How retarded would you have to be to believe that the Trudeau government's pipeline agenda makes any sense whatsoever?
The latest clanger is the news that the estimated cost of construction has been bumped from seven billions to twelve plus. If I'm not mistaken, the original Trans Mountain pipeline twinning (and capacity trebling) project was premised on an average price of $100/bbl crude over the life of the pipeline. Crude is half that and the price of the pipeline just went up 70%.
The Trans Mountain pipeline just lost all credibility as a viable business proposition.
Only a government could make it happen now.
But how could it possibly be a government that came to power on the twin promises of meeting our climate change obligations and working towards reconciliation with First Nations?
Showing posts with label native rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label native rights. Show all posts
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Friday, May 2, 2014
Atleo falls on his sword
The sudden resignation of Shawn Atleo today is a good-news bad-news story.
It's bad news because it throws native leadership into disarray at a time when native leadership is more important than ever.
But it's good news because it opens the door for serious native leadership who are not captured by the "hang around the fort" mentallity that captured Atleo.
Sound native leadership will not only reshape the future of Canada's native population, it will reshape the future of Canada.
Atleo, whatever his good intentions, was never the guy who was going to make that happen.
It's bad news because it throws native leadership into disarray at a time when native leadership is more important than ever.
But it's good news because it opens the door for serious native leadership who are not captured by the "hang around the fort" mentallity that captured Atleo.
Sound native leadership will not only reshape the future of Canada's native population, it will reshape the future of Canada.
Atleo, whatever his good intentions, was never the guy who was going to make that happen.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Shithouse sociology
From my perch here in the outhouse, I have a nice view of all the boat traffic heading to and from the eastern reaches of the lake. Aside from looking out at the boat traffic, I find that this is a very nice spot to settle in and read a book.
I'm working my way through Marlon Brando's autobiography at the moment.
Regular readers will realize that reading in the shithouse is not a recent phenomenon with the top analyst at Falling Downs.
In my youth I often found myself in workshops and factories wherein the shithouse offered the best available respite from the grinding monotony of the shop floor.
In fact, at the shipyard I became somewhat of a legend for disappearing hours on end into the bathroom with the fattest tomes on offer at the Saint John public library.
The shipyard crew had the same generalized anti-intellectual bent common in most blue-collar workplaces at the time, and I believe that the reason my bathroom habits made me a legend instead of a target was the assumption that I was using these books as a pillow and was not actually reading them.
What has caught my notice as I sit here on the island observing the boat traffic, is that there are far fewer sailboats on the lake today than there would have been five years ago, or ten, or twenty...
What could possibly account for this decline?
That Brando fellow was quite a piece of work. Have to say I really liked him in the Godfather.
Ditto Apocalypse Now.
Last Tango just left me feeling I'd watched somebody's dirty home movie. A middle-aged creeper boning a young hottie up the bottom is no doubt a great moment for the middle-aged creeper, but it's really difficult to locate the artistic merit in that, if you know what I mean.
Here's my theory on the decline of recreational sailing:
It's not about money. The folks running V-8 power boats up and down the lake at high speed could easily afford to sail, but they don't want to.
They've got places to get to and things to do.
Sailing is, after all, "outdoor recreation." Like camping, it's got to be an end in itself and not just a means to an end. Whose family today wants to spend the day on the sailboat when they could be snuggled up at the cottage with their internet?
Let's get there as fast as we can.
Let's get back as fast as we can.
That's why there are more supercharged 900 horsepower big-block V-8's on the lake than there are spinnakers.
That wasn't the case twenty years ago.
Perhaps the greatest shithouse intellectual I ever knew was my pal Johnny at GE. Johnny never finished high school but he finished the Globe and Mail crossword every day in the shitter at GE for over thirty years.
What I really respect about Brando is his commitment to native rights. I had no idea that he was actually in the building with those AIM guys when they were being beseiged and shot at by the cops in Wisconsin.
GE eventually made good on the threat they'd trotted out every couple of years at contract time; "we're gonna shut you down and build our transformers somewhere else."
Finally Johnny was able to do the Globe and Mail crossword at his kitchen table at home.
I'm working my way through Marlon Brando's autobiography at the moment.
Regular readers will realize that reading in the shithouse is not a recent phenomenon with the top analyst at Falling Downs.
In my youth I often found myself in workshops and factories wherein the shithouse offered the best available respite from the grinding monotony of the shop floor.
In fact, at the shipyard I became somewhat of a legend for disappearing hours on end into the bathroom with the fattest tomes on offer at the Saint John public library.
The shipyard crew had the same generalized anti-intellectual bent common in most blue-collar workplaces at the time, and I believe that the reason my bathroom habits made me a legend instead of a target was the assumption that I was using these books as a pillow and was not actually reading them.
