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Feature, Musings —02.19.2020 05:08 PM
—JWR offers a solution
But Trudeau won’t listen.
He doesn’t like strong women who talk back.
Wilson-Raybould, now an independent MP, called for Trudeau to fly to B.C. to get personally involved in meetings, a cooling-off period in B.C. during which construction would cease and the RCMP leave the area, and the immediate tabling of long-promised Indigenous land rights and self-governance legislation.
Wilson-Raybould also made a plea to the Wet’suwet’en to take responsibility for providing clarity to Canadians about who speaks for a community that Canadians and governments understand is divided.
Wilson-Raybould was especially critical of Justin Trudeau’s failed promises.
Canada has known for decades “what needs to be done,” said Wilson-Raybould. “But here we are, yet again, in a moment of crisis because the hard work was punted.”
…She said the prime minister and his colleagues know this, “So please look in the mirror and ask yourself why?”
“Let us be honest — the prime minister has to learn to take responsibility,” said Wilson-Raybould.
She suggested Canadians have learned “the true history and the need for fundamental change” yet Trudeau has done little but talk.
Wow someone got schooled. Sounds reasonable to me. Bravo Ms. Wilson-Raybauld!…Perhaps he will listen to reason, but I wont hold my breath.
The only caveat I would add is that during said cooling off period, the blockades would come down, if only temporarily, to clear the backlog of products on railcars that is beginning to adversely affect the Canadian economy.
If the Liberal Party wants to regain some of the credibility it has lost in the past six years, it could easily announce tomorrow morning that a bag of used Kleenex was taking over as interim leader.
JT should have come home sooner or kept on going to the Caribbean. What he is doing now is not dealing with either sides needs.
JT should have come home sooner or kept going to the Caribbean. What he is doing now isn’t going to work.
Asking for patience may have worked two weeks ago but it is wearing thin now.
“Wilson-Raybould also made a plea to the Wet’suwet’en to take responsibility for providing clarity to Canadians about who speaks for a community that Canadians and governments understand is divided.”
This is the most pertinent detail, to me. Who represents the Wet’suwet’en people…the elected chiefs or the hereditary chiefs? If you think (as some apparently do) that the elected chiefs are a ‘colonialism’ , then do you prefer the literal royalty of the hereditary chiefs?
If democracy offends you and you really want to have every aspect of your life decided by the same ruling family forever, just say so.
Hmmm…just to prevent misunderstanding, I should have made it more obvious in that post that I was actually taking to the natives themselves whenever I said “you”. They are the ones who need to clarify and explain exactly who speaks for them and who does not.
Fred,
In my mind, it can’t possibly be as simple as either or. Sure, you can’t possibly please everyone across every FN but there’s got to be room for a middle ground that can satisfy most FNs and their respective members. Is that really next to impossible? I don’t think so.
Ronald
I think you are far too optimistic. There is NO middle ground that can satisfy MOST FNs and their respective members. There’s a reason there were hundreds of separate and distinct “nations” in Canada at the time of first contact with europeans. They didn’t all think alike then and they don’t all think alike now.
“In my mind, it can’t possibly be as simple as either or. Sure, you can’t possibly please everyone across every FN but there’s got to be room for a middle ground that can satisfy most FNs and their respective members.”
That’s the whole point of democracy, though: *most* of the people get what they want. It doesn’t literally work that way in a multi-party system, but when there are only two (as in this case), it works just fine.
Your immature name-calling undermines the argument you are trying to make.
” A useless PM, and a pack of Con wolves ready to kill and imprison people to restore their idea of law and order, which ignores actual law! ”
Actual law in Canada is that railroad blockades are illegal. You have the right to protest…you DO NOT have the right to barricade a rail line. Those ‘protesters’ (most of them non-aboriginal, and not the least bit concerned for the future of the Wet’suwet’en people) could be arrested and jailed at any time.
Oh, and the land needed for the pipeline?…that could be expropriated at any time, too, if worst comes to worst (also Canadian law).
