http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/298893

Jan 30, 2008 04:14 PM
THE CANADIAN PRESS

The provincial and federal governments should implement made-in-Canada manufacturing policies and follow the lead of other countries that keep the bulk of their major transit spending at home, labour critics said today.

Ontario and British Columbia are both planning multibillion-dollar transit upgrades but the government funding could end up fuelling another country’s economy, said Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union.

Considering the struggles in Canada’s manufacturing sector and the tens of thousands of workers who have been laid off, it only makes sense the federal and provincial governments require at least half the money given to municipalities for transit stay in the country, Hargrove said.

“We’re trying to highlight the importance of getting the industrial spinoff benefits when you’re using taxpayers money,” Hargrove said in an interview.

“So we’re trying to convince the provinces that they have to use the leverage to say, `If you’re going to get the money, then you’re going to put the production in Canada.”‘

Similar policies are in place in countries such as the United States and Japan.

Canadian governments are essentially “suckers in the game” for not doing the same, said John Cartwright of the Toronto and York Region District Labour Council.

Cartwright and the CAW held a press conference at the Ontario legislature today to try to sway Premier Dalton McGuinty before a plan to spend $1.2 billion on 204 light-rail vehicles for Toronto is finalized.

The Toronto Transit Commission is only required to spend 25 per cent of the total domestically but there’s still time to change the rules to the benefit of the Canadian economy, said the CAW’s Bob Chernecki, who noted 65,000 manufacturing workers lost their job last year in Ontario.

“If you put those people back to work, imagine, if you can, what that does to our infrastructure, what it does to improve the tax base, and what it does by virtue of (having)that back into the economy,” Chernecki said.

Hargrove said Quebec is by far the most supportive province in terms of keeping government funding at home, followed by Ontario.

Most provinces do not have made-in Canada policies, and Hargrove said he’s particularly disappointed that British Columbia isn’t harnessing its huge infrastructure investments leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympics to create more jobs.

“Our people are lobbying continually in British Columbia but Premier Gordon Campbell so far has not been very responsive,” Hargrove said.

“But we’re going to just keep pushing. All we can do is just keep raising awareness and we think we have good public support for spending public money on jobs for Canadians.”

British Columbia Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon was unavailable for comment, but a spokesman said the province has no made-in-Canada policy.

Cartwright said Ontario has been dismissive of the idea of a broader made-in-Canada policy, but he wants the government to reconsider, since a second phase of the transit contract is expected to bring the project up to $3 billion.

In all, Ontario aims to spend $17.5 billion on its MoveOntario 2020 plan in the years ahead.

“We’re astounded, quite frankly, by the deafening silence that has come from the premier’s office … in the last year and a half in this crucial debate about the role of public funds in maximizing public good when jobs are at stake,” Cartwright said.

http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/299110

Jan 31, 2008 04:30 AM
James Travers
In the communications hierarchy of how governments woo voters, there’s spin and then there’s how Conservatives are twisting facts. Roiling controversies over Afghanistan detainees and the sacking of the nuclear watchdog measure how rubbery truth is here.

There are striking parallels in those seemingly unrelated events. Beginning with difficult decisions, each spirals into an alternate universe shaped by political imperatives and reconstituted reality.

A Martian touring Parliament would almost certainly conclude that Canadian forces in Kandahar made an operational choice not to hand over prisoners to their host government and that Linda Keen was fired for putting cancer patients at risk. But for the rest of us to believe either requires a leap of faith freed from the weight of evidence.

Public documents, including two transfer agreements, make a convincing case that the November decision to withhold detainees is a watershed change in a policy entrenched in a treaty, not merely a field option. Also apparent is that a change of that importance doesn’t happen in this risk-averse capital without advice and consent.

So what’s so politically worrying about a decision that reflects Canada’s international legal obligations and was known to Ottawa’s upper strata? Last fall, Conservatives preparing for an election didn’t want to revise their story that prisoner abuse wasn’t a problem. Months later and long after a change kept from Canadians was known to Germans, Stephen Harper’s government, in its haste to shift blame, muddled its media lines with the false explanation that the military acted alone.