What has caught my notice as I sit here on the island observing the boat traffic, is that there are far fewer sailboats on the lake today than there would have been five years ago, or ten, or twenty...
What could possibly account for this decline?
That Brando fellow was quite a piece of work. Have to say I really liked him in the Godfather.
Ditto Apocalypse Now.
Last Tango just left me feeling I'd watched somebody's dirty home movie. A middle-aged creeper boning a young hottie up the bottom is no doubt a great moment for the middle-aged creeper, but it's really difficult to locate the artistic merit in that, if you know what I mean.
Here's my theory on the decline of recreational sailing:
It's not about money. The folks running V-8 power boats up and down the lake at high speed could easily afford to sail, but they don't want to.
They've got places to get to and things to do.
Sailing is, after all, "outdoor recreation." Like camping, it's got to be an end in itself and not just a means to an end. Whose family today wants to spend the day on the sailboat when they could be snuggled up at the cottage with their internet?
Let's get there as fast as we can.
Let's get back as fast as we can.
That's why there are more supercharged 900 horsepower big-block V-8's on the lake than there are spinnakers.
That wasn't the case twenty years ago.
Perhaps the greatest shithouse intellectual I ever knew was my pal Johnny at GE. Johnny never finished high school but he finished the Globe and Mail crossword every day in the shitter at GE for over thirty years.
What I really respect about Brando is his commitment to native rights. I had no idea that he was actually in the building with those AIM guys when they were being beseiged and shot at by the cops in Wisconsin.
GE eventually made good on the threat they'd trotted out every couple of years at contract time; "we're gonna shut you down and build our transformers somewhere else."
Finally Johnny was able to do the Globe and Mail crossword at his kitchen table at home.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
It's all sweet grass and feathers at Chief Harper's invitation-only Loya Jurga
Big Chief Harper summoned the lesser chiefs to a pow-wow today. They came in their hundreds. Grand Chiefs, Regional Chiefs, hereditary Chiefs, Band Chiefs, you name it.
Most of the morning was taken up with prayers and tributes to the sleeping Gods that haven't done their First Nations supplicants much good the last five hundred years or so. Why not take a page out of whitey's book and try for a bit of separation between church and state, native brothers? The white folks are just patronizing you when they indulge this stuff. Let sleeping Gods lie already!
In the afternoon Big Chief Harper had to duck out early to meet up with some serious folks in Davos, but not before delivering one of the most hackneyed speeches of his career.
Referring to the Indian Act, the 1876 legislation that codified native apartheid in Canada, Harper said "that tree has deep roots. Blowing up the stump would just leave a big hole."
And with that Harper was off to Switzerland, and the Chiefs were off to their impoverished communities, no more empowered and no wiser than they were before.
Most of the morning was taken up with prayers and tributes to the sleeping Gods that haven't done their First Nations supplicants much good the last five hundred years or so. Why not take a page out of whitey's book and try for a bit of separation between church and state, native brothers? The white folks are just patronizing you when they indulge this stuff. Let sleeping Gods lie already!
In the afternoon Big Chief Harper had to duck out early to meet up with some serious folks in Davos, but not before delivering one of the most hackneyed speeches of his career.
Referring to the Indian Act, the 1876 legislation that codified native apartheid in Canada, Harper said "that tree has deep roots. Blowing up the stump would just leave a big hole."
And with that Harper was off to Switzerland, and the Chiefs were off to their impoverished communities, no more empowered and no wiser than they were before.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Canada: towards a two-state solution
In reading up on the last round of spit-ball exchanges between the local council in Attawapiskat and the federal government, I am struck by how far we really are from any realization that "our" native people are not in any way "ours".
Attawapiskat, for those of you who don't remember, is that native reserve way up north where conditions are so deplorable that the community caught the attention of the international media a few months ago. Sub-standard housing, unemployment, an epidemic of substance abuse... Attawapiskat made headlines from Stockholm to Sydney.
The international attention has subsided and now it's back to business as usual, which, long story short, consists of the federal government making the natives grovel for more "help".
I've been pondering this issue for a long time, and I've come to the conclusion that there is a solution; the two state solution. Not a state and a pretend lip-service series of state-reserves scattered here and there, but two independent states.
Before that can happen, our native neighbors have to get their act together. The fact that there are approximately 600 First Nations in Canada is a legacy of colonialist divide and conquer strategies. Dignity and sovereignty aren't going to happen as long as the federal government can get away with dealing with a community of a few thousand here and another few thousand there.
Those 600 native communities need to be held together under a cohesive central authority, and while there are national umbrella organizations today, they obviously aren't up to the job.
