Sorry, your ancestors didn’t have a million square miles to sell.
I’m going to guess that it comes through Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada but you’d be impressed at how difficult it is to actually figure out the budget allotment of these organizations. I got a thousand links of ‘this budget is going to be great for old people!!!1!11!1!’ and nobody who seemed to know how much money there was, or where it is going. For any part of the Canadian federal budget.
RickJay
Thanks for this. I didn’t know you’d have to rewrite the constitution to do anything about the issues. Between the constitutional requirements and everyone fretting about charges of racism and genocide or whatever, it is somewhat more understandable that nothing gets fixed.
On the other hand, some of the things that Muffin mentioned in her analysis of the budget are, as you mentioned, just an encouragement to corruption. The scheme reminds me of the Middle East, tribal/family based support for officials that in turn, have to pay off their supporters with huge salaries for busywork, huge payments for substandard materials, and all the rest of the things that go with a corrupt society.
If the Natives can’t be integrated into society, and the government can’t stop supporting them, then could they at least require a bit more accountability and a bit less nepotism? I understand they tried the accountability thing and the guy was run out of town. I guess that would lead me to my next question, is why does everyone tiptoe around these guys? Send in the Mounties or stop payments until you get some reasonable prices for work performed or at least a decent accounting of where the money is going. Still the racism thing? It would seem that there would have to be a limit to that at some point.
I understand about the noble-savage attitude. I’ve been lectured about how the Indians were “in tune with nature” “peaceful” and a host of other good things that the arrival of Westerners destroyed.
Maybe as an alternative, the army or the Canadian equivalent of the Corps of Engineers could just go in and get the housing/sewage problems fixed. Pass out rations or set up a chow hall to make sure everyone is well fed. The situation seems so messed up that almost anything would be an improvement.
Thanks again
Testy
PS: Thanks for the root-canal/testicle crushing imagery. Now that’s an image that will stay with me for a long while!:eek:
No. They fought amongst themselves, regardless of the westerners`influence. See, for example, my post (post 3) in this thread:
And from one of my subsequent posts (post 6, in the same thread):
The problem with this is that there are 600 some reserves in Canada. Some reserves do very well for themselves, but there is a very large percentage of reserves with problems similar to those seen at Attawapiskat.
Attawapiskat is this month’s lightning rod. I suspect heroic efforts made to mitigate the problems at this location would unleash a torrent of demands from all corners of the country for similar treatment.
Obviously, we need to nuke the place from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.
I think this is worth repeating. Certainly, in the interactions with street natives I’ve had here in Lethbridge, as well as in Toronto, “self-reliance” does not obtain. “Give me money because you stole my land” is the more-often heard complaint.
Critical Mass
Well, I was trying to think of something that would get the job done, ie nobody starving or living in tents at -20 degrees, but would not be fun for the locals. After all, if the army or whatever was doing the job then there would be no need for those fat contracts to be funneled through the reservation. The money would go to the army or other appropriate government organization instead of the locals. If the local tribal leaders were suddenly not in control of all that money, I’d think they’d make an effort to at least cut back on the corruption and graft. It wouldn’t really fix the problem but it might prune it back a bit.
It could be pitched as being entirely compassionate with not a word said about corruption and mis-management of government funds. They simply wouldn’t need to pay the locals since the problems were being taken care of in a timely and efficient manner.
I understand that this is all pie in the sky and is never in hell going to actually be tried. The locals would play the racism card in a New-York-minute and the government would cave on it. Again, not hammering the Canadians in particular, most government would do the same.
Regards
Testy
Spoons[
Thank you for this. I believe there are similar issues between some of the Southwestern US tribes that predate the arrival of Westerners.
I love the “proto hippies” term. 
Regards
Testy
I think I have to credit Diceman for that one. Credit where credit is due, after all. But thanks for reading the post, and the link!
I question this point of view based on financial viability to execute it. It’s already been extended out the point of absurdity but lets move it even further. What if the indians decide they want to live in the middle of a lake on boats. The supplies would then have to be airlifted by helicopter versus airplane which would raise the operating cost of the venture 4 fold. At what point does the government engage in it’s responsibility to tax payers to spend their money appropriately?
