Politic?

This is a blog dedicated to a personal interpretation of political news of the day. I attempt to be as knowledgeable as possible before commenting and committing my thoughts to a day's communication.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Prime Minister-in-waiting...waiting...waiting...

for the dissolution of Canada....

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair has been busy while Parliament has been in its usual winter abeyance, writing his script for public House theatre to impress upon the Canadian voting public that he is prepared to and capable of assuming the reins of governance from a current Prime Minister who surely will put up stiff resistance to handing over the administration of Canada to an impractical novice. Oops, did I say that?

During question period at the resumption of House procedures Mr. Mulcair was invested in excoriating the Conservative government for its failure to consult First Nations when it rewrote some of the country's environmental protection initiatives, particularly protection for rivers and lakes located on First Nations territory. Unemployment on reserves as high as 80% is scandalous, Mr. Mulcair thunders. Were he to become the leader of the country he would move industries to locations adjacent to reserves.

Schools are underfunded and half of the homes on First Nations reserves are in "pathetic state". He would see to it that First Nations parents imbue a love of education in their children and insist that they attend school and graduate from secondary institutions to institutes of higher learning. He has not quite enunciated his plan to shove private ownership of homes down the unwilling hands of those who have learned to depend upon others to clean up, repair and restore housing in disrepair.

"We have made ... unprecedented investments into things that will make a concrete difference in the lives of people. In skills training, in housing on reserves, in potable water, in schools, in treaty rights, in protection of the rights of women and of course ... in the resolution of many of the land claims" responded Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

It is not enough. It is never enough. It never will be enough. But Mr. Harper has vowed - and Canadians trust in his integrity to follow through - that he will reach incremental, albeit tardy agreement "...with those progressive partners who seek to make progress". The Prime Minister will meet again and again to gain traction and find solutions, with Grand Chief Shawn Atleo of the Assembly of First Nations.

Yet New Democrats have the solutions which the Conservative-led government has not yet recognized. And to further their agenda, NDP MP Romeo Saganash has introduced a private member's bill seeking to require federal laws to be compatible with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: equal treatment along with recognition that aboriginals have the right to remain distinct.

Their distinction is acknowledged. But they too are citizens of Canada. Although they derive from a nationhood that predated the European settlers competing with them for territory, their nation/s have been incorporated into union with the greater nation of Canada. Canada is obligated to deal with First Nations communities fairly and with due acknowledgement of their vital place in the country's history. As nation-to-nation...not quite.

Back when Canada was equivocating about signing on to the UN Declaration because some of the provisions it contained ran counter to Canadian law, Phil Fontaine then head of the Assembly of First Nations characterized the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People as an "aspirational", a non-binding document.

The-then Aboriginal Affairs minister was of a different mind: "To say it is only aspirational overlooks the fact that it contains a number of inconsistencies with Canadian law and policy", in particular those articles that proposed indigenous people have rights to ownership and use on lands traditionally occupied: "How are you going to administer the country?" asked Jim Prentice.

If the provisions of the Declaration were to be adopted, and high court justices interpreted those provisions in favour of aboriginal claims, the ability to administer the affairs of the country as a whole would be hampered, powers of administration and responsibility drained from the federal government, and handed over to an impediment to progress: a Crown/AFN collaboration.

Relations between the federal government and the Assembly of First Nations have never gone very well; the AFN does not act as a cohesive unit, there is fractiousness within it and competing regional and tribal interests. An unthinkable collaboration of that nature would endow federal and provincial legislators with boots of lead, stultifying debate and decision-making, incapacitating action on behalf of the country's advance into the future.

But the NDP and its leader, currently Leader of the Opposition, Thomas Mulcair, have other plans as well to generally advance Canada's interests and bring us to a much finer place in moral determinism, in their estimation.  He has recommended a proposal to replace the Clarity Act with plainer, cut-and-dried language that would be fairer to the aspirations of the Bloc Quebecois and the Province of Quebec's separatists.

"Instead of playing the games that the Liberals have always sought to play with this file and dropping us into the void as the Bloc would do we're proposing something constructive that is a positive way forward", claims Mr. Mulcair. That 'way forward' would represent a total capitulation to the separation agenda of the Bloc. In this scenario, a majority vote of 50-plus-1 would suffice to effect separation, allowing Quebec to go its own way.

To a degree. It wishes to be separate and sovereign. But it would not be ungracious about the sundering of the Canadian confederation. It would generously continue to accept assistance from the rest of Canada. A shared currency for example, and at least at first, a shared military. And while we're at it, sharing the provincial transfer payments, from the rich provinces to the less-so, under which arrangement Quebec has always and continues to receive the giant's share.

NDP MP Craig Scott's "unity bill" just tabled, would replace the current Clarity Act, written thoughtfully by Stephane Dion under Jean Chretien who suffered pangs of fearful guilt for not having adequately ascertained before the fact that there was a clear and present historical danger of the separation nightmare becoming fact, hurriedly emphasizing that a majority, agreed by the Supreme Court must be "free of ambiguity".

Yet Mr. Mulcair cavils and objects; the Supreme Court justices in ruling on the legitimacy and practical need of the Clarity Act, did not specify what could be construed as a definite, approved threshold, leaving that for the legislators. A hairsbreadth-slender majority of one will suffice, feels the NDP, carrying on with the legacy of the late Jack Layton.

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