At the all-candidates forum held last week, one of the questions posed to the five hopefuls on stage was regarding Indigenous issues; how reconciliation will play a part in a new government and how each party plans to include all Indigenous people at their table.
In their answers, not one of the candidates mentioned the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry or the 231 calls to action that came from the inquiry just five months ago.
NDP: Heather Sapergia used the much-debated term ‘genocide’ in her response.
“One of the things that settler culture has done ever since we hit North America is that we’ve been telling aboriginal people what to do. It’s been described recently as, and I believe the word is accurate, a genocide.”
“Now that we’ve woken up and realized that it is a genocide our government has apologized to First Nations people, but that’s not enough. We need to move past that, we need to honour First Nations cultures as equal partners in our country.”
Sapergia said she had the privilege of spending a few years on Haida Gwaii living with the Haida, “watching an amazing culture that almost died and come back. And come back strong. We as settlers need to recognize that we need to step back and learn from the First Nations people.”
Conservative: Todd Doherty
“Our first nations populations live both on and off-reserve. We need to make sure that we are being equal to all,” said Doherty.
“We have programs and organizations such as our Friendship Centres that have to rely year over year on having to reapply for funds to deliver those core programs that they have in the community. We have one of the largest Friendship Centres here in North America. They deliver incredible programs whether it is language lessons, ESL, not just for Indigenous people but for new immigrants as well.”
“So we have to find a way to make sure that we are providing those services on the ground level. I think far too often we focus on the Indigenous communities that are in the community but not necessarily away from the community and make sure those holistic services are here.”
Green: Mackenzie Kerr
Kerr began with her perception of how the word ‘reconciliation’ is being touted.
“A lot of us are saying the word. It’s a buzz word right now, unfortunately. I think that people need to be really understanding of what it truly means. I am personally still learning, I am not an expert in the field. I am trying to listen as much as possible.”
She said her approach is to go in with an understanding of the community and help First Nations communities with their own solutions.
“We’re saying that reconciliation is so important but we aren’t seeing it happen in our system. I really think that we need to work on the root cause, we need to start at the bottom. We have a colonial system and we need to be talking about that. We need to have more Indigenous representation. We are not representative of the riding. I’ve been trying to reach out to as many Indigenous communities as possible, but I’m also very worried, because that’s not my background, that I’m going to say the wrong thing,” said Kerr.
“I think that a lot of people feel that way. They want to have the discussion, they have questions but they don’t know how to start it. The thing is that we just need to start it and be upfront about it and say ‘I might say the wrong thing because I am still learning, but I want to learn and that is why I’m coming to your community to listen and hear what your ideas are because I’m not a professional and that is why I’m going to listen to you’.”
Liberal: Tracy Calogheros
Calogheros started off her turn by saying that the work she is most proud of over the last 25 years at the Exploration Place has been with the L’heidli T’enneh Nation. She specifically mentioned the permanent exhibit Hodul’eh-a: A Place of Learning and the Memorandum of Understanding which led to the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Community Programming.
“I think when we talk about a new relationship with First Nations across the country, people don’t recognize that relationships take time and time really is the key piece here. This is a generational issue. It’s multi-generational trauma that we’re facing and it’s taken us hundreds of years to get to this point, we’re not going to solve the trauma and distrust over a four-year election cycle. If you’re talking about a true relationship and you’re talking about trust, you have to spend time to get to know people.”
“In my view, the word reconciliation is just a term, an overview that we’re trying to layer on to the fact that what we’re trying to do is trust one another and I really believe that we’re making headway on that and I hope I can have a hand in it, just a little bit.”
Last week, the Liberal government began filing an appeal ordering it to pay First Nations children that were denied welfare services. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal issued the order to compensate the more than 50-thousand children $40,000.00 dollars each and the appeal means those apprehended or denied services may not receive the money.
PPC: Jing Lan Yang
Yang said she wanted to read her response from the PPC Party Platform manual.
“In this riding, we have 17.5% Aboriginal people and our party wants to face our relationship with full values. First, a lot of injustice was committed in the past and we cannot rewrite history but we want to build a new relationship based on mutual respect. This is our first statement,” said Yang.
“Second, we want to base this relationship with a balance between the needs of the Aboriginal people and also the general needs of every Canadian, the whole country.”
So what we want to do is give them equal rights and equal responsibility to them as Canadians, not just name them as Aboriginal or Indigenous people. We want to promote self-reliance, to do that we also want to respect first the constitution and the treaties.
“We will refer federal government power to improve natural resources and infrastructure projects. At the same time, we will have a more detailed consultation with the native people. Another thing we want to do is promote the establishment of individual property rights, let people own their property on the reserve. This is about freedom, about fairness, we want to ensure that Aboriginal communities take more ownership of the services they have.”
Yang said the first thing the PPC government will do is make sure Indigenous communities have access to clean water.
“Lastly it’s about responsibility. Every year Ottawa spends $21 billion on Aboriginal programs but there is no big or strong evidence to show the improvement of their living standards. We want to make sure the Aboriginal administration has the responsibility to ensure that taxpayers’ money is well spent and it serves to benefit their people.”