First Nation leaders to meet with Federal and Provincial governments during first ministers' gathering
PM promises fall summit to tackle native issues
BILL CURRY AND BRIAN LAGHI - July 19, 2008
OTTAWA and QUEBEC — Prime Minister Stephen Harper will hold a first ministers meeting this fall with the provinces and territories and has agreed to place aboriginal issues on the agenda.
The news follows this week's demand from provincial and territorial premiers for a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss the poor social conditions faced by Canada's young aboriginals, especially in education.
“We are looking at sitting down with the premiers this fall. There'll be a number of items on the agenda at that time and aboriginal issues are likely to be one of those,” Kory Teneycke, Mr. Harper's director of communications, told The Globe and Mail yesterday.
Mr. Teneycke's comments also followed two days of questions from The Globe about a written pledge Mr. Harper made during the 2006 election campaign to hold a meeting with first ministers and national aboriginal leaders within three years of a Conservative government to update progress on the 2005 Kelowna Accord.
When asked whether Mr. Harper will consider this fall's meeting as having met that commitment, the Prime Minister's spokesman said: “That will be for others to determine.”
Mr. Teneycke noted Mr. Harper usually meets with the premiers as a group once a year, in addition to one-on-one meetings. Details about the fall first-ministers meeting, which will be Mr. Harper's third, will be outlined as plans take shape, he said. Other topics on the agenda would likely include the economy and climate change.
Speaking on behalf of all the provinces this week, Quebec Premier Jean Charest urged Mr. Harper to build on his June 11 residential schools apology by tackling aboriginal education and social conditions.
Mr. Harper faced criticism from native leaders and opposition parties for dismissing the 2005 Kelowna Accord, in which then-prime-minister Paul Martin pledged $5-billion over five years to work with provinces to bring aboriginal living standards up to the national average within 10 years.
Phil Fontaine, the Assembly of First Nations leader who played a key role in negotiating the accord, lobbied premiers by phone in recent weeks, urging them to call for a first ministers meeting.
The AFN ensured that premiers were made aware of the campaign pledge that Mr. Harper made in a letter to Mr. Fontaine.
“The Conservative Party of Canada is also committed to holding another meeting with First Ministers and National Aboriginal Leaders within the next two or three years to measure the progress made on the Kelowna commitments,” Mr. Harper pledged in the Jan. 6, 2006, letter.
Minority Parliaments are usually short-lived, but the Harper government's three-year anniversary is just six months away.
The pledge is at odds with what would come to be the Harper government's public stand on the Kelowna Accord, which has been to dismiss the deal as poorly thought out.
Mr. Fontaine said Mr. Harper's written pledge was clear and national aboriginal leaders should be invited to this fall's meeting.
“I see it as good news,” Mr. Fontaine said yesterday. “But that first ministers meeting must include us.…We're talking about Canada's biggest challenge, first nations poverty, the single most important social justice issue in this country.”
Prior to this week's premiers meeting in Quebec City, sources say Mr. Charest discussed Mr. Fontaine's push for a first ministers meeting with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.
The two premiers came to the view, later supported by the other premiers, that it would be better to ask for a narrowly defined meeting with the Prime Minister on native education and social conditions. It was decided that a more specific request would reduce the odds that the Prime Minister would reject the meeting.
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The comeback of Kelowna
From Friday's Globe and Mail Editorial - July 18, 2008
Last month, Stephen Harper broke ground with the federal government's historic apology for residential schools. Now, with the country's premiers looking to him for leadership, he has a chance to do much more to alleviate the plight of Canada's aboriginal population -- by far this country's greatest policy failing.
Speaking on behalf of all the premiers and territorial leaders in Quebec City this week for their annual meeting, Quebec Premier Jean Charest noted the urgency of building on the momentum created by Mr. Harper's apology, by focusing on closing the socio-economic gap between aboriginal peoples and other Canadians.
To that end, the premiers have asked the Prime Minister to begin by meeting with them to discuss how they can work together to improve education and reduce child poverty. Their hope is that Mr. Harper can be convinced to work with them to restore the promises laid out in the Kelowna Accord, unanimously adopted by the provinces and five national aboriginal organizations alongside Paul Martin's Liberal government in 2005.
Despite the Tories' abandonment of Kelowna as one of their first acts as a government, this is far from a radical proposition. Mr. Harper's party objected to the $5.1-billion accord because it believed that it lacked detail. But by their own account, the Conservatives supported Kelowna's goals. "I've said categorically we're supportive of the Kelowna process, we're supportive of the targets," then-Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice told aboriginal leaders in March, 2006. "Clearly it's going to take resources."
