Heavy-handed?

There has to be something terribly wrong with AFN Chief Perry Bellegarde's brain.  The man cannot apply logic or reason to anything, a fact becoming increasingly-clear every time he opens his mouth.  The latest nonsense surrounds his bizarre and unreasonable pronouncement that, although he himself has never voted federally, he urges all natives to do so. 

Really?!  "I just haven't done it," he bragged.  "It's a real personal thing."  See how the logic falls apart?  I'm telling you to do it, even though I say it's personal -- something which, last time I checked, was....well....personal.  His lame excuse is "because as first nations' leader, I want to maintain an appearance of non-partisanship."  Guess he hasn't heard that Canadians vote by secret ballot.  Guess he also forgets that he slams the federal government every-which-way-to-Sunday every time he opens his mouth.  Clearly, by urging natives to vote, he is in effect telling them not to vote Conservative, to throw the bums out.    Again, logic escapes the man.

"Even though I may not vote, I am urging young people to get out.  I may, or may not, but that's why. (Huh?).  That's what I am wrestling with personally."  Man, there a statement of crystal-clear clarity if ever I've heard one!  Makes me long for good old reasonable, sensible, calm, intelligent, rational, judicious, even-handed, wise, level-headed Shawn Atleo.  Alas and alack, he was thrown under the bus and kicked to the curb by the likes of Bellegarde and his cronies for sitting down with the feds to work out crazy things such as educational funding -- the very battle cry Bellegarde is touting now.  It completely defies sense.

Bellegarde's other bug-a-boo is the federal obligation that bands report their finances.  He calls this "heavy-handed".  Really?  To ask natives to account for the money given them is heavy-handed?  The First Nations Financial Transparency Act requires 581 bands to post audited financial statements on the internet.  Apparently, 191 bands will not receive non-essential funding because they have not complied.  They will receive "essential" funding, but Bellegarde claims, "a lot of those people in those communities, you're going to make them suffer.  It's not proper.  It's not right," he said.     

What's neither "proper" nor "right" is Bellegarde's high-handedness in having the gall to believe he is above the law and does not have to comply, as all the provinces and territories must.  Claiming his people are a "nation" while at the same time refusing to act like one is the height of it.  If you do the basic math, 500,000 natives receive $8.5 billion every year from Canadian taxpayers, theoretically $1,700,000 each.  Insane!  And Canadians bitch about paying $1.60 each for our Queen.   

The real problem, as I have said before, is that natives do not identify as "Canadian", so they don't vote and they don't pay taxes -- two things the rest of us do because the former is our civic duty and the latter the law.