‘Get on with it,' Ontario tells Ottawa on Caledonia

KAREN HOWLETT

Globe and Mail Update

May 15, 2008 at 4:01 PM EDT

TORONTO — Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant is calling on the federal government to live up to its responsibilities to aboriginal Canadians by setting a deadline to resolve the long-simmering standoff between native and non-native protesters in Caledonia.

“The Harper government needs to get on with it and stop hesitating,” Mr. Bryant told reporters this morning.

“They need to set a deadline. I'm not going to do their job.”

Mr. Bryant made the comments just before Federal Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl is set to deliver a luncheon speech later today in Toronto at the Empire Club of Canada.

Mr. Bryant said tensions are growing among residents of Caledonia, a town southwest of Hamilton, Ont. The standoff began more than two years ago when native protesters began occupying a disputed tract of land adjoining a Six Nations reserve in Caledonia. But the roots of the dispute date back more than 200 years, when the federal government orchestrated a “coup d'é-tat” by replacing tribal councils with a band council system, he said.

Mr. Bryant reiterated Thursday that the federal government — not the province — has responsibility for resolving land claim disputes.

“We have been pushing the federal government,” he said Thursday. “It has been resting on hesitation. We need them to move it.”

Federal Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said he does not see the benefit of setting a deadline, especially when negotiations are progressing well.

“Frankly, negotiation rather than ultimatums, I think, is a better way to go,” Mr. Strahl told reporters following a luncheon speech in Toronto to the Empire Club of Canada.

How could setting an arbitrary deadline possibly help to resolve this issue, Mr. Strahl asked.

“It would turn it into completely a policing issue,” he said.

The Harper government unveiled plans last year to address the hundreds of backlogged native land claims. But Mr. Bryant said the plan is better suited to resolving claims in British Columbia and not in Ontario.

Jason Kenney, federal Minister of Multiculturalism and Canadian identity, caused a stir during a recent trip to Brantford when he blamed the province for not reining in Six Nations Confederacy activists who have blocked projects there and demanded cash from developers.

“For one of their ministers to show up in the midst of that was galling and galled a lot of people,” Mr. Bryant said.