Those resources have yet to adequately flow. Instead, the Tories have turned their attention to accountability. This year, they introduced a requirement that all 2008-09 funding arrangements include a clause enabling Indian Affairs to conduct audits. That followed legislation making the Canadian Human Rights Act applicable on reserves, eliminating an exemption that was supposed to be temporary but lasted three decades.
These are worthwhile measures, and further reforms of native governance are still needed. The fact that the federal government has in the past spent too much money to achieve too small a result for aboriginals does not entitle Ottawa to give up on fighting the social pathologies that deny one group of Canadians the quality of life enjoyed in the rest of the country.
The Kelowna Accord provides a good starting point. It was the culmination of this country's most extensive consultation and negotiation on aboriginal issues to date. Meeting with the premiers to begin its piecemeal implementation would be better than failing altogether to capitalize on its aims and agreements.
When he came to office, nobody would have expected Mr. Harper to succeed where his predecessors had failed natives. But then, nobody would have expected British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell, who once railed against land treaties, to achieve much at all for natives - and he has arguably done more for them than any other premier. Mr. Harper has helped increase accountability on reserves, and he has raised natives' hopes with his apology. Now is his chance to ensure their most basic needs are met and that they are provided with a fair shot at Canada's economic opportunities.
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Premiers revive the spirit of Kelowna - Citing PM's apology for residential schools, provincial leaders urge Harper to take next step by tackling native child poverty, education
KAREN HOWLETT and RHÉAL SÉGUIN AND BILL CURRY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail - July 17, 2008
QUEBEC AND OTTAWA — Canada's premiers are calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to build on his historic apology to survivors of residential schools by meeting with the provinces to tackle child poverty and other social problems afflicting the country's native communities.
In essence, the premiers suggested the reinstatement of the Kelowna Accord is the next logical step. While they have not broached the topic with the Prime Minister, they are offering to work with him in restoring many of the promises laid out in the 2005 accord.
"In the aftermath of the 11th of June apology, I think everyone now expects us to enter into a new period in which we will want to focus on new issues and take advantage of the momentum that's created," Quebec Premier Jean Charest said Wednesday. "This is an extended hand to the Prime Minister."
Mr. Charest, speaking on behalf of all the premiers and territorial leaders at their annual meeting in Quebec City, said their invitation to Mr. Harper was not about confronting or embarrassing him. He and British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell went out of their way to praise the federal government for embarking on a new era in its relations with Canada's aboriginal communities.
"I think the Prime Minister will welcome constructive suggestions on how we can close the socio-economic gap for aboriginal people across the country," Mr. Campbell said Wednesday.
However, the Harper government expressed little interest Wednesday in revisiting the Kelowna Accord.
Kory Teneycke, a spokesman for Mr. Harper, said the government would wait to receive a formal request from the premiers before responding to the call for a first ministers meeting on aboriginal issues.
"I think our position on the Kelowna Accord has been clear and consistent and is unlikely to change," he said.
The accord was signed by then-prime-minister Paul Martin, the premiers and native leaders in Kelowna, B.C., just before the federal election campaign in which the Liberals were defeated by the Conservatives in January, 2006. The culmination of more than a year and a half of negotiations, the accord pledged to bring aboriginal living conditions up to the national average within 10 years. More than $5-billion in federal spending was promised over five years for housing, education, governance and health.
The Harper government said it supported the Kelowna goals, but could not commit to the new spending because it was not properly studied in detail. Conservatives derisively dismiss the accord as a "press release."
Mr. Charest said yesterday that Ottawa cannot ignore the accord any longer. He also suggested that it was not the place of the Harper government to cancel it.
"The Kelowna Accord is not the propriety of any given individual or government," he said. "It's something that we together worked to put forward."
The premiers are seeking to bring Ottawa to the table to reintroduce certain elements of the Kelowna Accord without tackling all the issues in the agreement. According to a source, discussions with Mr. Harper would focus exclusively on education and child poverty as a means to persuade the federal government to come to the table.
However, for Assembly of First Nations leader Phil Fontaine, the objective would be nothing less than full implementation of the accord some time soon, noting that it was adopted by this minority Parliament as part of a private member's bill introduced by Mr. Martin.
"The Kelowna Accord is now Canadian law. What is missing is the financial commitment to implement the Kelowna Accord. When we talk next steps, that is the most important step we can take."