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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

UNDRIP’s false promise of Indigenous Nationhood threatens individual Indigenous Canadians

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22 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Peter Best

All societies need to make use of force, both to preserve internal order and to protect themselves from external enemies. A liberal society does this by creating a powerful state, but then constraining that power under a rule of law. The state’s power is based on a social contract between autonomous individuals who agree to give up their rights to do as they please in return for the state’s protection. It is legitimated both by the common acceptance of the law, and, if it is a liberal democracy, through popular elections. Liberal rights are meaningless if they cannot be enforced by a state, which, by Max Weber’s famous definition, is a legitimate monopoly of force over a defined territory…Ultimate power, in other words, continues to be the province of national states, which means that control of this power at this level remains critical.

-Francis Fukuyama – Liberalism and its Discontents

Our Canadian elites, led by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, continue to advance the idea that Canada should be a race-based nation. This is reflected in the Trudeau government’s enactment of the racist United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) laws and policies. (The UNDRIP Action Plan.)

These laws and policies are partly based on the premise that Indigenous peoples in Canada still have distinct cultures that give them the right to exist as separate groups within the Canadian nation, living parallel to the rest of Canadians, and only optionally being subject to the laws of Canada.

Under the heading “Cultural, religious and linguistic rights,” the UNDRIP Action Plan sets out the Trudeau government’s goal of creating a country where:

Indigenous peoples fully enjoy and exercise their distinct rights to maintain, control, develop, protect, and transmit their cultural heritage, indigenous knowledge, languages, food systems, sciences, and technologies, without discrimination…. Indigenous peoples are thriving, including through connection to culture and community, the use of their languages and the expression of their spiritual heritage.

Also, the UNDRIP Action Plan prescribes that these “distinct rights” are to be exercised and enhanced by treating “Indigenous peoples” as independent, self governing, “nations,” representing over 630 race-based nations existing within the boundaries of Canada.

The premise underlying the UNDRIP Action Plan is that authentic, pre-contact Indigenous cultures still exist, and that they have the right to be preserved at the expense of Canadian taxpayers.  In other words, these nations will be dependent on other Canadians.

The last vestiges of authentic, distinct, pre-contact Indigenous cultures disappeared about 150 years ago. As Assembly of First Nations co-founder William Wuttunee wrote in 1971 in his book Ruffled Feathers: “Real Indian culture is just about dead on the reserves.” Now, over 50 years later, native traditional cultures have been replaced by re-imagined cultures, even if a declining few Indigenous people still speak their traditional languages.

There can be no going back to any part of Indigenous pre-contact cultures, nor would Indigenous peoples want to. In this respect, Iroquois writer Sachem Ely S. Parker says:

Do you know or can you believe that sometimes the idea obtrudes…whether it has been well that I have sought civilization with its bothersome concomitants and whether it would not be better even now…to return to the darkness and most sacred wilds (if any such can be found) of our country and there to vegetate and expire silently, happily and forgotten as do the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. The thought is a happy one but perhaps impracticable.

When trade with Europeans began in the early 1600’s, Indigenous peoples began the long, irreversible process of appropriating European goods and technologies, modern economic practices, Christianity, and Western norms and values, with the consequence that, by the late 19th century, their paleolithic, pre-contact cultures had become almost extinct.

All that remained was what William Wuttunee described as “touristy” and “museum pieces of buckskin and feathers,” the ceremonial remnants justly celebrated on special occasions but, less innocently, now used by their current leaders as symbolism in their endless political campaigns for more money and power.

Indigenous peoples cannot turn back from the modern, high-tech, globalist culture that is systematically enveloping all Canadians. In this respect, Yuval Noah Harari wrote in Sapiens:

Today almost all humans share the same geopolitical system (the entire planet is divided into internationally recognized states); the same economic system (capitalist market forces shape even the remotest corners of the globe); the same legal system (human rights and international law are valid everywhere, at least theoretically); and the same scientific system (experts in Iran, Israel, Australia, and Argentina have exactly the same views about the structure of atoms or the treatment of tuberculosis…. We still talk a lot about “authentic” cultures, but if by “authentic” we mean something that developed independently, and that consists of ancient local traditions free of external influences, then there are no authentic cultures left on earth. Over the last few centuries, all cultures were changed almost beyond recognition by a flood of global influences.