Mike,
Maybe but it’s still infinitely better than this Prime Minister’s clearly self-evident phoney baloney, particularly on this issue.
Mike, when you get Trudeau to settle with the AFN on educational financing, that’s when I’ll cut this government some slack. Not before. Tick tock, tick tock.
I think a lot of the AFN and other Indigenous chiefs and band councils aren’t above playing self-serving politics just like their Canadian counterparts. Lots of perks, jobs and promises of no audits etc. were floating around from Trudeau in 2015.
As for not inviting JWR to that meeting, the Selfie-King knew full well she’d draw all the press attention and as has been amply demonstrated, he can’t stand being out of the limelight.
J.H.,
Well, human nature being what it is, I can’t necessarily disagree with your argument.
As much as I sympathize and try to understand the wrong that drive the need for reconciliation. The protesters shouldn’t get the direct attention of the prime minister by way of a face to face meeting. Regardless of who is in office. This is the place of ministers local and federal and at worst the local police.
As for JWR, she still has a voice but in reality, she’s done. The only play left for her is form an aboriginal federal party and lead it. It worked for the block.
Any direct attention from the prime minister will only embolden more actions like this.
Marc,
But emboldening copycats is decidedly beside the point. This Prime Minister talks an incredible game about reconciliation, coupled with redress. That’s only half the coin. What is the Canadian government prepared to do politically, by way of legislation, to put FNs and other Aboriginals on the same economic level as governments and project proponents? As Clara Peller famously said: Where’s the beef? Where are the royalty and other payments that FNs should be automatically entitled to IN LAW as soon as a project impacts their traditional lands??? Let the PM go there and settle this face-to-face. It’s either put up or shut up time. Let Trudeau take the lead and produce actual results — otherwise everything this government has done in the past — while seemingly well intended, will only ring hollow in light of a lack of a political settlement.
I am also of the belief that First Nations should have full partner status financially & culturally. Canada should be trilingual instead of bilingual IMHO.
If First Nations was indeed a full partner Canadians would not be inundated with protest.
RW
From the Tyee Article:
“Unlike the hereditary royalty of the British monarchy, Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief is not a lifetime position bestowed on a bloodline. Rather, it’s a title that can be bequeathed a Wet’suwet’en Nation member based on their character and conduct — though this remains a matter of some dispute within the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.”
The quote begs the question; Bequeathed by whom? and how?
Here is a Globe and Mail article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-wetsuweten-hereditary-system-coastal-gaslink-pipeline-protests-bc/
From the article: Mr. Naziel said in an affidavit that “our clan held a feast and formally rescinded the name Smogelgem,” stripping it from Ms. George. But she countered in an affidavit that hereditary titles “are only removed in the most extreme scenarios such as murder” and not stripped “like bark off a tree.”
Elsewhere in the article:
To Candice George, the Wet’suwet’en’s governance system has become distorted. She recalls her great-aunt’s “naming feast” in 2009 as extended family members packed gifts, served refreshments and sat down for a meal to bestow Gloria George with a long-awaited hereditary name.
“I witnessed the day my great-aunt Gloria George became Smogelgem,” Candice George said in an e-mail to The Globe. “Please do share the story of how those who oppose the pipeline are not telling the whole truth.”
After reading these articles and many others, it appears that hereditary leaders are not hereditary: some have been removed and new ones chosen/appointed. The positions appear to be hereditary, but not the people occupying them.
Thus we have elected Wet’suwet’en leaders who have reached agreement with the pipeline proponents and we have hereditary leaders who are somehow chosen and then sometimes deposed.
So who speaks for the Wet’suwet’en? Is it clear even to the Wet’suwet’en people?
What do the majority of the Wet’suwet’en people want? And how will we know?
“Thus we have elected Wet’suwet’en leaders who have reached agreement with the pipeline proponents and we have hereditary leaders who are somehow chosen and then sometimes deposed.”
So two parallel systems, then?
Then I would go with the (much) larger of the two groups.
Who’s funding these protesters?
