Frontier Centre for Public Policy

“Indian Industry” cronyism

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Published

11 months ago

12 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

So, if the huge marginalized and dependent indigenous underclass does not benefit from all that money that changes hands inside the Indian Industry who is benefiting?

Former Justice Minister David Lametti’s departure from government and immediate acceptance into an expensive law firm that makes millions from indigenous issues is a recent example of what has long been called “The Indian Industry” at work.

It is unknown who first coined the term “The Indian Industry.” Many indigenous and non-indigenous writers have used the term over the decades. Indigenous author, Calvin Helin made liberal use of the term in “Dances With Dependency” as did Cree writer, Harold Johnson, in “Firewater- How Alcohol is Killing My People”

However, it was Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard’s important 2009 book “Disrobing The Aboriginal Industry” that first examined the Indian Industry in detail.

The authors chose to use the term “Aboriginal Industry”, perhaps for reasons of politeness, but they are describing the Indian Industry. They tell in detail how extensive it has become in Canada. Entire universities, law firms and virtually all Canadian institutions have become largely dependent on the money sloshing around within it. Almost all of that money comes in one way or another from taxpayers.

But they note the supreme irony that the Indian Industry is not improving the lot of the very people it is supposed to be helping – Canada’s marginalized and dependent indigenous underclass:

“Despite the billions of dollars devoted to aboriginal causes, Native people in Canada continue to suffer all the symptoms of a marginalized existence – high rates of substance abuse, violence, poverty. Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry argues that the policies proposed to address these problems – land claims and self government – are in fact contributing to their entrenchment.”

However, “Disrobing” was written in 2009, and since the Trudeau Liberals took over in 2015 the money flowing into the Indian Industry has increased dramatically in volume. In fact, that money flow, and the enormous indigenous contingent liabilities that now total $76,000,000,000 are growing so quickly – seven times higher since Trudeau took over – that the parliamentary budget officer has raised the alarm. Canada’s economic future is being compromised.

It isn’t only indigenous contingent liabilities – money owed for indigenous claims – that have grown so alarmingly, it is all indigenous spending. Reports from the Fraser Institute keep track of the shocking increases in total indigenous spending since the Trudeau Liberals took power. It is fair to say that the truly frightening federal government deficits in recent years occurred largely because of this extra indigenous spending.

And it isn’t only the largesse of the Trudeau government that has dumped money into the Indian Industry. Since 2015 it has also been the residential school bonanza. Clever lobbyists have been able to extract tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers by making highly exaggerated claims that residential schools were places of horror, where priests tortured, murdered and secretly buried thousands of indigenous children. These claims are nonsense. Although it is completely true that the residential school system was deeply flawed, and that many indigenous children were badly hurt by their residential school experience, it is also true that many received educations they would otherwise have been denied. But, more to the point, there is no evidence that even one child was murdered, or secretly buried during the entire history of residential schools. Despite that, baseless claims of clandestine deaths and secret burials have worked very well for everyone involved in the Indian Industry. Residential schools have become the Indian Industry’s single biggest money earner.

But, as Widdowson and Howard noted years ago, the Indian Industry has done nothing to solve what has always been called Canada’s “Indian problem” – namely that the great majority of Canada’s indigenous people remain far behind the mainstream on every social indicator. They are the least healthy, worst educated, most incarcerated, shortest living of any demographic by far.

They were that way before 2015, and they remain that way now. The Indian Industry, and the astounding amounts of money poured into it since 2015 haven’t changed those depressing numbers one bit.

A recent CBC investigative report on the dismal conditions at the St. Theresa Point reserve in Manitoba is a case in point. It is one of Canada’s hundreds of totally dependent reserves. Families there of as many as 23 people per house live in dilapidated housing, in a community that is almost totally unemployed and dependent. The increased money flow since 2015 appears to have only made dependency and all of its related problems – addiction, crime, domestic violence – worse.

So, if the huge marginalized and dependent indigenous underclass does not benefit from all that money that changes hands inside the Indian Industry who is benefiting?

It is people like David Lametti and Perry Bellegarde, and their law firms, universities, etc. – none of whom need special help.

