John Reilly: Shut down the native industry and spend the money on natives

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Former judge, John Reilly wrote a book: Writing Bad Medicine: A Judge’s Struggle for Justice in a First Nations Community and he say’s if he had the power he would “Shut down the native industry and spend the money on natives”

It’s posted over at the National Post. The NP is not a paper I frequent and I have no idea how I originally found this story/comment but I did. I was drawn to the comment because I agreed with the broader statement John Reilly writes (people make big money off the misery of the First People) and in fact just finished ranting over at Non-Status Indian my views on the “Indian Industry” .

But.................I hate it when I learn that I disagree with everything else but that statement. And that sucks cause the statement itself is easy to hate along with and will easily draw attention but say something new or intelligent afterward or why say anything at all...unless its to make some quick cash.

It’s easy to develop policies when all you have to do is draw a straight line between A and B. My friend Balbulican is always reminding people of this over at StageLeft. It’s a little more complex if you want to design policies that work. Similarly, it’s easy to sell book and make a big profit if you write a book about misery, blame government, choose easy to spot villains, and then throw out new titles and new offices like new recipes created on some Chef TV show. It’s a formula designed to make profits otherwise publishers wouldn’t touch it. The reality is solutions are complex, take time, effort, work, patience, trust, and more hard work, and more effort than most people want to give.

The reality is that the former Judge John Reilly is still just sucking at the teat of misery and only too happy to make a profit while he pontificates from an “I know best” attitude.

His simplistic statement to “dissolve INAC and repeal the Indian Act” says it all for me. It was here I began to loose interest. I mean seriously don’t we all love to hate a government office? But when answering what he would do if he had the power he said would :

“...terminate funding to the Assembly of First Nations. In my view, the AFN is a chiefs club that looks after chiefs, many of whom just look after themselves and do very little for the poor and the children of their reserves.
Then I would enact a Canadian First Peoples Enhancement Act, to preserve and maintain the cultures of the descendants of Canada’s original inhabitants, to ensure their health and well-being and foster the independence and sustainability of their communities. I would create a Department of First Peoples Services. Non-natives and former employees of INAC should be ineligible for employment in this department. INAC was created for the assimilation of Canada’s First Peoples and the eventual elimination of their communities. That purpose lives on in the corporate memory of the department and must be changed.
I would spend the $7-billion on doctors and healthcare workers, addictions counsellors and healing lodges, teachers and improved schools, so that our First Peoples could become a healthy and happy part of Canadian society....”

It’s just such an easy target but really – what is or has John Reilly doing – on the ground to improve or make comfortable the lives of people around him. Sounds to me like he like many people worked hard, payed their bills, maybe raised children.....read newspapers, formed opinions voted in elections and now in his stately years can tell us what he has learned and how it should be done.

It’s ok for him but wrong for “non-Aboriginal employees former and present at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada” to make a living off misery (he was a lawyer first, then a judge in the system, and now writes a book) – WTF? I’m all for taking to task wasted time and effort but it’s simplistic and so talk radio to blame the bureaucrats (this time "non-Aborignal" bureaucrats like it's racial or something) and the Chiefs.

And his solution is to enact a “Canadian First Peoples Enhancement Act and a Department of First Peoples Services... so he can spend the $7-billion on doctors and healthcare workers, addictions counsellors and healing lodges, teachers and improved schools, so that our First Peoples could become a healthy and happy part of Canadian society....”

I’m the first to admit I believe in faeries and I love long tales but is anybody else shaking their heads in wonder?

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Todd Russell vs Brazman

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Ah its been way too long since we've posted about the Brazman. It's a guilty pleasure to point out- in case you missed it - this exchange of letters in the National Post between our favourite Senator and Liberal MP Todd Russell. Enjoy.

Why do some chiefs oppose accountability …

Re: First Nations Last In Openness, John Ivison, Oct. 7.

John Ivison’s column on the recently introduced private member’s bill that would compel First Nations to publish chiefs and band councillors salaries sheds light on a very important matter.

That there is resistance from the Liberal party and the Assembly of First Nations is no surprise. Let us recall that the Liberal party purposefully torpedoed its own minister’s legislation in 2003 when Bob Nault’s bill on First Nations Governance came too close to passage.

The Liberal party received over $350,000 in political contributions from 2000 to 2006, donated by aboriginal contributors, according to Elections Canada’s online database. Who would wish to stem such a tide of income to the party coffers by pursuing any efforts at reform of the status quo?

What is baffling is why the legislation is required at all. If the chiefs are as accountable, transparent and responsible as the AFN claims them to be, why is salary information not readily available and already proffered to First Nations citizens?

How can the idea of accounting of the investment of public funds towards political salaries be seen as an example of government-knows-best prescription, as AFN Chief Shawn Atleo contends?

Let’s be clear. Not all chiefs are unaccountable. Not all communities lack transparency. All First Nations citizens and indeed all Canadians have a right to know how much their politicians are being paid.

Such disclosure is necessary. Such openness reflects democracy. Relative silence on this matter such as there has been speaks louder than words.

Senator Patrick Brazeau, Ottawa.



Thanks for the donation

The only Aboriginal contributors who may now make political donations to federal parties or candidates are individual contributors. To my knowledge, neither Elections Canada, nor the Liberal party, keep data on the ethnic origin of individual political donors.

In any case, I imagine that the motives of individual Aboriginal political donors, or those of Aboriginal organizations under the old rules, are, and were, no different from those of any other donor, including Senator Brazeau himself.

The same Elections Canada databases which he so diligently searched, reveal that the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples donated politically while the Senator was its president, while Mr. Brazeau has personally contributed both to the Liberal party (of which he was formerly a member), and to the Harper Conservatives after he was appointed to the Senate by Stephen Harper in 2008.

