Hell or High Water

by Paul Martin

  It was clear to me that we could not effectively address the issues confronting our Aboriginal peoples except in partnership with the provinces. But, understandably, the provinces were wary of a federal government dumping new responsibilities on them without the resources they needed to shoulder them. I was lucky while I was prime minister that Gordon Campbell was the premier of British Columbia, and was prepared to take a leadership role. This was important because any prime minister, if he or she is to succeed in a negotiation involving the provinces, has to have a champion among the premiers.

  As the date for the meeting in Kelowna approached, it was clear that goodwill — indeed a will to succeed — had emerged on all sides. However, the deal had not yet been done. At one point I sat down with Campbell and he told me that the money Ottawa had put on the table so far was not enough. He said that $5 billion was going to be required to close the deal, a conclusion I had already reached myself. But I was not going to agree until I knew that all the negotiating tables had concluded their work. Soon this happened. Ralph Goodale then agreed to the $5 billion and Andy, Ethel Blondin, and the other involved ministers and I left Ottawa and headed for Kelowna.

  The meeting began with a prayer and a traditional ceremony. The large room was packed with Aboriginal leaders who had come from every part of the country. I was presented with a beautiful Métis buckskin jacket, which I wore throughout the time I was there, and many times since.

  In addition to the thirteen premiers and territorial leaders and me, arrayed around the table was a group of exceptional Aboriginal leaders. Phil Fontaine, of course, whose leadership was key to our success. Dwight Dorey, of the Congress of Aboriginal People, who was able to set aside his organization’s differences with Phil’s to make sure that everyone made progress. The Métis leaders, Clem Chartier and David Chartrand, who were exceptionally constructive. And Jose Kusugak, leader of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, who was in many ways the individual star of the meeting with his infectious humour.

  At one point in our discussions, Jose told a story to illustrate some of the difficulties Aboriginal peoples faced with the policies imposed on them from Ottawa. He said that when he was young, the government moved his family and their community from the land where they were living, in traditional dwellings, including igloos in the winter, to often poorly constructed houses that had been built for them by the federal government. He said that Southerners sometimes come up and ask why the Inuit didn’t take proper care of these houses. But they had never had houses before, he said, and no one told them how to maintain these buildings when they were forced into them. In your culture, he said to the premiers and me, when your wife is tired of your house she tells you to move the couch and you do it. And if she wants you to move it back again the next day, you do that too. But in our culture, he said, when your wife tells you she’s tired of the igloo, you build her a new one. He had everyone in stitches. Of course he was also making a serious point: even well-intentioned policies dropped on communities without consultation are likely to go awry.

  Another participant in the meeting was Beverly Jacobs of the Native Women’s Association, whom I had invited. At Kelowna, she told us that we were not giving women’s issues — such as violence in the home and civic equality on the reserves — the priority they deserve, and she was right. For that reason, we agreed to hold another conference specifically to focus on the issues Aboriginal women were raising.

  The Kelowna meeting formalized an agreement that we had already worked out through many painstaking months of negotiation. Every single provincial premier and every territorial leader in the country and every Aboriginal leader at the table endorsed the accord. All of us felt the historic significance of the occasion. Incredibly, never before had the prime minister sat with his provincial and territorial counterparts and the country’s Aboriginal leadership to deal with the issues that lay before us. Not only that, but we came to an agreement on what had to be done and how.

  Despite this, the Conservative government reneged on Kelowna, and in so doing broke the word of the Canadian government to the provinces and territories and to Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. They did this despite the fact that during the election campaign they said, through Jim Prentice, their Aboriginal affairs critic, that they would honour it. Did they renege for purely partisan reasons, on orders from the new PMO? Or did they do it because they do not believe that Aboriginal Canadians are entitled to the same quality of education and health care as other Canadians? I don’t have the answer but it must be one of the two, as they presented no other option. In either case, it’s beyond the pale.

  One thing, however, is immutable. This government may have walked away from the Kelowna Accord, but sooner or later the Kelowna approach will be the law of the land. Sooner or later a future government will have to come back to the Kelowna principles: the goals we set for Canada must be no less than the educational, health, economic, civic, and social equality of Aboriginal peoples with their fellow citizens; that progress toward those ends must be made by providing adequate funding and by setting specific, measurable targets along the way; and that all of this can only be done with the consensus and collaboration of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples.

  Under the agreement, the federal government was committed to an initial contribution of $5 billion in the first five years of a ten-year plan. Our objective was to bring the high school graduation rate for Aboriginal peoples to the Canadian norm by 2016 and to close the gap in post-secondary education by 50 per cent over that same period. In health care, we set targets to reduce infant mortality, youth suicide, childhood obesity, and diabetes by 20 per cent in five years, and 50 per cent in ten years, and to double the number of health professionals. On housing, we agreed to specific targets to reduce the shortage on reserves, for urban Aboriginal peoples, and for the Inuit (where the housing shortage was perhaps the most acute). We committed to reducing the income gap between Aboriginal and other Canadians, and to cut unemployment by 30 per cent over five years and 50 per cent over ten.

