What it Really Means

"'Idle No More' would quite literally mean accepting participation in the Canadian wage economy and therefore more integration, not less, with the rest of society."  That was the theme of a recent column by the Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson. 

Of course, most of the 'Idle No More' gang have no idea what it all means.  They think it means "the government" should do more and give more.  Of everything.  First nations want to be treated as self-governing bodies, but how can they be?  They certainly don't have the capacity and revenue to provide health, welfare, education, justice, policing and all the other services rightly demanded by any population of its own government.  There is no way natives can be self-governing because they don't have the self-generated money to do so.  Especially as they continue to block every attempt to work with oil companies and provinces, for example, to get the $$$ out of the ground -- money that could flow to them.  Every leaf of every tree must be protected.  How dumb can you get?!

"The entire constitutional, political, economical and sociological structures of aboriginal Canadians have been based for many decades on parallelism within Canada, a hard sell to the rest of the population that is strongly integrationist.  Canada places a high (sic) symbolic value on multiculturalism, even placing it in the Constitution and handing out grants to multicultural organizations, while simultaneously being one of the world's most integrationist countries  Indeed, just as the social condition of aboriginals is Canada's biggest failure, its greatest success has been the integration of millions of people from the four corners of the earth with a minimum of social conflict," said Jeffrey.

Yes, it is ironic that the scores of immigrants coming to Canada desperately want to be "Canadian", yet the aboriginals don't.  Simpson was writing about the slap-dash United Nations report by someone named James Anaya who missed the point that of first nations communities receiving federal funding, 70 percent have fewer that 500 residents and most are purposefully isolated from centres of activity and economy. 

The relationship between aboriginals and their 600 chiefs and the rest of Canada is abysmal.  The Assembly of First Nations has collapsed into internal political battling between those who want to work with government (such as Shawn Atleo, who  finally gave up and resigned) and those who wish to confront it.  Most natives want more distance from mainstream Canada, a big mistake but I guess it makes the chiefs feel better. 

This evening, as I was leaving the Calgary Tennis Club, I was distracted by a man and woman fighting on a park bench not far from the parking lot.  Yep, they were natives and yep, they were drunk.  Their leadership has let them down all the while blaming the rest of Canada for the mess they are in. 

My only hope is that that couple doesn't have children waiting somewhere for Mummy and Daddy to come home and feed them.