If someone wants to live in the middle of BFE then it’s on them to generate the funds necessary to do so.
First, it is not a question of where the Indians may wish to move – it is a question of where they already are. Second, heavy freight it brought in by truck during the winter once ice has formed on the lakes and muskeg, while lighter freight and passengers are brought in year-round. Although remote reserves now have short gravel landing strips that can handle small planes, float and ski planes are still commonly used except during freeze-up and thaw.
The cost does not justify their location. It’s as simple as that. And yes it’s absolutely a question of where they wish to move if they want to eat. This was originally a seasonal location. Their ancestors knew it wasn’t practical to live there year round.
AFAIC they can either use the location as it was originally intended to be used or lay in a seasonal amount of supplies at their own expense to save money. I don’t see it as a function of government to fund someone’s lifestyle at the expense of another.
Alright, I’ll bite. What is your plan to move these people elsewhere?
For example, Attawapiskat lies on a winter road route that connects the Manitoba year-round road-head at Gillam to the Ontario rail-head at Moosonee.
The various First Nations in Ontario have been pushing for all-year roads, but it is a fairly low priority for the provincial government, except for places where the roads will be key to developing natural resources. The provincial government kicks in about four and a half milliontoward winter roads each year. I do not know how much the roughly thirty remote First Nations in northern Ontario contribute, but I do know that they are expected to contribute.
For folks wondering just what the heck a winter road is, it is a track bulldozed through the bush. Come winter, the mushy bulldozed ground freezes, and the lakes freeze over, so trucks can drive along the frozen bulldozed ground and across the frozen lakes.
Here are links to overview maps of winter roads in the area, but note that these maps are not complete:
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http://www.mndm.gov.on.ca/northern_development/transportation_support/northern_ontario_winter_roads_e.asp (the green roads on the google map are the primary winter roads – go to the pdf maps to look at more complete coverage of the winter roads)
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Winter Roads in Manitoba | Manitoba Infrastructure | Province of Manitoba (note that the Gillam and points east map does not incidate the existing winter road that connects to Ontario, including Fort Severn and Attawapiskat)
Here is a link to a reality series on truckers whose routes include driving on winter roads (although the one some of them travel in Manitoba is not a truly remote one such as the loop over into Ontario and James Bay): http://www.history.ca/video/default.aspx?releasePID=8ql5LexZ_f8uBa1JjopdZOEi8h9lfQt9
Without putting a value judgement on your position, or that of any other poster, the simple unassailable fact of the matter is that Canada will not do what you recommend. It is not on the table, for the various constitutional, juristic, and social policy reasons set out by various posters in this thread.
I don’t see where Canada is legally responsible for funding lifestyle. It’s not like there’s a land shortage or any reasonable reason for living in the middle of nowhere. Nobody’s holding a gun to their heads.
We’re way past fiscal responsibility. You didn’t understand the point.
I’m not saying that the current situation is okay - it’s horrible. The question was asked WHY the system is as it is, and “because we don’t want people starving to death” is, in fact, one of the reasons. That doesn’t mean the system is good, or even sane. It is, however, indisputable fact that if funding were cut off tomorrow people would be so desperately poor they’d starve, and so funding will not be cut off tomorrow.
As to what SHOULD happen, as I have said many times, in this thread and many others, of course the system as it exists should be completely eliminated. The Indian Act should be abolished, all treaties abolished, all reserves abolished, and one of two things should happen; aboriginals should either be made full Canadian citizens like any other, though I’d argue with several more years of substantial government support (and payouts to escape the treaties) or they should be given a very large chunk of Canada and allowed to form a totally separate country.
The current system is designed to enslave aboriginals in a trap of poverty to enrich band leaders and Ottawa bureaucrats. It’s a disgrace.
I guess I missed something. Is there a treaty that says Crees can wander around at will and bread will fall from the sky on demand? Is the current location a government mandated relocation point like an American reservation?
What exactly is the process for getting a check in the mail?
As to this specific idea, it’s basically what’s being done now; resources are being pumped into the more horrible reserves to ensure nobody starves.
Sure, you could send the Army in to build houses, but they’d just fall apart.