The administration’s preferred Keen narrative is no less instructive, no less misleading. It may take a wrongful dismissal suit to decide if the now former president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was unduly rigid in exercising her onerous duties. But it’s reprehensible for ministers to sully a reputation and rationalize a dismissal by insisting her mandate stretched elastically from protecting public safety to ensuring the production of medical isotopes.

That’s self-serving bunk. Just as it continues to dump responsibility for detainees on the military, a government embarrassed by its own suspect supervision of two sensitive nuclear issues is scapegoating someone doing a vital job that’s supposed to be at arm’s length from politicians.

Experience reminds that all ruling parties are economical with unflattering truths. Still, Harper’s has particular reasons for candour. It defeated the Liberals by promising a new era of accountability and to make the transition from minority to majority it needs to prove it can be trusted with more power.

As the panel that includes prominent Conservative Derek Burney pointed out last week, the Prime Minister’s Afghanistan leadership and communications fall short of that standard. Nor is there any comfort in the expedient humiliation of an apparently competent and conscientious public official.

More remarkable still, pathologically defensive press tactics are turning good decisions into bad news. Under stress, the government made sound decisions to withhold detainees and to restart the Chalk River reactor. Then they undermined both with obfuscation and finger pointing.

In politics, truth is a moveable feast. But as plummeting opinion polls suggest, this government is making itself unpalatable by persuading Canadians that facts matter less to Conservatives than their interests.

James Travers’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/299109

Even as Tories defend current practice, talks held on common rules for treating prisoners
Jan 31, 2008 04:30 AM
Allan Woods
Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA–Canada has been quietly working to establish a new international policy for handling battlefield detainees, even while the Conservative government defends the way prisoners are transferred to Afghan jails.

The Star has learned that last October in Denmark, Canadian officials joined counterparts from the United States, Pakistan, Britain and a number of other European and African countries to establish a common platform for the handling of detainees that all countries can use in foreign military campaigns.

The meeting came one month before Canadian soldiers stopped handing prisoners over to Afghan authorities on Nov. 6 for fear they might be tortured. Government lawyers have admitted that continuing to send detainees to local jails could put Ottawa in violation of the Geneva Conventions and anti-torture laws.

Foreign officials say Canada’s decision to suspend transfers risks undermining the efforts of all NATO partners who have signed detainee transfer agreements with the Afghan government. Now that Canada has recognized there is a credible risk that detainees will be abused in Afghan jails, none of the NATO allies can claim ignorance of the risk of mistreatment.

The push for a global policy on detainee handling is being headed by the Danish government, which envisions setting up the new rules under the authority of the United Nations.

According to documents obtained from the Danish embassy, the initial meeting in October, which also included officials from the UN, NATO and the International Committee of the Red Cross, focused on the “number of difficult political, practical and legal concerns” surrounding detainees, including the legal basis for countries to take prisoners, the standards for transfers, and how to ensure human rights are respected.

Without a single agreement that all countries can sign on to, countries could be reluctant to commit troops to missions, said Jakob Henningsen, an official with the Danish embassy in Ottawa.

A Danish foreign ministry official added that the key is to avoid countries having to sign individual prisoner transfer agreements, often with different conditions and standards of care. That is the case in Afghanistan, where Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and other countries are responsible for negotiating the terms of transfer of detainees with the Afghan government.

“The way (detainees) are handled may depend, to some extent, on who is detaining them,” Thomas Winkler, head of the Danish foreign ministry’s department of international law, said in an interview from Copenhagen.

“This is, from a broader human rights perspective, not a very satisfactory solution. It creates some uncertainty between forces participating in the same operation, and it may affect the efficiency of the joint operations.”

Countries are drawing primarily on the experiences of militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan to sketch out a possible solution, Winkler said.

The next meeting, in April, is expected to include military officials and instructors who can present the practical considerations of soldiers on the ground who are the ones taking and transferring detainees.

“What the military is screaming for is clarity,” Winkler said. “At the end of the day, the way a detainee is being handled is up to a soldier.”

Canada has signed two agreements with the Afghan government outlining how to handle prisoner transfers. The first was signed in December 2005, under a Liberal government. The Conservatives signed a new agreement last May that allows Canadian officials to visit Afghan prisoners, monitor their conditions and interview detainees.

It was this procedure that unearthed a “credible allegation of abuse” – the electrical wire and rubber hose used in the abuse of one prisoner – and led to the suspension of transfers. Still, the Tories say they intend to resume handing over prisoners once they consider that risk of abuse to have abated.

