Just call 1-800-RED-NECK

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I'm not the kind of person to spoil a ballot, any kind of ballot.

In fact, my reverence for the democratic process is so unwavering that I'll vote for anything-prime minister, premier, city council, school trustees, parent advisory committee, board of directors at the local Elks Lodge-you name it.

So when I spoiled my ballot in the Liberal government's long-promised referendum on treaty negotiations, I did so with great regret.

But after reading the list of eight questions mailed to me by Elections BC, I was appalled and disgusted on so many different levels that there's no way I could cast my ballot with a clear conscience.

The so-called questions are nothing of the kind. They're statements of general principle that offered little chance for voters to clearly express themselves.

For example, Question 1 which read "Private property should not be expropriated for treaty settlements," came out the same no matter how I answered it. Yes, private property should not be expropriated. No, private property should not be expropriated.

Question 2, besides being vague to the point of absurdity, contained two broad statements of principle and asks for one answer. "The terms and conditions of leases and licences should be respected; fair compensation for unavoidable disruption of commercial interests should be ensured."

What if I supported one concept and not the other? Whose leases and licences are we talking about? Am I to understand that corporations should be compensated if Aboriginal land issues affect their ability to do business? Isn't the treaty process supposed to be based on the idea of compensating Native people, not the companies who are inconvenienced by Native people's Constitutional rights.

As someone who once spent a year working in communications at the B.C. Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs (under former premier Mike Harcourt) I know these issues well enough to have extrapolated some meaning from the loaded jargon on the ballot.

But how can the masses of voters with little more than a basic understanding of the topic possibly grasp the complex legalities of First Nations government?

Imagine 10,000 unemployed loggers mulling over Question 7: "Treaties should include mechanisms for harmonizing land use planning between aAboriginal governments and neighbouring local governments."

And if they voted no, did they vote for disharmony in land use planning?

Not to pick on loggers, because anyone without a degree in law or public administration would have had trouble offering an informed opinion on Question 6: "Aboriginal self-government should have the characteristics of local government, with powers delegated from Canada and British Columbia."

But if I answer no to Question 6, am I saying that local government powers are too much for First Nations? Or would I be saying they're not enough? How could I vote if I didn't know what my vote meant?

If the referendum looked anything like a realistic blueprint for improving the treaty process, I wouldn't have judged it so harshly.

But at least four of the eight questions were mirror images of policies that were entrenched in the NDP treaty process back in 1991, including the notion of excluding private property from negotiations, as referred to in Question 1.

Part of my job at Aboriginal Affairs was to answer the treaty information line, which quickly earned the nickname 1-800-RED-NECK.

People would phone from Fort St. John, Williams Lake, Cranbrook or Oak Bay, and say things like: "I'm not letting no Indians come and take my house."

And I would tell them, over and over again, "private property is not on the table." That was one of the founding principles of the entire treaty process and it figured prominently in the ministry's communications messaging at the time.

Not only is it inaccurate to imply that private property ever was on the table, it's irresponsible to spend $7 million on a mailout to confirm already existing principles.

Question 5: "Proince-wide standards of resource management and environmental protection should continue to apply" isn't an original idea either.

Under the NDP, government negotiators always insisted that self-governing First Nations be subject to the same environmental and resource management standards as the rest of the province.

At the ministry, we had fact sheets saying exactly that, and the topic often arose during calls to 1-800-RED-NECK.

A sample conversation: "Well, what if we give 'em all the trees and they just clear-cut the whole damn thing?" To which I would parrot something like: "Existing environmental standards will continue to apply in areas covered by treaty settlements."

(It's not mentioned on the ballot, but we said the same about the Criminal Code.)

Question 4: "Parks and protected areas should be maintained for the use and benefit of all British Columbians" also mimics NDP policy.

If memory serves me correctly, provincial parks and protected areas were never up for negotiation, and any parks that overlapped into traditional territories had to remain as such, treaty or no treaty.

Question 8 stood alone as the only straightforward, answerable question on the entire ballot, and yet it too was fraught with complexities.

Should the existing tax exemptions for Native people be phased out? Perhaps, since that what the Nisga'a agreed to in their treaty, but under what circumstances? The exemptions, which European settlers enshrined in the Indian Act around 1886, are lucrative and won't be given up without considerable compensation.

With all its wishy-washy platitudes and sweeping generalizations, there was a general theme wafting odorously from the ill-conceived ballot.

The Liberal push for "municipal-style" powers is a tactic for watering down the degree ownership that Native people will be granted in treaty settlements.

The references to parks, protected areas, hunting and fishing "for all British Columbians" is a way of telling First Nations that the gvernment, not First Nations, will decide who comes and goes on Native land.

This leaves me with the impression that the Liberals will refuse to negotiate any kind of title to the Crown land under dispute, a position deeply at odds with the cultural relationship between Native people and the land.

It's also at odds with Supreme Court rulings clearly recognizing that Native people held a form of title to the land prior to European contact. The courts have further ruled that Aboriginal title still exists in most of B.C. where those rights have never been extinguished by treaties.

So refusing to negotiate some kind of land title is a recipe for endless lawsuits that will cost the government countless millions and ultimately leave the province's land question unresolved.

A good friend who shares my opinion of the referendum's absurdity nevertheless had no trouble filling out his referendum ballot.

"It was easy," he explained. "They've worded the questions to get people to answer 'yes', so I just answered every question 'no.'

"It's like dealing with a three-year-old. They want to hear you say yes, and you just have to say no."

For me that's not enough reason to vote, especially when I see Premier Gordon Campbell saying he will only listen to people whose votes can be counted.

So, not only has the Premier insult my intelligence by mailing me a biased, confusing and ill-conceived referendum ballot, he questions my commitment to change for refusing to take part in such a phony democratic charade.

Anyway, when you have a 77-seat majority, you don't have to listen to anyone. So I've responded by spoiling my ballot and slipping this column in the envelope along with it. Both, I'm sure, will be dutifully ignored.