Money has to be coming from somewhere!
This is the most important consideration, but one that the criminal blockaders don’t seem to understand or care about:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/wet-suwet-en-coastal-gas-link-pipeline-lng-1.5469401
Continued use of the word Wet’suwet’en on the protester’s signs is basically identity theft.
What boggles my mind is that JT is a PM. His formula is the same….no show, late show and then campaign speak. He is incapable of making timely decisions or any decisions and now we have a pot boiling over.
There are many components to this standoff. Most people come at it through the prism of the rule of law: that whether the law is right or wrong, it’s there and has to be enforced. Theoretically accurate. But this is about much more than that — it’s primarily about political injustice, the abrogating of treaties, the non-respect of agreements by governments and the stain of quite deliberate social and economic inequality.
It’s not really about protesters blocking roads. It’s quite clearly about successive governments treating FNs as pawns not entitled to legitimate payment and accommodation for the right to cross their traditonal lands. FNs must be true economic partners on all energy and resource related projects. Period.
That and only that is what will get the barricades down. Posturing comes easy, genuine political sincerity and effort toward a long overdue political settlement is regrettably far more elusive. It’s the PM’s job to settle this once and for all by adopting laws that confirm and enforce the fundamental concept of a true economic partnership between governments, companies and First Nations. Nothing less is acceptable.
Does anyone have an answer that can be relied upon to address the unknown variable? I don’t. How can anyone argue for stringent law enforcement without first thinking through the following: under which government’s direction is the RCMP? What are RCMP negotiating protocols to rapidly defuse a confrontation? And now for the topper: what happens if RCMP unilateral enforcement action escalates the situation so that it rapidly gets out of control and resembles the Oka standoff? How do you handle the unknown variable of escalating violence that leads to injuries and possible deaths among civilian protesters? Brave talk, especially from off site politicians is cheap. Are they really prepared to take responsibility if RCMP action leads to serious violence, or even worse? That’s reality people. So think long and hard before giving orders you are likely to rapidly come to regret. You don’t play John Wayne and the cavalry with people’s lives. Ever.
“Violence” takes two, Ronald. Don’t lay all of this on the police or the politicians. When the police are enforcing the law, and you fight them, and you get injured or killed, that’s on YOU, not them
If the situation “gets out of control”, it will be because the illegal railway blockaders decided to fight a battle they can’t possibly win.
“You don’t play John Wayne and the cavalry with people’s lives. Ever.”
But you DO destroy their livelihoods and render them unemployed? Despite an existing law saying that what you are doing is illegal? I don’t think so, and neither do most other Canadians. It’s time for this to end; most of the anti-capitalists, anarchists, eco-warriors and other *professional protesters* manning these illegal blockades don’t give a rat’s ass about the Wet’suwet’en and are only using them as an excuse to further their own agendas…using the natives as cover and thinking that the government wouldn’t dare act against them, because ‘reconciliation’, right? Wrong: if the government refuses to act then more people will follow the lead of the Albertans and take the law into their own hands. That’s when you’ll see some violence…violence that could have been avoided if we only had a PM with a spine.
Trudeau is a Liberal PM and this is not a ‘just watch me’ moment of conservative authoritarianism either. Steven Harper is not at helm here, Fred.
Liberals are educated people today. Violence is not part of the Liberal agenda, and the so-called ‘eco-warriors’ et cetera are not FLQ kidnappers & terrorists, man.
I fully agree with Ronald on all of this subject matter. His comments are always bang on IMHO.
Albertan authoritarianism has no place in Canada today.
RW
“Trudeau is a Liberal PM and this is not a ‘just watch me’ moment of conservative authoritarianism either. Steven Harper is not at helm here, Fred.”
No, because if Stephen Harper was in charge he would have recklessly have ordered the RCMP and the military to attack the barricade and forcibly remove the protesters, just like he did that time in Sarn – oh, wait…that didn’t happen. Never mind.
