Entitled to their entitlements, aboriginal edition
The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation is right. There, I’ve said it. And it only hurt a little.
While I can—and do, and will—dispute the larger goals of this never-met-a-public-expenditure-it-can-stomach crowd, the CTF did discover real slime under its latest freedom-of-information rock.
Though there are only a million aboriginals in Canada, 82 reserve politicians “earned” more than the prime minister’s $315,462 salary last yea
r, 222 pocketed more than their provincial-premier counterparts and 70
4 raked in the tax-free equivalent of $100,000-plus.
One Nova Scotia councilor—on a reserve with 304 members—took home $978,468 tax free.
Some First Nations leaders argue these CTF remuneration numbers are ripped from their context—that the packages lump together salaries, honoraria, travel expenses and contracts for native businesses, and that native political leaders don’t get plush pensions like their non-native colleagues.
Some complain darkly that singling out native leaders smacks of racism.
Mi’kmaq elder Daniel Paul blames the Department of Indian Affairs, which he says has been “well aware of what’s going on and have chosen not to do a thing about it.”
There is plenty of blame to go around.
Traditional government paternalism coupled with a more recent laissez-faire fear of appearing to question First Nations’ autonomy created fertile ground for nefarious native leaders who choose to take advantage.
Whenever politicians operate in secret and are unaccountable to the people who elect them, entitled-to-their-entitlements corruption is sure to follow. (See Nova Scotia MLA expense scandal, federal sponsorship scandal, David Dingwall, et al, ad nauseum.)
What makes this scandal more difficult to digest is the stark reality of non-leader aboriginal life in Canada.
Consider the third-world conditions that exist on many Canadian reserves. Consider that aboriginal young people are seven times more likely to commit suicide than the national average. Consider that the unemployment rate for aboriginals in Nova Scotia last year was 17.4 per cent compared with nine percent for non-aboriginals, and that employed aboriginals earned just 77 per cent of hourly waged non-aboriginals.
Now consider again those CTF numbers.
It is past time for transparency and accountability. It’s time to put power in the hands of native communities, not native leaders.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Has the NDP found its governing groove?
Have Darrell Dexter’s New Democrats finally, belatedly discovered their governing groove?
When Nova Scotia’s first democratic socialist government arrived at the governing starting gate in June 2009, they were already saddled with an embarrassment of their own making—how to renege, almost yesterday, on virtually every promise they’d made to get elected: a balanced budget, no new taxes, no program cuts, 24-hour ER services, a chicken in every pot…
Without passing Go, they stumbled into the grubby MLA expenses scandal. While that mess was not solely of their own making, they bumbled its handling, miscalculating the seismic depths of public outrage and squandering what remained of public goodwill.
For much of the rest of its first year-and-a-half in office, Dexter’s NDP has seemed unable to gain control of its own agenda.
Until recently.
Take last week, for example. Dexter began by piggybacking on a federal commitment of $20 million for tidal power projects to tout what he calls the province’s coming role as “a world leader” in clean energy. By the end of the week, he’d inked a tentative $6.2-billion deal with Newfoundland to bring hydro power from the Lower Churchill River to the Maritimes and the U.S..
Meanwhile, his ministers were introducing far less flashy but crowd-pleasing measures to protect used car buyers from lemons and cyclists from drivers, and to belatedly hand the auditor general the power he needs to muck about in government-business dealings.
Dexter’s government even appears to have grabbed the “big decision” ball. This fall, it said yes to a controversial new convention centre, no to oil and gas exploration on George’s Bank, no to online gambling, and yes to funding Lucentis to treat macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in people over 50.
Health Minister Maureen MacDonald, who also recently struck a deal to cut costs for generic versions of the anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor, framed her own announcement as “an important first step” in getting fairer drug prices for Nova Scotians.
As if there might actually be a plan…
Darrell Dexter’s NDP is still a long way from proving it deserves a second mandate, but it has finally begun the climb back to where it began.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
TYP: It all began in a duck blind
What became the “most important (educational) program ever” for Nova Scotia’s black and aboriginal communities began inauspiciously enough in a duck blind in the middle of the Nova Scotia nowhere.
Dalhousie University’s Transition Year Program—a unique-for-its-time scheme to bring marginalized black and native students into the academic mainstream through a year-long process to “transition” them into university—celebrated its 40th anniversary this past weekend with a reception, symposium, dinner and dance.
Its conception was decidedly more humble.
In October 1968, Rocky Jones, then a black radical student activist, invited his friend Jim Walker, then a freshly minted white Dalhousie grad student, for a duck hunting weekend. “Rocky is an avid hunter,” Walker jokes today. “I am not.”
They built a lean-to but it was so cold they zipped their sleeping bags together and even invited Rocky’s Labrador retriever into the bag to stay warm.
