We can do better: Attawapiskat
The dialogue around the tragedy at Attawapiskat has taken a nasty turn in the last few days. From justifiable shock and outrage that a community in Canada (any community in Canada) can be living in such squalor, to blame and finger-pointing.
A reporter on the CBC’s The National confronted the Attawapiskat chief with evidence of a flight to Toronto that cost over $8,000. The flight was for her and her whole council to attend meetings. Anyone who knows anything about the north knows that everything costs two to ten times more than in the south. One million dollars will buy you four small, one-story houses. We’re not talking Boardwalk here.
Then Peter Mansbridge confronted Grand Chief Shawn Atleo about the $90 million spent at Attawapiskat over the past 6 years and wondered if that was “sustainable.”
Now, the Harper government has put the Band into third party management saying that they have to get to the bottom of the mystery of the $90 million.
But Indian Affairs has been co-managing the Band for the last ten years. Why don’t they just ask their own bureaucrats where the money’s gone? They should know. After all, some $2 billion a year goes to civil servants’ salaries and expenses. By the way, third party management in the past has proven much more expensive than Aboriginal management.
There is a real humanitarian emergency at Attawapiskat. Since when do we Canadians blame first and act later? When a soldier dies in Afghanistan, do we confront his commanding officer with the cost of the mission that killed him? Did we demand Haiti open its books before we responded to its earthquake?
There are a lot of reasons why Attawapiskat is in crisis. But, as someone who has worked with First Nations for 20 years, I can tell you that trying to deliver decent housing, clean water, sewage treatment, safe roads, policing, adequate education, and proper health care to 2000 Natives in the north is not one of them.
But first, there’s some people in our backyard who need help.
David McLaren is a writer living on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario.