I live in Burlington, a large (175,000 residents) suburban city in southern Ontario. Burlington, obviously, has a great many houses, a sewage system, roads, electricity, and various other elements of modern infrastructure, and for the most part they’re in excellent shape in the people here live well. It seems almost effortless to keep Burlington going and to serve about 85 times as many people as live in Attawapiskat.
The thing is, though, that it’s not a one-shot deal. What makes Burlington work is not that things get built, but that they get built and then maintained. The water treatment plants are all as old as I am, most of the housing’s years old, and not one major road has been built in Burlington for years, but those things are all maintained - money is constantly poured into them to keep them working. If we just built new houses and new water treatment plants here and constantly let the old ones die, Burlington would be a horrific shithole because that just does not work; you can’t afford it, you can’t plan things smoothly that way, you’re inevitably going to have a huge dichotomy in quality between old and new, you’ll have constant crises.
Approaching Attawapiskat’s problem as a “let’s get in there and build us a big ol’ cinderblock apartment building” or some such thing is just punting the problem a few years down the road. It’s not a solution. Nothing works forever; even a road will crumble and die, quite amazingly fast, if it’s not maintained.
The reason it’s done right in Burlington, but not in Attawapiskat, is that Burlington exists for an economically rational reason. 175,000 people live here because there is actually a normally occurring set of supply and demand functions that causes people to live here and engage in commerce and industry here, both in town and in relation to the great metropolis down the road, Toronto, and all the major cities and small towns nearby, and the economic and transportation network that plugs it into Canada, the United States, and through them the world. So there’s a constant stream of economic activity that causes people and businesses to have the cash to maintain their buildings and possessions. That stream of economic activity provides tax revenues to the City of Burlington and the Province of Ontario, and to a lesser extent the government of Canada, to provide the municipal, provincial, and federal services and infrastructure, and the high quality of those services and infrastructure in turn encourages people to continue, or begin, living and doing business in Burlington, adding more money to the tax base and multiplying the effects.
And the people who live in Burlington (or more or less any other city in the world) generally cooperate in maintaining the city in working order because there is a general sense that it is to their benefit to do so, or at least to conform in doing so in order to avoid the opprobrium of authority and other citizens, who act to enforce cooperation because there’s a sense that the city is owned by its residents and so its maintenance is to their own benefit.
Furthermore, Burlington pays for itself. The economic activity it generates is greater than its cost to the province and the country as a whole (it’s a wealthy town, so an easy example for me.) It benefits Ontario and Canada to spend money on Burlington’s upkeep. So everyone benefits.
Attawapiskat does not exist for any particular economic reason; it exists because a treaty and a flood of government money make it exist. In fact, it exists in DEFIANCE of economic reason; the cost of keeping a human being going there is many times higher than it is almost anywhere else. Just ordinary grocieries are, depending on what yuo’re talking about, three to six times more expensive than in most of Canada or anywhere else. It didn’t exist at all, in the sense of being a permanent settlement, until the money started, as there was no reason for it to. There is no economic activity; it isn’t a self-sustaining human settlement. Not only does it provide nothing to the rest of Canada, it doesn’t even provide anything to itself, not of any significance. We are basically paying people to sit next to a frozen sea in the middle of nowhere. It is exactly as logical and as productive as if we built a set of shacks in Antarctica and shipped 2,000 Burlington residents down to live there, and didn’t even bother giving them a polar research project to work on. Oh, and* they aren’t allowed to own the land you put them on.* Or build their own houses.
We can, and will, send in emergency teams and supplies to get people through winter or avoid the next crisis. And in a year there will be another crisis, there or at some other reserve, and the year after and the year after and the year after. This problem cannot be solved by any construction effort, not for ANY amount of money. Attawapiskat goes through either $18 million or $36 million a year depending on who you believe; go ahead and double it and it won’t make a whit of difference.
There is one solution; eliminate the dual standard. Eliminate reserves, one way or another. Eliminate the Indian Act. Either bring aboriginals into Canadain society, or hand them not just a reserve but an entire country-sized new country, and say “Here you go. Bye. See you at the UN.”
Burl