But critics have taken issue with the government’s secrecy on all aspects of the Afghan mission. The revelation that Canada is working to construct yet another prisoner transfer agreement is likely to give them further ammunition to attack the Conservatives.

It comes as the government defends itself in a court case against two human rights groups seeking an end to prisoner transfers, and as it probes at least seven allegations of torture heard by Canadian and Afghan officials.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/299113

Harper brushes off allegations as staffer, party organizer accused of meddling in lawsuit
Jan 31, 2008 04:30 AM
Sean Gordon
in Montreal
Richard Brennan
in Ottawa

Richard Brennan

Internal federal Conservative party rancour has spilled into public view amid accusations of arm-twisting and influence-peddling that have thrown the Tories’ Quebec wing into disarray.

The ill will surrounds Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson and Quebec adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Soudas’s longtime friend Leo Housakos, a Conservative organizer who was named to the board of VIA Rail late last year.

Opposition MPs say Soudas and Housakos interceded in a protracted lawsuit involving a Montreal property developer, Rosdev, and the federal government, pressuring Public Works officials to opt for mediation rather than litigation.

“The facts are that Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for the Prime Minister, intervened on a government file. He ordered senior ministerial staffers, including a chief of staff, to attend meetings designed to influence a $50 million deal,” Liberal MP Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering) said in question period.

Soudas denied doing anything wrong, but conceded he made the unusual move of calling a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in August 2006 to discuss the file.

“The file was looked into; as you may have noticed, the issue was before the courts at the time, it remains before the courts today and basically, no favours were exchanged,” Soudas told reporters.

Even so, the New Democrats have asked Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson to look into the matter.

The affair is further complicated by the fact the principals behind the development company are influential members of Montreal’s Hasidic community, a constituency that has been ardently wooed by the Conservatives as part of a strategy to broaden the party’s appeal to minority voters in Quebec.

Harper, who campaigned on bringing a new level of accountability and ethics to Ottawa, batted aside Commons questions from the Bloc Québécois, suggesting they had racial overtones.

“Mr. Speaker, the Bloc member mentioned the name of two people with Greek origins, an employee who works here in Ottawa and another who is a Conservative party supporter in Montreal. The fact they are two Montrealers of Greek ancestry does not mean there is a plot,” he said. “This company didn’t receive any benefits or special treatment,” Harper said.

Duff Conacher, co-ordinator of Democracy Watch, said the imbroglio shows the hypocrisy of a government that vowed to clean up politics and end backroom deals.

“We are seeing from a government that promised to be honest, ethical, and open … unethical behaviour and excessive secrecy. That is the definition in government terms of being hypocritical,” Conacher said.

Housakos angrily denied any wrongdoing. “I’m a bit furious with a lot of people … it’s an inside job and that’s what hurts the most,” he told the Star. He didn’t elaborate, but it’s clear he and others see the revelations as a vendetta orchestrated by people hostile to Soudas.

Some allies point the finger of blame at Public Works Minister Michael Fortier, whose office has previously jousted with PMO insiders over policy and communications decisions. When asked about the Rosdev affair, Fortier said “there was no pressure put on me.”

It’s the second time in less than a week Harper’s communications staff has been in the headlines. Sandra Buckler, Harper’s director of communications, was forced to publicly admit to misspeaking when she told reporters the military had not informed the government it had suspended the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities.

The infighting is also symptomatic of a split within the Tory Quebec wing, where factions loyal to both the Quebec Liberal Party and the Action démocratique du Québec – the political home of Soudas and Housakos – jockey for supremacy.

Though Quebec Liberal Party stalwarts like Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon and Fortier had Harper’s ear early on in the mandate, the situation has shifted.

Relations have cooled between Harper and Premier Jean Charest since the last provincial election, and the Tories have cultivated closer relations with ADQ Leader Mario Dumont. That made political sense last spring, when the nationalist, right-leaning ADQ surged to Official Opposition status and won in ridings coveted by the federal Tories. But a poll published yesterday showed Dumont has slipped 11 points behind the Parti Québécois and 7 points behind Charest.

