Ottawa Report

Page 3

I get a warm feeling when I think about the average Canadian these days, thanks to two public opinion polls. They show that Canadians are solidly behind the idea of Native self-government. But these same polls also give me a pretty cold feeling when I think about the First Ministers-or at least most of them.

I'll get to that but first, a little information about the two polls. The first was commissioned by University of Calgary professor Rick Ponting. His poll was conducted late last year. The second one was commissioned by the Inuit Committee on National Issues. It was conducted in mid-February. The polling company contacted a total of 3,500 Canadians in a coast-to-coast telephone survey.

(There's an ironic twist to this story, by the way, because the polling company was Decima Research Ltd., which just happens to be the same company used by the Mulroney Conservatives.)

In any event, Decima conducted two different polls and came up with one common funding-most Canadians don't know very much about self-government or Native people. That was especially obvious in the Ponting survey because a lot of people had their own, peculiar idea about what is meant by the term "Aboriginal" people. The Canadian constitution defines Aboriginal people as Indians, Inuit or Metis. But some people in the Ponting survey think an Aboriginal person is a foreigner or an immigrant. Some people think it means black people in Africa or aborigines in Australia. And some people think it means just the Indians and the Inuit and not the Metis.

The aim of the Ponting survey was to learn how Native issues compare with others. The result: Canadians think it's more important to improve living conditions for Native people than it is to negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States. In fact, free trade was considered the least important issue.

Unlike the Ponting survey, the Inuit poll was specifically aimed at finding out what Canadians think about Native self-government. The result: Canadians like the idea. In fact, it's not too much of an exaggeration to say they're crazy about it.

One of the first survey questions asked if Native people should have the right to govern themselves and 61 percent said yes. After the people learned something about self-government from later questions in the poll, the level of support increased to 73 percent. And the numbers got even better. When people were asked if self-government should be given constitutional protection, 77 percent said yes and a whopping 84 percent of the people surveyed said they wanted the first ministers to make an agreement on self-government at the constitutional conference.

The poll shows that support for Native self-government is highest in Quebec and lowest in Saskatchewan. The poll also shows that a majority of people in all provinces support the idea.

Despite the apparently strong support for self-government, Indian Affairs Minister Bill McKnight refused at first to say if the poll would make it easier for Ottawa to persuade some of the premiers to change their stand. He said he wants to study the poll more closely before commenting in detail-with good reason because anyone who knows anything about polls knows that the questions are almost more important than the answers. The Quebec referendum on sovereignty-association is a good example. In that case, the polls showed that support for the idea could go up or down by as much as ten percentage points, depending on how the question was worded. In the Inuit poll, a few of the questions were definitely worded to encourage positive answers. In one instance, for example, a question asked if the federal government should "get off the backs" of Aboriginal people.

But no matter how the questions were worded, the poll results should be strong enough to convince even the biggest non-believers of Native self-government. They should also send a strong message to just about everyone. The message for Native people is simple-don't giveup the fight because it's obvious that the vast majority of Canadians support our struggle.

The polls also have a message for the premiers, especially the hard-liners Getty, Divine and Vander Zalm. It's clear that they no longer have any excuse for not meeting their obligations to Native people.

Lastly, the polls have an even stronger message for Brian Mulroney. His own popularity in the polls is closer to zero these days than it is to 50 percent. The Ponting survey shows that Canadians think Mulroney's favourite subject-free trade-is not as important as Native living conditions. The Inuit poll demonstrates the broad base of public support for Native self-government. So if Brian Mulroney wants to raise his standing in the polls, it just might help if he starts paying attention to the Native poll results and acting on what most Canadians are saying about Native people.