And here is the second irony: The Indian Industry feeds on the human misery on display at communities like St. Theresa Point.

It needs that misery to continue to keep the money flowing.

This is not to suggest that any of the people and institutions that are part of it are deliberately perpetuating poverty, or doing anything illegal. They aren’t. They are simply picking up all of the free money our elected representatives and courts throw into the Indian Industry every day. They pick it up because we put it there.

It is probably not fair to single out David Lametti and Perry Bellegarde for their participation in this obscene waste of taxpayer money that is the Indian Industry. They are just two of many enterprising such people who have come before them, and many who will come after them. They probably convince themselves that they are doing something useful. They aren’t. They are part of an Indian Industry that fleeces taxpayers, while pretending to be solving the indigenous underclass problem, while making it worse. At a certain point, will Canadians grow tired of this game?

Because it has become abundantly clear that the federal indigenous policy that has developed over decades is a total failure. While privileged indigenous people who don’t need special attention are benefitting spectacularly, the indigenous people who do need the help are becoming more helpless and dependent all the time. The huge increase in the money dumped into uneconomic communities, like St. Theresa Point, is making things worse, not better. It is keeping young people, who should be moving to job centres, trapped in hopeless communities.

Renowned American economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell argues convincingly that simply giving money to chronically dependent people makes things worse, not better. I’m sure that Mr. Lametti and Mr. Bellegarde don’t want that to happen, but it is. And it is the Indian Industry that is making them wealthy that is doing it.

At some point the entire Indian Industry, with its racist Indian Act and brutal reserve system, will come to an end. Indigenous people living on Indian reserves now comprise only 1% of the Canadian population. Despite high birth rates on reserves, more and more reserve residents are moving away from them. By most measures only 25-40% of status Indians now live on reserves, and that percentage steadily falls.

Meanwhile, immigrants are steadily flowing into Canada. According to some estimates, Canada might have a population of 100 million by the end of the century. The percentage of the population living on reserves will become far less than 1%. Maintaining a completely separate system and bureaucracy for one tiny segment of the population will make less and less sense – especially to those millions of new Canadians, who don’t feel that they owe any special debt to indigenous people.

But while this natural process works itself out, the Indian Industry, now armed with the deeply divisive United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), is doing permanent damage to the country. We see that process now playing out in British Columbia, where their provincial version of UNDRIP- DRIPA – is wreaking havoc on their natural resources industry. It has become not only a virtual indigenous veto on any mining, pipeline or development project, it is now directly threatening basic landowner rights. In what is much like Chicago during the days of the Mafia, indigenous leaders all demand their “cut” before any project can proceed. This harmful process is spreading all across Canada, now that Canada has foolishly adopted UNDRIP.

And, in what is a perfect illustration of how the Indian Industry works, Perry Bellegard, as AFN Grand Chief, lobbied the government to bring in UNDRIP, David Lamerti, as Justice Minister, brought it in, and now Bellegrde and Lametti and their law firm benefit from it financially. Meanwhile, the taxpayer pays, and the marginalized and dependent indigenous majority remains marginalized and dependent.

Isn’t it time to end this farce? People who need education, and assistance to move to job centres should get that help. But pretending that making privileged people like David Lametti and Perry Bellegarde wealthier by dumping endless amounts of cash into Indian Industry cronyism is somehow good for indigenous people is nuts.

It isn’t. It’s bad for them, and it’s bad for Canada.

Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Related Topics:#BrianGiesbrecht #DavidLametti #FrontierCentreForPublicPolicy #IndianIndustryCronyism #PerryBellegarde

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COVID-19

Report Shows Politics Trumped Science on U.S. Vaccine Mandates

Published on January 8, 2025

Todayville

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

If you thought responsible science drove the bus on the pandemic response, think again. A December 2024 report by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee, Coronavirus Pandemic shows that political agendas made regulatory bodies rush vaccine approvals, mandates, and boosters, causing public distrust.

“After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward” praised the Trump administration’s efforts to speed up vaccine development. By contrast, the report said presidential candidate Joe Biden and vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris undermined public confidence.

