OTTAWA – Justice Minister Sean Fraser apologized Wednesday for comments he made about the government’s duty to consult with Indigenous leaders on major projects.
Fraser said Tuesday that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires consultation but does not amount to “a blanket veto power” over projects.
OTTAWA—Justice Minister Sean Fraser says the federal duty to consult and engage Indigenous people on major nation-building projects does not amount to granting those communities a veto.
After the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) warned Prime Minister Mark Carney he must secure Indigenous Peoples’ consent to his plans to expedite massive infrastructure projects, citing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, Fraser said the legal duty under that declaration is viewed by international experts and the current government as limited.
A year ago in these pages, I criticized land acknowledgements for implying that non-Indigenous Canadians are “uninvited guests” in their own country. Now, the B.C. government has embraced these labels.
To the applause of her colleagues, NDP MLA Rohini Arora stood in the legislature earlier this month, encouraging non-Indigenous British Columbians to describe themselves as a “settler,” “colonizer” and “uninvited guest” living on “Indigenous land.”
A federal memo has revealed that job applicants in the public service who claim to be indigenous are not required to provide proof of identity, prompting a review of current policies amid concerns over fraudulent declarations.
Blacklock’s Reporter says according to the Public Service Commission’s New President Briefing Binder, applicants who self-identify as First Nations, Métis, or Inuit must only sign a one-page form affirming their identity.
A modest improvement in Indigenous living standards due to unrelated federal child benefit
Since 2015, the federal government has significantly increased spending on Indigenous Peoples.
The annual Indigenous budget has almost tripled from 2015 to 2025, growing (in nominal dollars) from roughly $11 billion to more than $32 billion.
h/t Mauser
An audit into federal grant spending on a Saskatchewan First Nation found financial records were deliberately destroyed, making it impossible to verify how millions in taxpayer dollars were used, according to internal government documents.
Untangling Mark Carney’s father’s ties to Fort Smith, N.W.T., Indian day school
“Mr. Carney, at the teachers conference not long ago, you told about a program you have working at the Joseph B. Tyrrell (JBT) school in Fort Smith for culturally retarded children,” the host began. “First of all, would you define a culturally retarded child for me?”
The reply was unequivocal and direct.
“A culturally retarded child in the context of the Northwest Territories is a child from a Native background who for various reasons has not been in regular attendance in school,” said Carney.
I’m a proud Anishinaabe who asserts my Indigenous sovereignty. That’s why I won’t vote
I was 13 when my mom taught me an important lesson: I am not Canadian — I am Anishinaabe, and it’s the reason I will not participate in a colonial political system or vote in this year’s federal election.
We were sitting on the crowded bleachers of my school gymnasium when silence fell and a familiar song followed.
SASKATOON, March 8 (Reuters) – Like a growing number of formerly incarcerated Indigenous people, Marvin Starblanket’s life is still governed by Correctional Service Canada rules.
They determine where he sleeps (a halfway house instead of at home with his partner and children), when he clocks in for the night (10 p.m.), whether he drinks alcohol (he is prohibited), and the job he pursues.
The rules did not stop Starblanket, who is 42, from getting a pair of gray-scale tattoos on the backs of his hands: “Good” on the right, in curly script set against bars of heavenly light; and “Evil,” against a smokily stylized skull, on the left.
I remember the first time I heard a statement at a public event along the lines of, “This building is located on traditional unceded Aboriginal land.” It was in Australia, and it struck me as disingenuous, simplistic and patronizing. If the people making this statement really felt that badly about the land they (and possibly their forebearers) lived and worked on for generations and ostensibly stole, then they would reasonably choose to give the land back along with all they had built upon it.
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Order of Canada has been terminated, nearly three decades after she was appointed in 1997.
The announcement comes more than a year after an investigation from CBC’s The Fifth Estate reported that her claims of Indigenous ancestry were inconsistent with publicly available documents.
The investigation, from Oct. 27, 2023, found Sainte-Marie’s birth certificate, which says she was born in 1941 in Massachusetts. The document lists the baby and parents as white and includes a signature of an attending physician — information CBC says is corroborated by Sainte-Marie’s marriage certificate, a life insurance policy and the United States census.
h/t Mauser and NeoCon
If you can’t afford a home, little else matters. Especially in a country with a climate like Canada’s. Many factors led to Justin Trudeau’s downfall, but the spike in the cost of living really ate away his support. Particularly when it came to housing whether rentals or purchases. Young Canadians have abandoned hope of purchasing a home while many others struggled to keep up with payments.
The phenomenon of individuals with fabricated Indigenous ancestry—colloquially referred to as “pretendians” or “wannabindians”—benefiting from claims to Indigenous identity was is in the news again this week, with Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages Minister Randy Boissonnault stepping down from the Trudeau government’s cabinet for falsely claiming he was Indigenous.
It is time to stop blaming the people chasing incentives and start targeting the broken system that creates the incentives.
When Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, he memorably said that the welfare of indigenous Canadians was his highest priority. He certainly has delivered on his promise, at least in terms of shovelling out money.
While the Trudeau government has tripled the amount of money it spends on Indigenous issues from $11 billion annually in 2015 to more than $32 billion earmarked for 2025, it doesn’t appear to be improving the lives of on-reserve Indigenous people, according to a new study by the fiscally conservative Fraser Institute.