“Liberals are educated people today. Violence is not part of the Liberal agenda, and the so-called ‘eco-warriors’ et cetera are not FLQ kidnappers & terrorists, man.”
I understand, Robert. Your response to violence threatened against you would be the typical Liberal reaction: curl into a fetal position and whimper “please don’t hurt me…I’ll give you whatever you want”. My response would be different.
(and you’re too old to be playing the hippy, ‘man’…)
“I fully agree with Ronald on all of this subject matter. His comments are always bang on IMHO.”
Most of the time I would agree. Not this time.
“Albertan authoritarianism has no place in Canada today.”
It was the *citizens* of Alberta who took action, not the government. Do you ever watch TV news or read online news sites?
I’m a few months older than Warren as I’m 60 now and was born in 60. Hippies were actually older than moi by about a decade.
I used to attend Folk & Poetry readings at the Penny Farthing coffee house in Yorkville from 67 to 70 when I was a kid. Hippies were everywhere in Toronto’s Yorkville during the 60s, man.
One of my parents was a bohemian writer/poet. The other was a CA.
Violence never solved anything, ever. I’m far too graceful of a street fighter to have to engage in violence. I learned to street fight on Yong Street in Toronto in the 80s at the Gas Works which was a notorious Rock & Roll bar in Toronto’s history.
I’m almost 6′ and 190 lbs.
Guys like me don’t get violent as we don’t need to.
‘There is no path to peace as peace is the path’.
RW
RW
Robert,
Thank you. Much obliged.
“Violence never solved anything, ever.”
Centuries of human history beg to differ…
Fred,
With respect, you’re taking a step back from our previous discussion. We both favour increased FN participation in energy and mining projects with job priority and financial payment for crossing, or at worst, expropriating FN traditional lands.
Where we differ markedly is on recognizing that the blockades, however illegal in law are but a symptom of the real problem: Trudeau, Harper and every other PM’s failure to legislate FNs as MANDATORY economic partners with governments and project proponents. That’s the real big issue. Until that happens, there will never, ever, be a permanent peace with all of Canada’s FNs. Fuck the SCOC, consultation is quite literally crumbs on the floor and totally inadequate to solve this longstanding dispute that has been going on for decade after decade with the Canadian Parliament and provinces not doing their job to adequately address FN economic demands and grievances. Typical hypocritical politicians who perhaps unknowingly condone paternalism and ever so subtle racism. Period, exclamation point.
“Where we differ markedly is on recognizing that the blockades, however illegal in law are but a symptom of the real problem:”
No, Ronald, where we really differ is that I see quite clearly that a certain small group of natives, opposed by most of the others, are making a power play here. They are using one small issue as a club to try and force immediate *huge* changes in a much larger and more complex issue. This is sheer idiocy, since the “real problem”, as you put it, has been ongoing for years and will take years more to solve.
All that these rogue Wet’suwet’en chiefs have really accomplished is to hurt innocent bystanders, damage the economic future of their own people and piss off the general public.
(and just who elected them to hijack the whole reconciliation and land claim negotiations agenda and speak for the entire indigenous population of Canada, anyway? Oh, that’s right…they weren’t *elected* at all, and their ‘hereditary’ titles turn out to be merely a convenient ruse to keep themselves in a position of power that no one else recognizes)
There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about such negotiations…this is the wrong way. The longer this continues, the more people will be adopting my attitude and abandoning yours. This has probably set relations with the natives back ten years or more (others are saying twenty). They shot themselves in the foot here, sorry…
End it now, before violence becomes inevitable.
I can live with MacKay’s position on a carbon tax provided that as a government that he’s prepared to help companies expand carbon capture and storage as much as humanly possible. I agree on meeting our NATO committments ASAP, as long as we are equally committed not to go anywhere near the defence fiscal obscenity known as the F35. Finally, I support the conscience objection for medical practioners on assisted dying.
Never forget that bullets, are by necessity, equal opportunity killers and that idiotic or irresponsible prime ministers or premiers always get to live with and wear it. Real tough guys…with male inadequacy problems.