canada’s 19th century policies

The United States may be moving toward recognition of the United Nation’s International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Australia has already announced it will do so. New Zealand may be re-considering its opposition the the Declaration as well. If so, this will leave Canada the only member in the UN voting against it, because Canada (as usual) is hoping to legislate Indians out of existence before that’s necessary.

The fact that Canada will be alone in its refusal to recognize Indigenous rights should not surprise Indigenous peoples, nor should it anyone else. Canada has maintained hypocritical, illogical and ridiculous positions on Indigenous rights all along.

• Canada says it respects the right of self-determination while making sure its legislative leghold traps remain firm, keeping Indigenous peoples in a system of internal colonialism.
• Canada says it wants to resolve disputes about Indigenous rights to land and resources by honouring existing treaties and land agreements, but continues to be the main reason for the huge back log at land claims, wasting millions of dollars each year, and provoking legal bar fights over resource issues. 
• Canada says it supports Indigenous rights, but does not seem to have a clue what that means. Or if it does, Canada seems to be stuck in 19th century attitudes and legal opinions about Indigenous peoples and their rights.

So here’s a suggestion. Follow this link and read. Canadians really need to educate themselves about the Indigneous peoples that their governments deny even exist. They may need to drag their country into the 21st. century.

The critical point here is that nation states assume their citizens accept the government and the political and cultural rules of social and political process. This, however, is a main point of contention between nation states and indigenous peoples, who have their own cultures, forms of government, economies and communities. Indigenous peoples live in communities or nations that are organized differently than nation states and many indigenous peoples do not recognize the authority or power of nation states, although they are often compelled to abide by their rules.

Indigenous peoples are often not, if ever, consensual citizens within the nation states that have assumed power and territory surrounding indigenous communities. Immigrants are asked to become naturalized and take an oath of allegiance to the nation state. Indigenous peoples, however, have been legislated into citizenship, and have not voluntarily taken oaths of loyalty or willingness to uphold or recognize the constitutions of nation states. Indigenous peoples generally are not parties to, did not consent to, and often did not participate in the constitution formation of nation states. While many indigenous peoples are loyal to their nation states, they at the same time want recognition of their political, cultural and territorial traditions.

adventures of the karate kid

Brazeau (aka the karate kid, not exactly as shown)

Otherwise known as Patrick Brazeau, the youngest person ever appointed to the Canadian “cash-for-life” deal (the Senate), notorious repository for political yes-men and bag-men thanks to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Brazeau’s back in the news because he’s been accused by former employees of acting, well, not very responsibly while heading up the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) in Ottawa. We’ll let the Canadian Human Rights Commission tackle that mess.

What should be of more concern is the judgement of  Harper himself, when he made this and other appointments. On this one, did Harper’s officials vet the candidate sufficiently, or ram through a token appointment because they wanted to be seen petting a good little Indian on the head? “Good” in terms of advancing the assimilationist cause of Little Stevie and the Harperites.  Because it must be asked: What else could have been on their minds? Brazeau’s lifetime achievements?

For a lot more on this, browse this collection of blog posts – brought to you by the good, good folks who make blogging possible for much of this nation’s citizenry for the low, low price of whatever you can afford.

no natives allowed

I’ve just checked the Donner Prize for this 2009. They didn’t get it.  Who? Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard, that’s who. They were nominated for “Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry” etc. I agree, they don’t deserve it although I’m amazed it got as far as it did.

 

I noted elsewhere, the last minute PR push with full-chapter reprints got me wondering if an award could be won by chequebook rather than quality. 

 

I’m not falling into Widdowson’s and Howard’s pre-emptive trap, to allow them to use reverse racism as an excuse, or to allow them to portray themselves as victims of political correctness. No one has sought to ban their opinions, so we shouldn’t allow them to proclaim themselves poster children for free speech either. They put their stuff out, they had plenty of opportunity to express themselves in the media (thanks, mindless bots), and their opinions have been found wanting. Too many academics have found their work wanting. 

 

Widdowson and Howard had plenty of opportunity to flog their opinions – and that’s exactly what they are, poorly researched, flawed, and highly prejudicial opinions pretending to be academic study. The authors didn’t seem to understand or to appreciate what it was that they actually advocated. Or if they did, they didn’t care.

 

I think, I hope, that Canadians are wary of anything that smells of cultural genocide given their past as well as their present, as they send sons and daughters off to fight and die in foreign lands. Difficult to justify fighting for respect and human dignity out there when the opposite may be taking place at home.

