First Nations in Canada should address Canadians

I had to chuckle when I read the recent complaints and threats from the native chiefs:

The prime minister’s decision to leave the meeting early wasn’t sitting well with some chiefs.

“We’re like a bunch of puppies – he says jump, and we’ve got to do it,” said Regional Chief of Alberta, George Stanley.

If they do not want to be treated like puppies, the chiefs should not be wheeling and dealing with statesmen.

If there was any merit to their complaints or demands, the native chiefs would present themselves like honorable men: publicly and openly addressing the Canadian people.

Native uprising? That will be the day.

“The world is watching.”

No, they are not.

“In today’s world that response will be more instantaneous.”

No, it will not.

My suggestion to the natives is to start their own media blitz.

Aboriginal elder-assisted parole board hearings

A non-aboriginal murderer gets to have a parole board hearing with aboriginal elders assisting the process and the problem this creates is:

Victims’ families have reported being intimidated by elements of the elder-assisted process — such as the convention that the hearing be conducted sitting in a circle.

I do not get it. It just does not make sense to get upset over this. Either sitting across a table or around in a circle, the convict is going to have a parole hearing whether we like it or not.

I hope this is not just racism against aboriginal culture.

Will you return to the constitutional separation of Federal and Provincial responsibilities?

That is the question foremost in my mind as we continue into this Provincial Leadership Race.

Simply put, will you, as the new leader of the PC Party of Ontario, and possibly the future Premier of the province, lead the other provinces back to the constitutional mandated responsibilities both Provincially and Federally?

This is important. Canadians at large are starting to get physically ill when the provinces bicker with the Feds, and vice versa. Danny Williams and his mouth have accellerated this situation, and I think that’s about the only thing I can thank him for. For the rest of this post, I promise not to mention that man again.

After SO many elections and fights and rhetoric etc, Canadians want our governments to get to work! Get the job done. I don’t care how many heads need knocking, or ears need to be boxed, but I want to see progress.

A perfect example, and my favorite one to use since so many people are familiar with it, is Aboriginal Land Claims. Aboriginal [First Nations/Native...] issues are constitutionally the responsibility of the Federal Government. Land Issues are constitutionally the responsibility of the Provincial Governments. Over the years/decades, both levels of government have thrown that hot potato back and forth denying responsibility under the premise of “this is YOUR responsibility”.

The issue mostly becomes clouded when you have matching/similar governments both Federally and Provincially who want to co-operate to their own political benefits and swap responsibilites based on who needs a bump in the polls. Chretien was notorious for this. These activities have created “precedence” making it very difficult to go back without an agreement in full to do so.

This isn’t to say that I’m not aware that there are areas that inherently overlap. Aboriginal Land Claims is one of those areas. In such situations, a responsibility framework must be drawn up and strictly adhered to as to who is responsible for what (precisely with no room for confusion), and how  to deal with joint responsibility.

Yes, there’s going to be upheval. Yes, there’s going to be hardship. However, there will also be clarity. As we move on as a Country into the 21st Century and beyond, a clear definition as to who is responsible for what is mandatory. In the event of catastrophe, or emergency, where one might become involved in an area outside their jurisdiction, a clear statement and agreement of a “one time interference” should be required by both levels and properly communicated to the public in no uncertain terms.

Once we accomplish this, relations between Federal and Provincial levels of government should become a walk in the park. For the most part anyway.

So my question goes out to all the Provincial Leadership Candidates.

Where do you stand on this issue? Are you willing and committed to doing this?

McGuinty’s forest plan to save the world… and industry

The news of McGuinty’s recent foray into saving the world from Global Warming and/or Climate Change has reached Europe but they do not hear his superficial public relations exercises as often as we do:

“It’s our responsibility as global citizens to get this right, and to act now,” McGuinty said.

Wow! I am starting to feel better already!

All I see from this recent announcement is a hidden delay in any future commitment to protect the boreal forest with a token appeal to the aboriginal population tossed into the mix. I find it despicable that he would use the recent environmental fad as his main talking point:

The Ontario government says protecting this region is key to its plan to fight climate change. The forests and peat lands in the Far North store about 97 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide and absorb around 12.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the government said.

