imposed by the Indian Act led him to the University of Ottawa to study civil law.
In 2001, Brazeau abandoned legal studies for work with the Native Alliance of Québec, an affiliate of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, which represents native Canadians living off-reserve. He now saw a more direct way to advance Aboriginal interests, working for repeal of the Indian Act and implementing a new structure for First Nations’ governance that would be more respectful of all indigenous communities.
Working at CAP exhilarated Patrick. Other people found him clear-spoken and intelligent. His powerhouse appearance — strong face, radiator smile, athletic build, piercing blue eyes, and long black hair — also helped attract others to him, and even gave Brazeau easy extra income as a model. As an appealing spokesperson for the organization, Patrick was named vice-chief in 2005.
The congress, of which he was now a chief, represents the interests of nine provincial and territorial affiliates, whose members include more than eight hundred thousand off-reserve Indian, Inuit, and Métis people. Such a voice as CAP’s causes tensions within the Aboriginal community, however; the Assembly of First Nations, whose chiefs and band council governments speak for some 630 First Nations communities living on reserves, see themselves as the true lineal inheritors of Aboriginal rights connected to the land, and, thus, as the legitimate voice for Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Because over half of Canada’s status and non-status Indians don’t live on reserves, though, CAP says their interests are not effectively represented by the Assembly of First Nations. Many, it noted, did not choose to become dispossessed, but for generations had been driven into limbo by the Indian Act or forced to make the difficult decision of leaving their reserves to escape the poverty found there and to earn a livelihood or make a career. Moreover, because most of the $9 billion spent each year by the Government of Canada on Aboriginal programs and services goes to the reserves, CAP says this imbalanced allocation short-changes the off-reserve majority of Canadian Aboriginals. The two First Nations organizations are strong rivals.
On November 25, 2005, the Liberal government of Paul Martin, having spent a year and a-half consulting CAP, AFN, other national Aboriginal groups, and provincial and territorial governments, agreed at a meeting in Kelowna to boost funding in a big way. There would be an additional $5.1 billion over five years to improve housing, education, health services, and economic development for Aboriginal peoples.
Three days later, Prime Minister Martin’s government was defeated in the Commons and a general election called for January 23, 2006. The PM made the so-called “Kelowna Accord” a centrepiece of his campaign. It embodied stark differences between Liberal and Conservative philosophy, respectively represented by Mr. Martin and Stephen Harper, leader of the Official Opposition. The Liberals, devoted to meeting Aboriginal interests by providing for specific aching needs, believed spending more money was essential. The Conservatives, devoted to the general imperative of reducing Canada’s national debt, believed $9 billion a year was plenty. Instead of spending more money, already in short supply for a Canadian government with crippling annual deficits, Stephen Harper believed deeper change was needed. The Conservatives wanted to ensure that public funds already committed led to better results in the lives of First Nations peoples, and as part of that, would seek to establish financial accountability in band-council governance, along lines similar to the budget discipline required of municipal governments. The Conservatives would “support the principles and objectives” of the Kelowna Accord, said Mr. Harper, but would not commit to spend another $5.1 billion.
Stephen Harper’s senior policy adviser, American-born and American-educated political scientist Tom Flanagan, had come to believe it necessary to revamp Aboriginal governance and the reserve system. In his 2000 book entitled First Nations? Second Thoughts, the political scientist at the University of Calgary described the reserve system as “anomalous and dysfunctional.” He said, “Governments should help the reserves to run as honestly and efficiently as possible, but should not flood them with even more money.” He added that government should focus attention and money on improving the lives of the eight hundred thousand Aboriginals who live off the reserves. In this, Tom Flanagan and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples held carbon copies of each other’s position.
On January 10, less than two weeks before voting day in the 2006 general election, Stephen Harper called for “a realignment of federal Aboriginal expenditures to include appropriate and adequate distribution of resources in order to accommodate the needs of off-reserve and non-status Indians.” Only days before balloting began, CAP endorsed the Conservatives. A letter signed by National Chief Dwight Dorey and Vice-Chief Patrick Brazeau called Mr. Harper’s position a “promising and respectful alternative to the status quo.” On election night, January 23, Conservatives gathered in a Calgary hotel, and among those present, celebrating with prime minister–elect Stephen Harper the party’s break-through victory at the polls, was Chief Dorey.
This Conservative-Congress alliance, founded on mutual agreement about a fundamental Canadian policy, meant the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples’s voice in Ottawa would now be heard more attentively than that of its rival, the Assembly of First Nations. In November 2006, the Harper government increased CAP’s annual budget from $5 million to $6.3 million, ensuring the Congress would have the resources needed for their common cause.
The Conservatives had gained strong backing from one of Canada’s main Aboriginal groups, which meant the Harper government could take fresh approaches to Aboriginal issues “without appearing to be indifferent to native suffering,” noted Ira Basen of CBC News, “or supporting the assimilationist positions advanced by Tom Flanagan.” Even though CAP had been at the Kelowna conference, added Basen, “the Accord itself was a one-page document that no one had actually signed their names to,” a fact that allowed the new government to say it was not bound by the agreement, making it easier for “Patrick Brazeau to help Stephen Harper drive a stake into it.”
In February 2006, National Chief Dwight Dorey stepped down, and Brazeau’s swift ascent continued as he was promoted to the position of acting chief. At CAP’s annual convention that November, delegates keen for a new direction formalized the move, unanimously electing Patrick Brazeau their national chief.
From this country-wide platform, Chief Brazeau accelerated his radical campaign to dismantle the Indian reserve system across Canada, abolish the Indian Act, and reconstitute the traditional Aboriginal nations.
Chief Brazeau, speaking to a parliamentary committee about the Accord in November 2006, the same month his organization received significant increased funding from the Conservative government, said that while the process for the agreement seemed to be inclusive, the reality was that “Kelowna provided false hope for grassroots people — real people, in real need — while enriching organizations and the Aboriginal elite.” The chief echoed the Conservative critique that the accord did not demand enough accountability for the billions of dollars that would flow to First Nations, nor break down how much would stay on reserves or go to natives living off reserves.
“The reserve system as we know it is broken and needs to be replaced,” Brazeau had already told Ron Corbett in a 2007 Ottawa Citizen feature article. “Billions of dollars are poured every year into that system and what do we have to show for it? Reserves that are scandals, that’s what.”
Chief Brazeau’s bold campaign to advance his message of a new day for Canada’s First Peoples incorporated filmed messages, newspaper op-ed features, radio and television interviews, speeches, work at the United Nations, and addresses to such international conferences as a Chilean gathering on problems facing “urban indigenous peoples.” Everywhere in Canada he told audiences that “anybody serious” about solving the problems on Canada’s reserves “needed to get rid of a lot of chiefs.”
The Indian Act should be replaced by “more progressive legislation,” Brazeau argued, not only to reconstitute true Indian Nations, but also “to reflect the tenets of modern-day governance.” Such reforms were needed “to end