 

At risk of taking this off on a tangent, here’s a link to a story by Mark Dowie in the Boston Globe. It’s about the past, and the present, and  a centuries-old struggle to be heard and to be allowed to be heard. I think it fits the tone of this post. 

 

I suspect that Widdowson and Howard wouldn’t agree with this story, but then I don’t really care what they think anymore.

 

defending the despicable

A 7-year-old girl shows up in class with a nazi swastika drawn on her arm. The teacher washes it off. The next day, the mother has redrawn the swastika on her daughter’s arm and sent her back to school. Provincial child welfare authorities show up at their home, find nazi flags and other symbols of neo-nazism, and decide to take the girl and her 2-year-old brother into custody. 

“It was one of the stupidest things I’ve done in my life but it’s no reason to take my kids,” the mother told CBC News at the time.

The mother is fighting Manitoba child welfare authorities who have applied to take permanent custody of the children. She says that while she possesses neo-nazi and “white pride” symbols, she is not a white supremacist. 

“A black person has a right to say black power or black pride and yet they’re turning around on us and saying we’re racists and bigots and neo-Nazis because we say white pride. It’s hypocrisy at its finest.”  

Consider whether the state should have the right to remove children from their families because the state deems the parents’ thoughts or beliefs unsuitable, unacceptable or dangerous. Then consider what you would do as a Mohawk parent if the state decided that possession of red power literature, symbols or a Warrior flag were justification for apprehending your children? 

Is it instilling pride or conditioning racial hatred?

smoke shacks and a hole in the ground

A couple of years ago, a friend ranted about the smoke shacks that had popped up along the main road on his home territory. I listened, politely. I’d heard it all before and had said some of the same at one time or another. It goes like this:

• These guys and their smoke shacks are selling our collective, tax-exempt rights to Whites for the price of a pack of smokes;
• They’re padding their own pockets but giving little back to the community;
• They hire kids to sit on their asses in those shacks, watching DVD’s and playing video games instead of staying in school, finding a real job, or learning how to support themselves in the real world;
• They are putting our collective rights in danger with their actions – without our collective consent or support;
• They’re dependent on a false economy that might disappear tomorrow leaving them with nothing;
• They sell a product that kills people, adds to the cost of health care and human suffering – including their own people;
• They are responsible for an increase in drug and alcohol abuse and crime;
• They resist regulation by their own councils, defy outside authorities, exist in a vacuum of law and order;
• Some have grown rich enough, strong enough, to buy band councils (at least a few councillors);
• They have turned some communities in “one-industry” towns, with all that implies about who really runs things.

Rant ended, we spoke of other things. After awhile, my friend slipped into another story. He’s a middle manager at an international corporation who’s travelled to more Indian territories across Canada than me – and that’s saying something. He’s a businessman. He was struck by a TV documentary about a hole in the Amazon jungle. His take was an ode to entrepreneurship, and it went something like this:

• Someone discovered diamonds that could be dug out with a shovel;
• Soon, hundreds of people were digging an ever-growing pit in the middle of the jungle and far from any town or village;
• With the arrival of these people, others saw opportunity to open shops and sell everything from food and clothing, to tools and women;
• Along with this new economy – unofficial and unregulated – a town was born;
• Eventually, people installed a local government, made laws and regulations, and hired the means to enforce them.

Afterward, I point out to my friend that I saw little difference between the people (entrepreneurs) that he admired so in the documentary, and the folks running smoke shops on his home territory.

In both stories, I said, people saw an opportunity to improve their lives where little existed before. In Canada, unless you want to move off the territory and into the city, there aren’t many jobs outside of those few at the band council or school. Anyone hoping to set up their own small businesses face daunting, almost impossible, barriers. It almost seems as though the federal and provincial governments have designed a crossfire of regulations to kill any local initiative with red tape and bureaucratic stupidity. Other businesses, usually owned by Whites in neighbouring towns, do their best to shoot down any potential competition from the territory, and their votes count more with White politicians.

So some people on the territory say to hell with the government, to hell with the band council, and to hell with those who sit in comfortable office jobs or tap on keypads as if that was work. If people want to stop at their smoke shops and spend money, then let them. They are building a successful local economy in the wake of decade after decade of failed federal economic development programs that wasted millions of dollars. They say they are doing what governments haven’t been able to do — precisely because they cut out government altogether.