“[W]hy do we think the public is gonna line up to be willing to take the injection?” Joe Biden asked on September 5, 2020. This quote appeared in a Politico article titled “Harris says she wouldn’t trust Trump on any vaccine released before [the] election.”

The House report noted, “These irresponsible statements eventually proved to be outright hypocrisy less than a year later when the Biden-Harris Administration began to boldly decry all individuals who decided to forgo COVID-19 vaccinations for personal, religious, or medical reasons.”

Millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered beginning in December 2020 under an Emergency Use Authorization. This mechanism allows unapproved medical products to be used in emergency situations under certain criteria, including that there are no alternatives. The only previous EUA was for the 2004 anthrax vaccine, which was only administered to a narrow group of people.

By the time vaccines rolled out, SARS-CoV-2 had already infected 91 million Americans. The original SARS virus some 15 years prior showed that people who recovered had lasting immunity. Later, a January 2021 study of 200 participants by the La Jolla Institute of Immunology found 95 per cent of people who had contracted SARS-CoV-2 (the virus behind COVID-19) had lasting immune responses. A February 16, 2023 article by Caroline Stein in The Lancet (updated March 11, 2023) showed that contracting COVID-19 provided an immune response that was as good or better than two COVID-19 shots.

Correspondence suggests that part of the motivation for full (and not just emergency) vaccine approval was to facilitate vaccine mandates. A July 21, 2021, email from Dr. Marion Gruber, then director of vaccine reviews for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), recalled that Dr. Janet Woodcock had stated that “absent a license, states cannot require mandatory vaccination.” Woodcock was the FDA’s Principal Deputy Commissioner at the time.

Sure enough, the FDA granted full vaccine approval on August 23, 2021, more than four months sooner than a normal priority process would take. Yet, five days prior, Biden made an announcement that put pressure on regulators.

On August 18, 2021, Biden announced that all Americans would have booster shots available starting the week of September 20, pending final evaluation from the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Some decision-makers objected. Dr. Marion Gruber and fellow FDA deputy director of vaccine research Dr. Philip Krause had concerns regarding the hasty timelines for approving Pfizer’s primary shots and boosters. On August 31, 2021, they announced their retirements.

According to a contemporary New York Times article, Krause and Gruber were upset about Biden’s booster announcement. The article said that “neither believed there was enough data to justify offering booster shots yet,” and that they “viewed the announcement, amplified by President Biden, as pressure on the F.D.A. to quickly authorize them.”

In The Lancet on September 13, 2021, Gruber, Krause, and 16 other scientists warned that mass boosting risked triggering myocarditis (heart inflammation) for little benefit.

“[W]idespread boosting should be undertaken only if there is clear evidence that it is appropriate,” the authors wrote. “Current evidence does not, therefore, appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high.”

Regardless, approval for the boosters arrived on schedule on September 24, 2021. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky granted this approval, but for a wider population than recommended by her advisory panel. This was only the second time in CDC history that a director had defied panel advice.

“[T]his process may have been tainted with political pressure,” the House report found.

Amidst all this, the vaccines were fully licensed. The FDA licensed the Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine on August 23, 2021. The very next day, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a memo announcing a vaccine mandate for the military. Four other federal mandates followed.

“[T]he public’s perception [is] that these vaccines were approved in a hurry to satisfy a political agenda,” the House report found.

The House report condemned the dubious process and basis for these mandates. It said the mandates “ignored natural immunity, … risk of adverse events from the vaccine, as well as the fact that the vaccines don’t prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

The mandates robbed people of their livelihoods, “hollowed out our healthcare and education workforces, reduced our military readiness and recruitment, caused vaccine hesitancy, reduced trust in public health, trampled individual freedoms, deepened political divisions, and interfered in the patient-physician relationship,” the report continued.

The same could be said of Canadian vaccine mandates, as shown by the National Citizen’s Inquiry hearings on COVID-19. Unfortunately, an official federal investigation and a resulting acknowledgement do not seem forthcoming. Politicized mandates led to profits for vaccine manufacturers but left “science” with a sullied reputation.

Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Energy

Why Canada Must Double Down on Energy Production

Published on January 8, 2025

Todayville

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Must we cancel fossil fuels to save the earth? No.

