Taxpayers can’t afford expensive native programs

With our mining industry facing more hurdles and challenges today than ever before, there’s yet another ominous cloud looming. It’s that rising hue and cry for massive native land claims that could lead to a severe setback to exploration and new mine development in this country. .TFollowing the Oka fiasco in Quebec, there are growing fears within the industry that Ottawa might give the Indians everything but the kitchen sink. (Among their herculean demands, certain British Columbia native goups seek the right to terminate all logging, mining and other leases on Crown lands. That’s pretty serious stuff.) But even if they were given the entire north country — and with sovereignty — I can’t for the life of me see how that would significantly change their living standard, unless Ottawa pours in hundreds of millions of dollars to boot, an unlikely happening that would in turn raise another hue and cry from hard-pressed Canadian taxpayers.

Mineral exploration and development, I suggest, would all but come to a standstill. That they would be able to live happily ever after on mining royalties is verging on a pipe dream. How many new mines have been developed on Indian lands in the past decade? Operating conditions are just too onerous.

Mining today is now an international business. Money inevitably goes where it can make the best deal — our neighbors to the south perhaps, even Mexico or Chile.

And forestry too. How could the Indian people possibly finance, construct and operate pulp mills or saw mills to successfully compete with the big, efficient plants in the industrial south which today are finding it difficult to eke out a profit? Ontario is already being hard hit, having recently signed an interim agreement requiring Indian approval covering large areas for all work permits pertaining to mineral exploration, development, timbering and road building. And it includes fishing, I’m told, even if a prospector holds a provincial fishing licence. And all this on top of tough new environmental laws and closing down costs. Indeed under a new Environmental Protection Act that ministry can and does hold present land owners responsible for the past happenings of previous owners.

My father, who was for some years a federal Indian Agent, was always sympathetic to the Indian cause and knew their problems firsthand. But he long maintained that putting them on reservations as wards of the government was a mistake.

And what a mistake. Trying to cope with its ever rising native population, Ottawa has been pouring billions upon billions of dollars into its Indian Affairs department, building up a huge administrative staff. Yet there has been precious little advancement in their standard of living.

Some of these Indian reservations are more like concentration camps than livable settlements, with virtually no gainful jobs available. Rather the residents, who pay no taxes, live on government handouts including Canada’s generous baby bonus, old age pensions, free education, hospital care and other benefits.

By way of contrast, some 50,000 “boat people” who couldn’t speak a word of English came to our shores following the Vietnam war.

Yet within 10 years they became fully assimilated into the Canadian way of life and are doing quite well. But it called for changes in an ever-changing world.

The Indian lifestyle, too, may have to change, for the harsh Canadian northland can no longer support the hunting, trapping (fur trade now almost completely on the rocks) and fishing of upwards of 500,000 people, many of whom would starve if it were not for government handouts (read Canadian taxpayer) at every turn. Itself on the verge of bankruptcy, Ottawa is soon going to have to draw the line. If it doesn’t, the struggling taxpayers will.

Like my father before me, I have seen firsthand the harsh lifestyle being endured by many of our native Indians and too, hold every sympathy.

Some years ago, as an undergraduate on a geological survey party in an isolated area of northern Ontario, I was present at the annual treaty day ceremony at Big Sandy Lake to which Indians came by canoe from far and near as much as a week in advance.

Each received a meagre cash payment, as well as gifts of flour which was immediately baked into bannock on their open fires. On hand, too, was a dentist and nurse, proffering primitive services.

Two independent entrepreneurs flew in with a planeload of trinkets, candy and gaudy cloth which they were selling at highly inflated prices. They knew to the penny how much cash was being handed out by the government. Putting their heads together, they simply weren’t leaving until they had all that money.

It’s not quite like that today. Things have changed. But there will have to be more changes, for the days of give, give, give by the Great White Father in Ottawa are numbered.

Manna does not fall from heaven. It is squeezed out of the taxpayers.