Personal versus professional

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Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott may have pitched Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine into the deep water in regards to Bill C-20, the financial institutions' legislation currently before the Senate for consideration.

Scott told the standing committee on Aboriginal affairs that he had a letter of support for C-20 from the national chief, who chiefs believe is bound by an AFN resolution not to speak in favor of the legislation.

It turned out Scott made a mistake. He didn't have a letter of support from Fontaine. What he had, he said in a letter to the standing committee to correct this error, was Fontaine's personal endorsement of the bill. "National Chief Fontaine has, however, both to me personally and on the public record, expressed his support for the initiative."

Fontaine told Windspeaker the minister was relying on the platform of his last election campaign and in comments made at a chiefs' assembly in Saskatoon where he spoke openly of supporting the hard work of those who wanted financial institutions. Then he told Windspeaker there wasn't actually a resolution on Bill C-20. That's a new bill. The resolution was on Bill C-23, a previous incarnation of the legislation. So, would that make it OK for the chief to give C-20 his thumbs up?

Where do the private views of elected representatives end and their public obligations begin? The question is always a difficult one for a politician. Just look at the discomfort of some in the House of Commons over the upcoming same sex marriage bill. Some of those fine people were sent to Ottawa on the Liberal promise that the impediment to same sex couples wanting to marry will be legislated away. But that professional obligation sticks in the craw of some who are personally opposed to same sex marriage.

Fontaine was publicly chastised by several chiefs at the annual December meeting of chiefs in Ottawa for pushing forward his personal views on C-20. Many questioned Fontaine on whether he's being successful at putting the chiefs' views ahead of his own.

But leave it to a politician to find an escape route to a difficult situation if one is needed. Let's consider this interesting change made to this most recent assembly of chiefs.

In December, the regularly scheduled confederacy of the Assembly of First Nations' chiefs was instead called a special assembly. Regular readers of Windspeaker may recall there has been a great deal of fuss made about voting rights at these meetings. In confederacies, the AFN charter says that each region in the country gets a set number of votes based on population. The AFN has, until very recently, been ignoring this part of its charter and allowing all the chiefs that attend confederacies to vote.

A year ago, British Columbia chiefs showed up in force at a December confederacy held in Ottawa and attempted to force the organization to follow the rules for voting as set out in the charter. The only thing that stopped that plan was a threat of legal action by chiefs (mostly from Ontario) who said not following the rules had become an established custom so they had every reason to expect all the chiefs had the right to vote. They got to vote at that confederacy but were put on notice that from that point on the charter rules stand.

So why change a regularly scheduled confederacy meeting into a special assembly? At a special assembly, all chiefs in attendance can vote. So, what if a new resolution on the financial institutions act had come to the floor of the assembly?

At a confederacy meeting, parties would have been prevented from stacking the deck and flooding the assembly floor with delegates in an attempt to push a resolution through. At a special assembly that strategy was suddenly available and may have been useful to pass a resolution in favor of Bill C-20.

Fontaine said the move to a special assembly was designed to allow all the chiefs to vote while maintaining the integrity of the chter until the AFN renewal committee has a chance to recommend changes to the charter to get rid of all the confusion about voting rights. He said it wasn't an attempt to ignore the chiefs' direction on C-23 and help to pass C-20, a piece of legislation that he personally supports. We'll have to take him at his word.