When You've Lost The Star's Readers, It's Over

Heather Mallick got a little nutty regarding #IdleNoMore -- and took it upon herself to write a column that suggests that even the most well-meaning comments about the plight of Aboriginal Canadians are racist.

Once upon a time, I would have torn into Mallick's column full bore, and perhaps some day I will do so again. But right now it just so happens that I don't need to, as The Star's readers apparently took it upon themselves to do it for me.

Behold some of the comments regarding Mallick's rhetorically self-indulgent malarkey:

Note the agree-to-disagree ratios here. If Mallick simply expected to be backed up by her regular readers, they very clearly haven't been doing a very good job of it.

Now consider some of the comments affirming Mallick's aforementioned malarkey, replete with banal droning about "white privilege." Again, pay close attention to the agree-to-disagree ratios:

Accusing their critics of racism has been a favourite rhetorical shortcut for the #IdleNoMore movement and its supporters. But when even Toronto Star readers aren't buying it, it's very clearly time to pack it in.

It's over. It's just over.

Attawapiskat: It's Like Our Own Little North Korea Nestled Within Canada's Borders

I'm certain that when Chief Theresa Spence ordered any media arriving in Attawapiskat to ask questions about the explosive audit recently leaked to the media -- which Spence herself wishes people would dismiss as a distraction -- to leave or risk arrest, many of the aboriginal activists involved in Idle No More didn't so much as bat an eye. I imagine many of them are quite used to things like this. As Ezra Levant recently noted about the shoddy accounting in Attawapiskat's financials -- and I will now expand to the tyrannical bent of many First Nations leaders -- this is a way of life.

But it had me thinking about something that I had personally read and dismissed as malarkey -- which meant that many left-wing activists instantly fell in love with it. What I refer to is a recent blogpost written by one Tolbold Rollo -- I personally refer to him as Troll-bold -- and promptly re-posted in various sources. It was entitled "I Am Canadian (Because of Treaties With Indigenous Nations)."

It was laden with equal parts error, fantasy and logical fallacy. But what I'd actually like to draw attention specifically -- as this is very relevant to the current topic of discussion -- is a link within the blogpost. To a pamphlet Rollo wrote with Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred.

It's unlikely that this pamphlet would stand up to scrutiny not only by anyone not affiliated with Idle No More, but with many of those affiliated with it, provided that they even bothered to stop and think about it.

Particularly the idea that the Parliament of Canada should pass legislation that would allow First Nations to govern themselves according to their own traditions. The problem for many Idle No More activists is that they have expressed a belief that the government of Canada cannot legislate any such rights for First Nations without being paternalist. But the problem for absolutely anyone else is that it could quite easily lead to what is happening in Attawapiskat to proliferate on reserves across Canada. Presumably at the tax-payers expense.

 Think about everything you've seen about Attawapiskat. The grinding poverty of most individuals. Compare that to the comparatively lavish salary of Chief Spence and her common-law husband Clayton Kennedy. Between the two of them their yearly household income tops $200,000. They are truly among the 1% of Canada's aboriginal community. Now, the expulsion of any outside media. Not all that different from North Korea.

Spence's actions have revealed for all to see what a great many Canadians must have suspected all along: that Chief Theresa Spence effectively runs Attawapiskat as her own personal fiefdom. From their actions of the past 48 hours, the band council looks an awful lot like a dictatorship, flexing its muscle to prevent residents from talking to outsiders and showing them how the band's money was really spent.

Now suppose that a great number of First Nations chiefs across Canada -- looking to Spence as their "inspiration" -- decide to follow suit. Suddenly, we have a handful of little North Korea-esque territories scattered throughout Canada, but hundreds of them. All it would really take is for any number of Chiefs to decide to themselves that this is consistent with aboriginal custom and tradition. Sadly, it may not take as much distortion of those customs and traditions for the power-hungry to draw this particular conclusion.

And that's what Attawapiskat has truly become. Call it Attawapiscam, call it Attawapisham, call it Attawapistan. Call it whatever you want. But don't mistake if for anything but what it is: the creeping encroachment of not just tyranny, but tyranny that imagines itself sovereign, into Canada.

And Henceforth, It Was Known as #Attawapiscam

Paul Martin is inspired by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence.

Really. He even says so.

“I just told her that … she’d become really an inspiration for all Canadians and that we were obviously concerned about her health and that she’s got to take care of herself,” Martin announced.

But if you didn't know better -- or see the results of the audit released today -- you'd almost think that perhaps Spence hadn't been inspired by the government in which he served as Finance Minister, and eventually took over as Prime Minister. After all, it seems that Spence's Band Council and the government of which Martin was a part have so much in common.