James Warren, adjunct professor of environmental sociology at the University of Regina said so in a recent paper for the Johnson Shoyama School of Public Policy, a joint effort by his university and the University of Saskatchewan. The title says it all: “Maximizing Canadian oil production and exports over the medium-term could help reduce CO2 emissions for the long-term.”

The professor admits on the face of it, his argument sounds like a “drink your way to sobriety solution.” However, he does make the defensible and factual case, pointing to Canadian oil reserves and a Scandinavian example.

Decades ago, Norway imitated the 1970’s Heritage Fund in Alberta that set aside a designated portion of the government’s petroleum revenues for an investment fund. Unlike Alberta, Norway stuck to that approach. Today, those investments are being used to develop clean energy and offer incentives to buy electric vehicles.

Norway’s two largest oil companies, Aker BP and Equinor ASA have committed $19 billion USD to develop fields in the North and Norwegian Seas. They argue that without this production, Norway would never be able to afford a green transition.

The same could be said for Canada. Warren laid out stats since 2010 that showed Canada’s oil exports contribute an average of 4.7% of the national GDP. Yet, this noteworthy amount is not nearly what it could be.

Had Trans Mountain, Northern Gateway, and Energy East pipelines been up and running at full capacity from 2015 to 2022, Warren estimates Canada would have seen $292 billion Canadian in additional export revenues. Onerous regulations, not diminished demand, are responsible for Canada’s squandered opportunities, Warren argues this must change.

So much more could be said. Southeast Asia still relies heavily on coal-fired power for its emerging industrialization, a source with twice the carbon emission intensity as natural gas. If lower global emissions are the goal, Canadian oil and natural gas exports offer less carbon-intensive options.

China’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are more than four times what they were in 1990, during which the U.S. has seen its emissions drop. By now, China is responsible for 30% of global emissions, and the U.S. just 11%. Nevertheless, China built 95% of the world’s new coal-fired power plants in 2023. It aims for carbon neutrality by 2060, not 2050, like the rest of the world.

As of 2023, Canada contributes 1.4 percent of global GHGs, the tenth most in the world and the 15th highest per capita. Given its development and resource-based economy, this should be viewed as an impressively low amount, all spread out over a geographically diverse area and cold climate.

This stat also reveals a glaring reality: if Canada was destroyed, and every animal and human died, all industry and vehicles stopped, and every furnace and fire ceased to burn, 98.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions would remain. So for whom, or to what end, should Canada kneecap its energy production and the industry it fuels?

The only ones served by a world of minimal production is a global aristocracy whose hegemony would no longer be threatened by the accumulated wealth and influence of a growing middle class. That aristocracy is the real beneficiary of prevailing climate change narratives on what is happening in our weather, why it is happening, and how best to handle it.

Remember, another warming period occurred 1000 years ago. The Medieval Warming Period took place between 750 and 1350 AD and was warmest from 950 to 1045, affecting Europe, North America, and the North Atlantic. By some estimates, average summer temperatures in England and Central Europe were 0.7-1.4 degrees higher than now.

Was that warming due to SUVs or other man-made activity? No. Did that world collapse in a series of floods, fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes? No, not in Europe at least. Crop yields grew, new cities emerged, alpine tree lines rose, and the European population more than doubled.

If the world warms again, Canada could be a big winner. In May of 2018, Nature.com published a study by Chinese and Canadian academics entitled, Northward shift of the agricultural climate zone under 21st-Century global climate change. If the band of land useful for crops shifts north, Canada would get an additional 3.1 million square kilometers of farmland by 2099.

Other computer models suggest warming temperatures would cause damaging weather. Their accuracy is debatable, but even if we concede their claims, it does not follow that energy production should drop. We would need more resilient housing to handle the storms and we cannot afford them without a robust economy powered by robust energy production. Solar, wind, and geothermal only go so far.

Whether temperatures are warming or not, Canada should continue tapping into the resources she is blessed with. Wealth is a helpful shelter in the storms of life and is no different for the storms of the planet. Canada is sitting on abundant energy and should not let dubious arguments hold back their development.

Lee Harding is Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.