  Some commentators have said that the Kelowna process did not deal with the issue of accountability. That is nonsense.

  Accountability is a critical issue. It is for me, and when you examine what the vast majority of Aboriginal leaders have said, it is clear that they are aware of the need. It is for Phil Fontaine, who called for a First Nations ombudsperson and it is for his office, which initiated work with the federal Auditor General seeking to create the office of a First Nations Auditor General. Yes, there have been problems of accountability in Aboriginal governance, just as there have been in all governments in Canada, not to mention other well-established institutions, from school boards to some of North America’s largest corporations.

  Some years earlier, in an effort to address the issue Bob Nault (who was minister of Indian affairs before I became prime minister) tried to apply a legislated system of accountability. He was right to want to act. The problem was that his initiative was open to constitutional challenge, and it was going to be challenged. This would have meant years of litigation, with no better than a fifty-fifty prospect of success. I wasn’t prepared to wait a decade to see what would happen, while the whole process of increased accountability was hobbled.

  I chose to adopt a different approach in part because of Roberta Jamieson and Herb George. Jamieson is the first Aboriginal woman to earn a law degree, a former ombudsperson of Ontario, and the first woman to become chief of the Six Nations of the Grand River. Herb George is an expert in Aboriginal public administration who has taught in Canada and abroad and is now the chairman of the National Centre for First Nations Governance. Their argument was that the Aboriginal leadership fully supports the need for strong accountability, but there is a problem of a lack of capacity, which has to be developed and cannot be imposed. They argued forcefully that part of the solution to the riddle we confronted was the development of strong institutions of accountability within Aboriginal communities, coupled with a First Nations ombudsman and
a First Nations Auditor General as Phil Fontaine has proposed.

  To address the issue of accountability, the Kelowna Accord set aside $120 million, and a joint work plan detailed the agreement on principles and objectives. Ten specific project areas were identified, including the development of processes for financial certification, data measurement, improved reporting, and the development of management capacity. What is the situation today? When the Conservatives walked away from Kelowna, they cancelled the whole process. What is more incredible is that they even cancelled the funding requested by those chiefs who wanted to pursue the accountability initiatives on their own.

  It is important to understand that Kelowna was not only a plan of action, with specific financial commitments from the federal government; it was also a framework for continued co-operation among governments and Aboriginal peoples, right down to the band level. Everyone at Kelowna understood that each province is different and each band is different. The needs of the Haida of British Columbia and the Cree of northern Ontario are not the same. As the Kelowna Accord came into effect, there would be negotiations at every level in the context of a firm federal fiscal commitment. Gordon Campbell and British Columbia’s native leaders signed an agreement right then and there at Kelowna that set the stage for the other provinces in negotiations with their Aboriginal peoples that still lay ahead. To my mind, these successful examples of collaboration, consensus, and joint planning — given the doleful history of government relations with Aboriginal peoples — were almost as important as the goals themselves. But the goals were not just airy good intentions. I had set measurable targets as finance minister to eliminate the financial deficit. Similar targets were set in Kelowna to eliminate the social deficit borne by Canada’s Aboriginal people.

  Furthermore we laid out a plan for subsequent federal-provincial-territorial governmental-Aboriginal meetings every few years, to assess our progress against the specific targets we had laid out for outcomes in terms of the numbers of Aboriginal kids in school, the number of housing units built, the number of health professionals in Aboriginal communities, and right through the piece.

  There was a time when native peoples in this country signed treaties relying on the name of a monarch, half a world away, believing that they would not be betrayed. Time and time again, they were proven wrong, and we dishonoured ourselves. I believe that if the Harper government had carried through with the solemn commitment that we made at Kelowna, the next decade would be one of real progress in every Aboriginal community in the land. It would mean the restoration of some damaged lives and the avoidance of much suffering and frustration in others. It would mean that many young children who did not have much reason for hope, and turned to alcohol and other intoxicants for solace, would see another, better way opening up. It would not mean an erasure of the hundreds of years of bitter interaction between Aboriginal peoples and the rest of us, but it would be the foundation of a new relationship of collaboration and trust.

  Instead the government has gone back to the old ways of trying to impose solutions: something that scores of years and dozens of discarded policies have proven will not work. And because it will not work, I believe the approach that we — the provinces, territories, and Canada’s Aboriginal leadership — adopted at Kelowna will once again see the light of day: working together instead of confrontation, better education instead of more high school dropouts, better health care instead of higher infant mortality, measurable results instead of malignant neglect. Call it what you will, I believe the Kelowna approach if not the Kelowna Accord is inevitable. In the meantime, however, so much opportunity has been lost.

  How can the federal government justify spending substantially less per capita on the high school education of a young Aboriginal Canadian in its jurisdiction than the provinces do for a similar student in their jurisdiction. It’s wrong, and it cannot last.