After all, remember the Sponsorship Scandal? Adscam? Questionable spending of federal taxpayer dollars? No indication the work was actually done?

Yeah. Theresa Spence and Paul Martin are looking an awful lot alike right about now. Now, this shouldn't be confused with suggesting that Martin himself was directly responsible for Adscam. The results of the Gomery Inquiry pretty clearly indicated that Martin himself wasn't. Keep in mind that the results of the Deliotte audit don't yet point a direct finger of blame at anyone in particular.

But there's absolutely no question that when the shit went down, both Martin and Spence were either holding the keys of power, or (in Martin's case) at least holding the purse strings.

Keep in mind that the Attawapiskat audit doesn't reveal malfeasance per se. No one will know for certain until the forensic audit that Attawapiskat co-manager Clayton Kennedy ("coincidentally" Spence's honey bunny) called for. (Of course, it's remarkably easy for Kennedy.to say the funds can be tracked via the vendors and contractors when there are so few contracts, receipts, and documents of any kind. But I digress.)

Better yet, the government could just go ahead and call an inquiry into Attawapiskat. Which, if you ask me, is something that pretty much has to happen no matter what. After all, there are answers to be found and, one way or the other, Canada desperately needs them.

Now to say that there may be no malfeasance is not to say that there may be no scandal. There's no question there is a scandal of one sort or another. Which is why Canadians should go ahead and take their "inspiration" from none other than Paul Martin himself, and brand this scandal Attawapiscam. Even though it's a little bit on the longside, it actually makes a pretty decent hashtag.

Somewhere Outside Ottawa, Theresa Spence Has Gotten Very Nervous...

As Idle No More has grown, fed by left-wing activists desperate for attention and a consensus media desperate for a story, one would forgive First Nations' Chiefs if they began to convince themselves that it was all about them.

After all, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence's "hunger strike" (which isn't really a hunger strike at all, as she's managed to maintain a... let's say "healthy"... weight by eating fish broth) has garnered a significant deal of attention. At first demanding a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor General David Johnston, she received visits from celebrity guests like Justin Trudeau and former Prime Minister Joe Clark while refusing to meet with the Minister of Indian Affairs, or even Senator Patrick Brazeau (who himself is formerly Chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples). Now apparently Spence will settle for a meeting between Harper and other First Nations chiefs.

But as it turns out, maybe Idle No More wasn't that into Spence after all. After all, they recently began scrambling to distance themselves from Spence and other First Nations Chiefs.

It's not hard to see why. As it turns out, the Chiefs are the weak link of Idle No More, and everyone within that burgeoning "movement" -- in which First Nations activists have taken to being idle no longer by hanging out at shopping malls -- knows it. To examine the history of aboriginal self-governance on many reserves across Canada is to explore a seedy history of corruption, where Chiefs were able to rule with an iron fist and ruthlessly punish anyone who dared speak out against them.

If one is to take Idle No More on the word at some of their objections to Bill C-45, one would almost suspect that they want things to remain pretty much this way. But I digress.

“The Chiefs have called for action and anyone who chooses can join with them, however this is not part of the Idle No More movement as the vision of this grassroots movement does not coincide with the visions of the Leadership,”declared a statement on the Idle No More website.

In other words, Idle No More isn't going to take its directions from the Chiefs -- which is especially curious considering that Idle No More has stood up in defense of the Chiefs' interests far more than they're standing up for the interests of anyone else, or even themselves.

It seems Theresa Spence doesn't like that. The non-hunger-striking Chief urged "solidarity."

"We need to continue to encourage and stand in solidarity as Indigenous Nations," Spence announced. "We are at a historical moment in time, and I ask that grassroots, chiefs and all community members come together in one voice."

Certainly she'd prefer that this "one voice" be in fact her voice. But this is almost enough to make someone think that one of the reporters at the attention-hungry (not hungry-hungry) Chief's teepee turned to her and asked: "just why do we care about you at this point, again?"

Certainly, Spence must be hoping that Concordia University professor Daniel Salee is wrong when he says that Idle No More is now rejecting their traditional leadership, who have accepted so much money on behalf of First Nations and spent so much of it, accruing so much benefit for themselves, while managing to accomplish so very little for their own people. After all, if Salee is right, Spence will be among the first Chiefs that will be promptly disposed of (politically speaking, of course).

Let's Look Behind the Veil of IdleNoMore

I'm honestly trying like hell to not blog about Twitter on Bad Company anymore. That's what High Noon is for. But the impetus to write this particular post came over approximately two days of battling it out with "Idle No More" fanatics on Twitter.

