Crisis of management

Crisis of management
Attawapiskat reserve plunged into despair while $34 million is squandered

Each family on the Attawapiskat Indian reserve in Northern Ontario gets about $70,000 a year from the government, user fees and casino revenue. So why is their town a slum?

The NDP MP who represents Attawapiskat, Charlie Angus, released video showing that some people there live in Third World-type squalor. He blamed Stephen Harper. Angus has been received as a media darling, as if he was an investigative reporter blowing the lid off a secret scandal.

Except Angus has been the MP there for seven years. This is his town.

These slum-like conditions didn't pop up overnight. It's not a news scoop.

He's not a TV reporter blowing the whistle on politicians who don't care. What has Angus done to relieve the plight of his own constituents? Not enough to fix the problem after seven years.

But it wouldn't be fair to blame Angus alone. At least it wouldn't be any fairer than his attempt to blame Harper.

What about the people who are directly responsible for the Attawapiskat town? The Indian band themselves?

Attawapiskat isn't poor. In fact, it's extremely rich. It's got about 2,000 people in it. But it received $34 million from the government and other revenues last year. And the year before.

That works out to almost $70,000 per family of four. That's just the official revenues of the local band council. That's not taxable income. That's money that the local band council spends in town every single year.

That's all on top of regular income — what you and I would call "jobs." So every family gets $70,000 as a starting point, tax free, before they even work.

But the money doesn't go to individual families, it is administered by the chief and council. Translation: Politicians. And because we're all so afraid to ask tough questions of the chief and council because they're Indian, we let them get away with corruption and waste that we would never let a non-Indian politician get away with.

That's the soft bigotry of low expectations. It implies that Aboriginal leaders can't live up to Canadian standards of fiscal responsibility and fiduciary duty. It's guilty white liberal racism. It's racist, because it implies that corruption and waste are "normal" for Indians. And it's racist because it sentences the whole town of Attawapiskat to living under such a wasteful, foolish political leadership.

What are they doing with $34 million a year?

Some of it went to a school, but that was cleverly built on a diesel fuel spill, so they tore it down. Is Stephen Harper to blame for that? Is racist, white Canada to blame for that?

So more money came in. But the local band council built a gorgeous hockey arena instead. And they brought in a Zamboni. Those cost about $70,000 each.

There actually is a lot of wealth in Attawapiskat. You can't spread 34 million bucks a year around without it landing in some people's pockets.

Like all the very important people who work with the chief.

Chiefs, that is. The former chief, the acting chief and the deputy chief are all on the payroll. So are 19 councillors.

Could you imagine a town of 2,000 people with three mayors and nineteen aldermen?

Charlie Angus and the NDP have turned the town into poverty pornography to serve their own political careers.

They didn't blame the local Indian band. In fact, they blamed Harper for sending in an independent manager to take over from this wasteful, corrupt band.

Yes, corrupt. Spending money on a hockey rink instead of a school is a breach of fiduciary duty.

It's not racist to say so. In fact, it's racist to make excuses for such a band, because we'd never make excuses for a white town council that did the same things.

Stella Wheesk lives in a trailer with her husband and one-month-old baby. In other words, she's a victim here, not a perpetrator.

Who does she think has screwed things up?

"I'm not angry with the government. It's mostly the band office."

Clearly, according to Angus, she's just a vicious racist.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY