Democratic Deficit = Housing Deficit

"We suspect that a substantial number of band councils do not make a reasonable effort to recognize and guarantee voting rights to their off-reserve members. I'm sad for the people who were not able to vote in the election. They've been denied their fundamental right of enfranchisement.
"It's gotten to the point now that something has to be done. This is about a fundamental point of law."
Betty-Ann Lavallee, National Chief, Congress of Aboriginal Peoples

Her appeal to the Attawapiskat band council to postpone their band council election scheduled for Wednesday was simply ignored. Similar appeals by band members located outside the Attawapiskat reserve, were also set aside as negligible and intrusive to band affairs as administered by the current chief, Theresa Spence, and her band of councillors.

The election violated the Supreme Court of Canada's decision made in 1999 holding that all members of a First Nation are entitled to participate in band elections whether they live on- or off-reserve. This is what democracy, after all, means. Participation by the people. Disallowing that participation is an offence against democratic principles. Ignoring or setting aside the decision by the Supreme Court is supremely insulting apart from being illegal.

Yet, according to Ms. Lavallee, Attawapiskat is not the only reserve that prefers to make up its own rules. To rule out, for example, the utility of accepting mail-in votes from those members of reserves who happen not to live on the reserve or are temporarily absent. Reasonable opportunities for all band members to add their concerned voice to the affairs of the band and the reserve are simply ignored as triflingly irrelevant.

And in Attawapiskat itself band members who live on reserve must carefully conserve their resentment, not voice it where it could be overheard to their detriment, lest they then be disadvantaged, as they fear and as experience has taught them, as punishment for opposing the powers that be. Those attempting to unseat the unsatisfactory incumbents know full well they leave themselves vulnerable to exploitive oppression.

Attawapiskat's registered population numbers 3,351 people. Roughly half of that number live off-reserve. As matters developed, the election took place as scheduled and those not able to cast their votes directly at the reserve were simply out of luck. No alternatives had been arranged on their behalf; they had to attend or not vote, despite inconvenience and cost related to brief return to the reserve for the purpose of the vote.

And, surprise! Out of fewer than 500 votes cast, approximately half that number went to Chief Spence. She has been re-elected, her band council re-elected, and they are back in business. The unsolved issue of disappearing millions unaccounted for remains but that too is irrelevant. And to divert attention from the unfortunate lapse from democratic values Chief Spence is once again reverting to her previous stance, demanding more funds from the federal government.

The band's emergency state of insufficient and inadequate dwellings for its members, and dwellings of inferior quality requiring repair, it appears, is not the responsibility of the band council to use the funding allocated to it for that purpose wisely and without diverting the funds to other purposes, but that of the general taxpayer of Canada who must see the need to continue increasing funding.

The band's large numbers of unemployed depend on the kindly compassion of workers in the rest of Canada upping their contributions so that they may be able to live decent and comfortable lives. That compassion is born of historical guilt and the manipulation of leaders like Therese Spence who trade honour and dignity, honesty and competence for usury and deceit.