My friend is aghast with me. I point out that we have always been a mercantile people. We were manufacturers, traders and middlemen long before Columbus. In fact, our role as middlemen and traders was key to our dominance over and relations with the Dutch and English. It was also much of the reason why the French sought to destroy the Mohawk and their brother nations in the Confederacy – the French wanted to cut out the middleman and dominate the fur trade themselves. During much of this continent’s early colonized history, the Five Nations Confederacy (later Six Nations) held military, political and economic dominance over much of eastern North America. I stress the word “economic” to my friend.

I point out that his territory now has an economic zone where nothing existed ten years ago. Restaurants, gas stations, car washes, clothing, furniture and electronic stores and more have sprung up within that time. It happened, I add, without government aid or interference. The smoke shops owners diversified, said to hell with the government because it was holding them back. Now, I continue, the government sees success and wants to get involved so it can claim credit. Bullroar, I tell him, we both know the government did squat.

This story, I tell him, isn’t in the newspapers or on TV. There is no story about how all of these legitimate businesses are off-shoots of so-called “illicit activity.” What we see instead are stories about “illegal smuggling,” “crime” or “drugs.” It’s almost as if the government, Canadian society and the media wants us to remain perennial victims, permanently poverty-stricken, because there is too much invested in “managing” Indians. If they get independent, a lot of Whites lose their jobs.

The real story, I go on, may be about governments trying to stamp out these “illicit activities” with arrests and raids because what the governments really want is their cut. They’re like any other mob or gang. Give them their cut and they will sing your praises. Deny them and you’re “criminals” and “smugglers.”

As for the other complaints, about the moral and ethical questions raised about selling a deadly product to your own people and others… adding to the suffering of others… jeopardizing collective rights for individual gain… these need to be explored by the media to force debate – not by the White community but in our own territories. Those debates won’t take place unless the media starts doing its job better by providing more informed coverage on these issues, and less of the government line. The debate, much-needed and overdue, won’t take place at the insistance of our own politicians because they seem almost as gutless and ill-informed as White politicians. They will always choose the path of least resistance.

fool me once…

That’s the beginning of a rather famous saying that ends: “fool me twice, shame on me.” How many times have the Opposition Parities and the Canadian electorate allowed themselves to be fooled by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s flip-flops, broken promises and lies.

The following is an excerpt from an op-ed the other day, just before Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty finally stopped announcing their new budget in bits and pieces all week leading up to the actual delivery in the House of Commons (why does the news media in Canada insist on calling them “leaks”?):

Have they no sense that their policies have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin? Are they so divorced from reality that in their delusionary state they honestly believe we need more of their tax cuts for the rich and their other forms of plutocratic irresponsibility, the very things that got us to this deplorable state?

The newspaper in question is the New York Times. The writer is Bob Herbert. His criticism is aimed at those Republicans who just don’t get it, after a serious drubbing at the polls, and the much-deserved bum’s rush that the American voter gave George W. Bush.

These conservative Republicans attack the new Obama administration’s decision for more government intervention into the economy with a stimulus package. Instead, they advocate more tax cuts to the upper crust and business, and more spending on the military. These are the very things that, along with two wars, unbridled greed and a lack of government accountability, led to a $3-trillion dollar deficit and a meltdown of global economies. Herbert has little sympathy for their denial of responsibility – and absence from reality.

As you have probably already noticed, Herbert’s words could have applied just as easily to Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper and his Conservative horde.

Strangely, some of the harshest criticism of Harper in the past few days, though, has come from a former speech-writer for Brian Mulroney, an editor of Policy Options, a right-of-centre political journal, and published as a column in the conservative National Post newspaper. L.Ian MacDonald:

Leaking the deficit number was unprecedented in itself. But leaking it with the stock market open was unheard of. And leaking it from the Prime Minister’s Office, rather than the Finance Department, was a stunning big-footing of one central agency by another. If a deficit number isn’t market-sensitive information, nothing in a budget is. In the traditional Westminster world, there would be calls for the minister’s resignation. In the normal world of Ottawa, Finance officials, not the PMO, would have conducted the briefing.

But in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa, this sort of thing happens all the time. It’s all about command and control from the centre. This would never have happened in Jean Chretien’s or Brian Mulroney’s time – their finance ministers, Paul Martin and Michael Wilson, would never have permitted the Langevin Block to speak for them.

The strategy of leaking the deficit number was obviously to take the hit going into the budget, and take it out of the news cycle coming out of the budget. Indeed, the deficit number is itself a modest one, especially in the context of the global financial crisis and the imperative of securing the support of the Liberals to assure passage of the budget in a minority House.

At one time, leaking budget information before the government delivered it to the House of Commons was a federal offence for which quite a few journalists and civil servants were threatened with arrest. So much for the “honour of the Crown” and the “rule of law.” Clinging to power at all costs is what it’s come to be. How low can this government go?

parallel universes

Last year, I lived on Tyendinaga MT as the exit sign on Highway 401 puts it. Why, I would wonder from time to time, don’t they spell out “Mohawk Territory” so people won’t need to ask: “What’s M.T.?” Now you know.

At the time, I wondered why so many people on the territory did not support Shawn Brant. He had his small circle of adherents. Then were those who supported him because they desperately wanted change, and saw Brant doing something, anything. They were tired of watching their lands stolen, their children lose their language and culture, and their collective backbone erode after decades of giving ground.

Personally, he impressed the hell out of me. A couple of years ago, at a community meeting on their land rights around the town of Deseronto, I watched him cut through all the blather from those at the band office that everyone knew was just another dose of do-nothing.

In those few minutes, he summarized the positions of the federal and Ontario governments, the band office, and both the politics and finances of the nextdoor town of Deseronto. He went so far as to propose a solution – take over ownership and administration of the town. It was dying anyway. It was surrounded by Mohawk land and had no means to expand or upgrade. Since the town was under claim, why not? Had not the Seneca done just that in western New York State?

It sounded simple. A lot of people looked up, nodded their heads in agreement. The band council fudged, and then dumped it all onto the lap of Indian Affairs which was conveniently absent. Its officials were at that moment assuring the residents of Deseronto that nothing would happen. Indian Affairs was telling good Canadian citizens that the Mohawks would get nothing. These white citizens could trust Indian Affairs and the Canadian Government to do right by them, and by implication screw the Indians.

Back at Tyendinaga, you could feel the mood deflate. People shook their heads as they headed to the parking lot because they knew that this was how things had been done for decades. Sure they had seen some progress; going from sub-human to “wards of the state,” from denial of human, political and legal rights to “first nation.” It was all the same to them though. The all-powerful Indian agent had evolved into the band council despite claims to the contrary, and they knew that too. In that atmosphere of fog and dark, Shawn Brant stood out.

What most people didn’t realize then was that two parallel universes had crossed boundaries that evening.

Shawn Brant’s proposal to absorb Deseronto and assume administration of the town held real possibilities and mutual advantages to Mohawk and whites alike. They lived side-by-side, shared many services, had both federal and provincial governments supporting them – but separately. Tyendinaga’s businesses were booming for many reasons including a few minor tax advantages (that many whites tried to access on a daily basis). But like many of Brant’s ideas, there was a fundamental reality that he either ignored or failed to recognize.

Ever since contact, there has been a crucial difference between the Indigenous peoples in North America and their philosophical, cultural and legal understandings of land and land ownership, and those of the European settler. Indigenous folks must have been terribly confused by settlers who sunk roots into a piece of ground claiming to own it forever, when everyone knew one could never own Mother Earth. We borrowed time as stewards of the land until our bodies returned to the earth. Still, they understood territory and defended their sovereignty. This is the way things were, at least until the the Indian Act and its reserve system made official the one-sided shift in “nation-to-nation” relations.

So whatever the merits of Brant’s suggestion, and the hope for change that it might hold for some in Tyendinaga, it would require a massive and fundamental shift in not only the attitudes but the economic basis of the surrounding white population – particularly with the staunch conservative and even reactionary rural population in the immediate area around Tyendinaga.

Still, think of the possibilities. Then consider why so many Mohawks view Brant in a very different way than many – if not most – whites.

how wonderful is that?

Barrack Obama is President-elect of the United States of America. Here in Canada, there’s something else going on. The Opposition parties finally had enough. They woke up. They decided the Conservatives cannot be trusted to act honourably in the House of Commons. They are moving to dump the Conservatives under Stephen Harper.

