources and launching a "reconciliation fund" as recommended at the judicial inquiry into George's death at Ipperwash.
"Personally, my priority is I want to assist in creating more jobs, better economic opportunities, less dropouts, and more graduations for First Nation and Métis people, and with that will come the kind of prosperity that the middle class tends to enjoy," he said.
"I don't think Ontarians know how good it is and how bad it is. In some parts of the province, it's very dispiriting and there's little hope on some reserves at the same time as there's some remarkable success stories."
Noting that "governments have been paralyzed for most of our history" on native issues, Bryant believes there can be many more successes if aboriginal people are able to work with Ottawa, Queen's Park and corporate Canada.
Instead of getting bogged down in constitutional morasses, where fears of setting legal precedents can derail progress, Bryant is advocating "a radically different approach, where we're not going to wait for the courts to tell us what to do."
Mindful of the untapped potential in native communities, Bryant's voice rises in excitement with the sense of possibility for "enormous economic opportunities."
"If you went anywhere in the world and said: `In rural and remote communities in the resource-rich north of Canada, there's a group of very young people, willing and able to be trained and employed, to do the work, who know the land,' you'd think you hit the jackpot," he said.
"And that's exactly what we have with a lot of these communities."