Posted Vancouver Sun
QUEBEC — Ghislain Picard, chief of the Assembly of First Nations for Quebec and Labrador, said Tuesday he knows Canada's spy agency keeps tabs on aboriginal activists.
"That is not new," Picard said in an interview, adding that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was actively compiling a long list of native people "considered potentially dangerous" even before Quebec's 1990 Oka crisis.
"It isn't surprising and I think even the people who were quoted, are not surprised either," Picard said, referring to a Globe and Mail story quoting Martin Lukacs, a Lac Barriere solidarity network organizer, who said he received a visit from two CSIS agents.
Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl has ordered the first one-person-one-vote election in Lac Barriere, upsetting traditionalists who prefer the selection of a band council and chief by band elders.
Picard said 12 to 18 months ago there were two factions contending in Lac Barriere. Now there are four. "The minister's decision is the final recourse," Picard said. "There is no other choice. It is in the hands of the community."
Lac Barriere is an Algonquin community about 400 kilometres northwest of Montreal.
The traditional method of choosing a band council has been challenged in court and Strahl has used the Indian Act to impose a new election next month.
"Well that's difficult and it's unfortunate and it happens rarely," Strahl told reporters, after signing a trilateral agreement with Picard and Quebec's Native Affairs Minister Pierre Corbeil aimed at training and relocating native people now on social assistance.
"The courts have intervened and ordered new elections time and time again," Strahl explained.
The minister said he is not aware of investigations of aboriginal activists by CSIS.
"I have no idea what CSIS is doing," he said. "They don't check with me on this. All I know is what I read in the paper."
But Strahl also defended the right to peaceful protest.
"People from time to time will protest. I think Canadians understand that that's a legal right. You can do that. You should be allowed to do that in Canada.
"It's just that we want to come to a solution and in Lac Barriere's case one of the ways forward is to get a recognized government that we can sit down with that isn't in court constantly defending its legitimacy," Strahl said.
"I'm happy to deal with whoever gets elected I just urge them to participate in the electoral process and of course to change it as the community desires moving forward. But let's have a consensus on that."
Monday's agreement was first broached at a 2006 native summit in the Innu community of Mashteuiatsh. Picard noted differing federal and provincial jurisdictions always lead to delays.
Emploi-Quebec will run the program, in collaboration with native governments, and the federal government will contribute about $60 million a year.