If I owned the boreal forest, I would aim to protect it for its own sake not for the sake of protecting the world from climate change. That is why I think this is just smoke and mirrors again from a Liberal government. It sounds to me like new logging and mining contracts are in the works and the government has to lessen the blow:

Mining generated about $11 billion in Ontario in 2007, and McGuinty said he was confident the consultations on the new protected area of the forest won’t cause any damage to the growing sector.

“We don’t want to compromise that, but we do want to ensure that our mining efforts in the province of Ontario are respectful of Ontarians, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike.”

I think Gord is right:

The troubling part of the story as I first heard it is that it will take 10+ years to map out what area is to be declared off-limits. For the industries this is bad because it throws an incredible amount of uncertainty into their future planning.
—SNIP—
The idea is good. And admittedly discernment is needed to determine which areas to preserve. But 10 years is too long. Too long to wait, too much uncertainty.

Yes, that delay is troubling. However, the cynic in me says those ten years are long enough to sneak in government favoritism before these hypothetical future restrictions come into effect — sneak in contracts that would not bode well with the landowners nor with the public.

From The Same People Who Brought You Our Inadequate Health Care System…

…comes sex changes galore! And remember, it was this very troop who, in 2000, did a great disservice to our nation’s health when they used a bunch of emotional rhetoric to spook people into voting Jean Chretien into a third term as Prime Minister. Somehow, methinks the image of cross dressers screaming in agony on the street at the prospect of having to stick with the gender God gave ‘em wasn’t exactly what our nation had in mind when it rallied behind a universally insured country.

I’m glad to see the Liberals are going to the fringes again with their plans (Ontario Health Minister and notoriously dogmatic homosexual activist George Smitherman bragged about how this would only affect about a dozen people per year) since it will allow us Conservatives the opportunity to point out the folly to a health care system which on paper is completely financed by the government but in reality is only as good as the government decides to make it. On the provincial level, it would be hard for Dalton McGuinty to justify how he can allow thousands in the province to go through life with debilitating back pains or limited eye sight but hey, at least Fred is happy with that new figure we bought him when we dressed him up and called him Sally! Well, at least it would be if there was actually an opponent out there who wasn’t a complete pushover or leading a party with even less hope of winning the top prize than the Leafs.

All of which makes one happy to see our national government contains MPs who are willing to go to bat for us average Ontarians whose self-esteem issues are generally limited to the names our parents gave us and foregoing extremely expensive cosmetic surgeries for a shopping trip on the weekend. It’s nice to know that somebody out there still get the notion that “public” health care is supposed to cover more than one out of every one million people in this province!

The Courts & A Branch Of Government That Might Need Trimming…

The Friday before the long weekend is usually a slow news day, leaving viewers of the evening news slogging through reports on gas prices, congestion on the highways leading to cottage country and other non-essential news items. That might make the SCC ruling today that the Youth Criminal Justice Act, 2003 is unconstitutional more significant in perspective, although I feel that the story is one we we should be paying attention to for a while now since it’s the court deciding to use the ambiguities of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms once again to extend its own power and agendas to overshadow that of our elected officials.

It’s not the concept of rights that conservatives like myself hate; in fact, the United States — a country many of us neo-cons look to favorably — had natural rights embedded in its system far earlier in that country’s history. Rather, what bothers us the most with our rights is that they are so ambiguous and mailable; so much to the point that the courts could actually use the wording of the Charter’s introduction to justify locking up all Italian-Canadians…or rule just about any other reality into being just by a pronouncement. What good are rights if you can’t be certain that they won’t be written out of the Constitution 20 years from now when social culture shifts a tad, or, as today’s ruling demonstrates, the justice system we all depend on for stability is no longer in vogue over on the real estate west of Parliament Hill?

