remain pervasive.”
In tandem with abolishing the Indian Act, Chief Brazeau advocated the amalgamation of many First Nations communities “to restore the traditional Aboriginal nations,” consolidating the 633 native communities in Canada into perhaps sixty or eighty. Why did it make sense to keep living on the scattered parcels of mostly marginal land onto which non-Aboriginals had relegated them? He envisaged how the ten Algonquin reserves in Québec and Ontario would become one, with something similar for the Cree people, the Mohawks, and other Indian nations across the land.
Upon re-establishing the traditional structure of Aboriginal societies, to help harmonize these communities among themselves and create First Nations that were no longer divided and weakened but indigenous nations of self-reliant peoples, Patrick Brazeau envisaged a far more rational and responsive allocation of the nearly $10 billion in federal funding going to Aboriginal programs and services in Canada every year. This would include substantial redirection of resources to natives living off reserve: a large, ignored, generally impoverished, and trouble-plagued component of Canadian society.
“The lion’s share of the federal government’s more than $9-billion investment in Aboriginal programs and services supports the system of Indian Act reserves,” Chief Brazeau reminded policy makers in an op-ed explanation of his program for the Ottawa Citizen. “Yet Statistics Canada census data show that 79 percent of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples live away from reserve communities.” In the article, the chief complimented Prime Minister Stephen Harper for having “committed” his Conservative government to addressing this imbalance. The chief knew his goal of fundamental reordering of Canada’s governance structure for Aboriginal peoples would require a prime minister’s full support.
The Prime Minister’s Office, tasked with developing the Conservative government’s revamped approach to First Nations, which included band council financial management and budget accountability similar to that of municipal councils across Canada, took due note of Chief Brazeau’s clearly articulated agenda. It was rare to find an Aboriginal leader with clear-eyed analysis and candid expression of views about a fundamental Canadian issue that, in political Ottawa, was a toxic topic. It was also encouraging that Chief Brazeau’s program coincided on key points with recommendations of the PM’s senior adviser, Tom Flanagan.
Right on cue, many chiefs across Canada, whose positions derive from the status quo that brash young Brazeau was vigorously challenging, responded in an orchestrated attack. Their power and income, flowing from the Indian Act and existing patterns of federal government funding, would be undermined if such radical ideas gained traction, let alone ever got implemented. Brazeau’s message was that Canada’s Aboriginal communities needed to be brought under “the tenets of modern-day governance.” Representatives of band councils and the Assembly of First Nations leadership flooded Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Jim Prentice with letters. They also began a wider campaign to derail Patrick Brazeau, knowing the easiest way to stop a message is to discredit
its messenger.
As radical and threatening as CAP’s national chief appeared, Patrick Brazeau had not come up with his plan to overcome the stagnant life for many of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples on his own. Nor, for that matter, had Tom Flanagan. A decade earlier, the largest study ever conducted into the Aboriginal condition in Canada had reached similar conclusions. The Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney had not been content only to restore full legal status to Indian women and their families, but had more boldly laid the groundwork for far-reaching changes by launching a full-scale Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Its final report, which reached Parliament in November 1996, recommended dismantling the reserve system and reconstituting Canada’s traditional Aboriginal nations.
These proposals had been distilled from years of hearings in First Nations communities across Canada, and included active participation by respected elders. Yet strong opposition to such change by those entrenched in and benefiting from the existing system, when combined with the Liberal government’s reluctance to move ahead with recommendations of a review it had not initiated, consigned the ideas to oblivion — at least until Chief Patrick Brazeau gave them fresh wings.
As Ron Corbett noted, “Aboriginal people in Canada are an increasingly young, displaced, populace. Yet when the federal government funds Aboriginal programs and services, it continues to pour eight dollars out of every nine into a reserve system that was devised in the nineteenth century. To people like Patrick Brazeau, that’s like maintaining a fleet of wooden ships when the Bismarck is bearing down on you.”
Clearly, Brazeau knew the stakes were high and that the status quo could easily lead to real instability. This view found further support elsewhere; Canada’s security and intelligence services were warning the Government of Canada about rising threats within the country from militant First Nations groups, and internationally recognized insurgency expert Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Bland, retired from the Canadian Forces, was writing his warning on the same subject, a novel entitled Uprising, which I published in 2010.
For Patrick, it was obvious that the kind of change he sought required political action at the centre. Increasingly, he entertained the idea of pursuing that course of action himself. “I may take a stab at federal politics some day and run for elected office in the mainstream,” he explained to Corbett near the end of their interview. “I’ve thought about that.”
While working for fundamental change, CAP’s national chief also focused on specific measures that supported his vision of Aboriginal people acting in society to achieve their goals, not only on a tribal basis, but as individuals. Brazeau sought to inculcate a vital sense of personal responsibility for one’s own future because he felt strongly about self-sufficiency for Aboriginal peoples as individuals, not only as communities, which is particularly important for the majority of isolated natives living off-reserve. He fought to repeal section 67 of the Canadian Human Rights Act because it stipulated that communal rights under the Indian Act superseded the rights of individuals under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Brazeau argued this impeded the individual human rights of Aboriginals and was particularly detrimental to Aboriginal women. In this stance, CAP’s national chief was supported editorially by the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and other major organs of public opinion.
On June 20, 2008, Chief Brazeau happily applauded passage of the Harper government’s Bill C-21, which repealed section 67.Viewing this as another step toward the larger goal of reforming Aboriginal governance, he suggested this extension of human rights protection by the Harper government “will ultimately lead to the dismantling of the Indian Act itself.”
Before the year was out, Prime Minister Stephen Harper invited the highly visible spokesperson for marginalized Aboriginal Canadians to become a senator. It was one of the PM’s most strategic appointments. CAP’s national chief could continue to press, with whatever additional resources and status the Senate of Canada offered, alternative views that challenged positions held by Liberals and the Assembly of First Nations.
Chief Brazeau, who had contemplated federal politics “one day,” radiated his sunniest smile and agreed.
Prime Minister Harper believed the lustrous presence of Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, and Patrick Brazeau would enhance the Conservative Party and even, as a side-effect, the Senate itself.
In a tightly controlled Parliament, moreover, he reasoned that senators, like MPs in the House of Commons, no longer needed to possess much legislative prowess. If their attendance in committee was sufficient to provide quorum, and if they supplied the expected votes in committee and in the chamber whenever summoned by the Conservative whip, that would suffice as far as Senate duties mattered.
Lacking prior political experience would not serve as a hindrance to being a member of Canada’s highest legislative chamber because any decisions it made about legislation would continue to be orchestrated from the