As it turns out, the three individuals I spent the last couple of days trouncing, all three were essentially lifelong professional students. So at least as it pertained to these three individuals, apparently "idle no more" means that they're really still idle and just pretending not to be.

Moving along.

Idle No More enthusiasts made a pretty big deal when the Chiefs of Ontario Political Confederacy announced that it would not recognize or enforce Bill C-45. "Good for them!" all the fanatics declared. "They're standing up for their rights!"

What rights were they standing up for? Well, when you examine their press release in further detail, you discover that the Chiefs are standing up for their rights to deny rights to their people. They specifically refer to Bill S-2. the Family Homes on Reserve and Matrimonial Rights act, which is part of Bill C-45.

Just what is the Family Homes on Reserve and Matrimonial Rights act? I'm so glad that you asked. It's essentially a bill that will establish the rights of aboriginal women in the case

This was something that was brought up, in all places, at Rabble.ca by, of all people, consummate aboriginal 1%er Pam Palmateer. So you just know hilarity is about to abound. I'll give you the Colesnotes version of it: she insists that Bill S-2 is bad. She also repeats the claim that First Nations were never consulted about the bill.

As it turns out, this is patently false.

Apparently Pam Palmateer never bothered to consult a primer written on the bill by the Canadian Bar Association. It was written two years ago when this bill was known as Bill S-4. But as it turns out, the recommendations embodied in the bill were actually made by a committee that included the Assembly of First Nations. To whit:

"The federal government, in collaboration with the Native Women’s Association Canada (NWAC) and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), commissioned a series of consultations, resulting in a 2007 report by Wendy Grant-John. That report concluded that the simple application of provincial and territorial MRP law to reserves would be insufficient to deal with current deficiencies, and instead recommended a concurrent jurisdiction model like that proposed by Bill S-4."

The CBA lamely notes a lack of "consensus" among First Nations about specific remedies, but also notes the urgency for action:

"The issue of [Matrimonial Real Property] on reserve has been the subject of Parliamentary scrutiny in recent years, as noted in the Legislative Summary to the Bill. The main concern is a 'jurisdictional gap' in the Constitution Act, 1867. Property and civil rights fall under provincial power by virtue of section 91(13), and under territorial jurisdiction as delegated by the federal government, giving provinces and territories jurisdiction over the division of matrimonial real and personal property. At the same time, real property on reserve is exempted from the application of provincial and territorial law under section 91(24), which provides for federal jurisdiction over 'Indians and Lands Reserved for Indians'.

The Indian Act does not address MRP issues on reserve. While the First Nations Land Management Act provides a mechanism to address MRP issues, it is a statutory regime to which First Nations voluntarily chose to subscribe. Its provisions are not mandatory for First Nations in Canada."

So in other words, First Nations bands can essentially make up their MRP rules as they go along. And apparently Pam Palmateer is entirely comfortable with a situation in which a non-status individual living on reserve in a marriage or common-law relationship promptly becomes a "trespasser" on reserve should that marriage or relationship break up, leaving the non-status individual (not necessarily a non-aboriginal, BTW) with right to nothing.

It leaves non-status women in violently abusive relationships with remarkably few options. Domestic violence is a scourge anywhere it takes place, and it takes place on reserve with greater frequency than it takes place anywhere else in Canada. Yet non-status women accepted onto reserve as part of such a relationship are very much second-class citizens on reserve -- let alone within Canada -- and based on what she has to say it doesn't seem particularly uncharitable to conclude that Pam Palmateer intends for it to remain that way.

This is just one group of people Bill C-2 extends protections to. It also extends legal protections to individuals of status as well. So why, specifically, would the COPC refuse to acknowledge or enforce it? Because if you liberate their second-class citizens, if you take away their right to make up the rules as they go along, you're taking an awful lot of power away from them.

Which is what Idle No More is really about. It's not about standing up for the rights of First Nations -- unless the "right" they're standing up for is the right to actually have no rights. No. It's really about maintaining the power of aboriginal 1%ers over the aboriginal 99%ers. And don't be shocked if it's ever discovered that any number of chiefs have coerced some of the protesters into participating by leveraging whatever social assistance they receive against them. This is something that happens on-reserve quite frequently -- on some reserves with far greater frequency than on others.

Karma in Quebec

Let me start off by agreeing with Chris Selley: schadenfreude is an unworthy emotion.

But if there is anything to be said about the $124 million cut being imposed by Quebec's Parti Quebecois government on the province's colleges and universities, it's this: this is karma for the Quebec student movement that empowered the PQ. In virtually every way imaginable.

And in every way imaginable, they did it to themselves.