But ironically, the rise of globalism has counterintuitively led to the increase of parochial, tribalist feelings.

Historian Robert Kaplan, in his latest book The Loom of Time – Between Empire and Anarchy, From the Mediterranean to China, argues that the cultural shock caused by modernism and globalism–by their annihilation of traditional tribal life–has resulted in an emotionally compensating reaction on the part of those affected to “reinvent their primordial selves in more abstract and extreme forms in order to cope with impersonal settings,” and, in addition, to achieve worldly gains.

Kaplan explains that the anonymity and the loss of pride and identity on the part of tribal societies resulting from urbanization and other globalist influences led to the psychological need for a compensating, “emotional grounding,” which now manifests itself in intense, albeit fictional, assertions of political, ethnic, religious, and racial exceptionalism, and opportunistic demands for favored treatment by the state.

Ironically, the more modern, urban, and globally integrated the former pre-contact tribe becomes, the greater its “primordial” racial sentiments become and the greater and more inherently baseless are its ethnic or race-based claims to be favored by the state.

Pre-contact tribal cultures were relatively static and fatalistic. There was little belief in “progress,” human rights, money, wealth, or job creation. There was no belief that people had a right to material things like housing, education, medical care, constitutions, courts, judges, welfare, policing, or clean water. These are all modern Western ideas and practices that were inconceivable to pre-contact tribal cultures.

Kaplan writes:

Cultural consciousness is enhanced rather than submerged by modernization, because of the ability of modern states and societies to offer jobs, status, and other spoils for which individuals of different ethnic, religious and sectarian identities compete. Through education, modernization also makes people more aware of their collective pasts and their differences with other peoples. Such phenomena have been the forerunners to the identity politics of the post-modern era.

This is what has happened to Canadian Indigenous tribes.

Modernity, urbanization, and globalism, as William Wuttunee confirmed, have destroyed their pre-contact cultures and, as an ironic consequence, have led to abstract and entirely fantasy-based claims of present Indigenous cultural authenticity and “difference.” The more obvious it is that authentic pre-contact Indigenous cultures have vanished, the more their current Indigenous leaders opportunistically claim that they are alive and thriving.

The unprecedented, radical Indigenous political and legal demands now being routinely made by Indigenous groups are, in ironic fact, completely rooted in Western political ideas and practices.

Their demands for quasi- separatist “nation-to-nation” status, for veto powers over federal and provincial laws possibly affecting their “aboriginal rights and territories,” for reparations, for ownership stakes in resource projects and for co-management with the Crown of public lands and natural resources, are all demands that would be inconceivable to pre-contact Indigenous tribal cultures.

The Western philosophical nature of these demands is proof positive of the extinguishment of pre-contact Indigenous cultures.

Canadian Indigenous groups cannot form viable nation-states, and the UNDRIP Action Plan’s attempts to do this impossible task threatens the civic well being of individual Indigenous Canadians.

In referring to the endless squabbling between the various ethnic tribes that make up the many failed states of the Middle East and Africa, Kaplan reminds us that legitimate nation-states are more than artificial communities created by politics, as were the First Nations reserves in Canada. Rather, they are natural, “practical communities…entities of geographic and historical association.”

Kaplan also says that legitimate nation-states have hierarchical, coherent governing structures, and rules-based laws developed organically over time. They are supported by “organized bureaucratic systems interacting with each other on an impersonal, secular basis.”

None of these basic requirements of nationhood are present to any sufficient degree on First Nations reserves, which, as organized groups, are mostly strangers to the civic values, practices, and traditions of modern liberal democracies.

