This letter is to express concern over the recent replacement of Hon. Jim Prentice with the appointment of Chilliwack elected Mr. Strahl as the new Minister of INAC.
Upon hearing of this latest appointment, alarm bells went off. Canadians need to be very apprehensive about how this will all unfold. Instinctively, my gut reaction was to wonder about the quality of the Conservative entourage surrounding Prime Minister Harper. All I can see are red flags and more of the same. What was Prime Minister Harper thinking?
We can only hope that Mr. Strahl has the moral ethics and uprightness to get INAC “back up to snuff” such that it will be a reliable Department within the Federal Government. As I see it, the Conservative Government has sunk to a new low. Prime Minister Harper has to be aware that Mr. Strahl has in inoperable terminal condition and that his presence in a high profile stressful environment has a high probability of aggravating that condition.
Is this just another innocent blow to the system or is this part of a carefully crafted plan to disrupt the INAC to the point that it will become totally corrupt and unreliable? There’s already an active online petition to repeal the Indian Act…this new appointment could be the final blow to the INAC and it could send the Indian Act toppling to the bottom of the barrel, so to speak.
Mr. Strahl has been in politics for a very long time. Throughout the years, his exposure to Indian Affairs is at best questionable. He was however “a member” of the standing committee on aboriginal affairs for several years. He does come to the political arena as a qualified “logging contractor” however, I’m not sure how this will help resolve or address the problems faced by INAC.
Having observed how committee members come and go, how they frequently are unavailable at critical sessions, I have as yet to be convinced that standing committee members are really qualified to express any opinion on the subject they “represent”. Therefore I have to question Mr. Strahl’s experience gained from being “a member” of the standing committee on aboriginal affairs and northern development.
Will this “limited background experience” serve as his exclusive source of reference? What will he use as a knowledge base? What has he been exposed to, other than committee business? Will he continue with Jim Prentice’s plan of giving Canada back to the Indians or will he actually operate with a significant amount of “that was then, this is now” integrity? Or does Mr. Strahl have an agenda as yet to be revealed?
By the way, Mr. Strahl is from British Columbia , that same province that’s home to the “eye raising” observations I’ve outlined further:
These numbers should correlate somehow but they don’t. The above observations only serve to point a finger at the Province of British Columbia and this should be a concern for every Canadian tax payer.
While the above observations are all subject to different variables, one has to question why the Province of British Columbia does appear to favour the creation of reserves “almost indiscriminately” and that these appear to be uncontested. Policies for creating a reserve are very specific in the Land Management Manual (LMM) published by INAC. This LMM is published for INAC staff and the manual is supposed to represent policies for land management as they apply to Indians. The process of creating the reserves in BC has to be questioned as the details articulated throughout the LMM simply appear to be inconsistent with what’s happening over there.
Upon looking deeper, I was surprised to find that some reserves in the registry had no data available for them (I’ve been checking for a year now, staff has had plenty of opportunities to update their records – as a matter of interest, their database is upgraded every few weeks). I was also very surprised (and disturbed) to see the numbers shown as “population count” on some of these reserves.
So I took it upon myself to contact Ms. Jean Fisk (her name was given to me by a Librarian from the HQ Library Reference section of INAC) Ms. Fisk is listed as a “Policy Analyst” in the GEDS system and she’s apparently the contact point for speaking with a “manager of the database section”. Six months and four emails later, Ms. Fisk has as yet to provide me with answers to very basic questions. Why did I bother?
Of particular interest is the fact that two weeks after questioning Ms. Fisk about newly added reserves in the registry (from September 1996 through to April 2007), the number of reserves maintained in the registry dropped from 3,344 to 2,999.
As far as the claims are concerned, I’m sure there’s a very good reason why so many are from BC. However I have to wonder if there’s an agenda here, namely to disrupt the BC economy and landscape similar to what the natives are doing in and around the Municipalities along the Grand River …
Forgive me for whining a lot here, but INAC is part and parcel of the Harper government that claims to be open, transparent and accountable to Canadians. I would suspect that somewhere in the definitions of these accountability articles is a statement addressing “civility and dealing with the general public”. By appearances, it seems that the INAC bureaucracy may very well be functioning with a plan and a purpose that excludes communicating with the general public.
What does all this have to do with the new minister at INAC? Simply put: A LOT! The picture I’m seeing is that of an inexperienced politician (as relates to Indians) stepping into a hotbed that’s currently being controlled by a less-than-responsive bureaucracy. Perhaps Mr. Strahl has other experience to draw from in order to bring the INAC bureaucrats under control. Otherwise, you can rest assured the bureaucracy machine will be functioning in high gear and that one more time, the general public will be misled and bamboozled into accepting situations that can only be described as undesirable.
My fear is that Mr. Strahl may also be influenced by policies from his home province. What none of us want is to see “what’s happening in BC” being formulated into national policy applicable to the rest of Canada . That’s a real fear as this would definitely put a severe limit on the growth of Ontario ’s economy.
At the recent conclusion of a Final Treaty Settlement in BC, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of The Union of BC Indian Chiefs remarked “only 202 more First Nations to go”. This should be a wakeup call for every tax payer.
And that’s why I’m very concerned with this latest appointment.