It's been a little cold here in Calgary this week. We've been dealing with -40 temperatures at night, and more to come before it warms up on Sunday or so.
This kind of cold is mostly a frustration. Everything moves slower. Cars don't start. Stuff breaks. Heating bills go up. We bundle up and deal with it. But, we stay warm.
Every year, when we get a cold snap, the local news always features a story about how the homeless are coping. I'm proud to live in a country that has so many shelters and organizations dedicated to helping the less fortunate. Even if a homeless person has to huddle in the corner of a shelter for the night, at least they're warm and safe from freezing to death.
It's also -30 in Attawapiskat, Ontario this week. Attawapiskat is a Cree First Nation reserve in Northern Ontario. It's very remote really. Excruciatingly remote. Nestled up against James Bay, on the Attawapiskat River, there are no roads into town. There is an airstrip, which the almost 2,000 residents of the reserve rely on as a lifeline of supplies.
I've been thinking a lot about the people of Attawapiskat this week. This is the reserve who declared a State of Emergency back in October due to the coming winter and a lack of proper housing. This declaration launched a firestorm of blame in the Canadian Parliament the following month. Yes, somehow it took an entire month for the news to travel to the outside world. Anyways, it seems everyone wanted to know where the $90 million of federal funds provided to the reserve over the past 5 years went to. It seemed quite obvious to the chest pounders in Parliament that the Reserve or Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs squandered the money on shiny baubles and forgot to spend it on the people. This argument over who was to blame went on for weeks.
I'm not going to bother getting into the whole "who wasted the money" argument here. Well, just a little bit. If you want a good analysis of the money in Attawapiskat, go here.
Anyways, I'm not mad about the money thing. Governments waste money. It's a truism of life. What I'm mad about is the cavalier attitude expressed towards the residents of Attawapiskat. Our government spent weeks arguing over where the money went. The NDP blamed the Conservatives, and the Conservatives blamed the Reserve leadership. Meanwhile, the people of Attawapiskat lived in seriously 3rd world conditions. Look at it for yourself.
We should be ashamed to have allowed Canadians to live like this. It's sickening and deplorable. It simply doesn't happen "off the reserve".
Back in December, there was a fire in a Calgary Housing complex. Calgary Housing is a system of subsidized housing designed to give adequate housing to our less fortunate. Many of the residents are on Disability, which in Alberta, pays a mere pittance for monthly support. Regardless, their basic needs are taken care of. In this fire back in December, 'several families' were left homeless, but thankfully nobody was hurt. The point is, Calgary Housing had a place for these folks to go to the very next day. If it wasn't a new rental unit, they were put up in a hotel until suitable housing could be found. This is a use of taxpayer money that anybody can support. Who could possibly say, "Wait. We're paying these people for what? I didn't put them in a wheelchair. I didn't burn down their house. They wanted to live on their own, then they should survive on their own" Who could say that?
Yet, that is exactly what many Canadians are saying about the plight of their countrymen in places like Attawapiskat. "Places like" is actually a euphemism for "places where Indians live". We treat Aboriginals in this country like second class citizens. For some reason, it's okay to dismiss their needs. And more importantly, actually dismiss Canadian law. Canadians routinely ignore the fact that Aboriginals in this country are wards of the Federal Government....by law. It's not something we just do out of the goodness of our heart. The Indian Act of Canada spells out in law what our obligations towards Aboriginals are. I guarantee you, the Indian Act does not say we have to keep Aboriginals in squalid and deplorable conditions. But we do.
If you noticed the first link in this post, it was from the Ottawa Citizen dated on November 19, 2011. The article mentions that "A state of emergency (sic) declared last month" October 28th to be exact. Remember how I said the government squabbled for weeks over where the money went? Here's the government press release announcing what extraordinary and generous measures the Canadian Government is taking to alleviate the housing crisis. Notice the date? December 24, 2011. A full month after the story broke. 2 months after the reserve first pleaded for help. And guess what? Those 22 modular homes the Federal Government so generously purchased on a RUSH order (Really? You mean there are no surplus trailers or modular homes in any government agency?) may or may not have actually made it there. This is a picture of the homes waiting in Moosonee, Ontario on January 8th. That's just last week. Obviously, transportation is a challenge for a place so remote. I'm not an expert by any means on Northern life, and I've never had to wait for an ice road to open up. But, DeBeers has an operating diamond mine just 90 Kilometers from Attawapiskat, and they seem to have no problem getting their supplies on site year round.
So once again, we have created a second class of Canadian citizens. Aboriginals in this country are marginalized, derided, and ignored. Thanks to the Indian Act, they don't even have the freedom of Democracy that the "rest of us" enjoy. Generations of Canadian Governments have had a clear mandate to starve and freeze the Indians off the reserves. And we act all disgusted when Aborignals dig their heels in. I don't blame them. They just want to be treated as equals. And we use every tool at our disposal to cast them aside. Why not? It's been a solid plan since the 1700's anyways. Sadly, Attawapiskat is not the only Aboriginal Reserve who have the exact same issues. They are the tip of the iceberg. There are many Aboriginal communities across the country who are suffering in deplorable 3rd world conditions.
These are Canadians. And tonight, they are freezing. And we should be ashamed of ourselves.
0 comments:
Post a Comment