First Nations reserves, like the “institutionally flimsy” Arab and African tribal groups referred to by Kaplan, “have imported the fruits of science without as societies ever producing them themselves… They have experienced the West only as “things.” … They have possessed the techniques of Europe without intuiting the centuries-long cultural processes that had made the West what it was…”.

In other words, Indigenous tribal groups are “modern” only in the culturally appropriated material sense, and because of the Indian Act and the reserve system, they tend to be illiberal in their political culture and governing practices. The proposed Indigenous nation-states that are envisioned by the UNDRIP Action Plan will be, in Kaplan’s words, just as institutionally-flimsy as other failed states are.

This reality is at the core of the threat posed by the UNDRIP Action Plan to the civic well-being of individual Indigenous Canadians. In this regard Kaplan reminds us that: “…where institutions are weak then personalities…who milk and misgovern…perforce dominate.”

On Canadian Indigenous reserves, governance is prone to family-based self-dealing. (Kaplan’s phrase is “republics of cousins.”) There is no reason to believe that such governments will be better under the UNDRIP Action Plan. In fact, governance will probably get worse because, as Kaplan shows, tribalism and illiberalism are worsened when politically unprepared people achieve self-rule.

Indigenous lawyer and businessman, Calvin Helin, in his seminal book Dances With Dependency: Out of Poverty Through Self- Reliance, compares illiberal First Nations reserve governance to “banana republics.” He referred to Chiefs and Band Councils as “colonizers of their own disempowered people.”

 Indigenous scholar Rob Louis adds:

What realistic chance do band members have against chief and council who control their money and resources? For many band members in Canada, the battle is not just with the Crown, it is also with their own leadership… Perhaps reconciliation within Indigenous communities needs to take place before reconciliation can happen with Canada.

Until recently, vulnerable, and powerless Indigenous Canadians had the federal and provincial governments, the courts, and human rights commissions to protect them. But that is no longer true. All these state institutions have shamefully abandoned their role of protectors of weak and vulnerable Indigenous Canadians.

The Supreme Court of Canada is just as much of a threat to the civic well-being of Indigenous Canadians as is the UNDRIP Action Plan.

In its Vuntut Gwitchin decision, purportedly to preserve Indigenous “difference,” the Court ruled that in the event of an irreconcilable conflict, a First Nations Band’s “collective rights,” resting on its right to protect “Indigenous difference,” will now prevail over an individual Indigenous Canadian’s rights as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As such, the Charter can now be effectively ignored by Band Councils, depriving countless Indigenous Canadians of Charter protection on their home reserves and territories.

The Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation (VGFN) is described by the Supreme Court as a “self-governing nation” in the Yukon comprising of about 560 “citizens,” only about 260 of whom live in the “main community” of Old Crow, which is the so-called “seat of government.” The other 300 odd “citizens” live mostly in Whitehorse, 800 kilometres south. There are no roads into Old Crow. Students cannot graduate from high school in that community, and there no adequate medical facilities in Old Crow.

Cindy Dickson, a VGFN citizen living in Whitehorse, claimed that a VGFN law that said that a “citizen” had to live in Old Crow to qualify to run for VGFN Council violated her Canadian Charter rights not to be discriminated against based on her residency.

She lost her case.

The Supreme Court asserted the existence of “Indigenous legal orders” that prevailed over Canadian law. There was an anti-discrimination provision in the 1993 VGFN Constitution. The Court told her to rely on that and “pursue a similar claim under the VGFN Constitution.”

The problem with this is that there is no VGFN court and no VGFN judge or lawyers. In fact, there is no VGFN institutional justice system whatsoever through which Cindy Dickson could pursue her claim. How could there be? VGFN, like most First Nations, is a mere tribal village, with a population so tiny that the creation of any such state institutions is impossible.

The Supreme Court knew this, and, to its discredit, preferred giving Ms. Dickson empty words over telling her the harsh truth that while she may have rights in the abstract, in VGFN because of its lack of institutions, she could not pursue those rights. A right without institutional support is, in fact, no right at all.