Harper is using every nasty trick, half-truth or bald lie to discredit the coalition between the New Democratic Party and the Liberals supported by the Bloc Quebecois. There’s lots of speculation by the media, political pundits, party spokespeople about what the Governor-General of Canada will do when the Prime Minister and the coalition appear for her decision on which group should rule. But I have yet to hear or see one word on the fact that the G-G is a woman (not the first) and, more to the point, a francophone Black woman.

Michaelle Jean is also married to a confirmed separatist. Conservatives and their supporters slammed the Liberals for appointing Jean a couple of years ago for all of the above, shortly before the Liberals fell and Harper took office. They went after Jean’s husband as well. It was slimy, nasty stuff. The G-G kept her regal cool throughout.

Now she sits, waiting for Harper and the coalition to plead their cases before her.

The times they are a-changing.

Consider Justice Harry Laforme…

What a long, strange trip it’s been. And it ain’t over by a long shot.

Remember the illusory euphoria of last June? Remember the national apology to the survivors – and the Canadian people – for native residential schools delivered in the Canadian House of Commons by Prime Minister Harper? Remember the heads of various national Indigenous organizations sitting in the centre, along with one or two residential school survivors?

Why illusory? Because even the survivors said back then that words were cheap. They wanted to see if the federal government would act – actually do something – to begin the reversal of the awful legacy of that period in history. What they got instead was a soap opera, and a failed attempt by Harper to convince the majority of Canadians that he really was a nice guy, and that his party meant to do right and well by Indigenous peoples.

Shortly before the apology in mid-June, the federal government appointed Justice Harry Laforme, an Ontario judge, to the truth and reconciliation commission it had begun to set up. But even before the apology, Laforme was muttering about the connivance of some people, in some sectors. Later, he complained publicly that he was struggling against pressure from both the federal government and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). He said both were trying to influence himself and the work of Canada’s truth and reconciliation commission on Indian residential schools.

Then Laforme resigned, suddenly, citing differences with his co-commissioners; a lawyer from British Columbia named Jane Brewin Morley, and a nurse from Algonquin Territory at Kitigan Zibi, Quebec, Claudette Dumont-Smith. Some news reports portrayed it as a fundamental difference in approach with both women pushing for “reconciliation” while Laforme wanted “truth.” Other reports decribed a power play with both women refusing to knuckle under to Laforme. Later, a teary-eyed Laforme would say it boiled down to a moral question, and his own personal integrity. But most of us ordinary folks could only shake our heads in confusion and shame. Meanwhile, the folks that really mattered – the survivors – just kept dying at the rate of four more every week.

For decades, the federal government refused to deal with or even acknowledge complaints from survivors of the native residential school system. The feds and the churches shifted people around, covered tracks, overlooked malfeasance and even criminal acts in order to maintain the honour of the crown and uphold the sanctity of whatever church. Whenever a survivor refused to go away, or managed to actually get a lawyer to listen, the government built a wall of denial to anything resembling responsibility or accountability for the damage wrought to native lives. Then, in the face of more than a billion dollars in civil and class action law suits, and decisions awarding increasingly large settlements to the victims, Ottawa pulled a 180-degree turnabout.

What the feds came up with was a type of “no fault” insurance deal for itself and the churches. The deal went something like this: Okay, you have to prove that you went to residential school. You have to do the research.  You have to pay for the records. Then you have to prove that you were there when whatever you claim took place. Then your claim will go for evaluation. If you haven’t proved your position to our satisfaction, you will be denied. What’s that? Can you opt out and go back to your lawsuit after going through all of this time and expense?  Sorry.  You signed a waiver before you began this alternative dispute resolution process.

Naturally… this only angered the victims because it required them to sign away any legal options – even before they had told their stories. The federal government really tried to get the survivors to believe that it would do right by them. It held conferences on the ADR process. It hired tons of lawyers to advise groups on how to apply and sign the waivers. But, well, there was that credibility thing. The survivors just weren’t buying it, even if the AFN did.

The feds still faced a billion dollars or more in legal suits and Canadian opinion was beginning to solidify behind the victims. So Ottawa then moved to settle the law suits out of court with these conditions: minimum payments to all survivors; additional damages would be awarded on a sliding scale for a long list of abuses that included beatings and rape among other things; the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission. An official apology was not promised, nor denied, but a possibility was left hanging.