“I should mention,” Walker adds, “we had a bottle of rum we passed back and forth.”
They talked through the night—about Mississippi freedom schools, the fledgling American “head start” school programs, a recent report documenting the shockingly low numbers of black Nova Scotians in university…
At some point, remembers Jones, they concocted a scheme that—after two years of discussion and the perhaps surprising support of then-Dalhousie president Henry Hicks—became the Transition Year Program.
Today, Jones is one of Canada’s most prominent civil rights lawyers, Walker is a history professor and author of the seminal book on Nova Scotia’s black loyalists, and TYP is a model for programs across North America.
Its most important accomplishment, Jones suggests, is that it helped foster a cadre of educated local black and aboriginal grads who returned to their own Nova Scotia communities and became leaders there.
Is the program still needed?
Yes, says Jones. But it needs to return to its roots. In recent years, it has admitted more students from outside Nova Scotia. Many don’t stay after they graduate. “We’re losing leadership,” Jones says. Which is especially troubling, he adds, at a time when many local black and native communities desperately need a new generation of educated leaders.
So a toast to TYP. To what it was. And still needs to be.
***
If you'd like to read more of Jim Walker's recollections of the beginnings of the Transition Year Program, you can find his emailed response to my queries here.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Keep hate laws for real haters
It’s difficult to summon a scintilla of sympathy for the Rehberg brothers. Twenty-year-old Justin was convicted Friday of criminal harassment and inciting hatred against blacks by setting a two-metre cross ablaze last February in front of the Hants County home of a mixed-race couple. His brother Nathan faces similar charges this week.
But since this decision may be precedent-setting, it’s worth asking whether we want to set this precedent. The law requires proof not only that the accused did the deed but also that their “motivation” was to incite hatred.
Justin’s lawyer argued the motivation for this crime—his client pleaded guilty to criminal harassment—was something else.
Justin was convinced Michelle Lyons—a distant cousin who shared the house with her black partner and their children—was spreading rumours the Rehberg brothers had herpes. In his dumb-as-dirt way, Justin lashed back, zeroing in on her partner’s race and upping the offensive ante in the process.
The intent, his lawyer insisted, was personal vengeance.
It’s complicated, of course. Cross-burning carries symbolic connotations. That this torching failed to ignite racist nutbars says more about the community, which rallied to support the family, than the act, or those who perpetrated it.
Still, we need to be careful when we attach the most heinous intent—inciting hatred is heinous—to messy personal vendettas.
One criminologist argued after the verdict that “hate laws were created for this reason… We need to prosecute more, not less.”
I’d suggest hate crimes are, and should be, so reprehensible we must designate them such only in clear-cut cases.
Consider another recent case involving a New York street gang that discovered one of their recruits was gay. They allegedly beat and sodomized him, tortured another gay man, then beat up that man’s roommate and brother. Police call those hate crimes. No kidding.
In a slightly different context, American comedian Jon Stewart got it exactly right during his recent Rally to Restore Sanity when he urged caution in our use of language. We must learn to “distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez.”
We also need to distinguish between real race haters and dumb-assed vengeance seekers.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Best interests of the child (care system)
Remember that Cole Harbour kid who had so many complex emotional issues and acronym-saturated syndromes the province’s community services department decided the only possible solution was to put him in a residential care facility where he could be helped 24 hours a day on a long-term, continuing basis?
And remember there wasn’t such an institution in Nova Scotia. So two years ago community services shipped him off to Bayfield in Ontario.
Recall that his grandparents—who’d raised him since he was a toddler and initially asked community services for help—objected to sending him so far from home. They—horrors—complained to the press and even went to court to force the government to bring him back.
They lost that battle but… well, one bit of sour publicity led to another. There were questions about the efficacy of Bayfield’s treatment approach, and allegations the boy may have been abused. This summer Bayfield washed its hands of the boy and shipped him back to Nova Scotia.
In late September, community services dumped him back on his grandparents with nothing more than a skimpy, page-and-a-half “Service Plan”— part-time/sometime help from a school liaison/tutor, family therapist and alternative youth worker—and good riddance.
But remember. It was community services that initially claimed he had so many issues and syndromes he needed 24 hour continuing care and supervision.
Remember, too, that this boy is still only 15!
It’s difficult not to see his treatment as vindictive payback by miffed community services officials who don’t like having their authority questioned.
Today, the grandparents report the boy’s behaviour is no better and, arguably, worse now than when community services took him two years ago. They’re going back to court to force the department to implement an alternative, community-based, intensive care program developed by Moncton psychologist Dr. Charles Emmyrs and other professionals. But the earliest family court date they can get is December 22nd.
Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse should be embarrassed. And the opposition should be demanding answers—not to mention a public inquiry into whatever happened to what is supposed to be the bedrock of our child welfare legislation: “the best interests of the child.”
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and seven non-fiction books.