Another harsh truth that the Court avoided telling Ms. Dickson is that now, VGFN, like all Canadian First Nations, have been shamefully declared Charter-free zones by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Vuntut Gwitchin decision, along with the UNDRIP Action Plan, means that victims of corrupt or discriminatory First Nations reserve leadership practices will now have no one to turn to for protection and relief.

In fact, the Vuntut Gwitchin decision illustrates the absurdity of the Indigenous nation-state pretensions of the Canadian UNDRIP Action Plan.

The joint efforts of the Supreme Court and the federal government’s UNDRIP Action Plan have made individual Indigenous Canadians, in terms of having the guaranteed protection of the rule of law, effectively unprotected on their new, UNDRIP “nation-state” reserves.

Robert Kaplan writes a great deal about the multi-ethnic, multi-racial empires, the most generic form of governance in world history, where the strong hand of the emperor kept order and protected vulnerable minorities from the depredations of majorities. He cites the example of the Ottoman empire, where, with its breakup, the strong power of the sovereign in those territories was lost. Power was then transferred to tribalistic ethnic and religious groups that have little regard for the rights of minorities. This has resulted in over a century of anarchic tribal, ethnic and religious persecution and warfare in the Middle East.

Since Confederation, Canada has protected powerless and vulnerable Indigenous people from the mainly illiberal governance systems that are typical of First Nations reserves. Now, the Canadian state is abandoning this protective role. By doing so Canada is betraying the vast majority of powerless and vulnerable Indigenous Canadians, leaving them defenceless against the power and potential injustice of their tribal leaders.

What has happened echoes Frances Fukuyama’s warning that rights are meaningless unless they are created and can be enforced by a powerful state. The UNDRIP Action Plan and the Supreme Court’s rulings like Vuntut Gwitchin will not create viable and strong Indigenous nation-states. All they will do is weaken the Canadian state, causing harm to all Canadians and depriving the vast majority of vulnerable, powerless Indigenous Canadians of the protective rule of Canadian law.

Peter Best is a retired Sudbury lawyer. He is the author of There Is No Difference – An Argument for the Abolition of the Indian Reserve System and Special Race-based Laws and Entitlements for Canada’s Indians.

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Education

Our Kids Are Struggling To Read. Phonics Is The Easy Fix

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Michael Zwaagstra

One Manitoba school division is proving phonics works

If students don’t learn how to read in school, not much else that happens there is going to matter.

This might be a harsh way of putting it, but it’s the truth. Being unable to read makes it nearly impossible to function in society. Reading is foundational to everything, even mathematics.

That’s why Canadians across the country should be paying attention to what’s happening in Manitoba’s Evergreen School Division. Located in the Interlake region, including communities like Gimli, Arborg and Winnipeg Beach, Evergreen has completely overhauled its approach to reading instruction—and the early results are promising.

Instead of continuing with costly and ineffective methods like Reading Recovery and balanced literacy, Evergreen has adopted a structured literacy approach, putting phonics back at the centre of reading instruction.

Direct and explicit phonics instruction teaches students how to sound out the letters in words. Rather than guessing words from pictures or context, children are taught to decode the language itself. It’s simple, evidence-based, and long overdue.

In just one year, Evergreen schools saw measurable gains. A research firm evaluating the program found that five per cent more kindergarten to Grade 6 students were reading at grade level than the previous year. For a single year of change, that’s a significant improvement.

This should not be surprising. The science behind phonics instruction has been clear for decades. In the 1960s, Dr. Jeanne Chall, director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory, conducted extensive research into reading methods and concluded that systematic phonics instruction produces the strongest results.

Today, this evidence-based method is often referred to as the “science of reading” because the evidence overwhelmingly supports its effectiveness. While debates continue in many areas of education, this one is largely settled. Students need to be explicitly taught how to read using phonics—and the earlier, the better.

Yet Evergreen stands nearly alone. Manitoba’s Department of Education does not mandate phonics in its public schools. In fact, it largely avoids taking a stance on the issue at all. This silence is a disservice to students—and it’s a missed opportunity for genuine reform.