Secondly, non-native Canada needs to recognize that for a sovereign people to thrive, they will require adequate resources. By adequate resources I don't mean welfare cheques. I mean the resources that come with having sovereign control over an equitable share of Canada's land mass.
What is an equitable share? Based on their proportion of the population of what is now Canada, this should be at a very minimum at least five percent of the land mass. That is about a ten-fold increase over the amount of resources natives have today. There may be good sound arguments that will allow a higher figure to be negotiated.
Before there are negotiations there will need to be that central authority that speaks for the aboriginal people, and in no way can it be made up of the hang-around-the-fort types who populate the leadership of national native organizations today.
We've had a system in place that's proven itself detrimental to the First Nations for well over a hundred years. That system seems to work OK for the side that has all the power. Attawapiskat tells us it doesn't work for the other side.
It's time for change.
Attawapiskat, for those of you who don't remember, is that native reserve way up north where conditions are so deplorable that the community caught the attention of the international media a few months ago. Sub-standard housing, unemployment, an epidemic of substance abuse... Attawapiskat made headlines from Stockholm to Sydney.
The international attention has subsided and now it's back to business as usual, which, long story short, consists of the federal government making the natives grovel for more "help".
I've been pondering this issue for a long time, and I've come to the conclusion that there is a solution; the two state solution. Not a state and a pretend lip-service series of state-reserves scattered here and there, but two independent states.
Before that can happen, our native neighbors have to get their act together. The fact that there are approximately 600 First Nations in Canada is a legacy of colonialist divide and conquer strategies. Dignity and sovereignty aren't going to happen as long as the federal government can get away with dealing with a community of a few thousand here and another few thousand there.
Those 600 native communities need to be held together under a cohesive central authority, and while there are national umbrella organizations today, they obviously aren't up to the job.
Secondly, non-native Canada needs to recognize that for a sovereign people to thrive, they will require adequate resources. By adequate resources I don't mean welfare cheques. I mean the resources that come with having sovereign control over an equitable share of Canada's land mass.
What is an equitable share? Based on their proportion of the population of what is now Canada, this should be at a very minimum at least five percent of the land mass. That is about a ten-fold increase over the amount of resources natives have today. There may be good sound arguments that will allow a higher figure to be negotiated.
Before there are negotiations there will need to be that central authority that speaks for the aboriginal people, and in no way can it be made up of the hang-around-the-fort types who populate the leadership of national native organizations today.
We've had a system in place that's proven itself detrimental to the First Nations for well over a hundred years. That system seems to work OK for the side that has all the power. Attawapiskat tells us it doesn't work for the other side.
It's time for change.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Canada Defense Minister weds Iranian beauty queen
Canada's Minister of Defense Peter "Pinocchio" MacKay revealed today that he has married long-time girlfriend Nazanin Afshin-jam.
Nazanin has been a long time advocate for the rights of children in Iran. We sincerely hope that with her new commitment to MacKay she can also find time to champion the cause of children in Canada, particularly the children who live on Canada's native reserves, who face challenges every bit as dire, if not moreso, as the children in her native Iran.
Nazanin has been a long time advocate for the rights of children in Iran. We sincerely hope that with her new commitment to MacKay she can also find time to champion the cause of children in Canada, particularly the children who live on Canada's native reserves, who face challenges every bit as dire, if not moreso, as the children in her native Iran.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Attawapiskat to get 15 new double-wides
Now that's a story I can relate to. The federal government, shamed by the international outrage over the living conditions of its aboriginal citizens in the remote northern community, has loosened the purse-strings enough to permit the purchase of fifteen mobile homes.
Fifteen double-wides for 1,800 people? Are they trying to solve a problem or are they after a bit of positive PR? You have to wonder.
Meanwhile, it has come to light that the "third-party" appointed by the government to run the community's finances is being paid $1,300. That's a damn good weekly paycheck, eh? Oh, wait a minute, that's not his weekly pay, that's his per day stipend. Plus expenses of course.
There's a couple of loose ends to the story. The government doesn't actually know when they might get around to delivering the new mobiles. And they're not about to say who's going to pay for them. Odds are even that the money will come out of the Attiwapiskat band budget, which of course the government's "third party" financial manager has total control over.
By the way, his $1,300 a day plus expenses comes out of their budget too.
That's how we solve native poverty issues in Canada; make the natives pay $1,300 a day to a white guy to tell them what to do.
Fifteen double-wides for 1,800 people? Are they trying to solve a problem or are they after a bit of positive PR? You have to wonder.
Meanwhile, it has come to light that the "third-party" appointed by the government to run the community's finances is being paid $1,300. That's a damn good weekly paycheck, eh? Oh, wait a minute, that's not his weekly pay, that's his per day stipend. Plus expenses of course.
