HOW would farmers and ranchers feel if the minister of agriculture was always someone who had never been an agricultural producer?
That is exactly the situation that Indian people have faced throughout their history. Canada has never had a minister of Indian Affairs who is an Indian or even Aboriginal, a definition that takes in Inuit and Metis.
Governments might argue that they haven’t had much choice given the virtual absence of status Indian MPs.
That is part of the problem. Some years there are no Indian MPs among the ranks of the governing party.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
However, the Liberal governments of Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin had Skilwh Indian and Dene MPs – Leonard Marchand and Ethel Blondin – who were denied the Indian Affairs post but considered competent enough to serve in other cabinet posts.
Governments have also used the Senate to back door cabinet appointments in areas where representation is absent.
Governments could have found ways to appoint people to cabinet who knew what it was like to live in First Nations, but I want to leave that part of the issue and move on to the lack of Indian representation in general in Parliament and the legislatures.
In Manitoba it is rare for an Indian to be elected from outside of the northern part of the province.
In Canada, outside of the northern territories, there are only two federal ridings a where Aboriginal people are a majority. One is northern Saskatchewan and the other in northern Manitoba.
The number of people living on farms and the number of Indians in Canada is very similar, each at around 700,000. Total Aboriginal population is slightly more than one million.
Farmers, however, have more clout with the federal government and certainly with the provincial governments of some provinces. The reason is simple: their votes are more concentrated geographically.
When Indian reserves were created, they were dispersed over wide areas and the surrounding lands were filled with settlers who established farms, towns and cities.
In Manitoba, residents of First Nations often vote in a way that is totally different from surrounding farming areas. Our votes don’t count and the politicians know that.
Most of the non-farmers in towns and villages also have similar issues and political sympathies to farmers because they are retired farmers, they grew up on prairie farms or they work in some extension of the agricultural industry.
In large cities like Winnipeg there are concentrations of voters based on economic strata and ethnic background.
There are rich ridings, poor ridings and ridings where Italians or Chinese or Vietnamese form powerful voting blocks. The best example of this is francophone Quebec where the Bloc Quebecois has become a huge force.
One option would be to allow Indian voters to opt out of their geographical constituencies and vote in a small number of ridings created specifically for them.
The justification would be that Treaty Indians, unlike other people, were not allowed to choose where they would live. It was determined by government and enforced by government.
A variation of this idea was discussed in the 1992 Royal Commission on Electoral Reform. The plan drew criticism, but nothing better has been endorsed since.
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t look at other proposals to increase Indian clout, but one thing is certain: the system isn’t working.
How long can we keep playing a game that is rigged so that we can never win?
