OTTAWA REPORT

Page 2

Time is running out to hold the next First Ministers Conference on Aboriginal Rights - the deadline is now less than seven months away - but you wouldn't know it

from watching the federal government. Federal diddling is responsible for the latest snag in the preparations for what could be the last chance to enshrine the Native rights to self-government in the Constitution of Canada.

The recent meeting in Frobisher Bay of government officials and Native leaders was boycotted by the Assembly of First Nations. The AFN refused to go because the federal government refuses to discuss crucial issues such as Native rights to land and resources.

The problem now, like the problems with all the previous conferences is the fight over the agenda. Every conference has been preceded by months of bitter haggling over just what the prime minister, the premiers and Native leaders should discuss. By the time everyone agrees on the agenda, though, there is usually little time left to reach agreement on the issues themselves. The result has often been chaos on the conference floor and separate bargaining behind the scenes. (One example of the problems created by last-minute panic is the controversy over the sexual equality issue at the 1983 conference.)

This year's fight over the agenda is critical because Native leaders will not get the self-government deal they want unless the conference agrees to discuss Native concerns. There have been liberally dozens of meetings involving government officials and Native leaders since the 1985 conference. The latest argument started this past June when the AFN said it wanted to discuss some of the issues it wants included in any talks about self-government - land, resources and the legal and financial relationships between government and Native people.

But a month later, when Indian leaders arrived for their next meeting with govern-ment officials, their concerns were not on the table. Federal officials said they were not prepared to talk about them so the AFN walked out in protest.

Now, two months later, government officials have once again met with Native leaders and once again they are refusing to discuss Indian concerns.

Inuit and Metis groups have sided with the AFN in the dispute. The Native Council of Canada says that a constitutional amendment on Native self-government would be meaningless if it doesn't deal with issues such as land and resources.

The Indian decision to boycott the Frobisher Bay meeting was a calculated gamble. The AFN felt it had little to lose by not going since it says Ottawa has gone back on its promise to let Native people set the agenda. The Indians hope the publicity from the boycott will pressure Ottawa to begin discussing their concerns.

The federal government has had the difficult job of setting an agenda that meets the wildly different viewpoints of the 17 parties involved. But the AFN says the fight over the agenda is just the latest example of the government's continuing refusal to recognize the inherent Indian right to self-government. The AFN says government stonewalling could be a deliberate plot to lower Indian expectations for the conference.

Another explanation for some of the problems, however, may be the high turnover of government people involved in the constitutional process. The change in federal personnel since the last conference has been substantial. The head of the Office of Aboriginal Constitutional Affairs resigned more than a year ago but there is still no permanent replacement. In June the two cabinet ministers responsible for Native constitutional affairs were shuffled. In August the secretary to the cabinet for federal-provincial relations were replaced.

On the provincial side, the turnover has been just about as great. At least five of the ten premiers attending next year's conference, Joe Ghiz, Robert Boursassa, David Peterson, Don Getty and Bill Vander Zalm - will be newcomers to the Native constitutional talks.

Brian Mulrney doesn't have the same excuse, however. If he is sincere about wanting to make a deal on self-government he knows that a last-minute scramble has to be avoided. His officials have known about the AFN complaints since the middle of June. Three months, later, though, there is still a big difference between what the Native groups and the federal government want to discuss.

I suppose that Brian Mulroney can continue to use the increasingly lame excuse that the changes in federal personnel have prevented his government from giving proper consideration to the constitutional topic. Yes, there have been changes a plenty, but when it comes to Native people and the Constitution, they all seem to prove the old saying that the more things change the more they stay the same.