There's a couple of loose ends to the story. The government doesn't actually know when they might get around to delivering the new mobiles. And they're not about to say who's going to pay for them. Odds are even that the money will come out of the Attiwapiskat band budget, which of course the government's "third party" financial manager has total control over.
By the way, his $1,300 a day plus expenses comes out of their budget too.
That's how we solve native poverty issues in Canada; make the natives pay $1,300 a day to a white guy to tell them what to do.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Attawapiskat weather forecast
Here it is, straight from the Environment Canada website:
Tonight
Partly cloudy. 40 percent chance of flurries this evening. Wind up to 15 km/h. Low minus 20. Wind chill minus 28.
Friday
A mix of sun and cloud. Wind becoming west 30 km/h in the morning. High minus 15. Wind chill minus 31.
Friday night
A few clouds. Wind west 30 km/h becoming light early in the evening. Low minus 23. Wind chill minus 32.
Saturday
Sunny. High minus 16
Whoa, a high of minus 16 on Saturday? Those tent-bound natives are on the threshold of a veritable heat-wave!
A week ago the Attawapiskat scandal was on front pages around the world. Isn't on those front pages anymore, is it? Been replaced by "aging carpet-bagger bags Republican lead" and "Merkozy saves Euro again" and "Putin punked".
So do you think in the past week those bureaucrats managed to put up habitable homes for the two thousand human beings who call Attiwapiskat home?
Or do you think the scandal has outlasted our attention span?
Whoa, a high of minus 16 on Saturday? Those tent-bound natives are on the threshold of a veritable heat-wave!
A week ago the Attawapiskat scandal was on front pages around the world. Isn't on those front pages anymore, is it? Been replaced by "aging carpet-bagger bags Republican lead" and "Merkozy saves Euro again" and "Putin punked".
So do you think in the past week those bureaucrats managed to put up habitable homes for the two thousand human beings who call Attiwapiskat home?
Or do you think the scandal has outlasted our attention span?
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Why we have spent billions on native housing and natives don't have housing
The tragedy of sub-standard housing on many First Nations is the result of doing things for the benefit of a multi-layered bureaucracy instead of for the benefit of people who need housing.
A number of decisions made by white experts years ago have become the accepted and unchallenged wisdom even though it is obvious to virtually all concerned that this way of doing things doesn’t work.
In the first place, why should Don Mills tract housing be appropriate for remote northern communities?
Why should remote reservations surrounded by trees be importing lumber?
Why should communities with eighty, ninety, or a hundred percent unemployment import labor to build houses?
Why should Southern Ontario building codes provide the template for construction in Arctic communities?
Because at every step in this process people have a vested interest in continuing the status quo.
The bureaucrats keep their jobs.
The contractors keep their huge profits.
The Chiefs keep the power that goes with deciding who gets what.
And the housing falls apart in five to ten years, ensuring that this stupid but very profitable cycle keeps spinning.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Occupy Attawapiskat
Jacques Marion, the so-called third-party manager sent into Attawapiskat, high-tailed it back to Ottawa after an unfriendly welcome in the northern First Nation community today. He is at this moment peeling tar and feathers off his backside.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, who appointed Marion, says that's tough luck for the natives.
"Jacques' got their money" Duncan said. "He remains in full control of their finances. If they want any help at all they'd better get over themselves."
Band Chief Theresa Spence fully approved of the move to run Marion out of town. She claims that the appointment of a third-party manager is just an attempt to silence the band and blame the victim.
It should be pointed out that calling the government appointee a "third party" is a misnomer. There are two parties involved here; the federal government and the Attawapiskat First Nation. One party has the hardship and the other party has the hard cash. When the party with the cash nominates an agent to hold the money, that doesn't make that agent a "third party".
But it does speak volumes about the nature of the relationship between the government and the First Nations. In theory the relationship is between two nations. In reality, the federal government feels perfectly content to say to the natives "if you don't do it our way go ahead and freeze to death."
Good for them for running the arrogant bastards out of town.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, who appointed Marion, says that's tough luck for the natives.
"Jacques' got their money" Duncan said. "He remains in full control of their finances. If they want any help at all they'd better get over themselves."
Band Chief Theresa Spence fully approved of the move to run Marion out of town. She claims that the appointment of a third-party manager is just an attempt to silence the band and blame the victim.
It should be pointed out that calling the government appointee a "third party" is a misnomer. There are two parties involved here; the federal government and the Attawapiskat First Nation. One party has the hardship and the other party has the hard cash. When the party with the cash nominates an agent to hold the money, that doesn't make that agent a "third party".
But it does speak volumes about the nature of the relationship between the government and the First Nations. In theory the relationship is between two nations. In reality, the federal government feels perfectly content to say to the natives "if you don't do it our way go ahead and freeze to death."
Good for them for running the arrogant bastards out of town.
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