The credibility of today’s ruling isn’t also helped by the strong dissenting opinion of four of the court’s nine sovereigns. Strong language was used by Justice Rothstein in writing on the dissenting opinion, giving hope that this ruling could be overturned with a modest change in the line-up of court judges. Again, even the most partisan individual has to acknowledge that possibility and by extension, that rights are only as good as the ideologues in high courts who defend them!

Unfortunately, any change that may come down the road won’t come soon enough for the victims of violent crimes, or their families, who go on to see their perpetrators go on to receive a Happy Meal sentence, even when the crimes they commit are anything but a “diminished moral blameworthiness” act, as the court would have you believe!

The Road to A Harper Majority…

…is paved with the extortion attempts of Natives. Well, not like the majority highway that the Prime Minister is currently paving in Quebec, but consider this: a Liberal Premier is currently allowing a lot of terrorist Natives to run amok in Caledonia, the Conservative government in Ottawa is refusing to break bread with this group and now the Natives are threatening every community along the Grand River — many of which are part of swing ridings in south-western Ontario. Out of these ridings, Kitchener-Waterloo, Kitchener Centre, Brant and Guelph are all held by Liberal MPs and the latter three were all won within reasonably close margins (Kitchener-Waterloo is a distinct beast which likes to stick with an incumbent). Four ridings, 1.3% of our national seats total, could make all the difference if Stephen Harper is able to pick up another 20 seats in Quebec as many speculate he will do; in fact, it could turn a strong minority into a razor-thin majority. The Natives, in their quest to get their way, might consider this before they attempt to extort money and illegitimate taxes out of the half-a-million residents who live along the Grand River.

I’m sorry that they feel that their people got a raw deal from Confederation and in a perfect world, yes, the treaties negotiated over a hundred years ago (and gifts for that matter) were done in bad faith, but a Native today has no more right to rule over this land than an immigrant, a native-born Euro-Canadian or anyone else for that matter. Canada is a U.N.-recognized, politically sovereign entity which calls the shots in its territory. In all fairness, what have any of these mobsters or terrorists now crying crocodile tears done to deserve the very generous tax exemptions, government programs and hand-outs that they get besides winning the genetic lottery? Have all of those perks been considered by these people or should we subtract all of the tax money behind them from the total we are to pay this band for the Grand River territory (IF we even owe it to them post-negotiations!), because it might just turn out that the Natives owe us a nice big fat cheque along with the apology!

Indian Reserves – The Debate Rages on…

There is a fierce debate raging in an old thread about Chief Clarence Louie and his comments about Indians and life on the reserve. I highly recommend you head on over and read the two very different perspectives of Anwaan Jiimis and ….

Considering the comments in the “Straight Talk Thread“, and what we already know is happening on the reserves, who do you think has a better perspective on this important issue?

A Vote Against Legal Apartheid in Canada

There are lots of reasons to not vote for John Tory in the upcoming provincial election. And then one enormous, glaring check in the pro-Tory category.

Surprise!: Condoning native terrorism produces more of it

Unfortunately, noble native warriors extended an oak railing instead of an olive branch:

The man’s brother, Joe, told CHCH-TV that more than three individuals attacked Gualtieri and that his nephew saw a native protester hitting him over the head with what may have been an oak railing.

“It was held with two hands when when the one nephew found (Gualtieri) unconscious, the individual had just finished striking him again,”_Joe Gualtieri told CHCH-TV. “Standing on top of him, almost crouched down, beating him over the head – when he was already unconscious.”

One can almost hear the leftist bloggers explaining that Gualtieri invited being beaten almost to death for the offense of interfering in a “first nation” protest. Such is life in the apartheid state of Ontario.

Update: “I believe that my brother was one strike away from being killed.”

Gualtieri, evil post-colonialist that he is, was building a house for his daughter. If that’s not a good reason to repeatedly smash someone across the head with an oak railing after he’s been knocked unconscious, then I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, local natives are testifying to the fine and admirable character of the young lads who came close to beating Gualtieri to death. Despite that everyone knows who the natives are, OPP officers on hand have no clue who to arrest for the attempted murder. Perhaps because no crime has been committed: Allow me to welcome you once again to life in the Apartheid State of Ontario.

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