Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Mia Rabson comments on the dangers of eliminating any public debate over Canada's future direction - as the Cons are trying to do:

This is one of the most important committees in Parliament. It looks at all government operations and examines spending estimates reports in detail.

To push all the discussions except witness testimony out of the public eye is to allow MPs a free ride and reduce the kind of scrutiny good government requires.

Wallace's motion was postponed on a technicality but it will resurface.

And it's not the only one of its kind.

Also on Tuesday, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett wanted a debate on her motion before the aboriginal affairs committee to hold two emergency meetings to discuss the housing crisis on reserves. The Conservatives on the committee forced the debate on the motion behind closed doors.

That same day, a motion to go in camera was also introduced at the official languages committee.

Apparently, open and accountable government means Canadians don't get to see or hear what their elected officials think about whether it is worthwhile to debate the housing crisis on reserves. There likely are legitimate arguments on both sides of the debate. We wouldn't know because the debate took place in camera.

The trend to have more and more committee business conducted out of earshot of anyone but members of the committee is something that should concern all Canadians.

When government doesn't operate out in the open, there is no accountability.

When there is no accountability, democracy is harder to achieve.

- Meanwhile, Chantal Hebert is more concerned that the media didn't pry more into Jack Layton's health during this spring's election campaign. But it's at least worth noting in hindsight that the media was indeed far too slow to give the NDP coverage as anything more than a curiosity.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Anderson is horrified to discover that the NDP's leadership candidates are actually running to lead the NDP rather than the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation.

- Finally, Stephen Hume pinpoints the source of the state of deprivation facing Attawapiskat and other remote First Nations:

Let's be clear about what reserves are. They are a government invention. Reserves were created by government to concentrate, for administrative purposes, peoples who roamed those landscapes and exploited their resources.

So perhaps the reasonable question is: Why is Attawapiskat not viable?

It's not viable because the community was separated from the economic resource base that would otherwise sustain it.

Could Prince George be viable if it were denied the vast forest hinterland that sustains it? Arguing that Prince George is viable because its economy is sustained by forest resources appropriated from around Fort Ware, while Fort Ware is by some magical thinking then declared economically unviable, begs some re-thinking.

The forest, mineral and energy resource base surrounding Attawapiskat was appropriated by the Crown, which receives the rents from its exploitation by corporations. A minuscule proportion of those rents is returned to the original occupants.
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Perhaps the question that Canadians should be asking of their federal government is why, after a century of responsibility for aboriginal communities that are entirely creatures of Ottawa, is the system such a disgraceful, chaotic, festering mess of bungling, red tape, bureaucratic incompetence and political prevarication? Why are we still blaming the victims of our policies?