Meanwhile, the three big churches involved in this “crime against humanity” (as some would have it) faced the same individual and class action law suits as the federal government. Individual churches within the Catholic, Anglican and United Churches faced bankruptcy for a lot of reasons, including these residential school damage awards, but also due to falling numbers as members left in droves, perhaps even as they became more sceptical about their spiritual leaders and the houses they built. The churches pushed hard for Ottawa to do something, including taking most of the blame and at least half of the cost for settling. Did they say “half”? They meant two-thirds. Going… going…

The third party in this triumvirate was the Assembly of First Nations, which the media (and the government) accorded official status as representatives of the victims, even though residential schools scooped up Métis and Inuit as well as Indians, and the survivors had their own organizations – thank you very much. The vast number of survivors were Indian, so that confusion made some sense. Still, the AFN was given a leading role in setting up the trc – not the survivors themselves.  Phil Fontaine, the head of the AFN, is a survivor. But he is also the head of a national Indian organization with an increasingly angry bunch of voting chiefs who’ve seen lots of give from Fontaine and the AFN on issue after issue but very little gimme heading into the national chief’s mid-term. In other words, Fontaine needs some love.

Enter Laforme. Chosen among a short list of candidates suggested mainly by the triumvirate (federal government, churches and AFN) that cannot and will not put vested interests ahead of those of the survivors. The survivors’ groups grumble about the process, which they feel has been shanghaied. But they’re old and more die every day. The survivors hope Laforme will do right by them, because they have been given little choice but to hope. The question, and the survivors know it, is whether Laforme can become more than a token elevated by the old boy network into their stuffy little club?  Can Laforme – will Laforme- take on the triumvirate and risk all for a bunch of dying old people?

Stay tuned.

uh… who’s looking at your books?

I try to keep an eye on announcements by the federal government of Canada. Yes (sigh), even the announcement that the feds have launched BizPal in Muskoka. But there was nothing on my computer about Son of Chuckie’s latest.

Chuck Strahl, the Minister of Indian Affairs, announced new “value-for-money” audits which will, according to Sue Bailey at Canadian Press, “better track how Indian Affairs spends billions of dollars will catch misappropriation, lax reporting and – in rare cases – fraud.”

The emphasis here, of course, is not on Indian Affairs but on those pesky Indians their danged mai-tai sipping lifestyles.

Let us ignore for a moment that one of the biggest frauds in recent years in Indian country was actually organized and perpetrated by a senior civil servant in Ottawa’s Health Department.

Or that the Auditor-General of Canada slammed the Indian Affairs Department in 2002 for lack of or bizarre funding policies, and of ham-stringing band councils and Aboriginal organizations with multiple layers of audits that had some bands filing as many financial reports as days in a year.

Which raises interesting questions amongst we poor folk in the bushlands. We were just wondering how much the Federal Government wastes with its bizarre arrangements for program funding, in outstanding interest payments, or where the “value-for-money” is in such idiocy.

Y’see, this is how federal funding usually (often?) works in Indian country, and keep in mind that this applies for both new and continuing (year-to-year) programs:

• bands and organizations understand and rush to submit applications for funding on deadlines often set toward the end of the calendar year (around Xmas) for funding that should be approved and kick in by the beginning of the new fiscal year, April 1.
• Federal departments, though, sometimes (even often) change the program criteria and funding requirements even after the bands and organizations have had to submit their applications. The bands do so on assurances from Federal program officers that changes in policy likely, probably, hopefully will not affect their submission. No guarantees, of course.
• the Federal departments then consider the program and grant applications sometimes (perhaps often) without knowing what changes will be made to policies, program criteria or funding requirements. This process may take months, and months, and more months, while they wait for the highest levels of government to decide what to do.
• in the meantime, homes need to be built, schools need to operate, salaries for any number of people need to be paid, and this comes from lines of credit and loans that need to be arranged so ambulances continue to run and clinics keep operating. Who pays the interest on these loans and lines of credit? Sometimes this item is buried in the “miscellaneous” column, but often it must be taken out of regular program funding which may mean one less home or ambulance ride. But it certainly means more money to the banks.
• it is not unusual for programs to receive their “new” funding six, eight, ten months into the fiscal year. One group I’m familiar with received its funding one month before it was required to submit its final report at the end of that fiscal year.

So here are some questions:

1. this example deals only with Indian programs, and only in general terms. Does this or similar shenanigans take place in other federal departments as well?
2. how widespread do you think this problem is?
3. how much does the federal government’s idiocy (constantly changing funding requirements and late approval for funding) cost the Canadian taxpayer — not to mention the Aboriginal organization and programs?