Now You're Talking!
Well, this is refreshing, this is a change, this is responsible governance. Phil Fontaine taking on a new tack. And it makes good sense. The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations addressing a business audience making an offer they should seriously think about. To consider the feasibility, the practicality of setting up business partnerships with some of Canada's 630 native communities.
Canada is facing a shortage of critical workers. In all areas. We're increasingly dependent on immigration to swell our workforce potential. Our replacement birth rate is hovering on depletion. Yet here are our First Nations people living in dire poverty on welfare hand-outs and tax money. It's what Mr. Fontaine terms "the ugly reality and desperation of First Nations poverty".
He's right; it is a visionary plan, and about time, too. Government hasn't been able to solve the intractible problems facing native communities, and the communities themselves have been close to useless in making the effort to solve their own problems. They're stuck on both sides, not because it's impossible to make the changes needed, but because the will to do so is absent, on both sides.
On the part of the First Nations there's a culture of languid despair, an ingrained belief that they cannot succeed, and there's nothing they can do about it, sinking deeper into the depths of apathy and neglect, endemic poverty and child abuse. As for the government, they've proved to be utterly inept, devoid of the kind of creative thinking it would take to turn the situation around.
But if business and large corporations can see the utility in aligning their futures with that of First Nations there's hope. First of all, there's the potential of a large pool of employable people, then there's the potential to develop geological natural resources that Indian reserves hold.
If, through Chief Fontaine's vision corporations like Siemens Canada, Bell Canada, Adobe and SixTech, Enbridge and Royal Bank of Canada have signed up to his corporate challenge, there may very well be an example ready to demonstrate to the country at large, to add to that of already-successful joint enterprises.
Living conditions can slowly be brought up to the standard deserved by all Canadians, and pride of responsibility-and-result will bring Native Canadians the future they surely deserve.
Canada is facing a shortage of critical workers. In all areas. We're increasingly dependent on immigration to swell our workforce potential. Our replacement birth rate is hovering on depletion. Yet here are our First Nations people living in dire poverty on welfare hand-outs and tax money. It's what Mr. Fontaine terms "the ugly reality and desperation of First Nations poverty".
He's right; it is a visionary plan, and about time, too. Government hasn't been able to solve the intractible problems facing native communities, and the communities themselves have been close to useless in making the effort to solve their own problems. They're stuck on both sides, not because it's impossible to make the changes needed, but because the will to do so is absent, on both sides.
On the part of the First Nations there's a culture of languid despair, an ingrained belief that they cannot succeed, and there's nothing they can do about it, sinking deeper into the depths of apathy and neglect, endemic poverty and child abuse. As for the government, they've proved to be utterly inept, devoid of the kind of creative thinking it would take to turn the situation around.
But if business and large corporations can see the utility in aligning their futures with that of First Nations there's hope. First of all, there's the potential of a large pool of employable people, then there's the potential to develop geological natural resources that Indian reserves hold.
If, through Chief Fontaine's vision corporations like Siemens Canada, Bell Canada, Adobe and SixTech, Enbridge and Royal Bank of Canada have signed up to his corporate challenge, there may very well be an example ready to demonstrate to the country at large, to add to that of already-successful joint enterprises.
Living conditions can slowly be brought up to the standard deserved by all Canadians, and pride of responsibility-and-result will bring Native Canadians the future they surely deserve.
Labels: Canada
posted by Pieface | 6:08 PM
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