Outspoken Robert Falcon Ouellette continues to be an outlier

Opinion

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This article was published 18/01/2017 (2854 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Manitoba Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette is no stranger to dancing to the beat of his own drum.

This time, he’s just doing it on skis.

The 40-year-old MP for Winnipeg Centre is spending the next three weeks gliding across snow between North Battleford, Sask., and Winnipeg, stopping at 41 different First Nations to lobby for support for what he calls the “Great Confederation.”

“I’m trying to get support for a political union among indigenous people,” said Ouellette, after the first short leg of his journey, which began at the Red Pheasant First Nation, just south of North Battleford.

His second day will include stops north of that city at the Moosomin First Nation and Saulteaux First Nation, before he starts to head east.

All told, he will cover more than 1,000 kilometres — some of it on skis when possible, and on foot when it’s not.

Ouellette, who is of mixed English and Cree descent, said he thinks First Nations would be more powerful and more prosperous if they worked together, including turning the Assembly of First Nations into an indigenous parliament of sorts, to parallel the House of Commons.

“It’s given a good standard of living to the rest of Canada, hasn’t it?” he asked. “It’s time for the indigenous organizations to change, to become something far greater.”

That this is outside the normal bounds of his duties as an MP is not really debatable. It has no direct ties to either his constituency work or his roles in Ottawa representing Winnipeg Centre, or as a member of the finance committee.

To miss a day in the House, MPs must clear it with the party whip, which the party confirmed was done in writing despite the fact that the whip position is now vacant after the promotion of Andrew Leslie to parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs.

Ouellette shrugs off any suggestion he is shirking his MP duties, even though he will miss at least 13 sitting days in the House of Commons and up to 15 constituency days.

“I’m hopefully drawing attention to an idea and causing debate about the society we want to have here in Canada,” he said. “When I’m in Ottawa, I don’t hear a lot of people discussing this.”

Ouellette has only been an MP for about 15 months but he has already ostracized himself from his caucus in many ways. Right out of the blocks, he landed in hot water when he put his name in the hat to be Speaker of the House of Commons. He told a town hall in his riding that, as speaker, he would have influence to call the prime minister over to his chair and demand money for something in his riding.

“You do control the debate and the prime minister wants to keep you happy,” he said at a town hall in his riding in November 2015.

He withdrew his bid for the speaker’s job not long after that, after a few words of caution were thrown his way by people within the party.

In May, he voted against his government’s call to shorten debate on the assisted dying bill, as it tried to rush the bill through ahead of a Supreme Court deadline.

Last spring, he filibustered a finance committee meeting during a debate about launching a study of a guaranteed minimum income, hoping to persuade his Liberal colleagues to change their mind and vote for it.

This fall he broke ranks again, saying he didn’t think the Department of Fisheries had properly consulted with First Nations before it approved the Site C hydroelectric dam in northern British Columbia.

The Liberals are tolerating Ouellette’s outspokenness to a point. Last fall, when the finance committee hit the road for the annual pre-budget tour, Ouellette wasn’t in attendance at any of the nine stops across the country, not even the meeting in Winnipeg on Oct. 6. He was forced to miss them, scheduled by the party to be on house duty in Ottawa instead. He attended every meeting of the committee in Ottawa, where the Liberals can keep a closer eye on him.

Insiders say it would be a fair assessment to call him “sidelined.” 

One of the reasons the Liberals have tolerated him this far is because he won them a long-held NDP seat, upending veteran NDP MP Pat Martin in the process. Many constituents were tired of Martin’s outspoken style, but some have privately wondered to the Free Press if Ouellette is actually much different.

Ouellette himself has no concerns that he is upsetting anyone in his party. He has told the Free Press a few times he was elected to represent his constituents and they didn’t send him to Ottawa to keep his mouth shut.

Mia Rabson is the Winnipeg Free Press parliamentary bureau chief.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mrabson