Are there any successes in negotiations for land by Indigenous bands? Yes, one bright spot in the long history of resolving Indigenous land claims came 30 years ago in Saskatchewan. The framework for Treaty Land Entitlement enacted then was the culmination of a rocky...
The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was styled after the South African Commission which was the first commission ever established to sort through claims and counter-claims in an attempt to get at the Truth. The South African TRC was established in 1996 by...
Once again we are indebted to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and retired judge Brian Giesbrecht for their diligent research that has unearthed the proportions of some of the embellished claims about Canada’s past treatment of its Indigenous population and...
1.0 Introduction For years there have been constant references to the death of Aboriginal children. It has been said that the death rate in residential schools was much higher than the death rate on the reserves, and that the schools were deathtraps. When the Truth...
As we enter the year 2022, most Canadians will have lived their entire lives under the shibboleth that says we have the best health-care system in the world. Our beloved medicare is universal in scope, free of charge and offers equal access to all. What country could...
Calgary has sworn in its first female mayor. A week earlier, less than 24 hours after winning the mayoral race, she gave her first post-election talk-radio interview to Ryan Jespersen, mostly involving a series of softball questions. He asked her the obligatory woke...
Individuals aboriginal citizens are not represented by anybody, particularly the Assembly of First Nations. That’s why grass roots advocate Leona Freed favours a modernized treaty annuity which would direct resources directly to ordinary aboriginals. (2 minutes)
The ’60s Scoop was back in the news this month, and I expect we will hear more about it in the coming years. In fact, I am guessing there are plans in place to make it the subject of the next national inquiry after the missing women’s inquiry has wrapped up. So, what...
An Ontario Superior Court ruling, delivered December 2018, has lit the fuse for a political, cultural and economic time-bomb that will impact Canadians across the country, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Ruling on a claim by the chiefs of 21 First Nations that...
If life is so terrible on so many reserves, why do people stay? Why don’t they just pack up and move to the city? Actually about half of them have, but about half remain. That’s because they are very attached to the land. Their connection to their ancestors, to their...
The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for The United Nations Declaration On The Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to become the law of Canada. This is a very bad idea for many reasons. In the first place, enacting a law that would...
The Indigenous Affairs department which is now Indigenous Services and Crown & Indigenous Relations which is the same department, just divided up a bit, has an annual budget of about $10 billion dollars. It's complicated to find out exactly how much money is spent...
The Indigenous policy, being advanced by the Canadian government in a suite of legislation in the fall of 2018, is supposed to mark at new turn in the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous people. It appears, however, that the new policy is merely a tweaking...
"One day, I was approached and asked by a fellow called Jean Allard, a prominent member of the Indigenous community.” He felt that certain treaty rights were not being respected “and he was passionate about this. He felt that there was something very wrong happening...
It isn’t easy to grasp just how vast and complex Canada’s federal Indigenous affairs portfolio has become over the past fifty years. In part, that’s because Indigenous Affairs (now divided into Indigenous Services and Crown-Indigenous Relations) is unlike any other...