For the sake of full disclosure, Patrick Brazeau also made a contribution to my federal Liberal by-election nomination campaign in 2005, for which I thank him.

Todd Russell, MP, Labrador.

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National Post: Nah nah nah nah Hey hey, Goodbye

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I think that the fact the Aspers put every holdig except the National Post under bankrupcy protection is telling. Or at lest I hope so. Could my dream finally be coming true?

CanWest's newspaper empire for sale

In the biggest shakeup in Canadian media in years, debt-laden Aspers cede a chunk of the family's legacy Canada's largest newspaper group is on the auction block amid the biggest upheaval in the country's media industry in years.

CanWest Global Communications Corp., whose late founder Israel (Izzy) Asper once dreamed of creating a worldwide media empire, put most of its big-city dailies into bankruptcy protection Friday after sinking under about $3 billion of debt.

The move ends almost a decade of efforts by the Asper family to make many of Canada's leading newspapers a key part of their drive to turn what was once a small, Winnipeg-based company into a national powerhouse, influencing opinion across the country and beyond.

CanWest said its newspapers – including the National Post, its only daily not now under protection from creditors – are looking for new owners in hopes of wiping out some of the company's debt while keeping the newspapers in business.

The long-anticipated filing for a court-supervised restructuring comes as the newspaper industry undergoes wrenching changes. Advertising revenue is beginning to recover after the recession, but the move by readers and advertisers to the Internet remains a major challenge for the industry.

"It's a sad day for me. The Aspers have lost control of Izzy's legacy," said Ray Heard, a longtime Asper family adviser. Izzy Asper died in 2003, leaving his son Leonard in charge as CanWest's CEO.

The company hopes to fetch between $1 billion and $1.5 billion for the newspaper group – less than half what it paid Conrad Black's Hollinger group for it in 2000.

Last October, CanWest took many of its broadcasting properties, including Global TV, into bankruptcy protection.

The Aspers intend to retain control of their broadcasting business, the foundation of the family's shrinking empire, but they are likely to have little role in the future newspaper company

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Frances Widdowson is a racist and how much longer until the Post goes bankrupt?

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It's amazing that the National Post can publish editorials by Widdowson, and still wonder why they are hovering on the verge of bankruptcy. Who wants to read it? Well I fought down the bile long enough to skim through her latest article "The aboriginal healing boondoggle" which attacks the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF).

Widdowson clearly has no idea what the AHF actually does and she flops from one topic to another like a fish on dry land trying to grasp onto something to criticize. For example, she points out that several individuals at the AHF have prior professional experience related to their jobs. But far from being a good thing Widdowson's twists job experience into an evil conspiracy: the "Aboriginal Industry," which she described in her book of paranoid delusions last year. In an attempt to shock her readers she points out that a number of high-level professionals at AHF are well-paid. Of course these salaries are on par with what their peers earn in other government departments. So I am not sure where she's going with this, unless she believes aboriginal workers should be paid less than their non-native peers for the same work.

Widdowson continues to spew ignorant arguments based on her unique brand of thinly veiled racism. For example - towards the bottom of her article she says Aboriginal people (here I think she really means FIrst Nations) found the transition from hunting to wage work difficult, which is false. The fur trade started failing at the turn of the century in the east, later in the West. Within a few decades First Nations were successfully working as lumberjacks, in high steel, ran a number of successful farms, earned wages fisheries and canneries, or during the wars, worked as soldiers. She could walk into any library and crack open a book (some of them even have pictures) to get this information. In reading through Widdowson's writings once finds most of what she writes is baseless, false or based on carefully manipulated half-truths.

Make no mistake though, there is an aboriginal industry. Here is how it works based on real facts, histories, political sciences, newspaper articles (in REAL newspapers, not the Post) all of which are available either online, in public records or public libraries.

For any nation wealth is based on an ability to access resources. Over the last century First Nations were slowly cut off from resources they once harvested, traded, or sold such as gold, trees, fish. First Nations were cut off from exploiting new resources on their land as they were discovered: oil, diamonds etc. So everyone else gets their cut - federal, provincial and municipal governments who earn millions in taxes, and the corporations who get to exploit these resources. However, not a single red cent goes to First Nations. An that is why First Nations have to go hat in hand to other governments and beg for money to provide basic services like schools and water. When First Nations ask for their cut, to either exploit the resources themselves, launch land claims, or ask for revenue sharing agreements, governments fight tooth and nail, spending millions of taxpayers dollars on lawyers to keep First Nations poor. That is the REAL aboriginal industry. It's not good for First Nations, and it's not good for Canadians. The sooner we all fight back and express our desire for change, the sooner it will all get better.

Widdowson is part of this aboriginal industry. She is their cheerleader and their PR. She earns a living promoting racist ideas. You see Widdowson not ignorant or stupid. She has been to a library. She is well-read. She knows all the same facts we know. Her brain is healthy and perfectly capable of interpreting and analysing the data she reads. So when Widdowson pounds her keyboard, purposefully spitting out falsehoods like a viper spitting poison, she does so fully aware that she is twisting the truth and ignoring the facts. She writes what she knows is ugly and untrue about an entire race of people because she wants to. That is why I call her writings racist.

Fortunately, the majority of Canadians see through it. That is why they don't read the Post which seems to specialize in poorly researched opinion pieces that border on hate crimes. That is why it is about to go under. The world will be just a little bit prettier when that happens and people who want to spin hate have to go back to hertiage front chatrooms. I think we should all help it along. We should each call or write one advertiser in the Post and let them know we will ban their products so long as they continue to support such a nasty paper.

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