At the recent Manitoba School Boards Association convention, Evergreen trustees succeeded in passing an emergency motion calling on the association to lobby education faculties to ensure that new teachers are trained in systematic phonics instruction. It’s a critical first step—and one that should be replicated in every province.

It’s a travesty that the most effective reading method isn’t even taught in many teacher education programs. If new teachers aren’t trained in phonics, they’ll struggle to teach their students how to read—and the cycle of failure will continue.

Imagine what could happen if every province implemented structured literacy from the start of Grade 1. Students would become strong readers earlier, be better equipped for all other subjects, and experience greater success throughout school. Early literacy is a foundation for lifelong learning.

Evergreen School Division deserves credit for following the evidence and prioritizing real results over educational trends. But it shouldn’t be alone in this.

If provinces across Canada want to raise literacy rates and give every child a fair shot at academic success, they need to follow Evergreen’s lead—and they need to do it now.

All students deserve to learn how to read.

Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Economy

Support For National Pipelines And LNG Projects Gain Momentum, Even In Quebec

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Joseph Quesnel

Public opinion on pipelines has shifted. Will Ottawa seize the moment for energy security or let politics stall progress?

The ongoing threats posed by U.S. tariffs on the Canadian economy have caused many Canadians to reconsider the need for national oil pipelines and other major resource projects.

The United States is Canada’s most significant trading partner, and the two countries have enjoyed over a century of peaceful commerce and good relations. However, the onset of tariffs and increasingly hostile rhetoric has made Canadians realize they should not be taking these good relations for granted.

Traditional opposition to energy development has given way to a renewed focus on energy security and domestic self-reliance. Over the last decade, Canadian energy producers have sought to build pipelines to move oil from landlocked Alberta to tidewater, aiming to reduce reliance on U.S. markets and expand exports internationally. Canada’s dependence on the U.S. for energy exports has long affected the prices it can obtain.

One province where this shift is becoming evident is Quebec. Historically, Quebec politicians and environmental interests have vehemently opposed oil and gas development. With an abundance of hydroelectric power, imported oil and gas, and little fossil fuel production, the province has had fewer economic incentives to support the industry.

However, recent polling suggests attitudes are changing. A SOM-La Presse poll from late February found that about 60 per cent of Quebec residents support reviving the Energy East pipeline project, while 61 per cent favour restarting the GNL Quebec natural gas pipeline project, a proposed LNG facility near Saguenay that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. While support for these projects remains stronger in other parts of the country, this represents a substantial shift in Quebec.

Yet, despite this change, Quebec politicians at both the provincial and federal levels remain out of step with public opinion. The Montreal Economic Institute, a non-partisan think tank, has documented this disconnect for years. There are two key reasons for it: Quebec politicians tend to reflect the perspectives of a Montreal-based Laurentian elite rather than broader provincial sentiment, and entrenched interests such as Hydro-Québec benefit from limiting competition under the guise of environmental concerns.

Not only have Quebec politicians misrepresented public opinion, but they have also claimed to speak for the entire province on energy issues. Premier François Legault and Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet have argued that pipeline projects lack “social licence” from Quebecers.

However, the reality is that the federal government does not need any special license to build oil and gas infrastructure that crosses provincial borders. Under the Constitution, only the federal Parliament has jurisdiction over national pipeline and energy projects.

Despite this authority, no federal government has been willing to impose such a project on a province. Quebec’s history of resisting federal intervention makes this a politically delicate issue. There is also a broader electoral consideration: while it is possible to form a federal government without winning Quebec, its many seats make it a crucial battleground. In a bilingual country, a government that claims to speak for all Canadians benefits from having a presence in Quebec.

Ottawa could impose a national pipeline, but it doesn’t have to. New polling data from Quebec and across Canada suggest Canadians increasingly support projects that enhance energy security and reduce reliance on the United States. The federal government needs to stop speaking only to politicians—especially in Quebec—and take its case directly to the people.

With a federal election on the horizon, politicians of all parties should put national pipelines and natural gas projects on the ballot.

Joseph Quesnel is a senior research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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