The politics of gutlessness

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There's a story in this month's issue and we want to emphasize an important point that's made between the lines.

The story is about the process of adding regulations to legislation after the fact, a development that Canadian Alliance co-chair of the Joint Committee of Scrutiny of Regulations Gurmant Grewal has a big problem with.

He says the government is happy to keep as many of the really politically troubling aspects of new legislation as possible out of the bills that are debated in the House of Commons-read: where the public is watching.

The current scrap that Mr. Grewal's committee is embroiled in is a case in point.

It looks to us like the government of Canada doesn't want to introduce a legislative amendment that would enshrine the current regulations that give force to the Aboriginal-only fisheries on the West Coast. Yet the Liberal government was happy to have its bureaucrats (very well paid bureaucrats at that, as another story in this issue shows) quietly write those regulations well away from the public eye.

Sorry, but it looks to us like the Liberals don't want to stand up in the House of Commons and defend those fisheries. The government knows if they introduce such a legislative amendment to the Fisheries Act that the Alliance (hello John Cummins and Jim Pankiw) will go ballistic over this "race-based" fishery and score points with a lot of uninformed people who haven't bothered to think things out. The kind of people who prefer to decide that superbly well-educated jurists must be stupid rather than wrap their own minds around a challenging new idea.

Never mind that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Aboriginal people had prior claim to the various lucrative fisheries on the West Coast and that Aboriginal interests in fisheries were ruled second in line behind conservation. That only makes sense. The West Coast Aboriginal peoples were there first, basing their entire way of life on sustainable fishing long before Europeans had any idea they wouldn't fall of the edge off the world just west of the Canary Islands.

Never mind that the concept of an occasional Aboriginal-only fishery is the right thing to do, the Liberals seem to be saying, it won't play well to the voters. The Alliance would be (forgive the outrageous pun) shooting political fish in a barrel.

So do it in the regulations, they say. Keep it off CPAC and away from the glare of the cameras. Let's be discreet.

And so the intolerance that plagues this country continues unconfronted and unabated. It would be an act of humanitarianism, of great political courage if the Liberals (or any party) stood up and told the voters it's time to purge the racial hatreds from the fabric of this nation.

"If you think Aboriginal fisheries are wrong, you're wrong and here's why," the government should be saying and they should be saying it in the House of Commons.

But no political operative in his right mind in this country would tell his boss that it's time to tell Canadians to give away their hate and intolerance. That's not the way to get elected. It's just not practical. It's not a smart political move.

But aren't we all starting to get just a little bit sick of a system that rewards dishonesty and gutlessness?

Isn't it time to do something about it?