  That the Conservatives reneged on Kelowna, and in so doing condemned another generation to the same compromised lives to which their parents were condemned, is my deepest regret at losing the election of 2006.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Flying in Turbulence

  Transition. Cabinet selection. Sponsorship cancellation. Budget #1. Auditor General’s report. Mad as Hell. Whistleblowers Legislation. Gagliano. Health care. Child care. Cities. Kyoto. Ontario health premium. Election call. Darfur. Haiti. Afghanistan. Debt-relief. L-20. Mexico. Russia. India. Japan. Hong Kong. China. Sudan. Libya. Thailand. Sri Lanka. Middle East. Responsibility to Protect. Tsunami. DART. NORAD. BMD. DND. CIDA. International Policy Statement. Second cabinet. Budget #2. Sea Island. Gleneagles. Bush visit. Parrish. Kilgour. Stronach. Grewal. Cadman. Gomery. Fisheries. Mad cow. Softwood. Devils Lake. Health accord. Atlantic accords. NDP budget accord. Kelowna Accord. Equalization. Pacific Gateway. Safe Borders. Maher Arar. The North. The West. The East. Quebec and Ontario.

  Have I left something out? Of course I have. Many things. It was that kind of time, and we had a minority government. I have tried in this book to separate out many of these moments, places, issues, and challenges, and put them in their proper context. But my time as prime minister was concentrated into just a couple of years and if, for some people looking in from outside, it all seemed like something of a blur, they may be forgiven. The truth is that all governments deal with many different files, each of which demands urgent action and not all of which can be delegated elsewhere. You probably have to be inside the eye of the storm to see the connections and continuities.

  We won 135 seats in the 2004 election, much better than many pundits and pollsters had predicted in the waning days of the campaign. In fact, our victory came as a surprise to many of the so-called “experts.” Still, it was well short of a majority. The Conservatives had 99 seats; the Bloc Québécois 54; the NDP 19; and to begin with there was one independent, the former Reformer and Canadian Alliance MP Chuck Cadman. Initially, that appeared to mean that we could get our legislation through with the support of any one of the opposition parties — just barely in the case of the NDP. It did not take long however for us to lose our first MP (Carolyn Parrish). Then in December 2004, Lawrence O’Brien, an MP from Labrador, passed away after a long struggle with cancer at the untimely age of fifty-three.

  Whenever these things happen, they help put political life in better perspective. Lawrence had been a wonderful representative for his constituents as well as a friend and supporter of mine, and his brother Leo was one of my RCMP bodyguards. I flew out to Happy Valley-Goose Bay for the funeral. I had been to his riding of Labrador with him many times before. We had worked together to save the Canadian Forces Base at Goose Bay, and had toured some of Labrador’s reserves together. One visit with Lawrence that I will never forget was to Charlottetown, a beautiful small fishing village on the Labrador Coast where virtually the only access was by air. Sitting in the school gymnasium talking to the children, it became clear that they knew as much about Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal as any other Canadian, but I wondered how many Canadians know about their home on the Labrador Coast.

  Lawrence had been an educator, a public servant, a town councillor, and eventually a four-time MP. He was a champion, among other things, of the constitutional amendment to change the name of Newfoundland to “Newfoundland and Labrador.” He fought and won a tough election after his diagnosis with cancer, which in itself was a tribute to his dedication to public service.

  In the House, we were now in a tough position. To get our legislation through we needed the support of either one of the larger opposition parties or the NDP and the independents. From the moment the Gomery inquiry began its public hearings in September, it was clear that both the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois would be spoiling to have an election at the first opportunity. Although we might be able to win their support on specific pieces of legislation that spoke directly to their constituencies or platforms, we felt it was only a matter of time before they would gang up to try to force an election. The NDP were the exception on the
Opposition benches. They had performed relatively well in 2004, after a dismal decade, and probably would have done even better if many of their potential supporters had not come to us for fear of Stephen Harper. The minority offered them a special opportunity to capitalize on their success; another election might snuff that out by electing a majority government of one stripe or another. At the same time, many New Democrats were wary of co-operating too closely with us, fearing that their hard-core base would treat that as a betrayal, and their softer supporters might come to see it as a reason to vote for us.

  The first real crunch we faced (though there were plenty of phony crises through the fall) was over our 2005 budget. Not long after Ralph Goodale introduced it, Jack Layton came looking for a negotiation. We met at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. It was pretty clear that he wanted a deal, for the reasons I’ve explained above. Initially, he presented a long list of demands that was not very well thought out — or even coherent, to be frank. However, when Tim Murphy sat down with Layton’s advisers afterwards, the core demands boiled down to a delay in enacting corporate tax cuts, which we had already delayed in the actual budget announcement itself, so that was no problem, and an acceleration of some other plans we had for housing and student aid by one year. Compromise is not a dirty word in a minority Parliament; it is the way you get things done. And this was a compromise on timing, not substance: an easy deal to make. The Conservatives and the Bloc, who had formed an increasingly close parliamentary alliance, seized on these amendments to set non-confidence motions in play that they hoped would topple the government.