The Globe has a story about how the "First Nations Financial Transparency Act" is being received by the First Nations. That's a new law that will require band administrators to make public their salaries.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan makes it plain that this law is, like the residential schools, strictly for the good of the Natives. Sure it is! Everything Canada has ever done to the Indians has been for their own good!
If you read Harper's speech four years ago you would have come away with a sense that maybe things would be different. We and they would be "moving forward" together, a movement that would be marked by mutual respect.
How is dictating to Natives what's good for them evidence of "mutual respect?"
On the face of it there's nothing wrong with public servants being required to make public their salaries. What's different in this case is that band councilors and chiefs may be public servants all right, but the public they are serving are the First Nations public, not the Canadian public.
Any move to make personal finances public needs to originate among the First Nations, not be imposed from outside.
All this Act will do is help further poison the atmosphere in a lot of Native communities and give the Ezra Levant types lots more fodder for their racist stereotyping of Indians.
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