New Media

Imagine you’re the slumlord owner of a rent-controlled bedbug-infested hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. You’ve pocketed big bucks over the years from the government that was supposed to pay for essential renovations. Your welfare-dependent tenants usually don’t complain too loudly about the mold or the rats or the lack of working toilets, for fear of being tossed out on the street.

But this time, they couldn’t help themselves, when a wall fell down, exposing several families to the elements and the shocked stares of onlookers from Hastings Street. They spilled the beans. Reporters from all over the country started talking about the deplorable crisis. It’s downright embarrassing.

An independent auditor comes knocking to go over your financials. He wants to find out what you’ve done with the millions of dollars that you were supposed to use to fix the leaky plumbing and the crumbling brickwork and rotten wood and broken windows. You tell him to take a hike. When he objects, you physically throw him out.

Then you get an epiphany. Oh, this is brilliant. You file a grievance with the United Nations over your ill treatment.

How do you think this story ends? With you keeping your hotel? With the United Nations giving you a badge of honor? With your long-suffering tenants patting you on the back for your courageous stand? With you not going to jail?

No.

No, no, no, no.

The crisis of Attawapiskat has thankfully helped put the entire system of First Nations reserves under more scrutiny. Band leaders on many (most?) reserves operate with impunity and an explicit rejection of democracy. The nepotism, corruption and wastefulness not merely of money but of human beings is something that people in the rest of the country would never stand for.

I’ve been ambivalent about this problem over the years because I don’t live next to it. I see the conditions on reserves in the news from time to time. The places do look awful. But that’s not the fault of the government shoveling cash into these places. No amount of cash can paper over this perpetual horror show. Not with band leaders demanding 280 new houses at $250,000 a pop, according to the NDP — houses in the middle of nowhere that are just going to fall apart again after a few years because under the rules on reserves, no one actually owns the property.

Think about that figure again: $250,000 per house. That’s just to build a house, since the land has no value. This is a house that will stand in an isolated community with no jobs, no schools, no hospital, no reason to live there at all. Why does it cost that much to build a house there? Because that’s what the band council says it costs… for houses that are going to end up as firewood.

This problem needs to be solved yesterday.

The solution? Simple. Stop the flow of money. There are some examples of well-run, prosperous reserves that are closer in development to Whistler than Attawapiskat. They will survive, maybe even thrive. But those reserves like Attawapiskat that cannot survive without massive infusions of funds (or fail even with such generous support) need to be dismantled. Let the people living on those reserves migrate to places with education, jobs and a hope for a future.

No more money. No more reserves.

Vancouver’s UBC Museum of Anthropology got robbed this week (Bloomberg.com). Presumably, the jerks who stole Bill Reid’s gold artwork at least know enough not to melt the stuff down, as the gold will lose probably 90 per cent of its value if it’s made into a lump of cold bullion. To the rich, selfish, obsessed collector who ruined the party for everyone by hiring goons to steal the work of one of Canada’s greatest artists: get bent.

In tribute to the people who work at the museum and the spirit of Bill Reid, I’ve posted the latest Currents video of my own tour of the UBC Museum of Anthropology. No voice-over this time, but please enjoy the scenery.

The latest findings from the Statistics Canada census show that the majority of visible minorities live in — surprise, surprise — Toronto and Vancouver (Canwest News). Not surprisingly, our new immigrants are avoiding the rustic charms of farming life in Saskatchewan and opting for the thrills and opportunities of the big city.

We’ve come a long way since the days of Lord Durham’s description of Canada as “two nations warring within the bosom of a single state” (presumably with the First Nations peoples living peacefully on the sidelines somewhere, Mr. Lambton?). How odd that certain Vancouver-based miscontents have taken it upon themselves in recent marches and demonstrations to blast the “racist Canadian state” for the terrible crime against humanity of having immigration rules and trying to police its territory (just like every society in human history, not excluding the Coast Salish people).

The real question that such groups need to answer is: if Canada is such a racist state, why does everyone keep moving here? Dealing with a related assertion (aired on the CBC last year) that in Canada and the USA in the post 9/11 world, certain ethnic groups feel like they are under siege, intellectual Hirsi Ali had this ironclad response: “I think that it’s highly exaggerated… If that were the case, we know of groups in history that were under siege and what they usually do is they would leave.”

They’re not leaving. The world is coming to Canada.

As we know from our own census records, Canada is still — happily — a nation of immigrants.

A proposal from Chemainus First Nations member George Harris to rename Georgia Strait the Salish Sea in recognition of the land’s original inhabitants is getting some serious consideration from the BC provincial politicians (UPI).

I’m not really against the idea, but what’s the point? Harris contends that the new name would help people recognize the indigenous heritage of the Coast Salish people (as opposed to reminding people that King George III happened to be the boss of Britain when Captain George Vancouver sailed through this neck of the woods). But even the most ignorant backwoods half-wit already knows that First Nations Peoples were the original inhabitants of Canada, and anyone of legal breathing age in BC knows about the Salish people.

Half of our Canadian place names already come from Aboriginal names – Toronto, Ottawa, Saskatchewan, Kelowna, Kitsilano… Heck, our country’s name, Canada, was adopted from a First Nations name.

Is it Harris’ idea that the renaming of Georgia Strait will be a one-off stunt, or is the idea to rename the rest of Canada as well? Shall we do away with Vancouver, Prince Edward Island, Montreal, Surrey, Gimli (quick, where is it?) and all of the other “foreign” place names? What about their heritage?

Honestly, renaming the straight or any other place wouldn’t be that big deal on its own, except to map-makers and local historians. But what exactly are we trying to achieve, here? Wiping out the historic stain of foreign cultural imperialism for all time? Having a little fun confusing the tourists? Inducing the local paper, the Georgia Straight, to change its name to the Salish Spectator?

George, feel free to comment.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…
If everyone in the world could choose to live in a faraway land of peace and harmony, without want of coin or freedom, the Scandinavian countries would be the repository of the world’s huddled masses.

As it is, Canada sometimes seems to be the second home to far too many geriatric killers, terrorists and corrupt tycoons. Fair or not, the case of Laibar Singh has brought our nation’s system of immigration under the microscope once again.

Immigration has been good to Canada (even if it wasn’t at all a good thing for its germ-decimated First Nations prior to Confederation). As ever, our citizens must try to sort out people whose own nations have failed to provide for them and those who just need a place to crash where they won’t have to pay for their sins.

Control of borders is hardly a modern concept. Indigenous peoples all over the world had rules about outsiders passing through their territory without permission – often a breach punishable by death.

The No One Is Illegal movement out of Vancouver therefore seems not well thought-out, not to mention probably counter-productive: if national governments have no legitimate control over their own borders or the resources found therein, then by default our North American territory becomes just one big playground for the people with the biggest guns and the most gold – that is, the people to our south whose elected leader has a distinctive Texas twang in his speech.

No one is illegal? Are you sure you won’t reconsider?