Take a lesson from Harper

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/01/2017 (2792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s premier would probably have an easier time if he would just take a page from his old boss, former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Mr. Harper, during his career as leader of the Conservatives and his tenure as prime minister, did not make it a habit to engage in incendiary language. His relationship with First Nations could at times be characterized as frosty, particularly on issues such as aboriginal education and missing and murdered indigenous women.

But Mr. Harper never found himself on a the wrong side of a microphone denouncing aboriginal people (although he did make the mistake once of using the term “old stock,” for which he was widely criticized). His language and comportment was for the most part viewed as professional and diplomatic.

This is something Brian Pallister needs to learn.

A case in point is an interview he conducted with Maclean’s magazine in which he complained that “young indigenous men — a preponderance of them are offenders, with criminal records — are going off shooting guns in the middle of the night. It doesn’t make sense.”

Mr. Pallister made those comments to the reporter while enjoying his “winter home” in Costa Rica. It was in followup to an earlier remark he made while in Virden.

In that conversation, recorded by Virden’s radio station CJVM, the premier told area residents: “Young indigenous guys going out and shootin’ a bunch of moose ’cause they can, ’cause they say it’s their right, doesn’t make any sense to me. This is a poor practice. A dumb practice… It should stop. So what are we doing? We’re organizing to bring indigenous people together and say the same thing I just said to ya, ’cause it’s becoming a race war and I don’t want that.”

More than anything, Mr. Pallister may have felt he was playing to the crowd — there are some in the room who likely agreed with what he had to say and, given the tone of the newly elected president in the United States, perhaps this type of language has become more acceptable.

But this premier is a smart guy. He knows the right to hunt and fish for indigenous people in Manitoba and elsewhere is constitutionally protected.

In fact, as the Supreme Court decision in R. v. Morris makes clear, aboriginal people have the right to hunt and fish and, if they wish, to hunt at night using techniques such as flashlights. It’s one of the concessions Canada made to First Nations in exchange for the territories on which Manitobans farm and live (including Treaty One territory, which includes Winnipeg).

Now, if Mr. Pallister wanted to be smart, he would take a page from his former boss and criticize the Supreme Court for this decision, because that’s really where the fault lies. Certainly, Mr. Harper and some of his advisers complained long and hard about “judge-made laws” that shackle governments from making policy decisions.

Instead, our premier has set off a grenade on the issue of night hunting, completely eradicating any opportunity to have a careful and well-considered conversation with First Nations leaders about rural residents’ concerns about safety and conservation. This is not something Mr. Harper would ever do.