March 5, 2007 - by Joseph Quesnel
First Perpective - National Aboriginal News
A leaked report prepared by the Liberal Renewal Commission's aboriginal task force is calling for an increasingly urbanized Aboriginal population to circumvent the Ottawa bureaucracy and Aboriginal organizations in order to achieve progress. "Fixing the system seems to lie outside the imagination of the current bureaucratic regime," the report says. The main author, Mark Podlasly, is an ambitious Aboriginal leader with a business degree from Harvard University, and owns an international business. Communications staff with the Liberal Party conceded to the Drum the report had been leaked to the media by this individual.
"Organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations and the Congress of Aboriginal People have been equally unable to address the transformation underway in aboriginal Canada.
Despite guaranteed social benefits, Aboriginals increasingly are choosing to relocate to urban centres, it stated.
The report states that the "future of Aboriginality" lies in Canada's cities and will only be solved by imagination, talent, and resources from this growing segment.
One of the major recommendations of the report is for the establishment of independent research teams, comprising Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, who should go to Aboriginal communities and find out "what really is going on. "The report castigates Indian Affairs for merely doling out money in these cases, with no real knowledge of where it is going or if it helps the actual people it intends to.
Among other recommendations, the report calls for extending micro-credit to Aboriginal entrepreneurs who lack necessary collateral, as well as the loosening of post-secondary education funding criteria for Aboriginal students.