Should anyone be surprised that Premier Pauline Marois' first impulse after having achieved power through the Quebec students' movement was to turn around and screw them over? Absolutely not. They set themselves up for it. They did it to themselves. As Thom Yorke would add, and that's why it really hurts.

Simply put, these Quebec students are really the victims of the same intellectual and ideological morass that has afflicted the Parti Quebecois itself: a lack of new ideas. Quebec separatism has been devoid of new ideas for decades now, and it's very telling that as soon as Marois and her merry band of incompetents were elected, the first thing they did was revert to the PQ's old form. Pushing draconian and discriminatory language laws. Trying to pull the Canadian Flag off of the National Assembly. Playing economic chicken with the rest of the country.

Same old, same old.

In the same sense, what the Quebec students movement demanded -- free or nearly-free tuition -- is itself far from a new idea. It's been considered and rejected by nearly every government on the planet with any sense. Most of those governments that made the mistake of trying it found it to be prohibitively expensive and have thusly since abandoned it.

Free post-secondary tuition may be a novel idea, but it's also a failed idea.

That didn't stop Quebec students -- who already enjoy the cheapest university tuition in Canada -- from toppling the Jean Charest government over modest tuition increases that still would have left Quebec with the cheapest tuition in the entire country. And while Marois did temporarily make good on a promise to cancel the proposed tuition increases -- at a speculated cost of $20 million -- she has instead turned around and imposed a funding cut of six times that amount.

Perhaps it's a cynical way to treat the people who basically got her elected. But this is the natural destination of a political movement that has produced no new ideas in at least thirty years.

Of course, they frequently manage to convince themselves that they have produced new ideas. If you peruse the #CdnPoli Twitterverse, you hear them trumpeting them all the time. Yet when you actually pay attention to these "new ideas," you find that they aren't new ideas at all. Rather, they're simply new ways to get attention.

Which is nothing more than what the inane "Casseroles" movement was: simply a desperate bid for attention, in the loudest and most obnoxious way possible. Far from the visionaries of a utopian future, the #ggi movement had reduced themselves to a pre-school-aged Bart Simpson, tearing around banging pots and pans while the adults in the room plaintively begged for some peace and quiet. And Marois was not content to be one of the adults in the room -- she was right there along with the other children, banging pots and pans while seemingly fully aware of the sheer absurdity of it.

That was perhaps the most fatal error the Quebec students movement ever made. For as much as they coveted attention for attention's sake, so do the most cynical of politicians. And virtually everything Pauline Marois has done since becoming the Premier of Quebec blares of cynicism to the nth degree. After having waited to gain power since 2003, the PQ had -- and continues to have -- no idea of what to do with it.

They, like the Quebec students' movement, are utterly bereft of new ideas, and accordingly doomed. They, like the Quebec students' movement, are now finding that getting all the attention they ever wanted was the worst thing that will have ever happened to them. They now form a minority government that is stunningly immobilized by the lack of a coherent program,

So for the Parti Quebecois, just as for the Quebec students movement, there is plenty of karma to go around in Quebec.

They did it to themselves.

Pop Quiz!

Pop quiz! Let's see who's been paying attention in Parliament this week.

This week, a vote was held on a private member's bill that would have advantaged a particular group perceived as being friendly to that member's party. Who was the bill going to benefit? Was it:

A.) A Conservative Party bill designed to dole out handouts to the oil and gas industry?

Or,

B.) An NDP bill designed to dole out handouts to artists?

If you guessed "B", award yourself a priceless no-prize.

Indeed, this week a vote was held on NDP MP Tyrone Beskin's Bill C-427, designed to institute "income averaging" for Canadian artists. See, in many years artists -- who basically pursue their hobbies as if it were a profession -- don't get to work an awful lot. Yet they -- *gasp!* -- still have to pay taxes when they do. I know. Shocking, right?

The bill was defeated.

Well, it turns out that Beskin has a plan to correct this grave injustice. It would allow them to average their income over a certain period of time -- spanning productive years in which they worked and years in which they weren't producing anything anyone had any interest in, and for whatever reason they didn't work in some other capacity.

Now, Canadian artists describe this as "fair." Fair in the sense that it gives them the freedom to pursue their hobby as if it were a career, and as a consequence actually pay a lower tax rate when their work might actually have some value. Compare this to working-class Canadians, who do not enjoy the same benefits.

Now apparently this has been tried before. And abandoned before. Mostly because Canada's tax codes were reformed to make income volatility less damaging.

But apparently Canadian artists want this back because... well, they want it. And apparently because while they love to harp about how the wealthy should pay more and more taxes, regardless of how much they already pay, apparently they don't like paying taxes either.

I know, right? Go figure.