Liberals may be lesser of two evils

Page 4

Elections are usually a time when a politician's true stripes never show.

Kissing babies, promising jobs, handing out favors and making life with them as leaders look too good to be true is more often the way life for the candidates goes in the weeks preceding voting days. Not so, this time. Not for Natives.

Natives are definitely on the outside in this election. The first clue was the bingo daubers. Elections Canada decided the best way to reach us, to make sure we come out and vote in an election that, let's face it, will have little or no positive impact on our lives, was to issue to Native organizations bingo daubers covered in the slogan "It's your right to vote."

Bingo daubers.

What an unbelievable faux pas! What was Elections Canada thinking? Obviously, there weren't. To assume that the Aboriginal mentality, the ability to understand, the need to take part in the democratic process, resides somewhere between I-23 and G-49 is an unprecedented insult.

Phil Fontaine, head of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, Gerald Morin, leader of the Metis National Council, and Assembly of First Nations vice-Chief Jerome Morin were only three of the dozens of Native leaders who came out swinging against Elections Canada. There were charges of racism levelled, and rightly so.

But watching the way the election campaign has gone so far leaves one wondering whether all the screaming we do about Ottawa's lack of understanding and abundance of indifference does any good. Notably absent among all the issues being discussed the Prime Ministerial candidates - any candidate, actually - are Native issues: Education, self-government, health, social programs, etc.

There has not been a single debate about Native issues. Kim Campbell, Jean Chretien, Audrey McLaughlin, Preston Manning and Lucien Bouchard have all been remarkably silent on the subject of us. A quick Windspeaker survey of the campaign information officers for each of the five national leaders did not produce a single record of a public discussion of Native issues.

Some of them have written policies. The NDP says Natives have a choice. If

we vote for them, the new Democrats will fight for a better deal for us - better housing, better health care, and the recognition of Aboriginal self-government. They'll also fight for a stronger Aboriginal economic community. Too bad they won't get elected. The NDP were at six per cent of the popular vote in recent pools.

The Reform party also produced a paper on Native issues. Manning is willing to recognize Native self-government as soon as we tell him what we mean it. He wants

to know how Aboriginal governments will be accountable to their people, how we will manage common resources an how much our governments will cost. But the Reform Party's chief concerns seems to be that Native self-government means a lot of semi-independent states whose relationship to Ottawa is based on race. It doesn't sound like they want it. But that doesn't matter. They won't get elected, either.

The real threat is from the Conservative party. The Tories have not produced a single policy statement about Native issues. In fact, the last thing that any Conservative said about us was newly appointed Indian Affairs Minister Pauline Browes' comments about how Ottawa no longer endorses constitutionally recognized Native self-government.

Kim Campbell is currently neck-and-neck with liberal leader Jean Chretien in the polls. The Liberals have produced a Native policy paper, although it's full of generalities about our "problems" and no firm commitments to the solutions. And this seems to be our best option. If we're lucky, the Liberals will win and form a minority government. At least then, the leaders in the House of Commons will acknowledge our existence, even if it is only lip service.