Do They Think We’ve Forgotten?
The last Liberal propaganda e-mail out brought up the May 29th National Day of Action, the Kelowna Accord, and Conservative inaction on Aboriginal issues. What they didn’t mention was that the Kelowna Accord died, and these same issues remained unresolved under their governments, as a result of Liberal inaction when they were in power.
Canada’s First Nations gathered on Thursday to stage a Day of Action – the second in two years – to draw attention to the broken promises of the Conservative government regarding the Kelowna Accord and the government’s failure to build a relationship with Canada’s Aboriginal peoples.
Ah yes… the Kelowna Accord, Liberals love to tout that every time an Aboriginal issue sees the media light of day don’t they? … and each and every time I see it the words “arrogance” and “hypocrisy” come immediately to mind.
Lets go back to November 2005 when the accord was signed. The Gomery Report was due out in December, and Martin had been muttering about going to the polls after it was released to give Canadians a chance to speak their piece even though (as I recall) the polls said that those same Canadians didn’t want to have an election in the middle of winter.
The Gomery Report let Martin off the hook, but as far as the Opposition was concerned the writing was on the wall and on November 28th the [minority Liberal] government fell on a straight non-confidence vote and the winter election was on. Martin could have avoided this by agreeing to an Opposition offer of a February 2006 election, but, in a blatantly arrogant “we cannot lose so lets get on with it” move, he didn’t.
You may be asking what all this has to do with current Liberal mutterings about the Kelowna Accord, and the answer to that question is “time”.
Had the Liberal government really been concerned about formalization of the Kelowna Accord they could have taken the Opposition offer and had two months to make that happen – but they didn’t.
Had the Liberal government really been concerned about the Aboriginal community whose leadership was speaking out against an election call almost daily they would have listened to those calls – but they didn’t.
We all know what happened next:
- Canada went to the polls,
- the Liberals lost,
- the Conservative [minority] government shelved the Kelowna Accord,
- the Liberals didn’t bring down the Harper government on their first budget that represented the formal killing of the Accord
– and lets hear no chest thumping from Liberal quarters about a June 2006 private members bill in the House requiring the government to follow through on the Kelowna Accord either. Its’ author, and each and every MP in the House that voted for it, knew fully well that a private members bill cannot compel the government to spend money.
So enough with the hypocrisy already, lay the blame for the Kelowna Accord not being implemented exactly where it belongs, at the front door of the Liberal Party of Canada.
[ratings]
Naw.
I’m not a Liberal supporter. But I want to make three points.
a) The development of the Kelowna Accord required a greater investment of political will than just about any Canada/Aboriginal initiative in my experience. It’s incredibly difficult to get consensus between federal, territorial and provincial governments on any given issue. It’s equally difficult to get agreement among First Nations, Inuit and Metis. Kelowna represented one such rare consensus. Monte Solberg’s contempturous dismissal of a “deal scribbled on a napkin” showed nothing more than his own utter ignorance of the process.
b) I hate to break it to you, but aboriginal affairs is not, and will probably never be, the first priority of ANY Canadian political party. Suggesting that the Liberals are to blame for not re-engineering their complete electoral strategy in order to protect one of several major policy initiatives under development at the time (as opposed to the Conservatives, the party that actually killed Kelowna), is silly.
c) My biggest question about Kelowna was “will the Liberals follow through with it”? They have a long and ignoble track record of agreements in principle, followed by inaction (as opposed to the Conservative, who generally skip the agreement in principle and just say “no” right off the bat.) But Martin (whom I otherwise dislike) seems somehow to have gotten this one into his blood. And I don’t think it’s because it’s a useful stick to beat Harper with, for two reasons: this government is simply beyond embarassment, and there are NO new votes to be got in pushing Aboriginal issues.