With files from Tonda MacCharles

>Advertisement

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080130/greeks_commons_080130/20080130?hub=TopStories

Opposition blasts Harper over Greek remark

Updated Wed. Jan. 30 2008 7:09 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

An opposition MP is accusing the prime minister of slighting Greeks, after a bizarre exchange between Stephen Harper and a Bloc Quebecois MP in the House of Commons.

During question period on Wednesday, Bloc MP Michel Guimond asked Harper why his deputy press secretary, Dimitri Soudas, tried to intervene in a dispute between Public Works and a Montreal developer called Rosdev Group in 2006.

Conservative party fundraiser Leo Housakos, who now sits on the board of Via Rail, also tried to intervene in the dispute around the same time.

“The prime minister cannot plead ignorance concerning what Mr. Housakos did,” said Guimond.

“It was his own government that appointed him to Via Rail. In that context, can the prime minister tell us whether he himself has met Mr. Housakos at 24 Sussex, his official residence?”

Harper shot back in French: “The Bloc member mentioned two people who are of Greek origin: one who was an employee here in Ottawa, another one who is a supporter of the Conservative party in Montreal. The fact that (there’s) two Montreal gentlemen of Greek origin doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy here.”

Liberal MP John Cannis, who is Greek-Canadian, rose on a point of order and demanded that Harper “apologize publicly to each and every Greek-Canadian.”

He said Harper’s comment “put a black mark on the over half-a-million Greek-Canadians that played even a small role in the development of this great country. The prime minister insulted the entire Greek community.”

Cannis later told CTV’s Mike Duffy Live that Harper had no need to mention the ethnicity of Housakos and Soudas.

“I was very angry as a proud Greek-Canadian,” said Cannis. “I could not understand why the prime minister had to attach his response to any ethnicity, not matter what the ethnicity may be.”

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe later told reporters that he was surprised by Harper’s response, considering his party’s questions had nothing to do with the men being Greek-Canadian.

“There is no link between the fact those people are from Greek origin. None at all,” he said.

Opposition parties have questioned why Public Works took legal action against Rosdev to acquire a building in Ottawa. The Conservatives said a lawsuit was the only way to deal with several lingering disputes with the developer.

According to a report in the Globe and Mail, Soudas organized a meeting in PMO offices in August 2006, “asking whether it was possible to come to a mediated solution.”

Conservative MP Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, said he dismissed the incident as a “classic non-story.”

“Nothing happened. The government has continued with its current position in the courts against the developer,” he said. “A meeting was had but no one gained anything. There is not the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Soudas spoke to reporters Wednesday and said he was only doing his job.

“There was no interference,” he said.

“For those who choose to serve the public, in the spirit of transparency, looking into a file makes common sense. The file was looked into. As you may have noticed, the issue was before the courts at the time, it remains before the courts today. Basically, no favours were exchanged,” he said.

Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc said officials must look into the possibility of government interference in the legal dispute.

“You have an organizer who has been appointed to the board of Via Rail — probably because of his life-long experience in passenger rail experience,” he said sarcastically. “You have political staffers from the Prime Minister’s Office summon political staffers from Public Works to a meeting … None of this is routine, none of this is normal.

“If the developer was interested in negotiating a solution, he probably doesn’t go through Conservative fundraisers and PMO staff members. It’s probably done through the lawyers.”

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/298911

Retired judge hammers Harper for ignoring sponsorship reform proposals
Jan 30, 2008 05:44 PM
Jim Brown
THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA–The man who investigated the sponsorship scandal says Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to have abandoned any commitment he once had to transparent government in favour of a top-down style that centralizes power in his own hands.

John Gomery, in a wide-ranging interview marking the second anniversary of his final report, expressed dismay that the federal Conservatives have ignored his key recommendations for reform.

“I have to tell you, I’m very disappointed,” Gomery said from the farm in Havelock, Que., where he now lives in retirement.

“I worked so hard, and I got other people to work hard, and we gave very serious thought to what we were recommending. I thought it deserved a debate.”

Instead, said the former judge, most of the political and bureaucratic changes he proposed fell into a “black hole” of indifference or were rejected out of hand.

His verdict on the Harper government is harsh: “They were glad to see the end of the commission (of inquiry), and they’d like me to disappear. . . I’m a pain, I’m a bit of a menace.”

Ironically, it was Gomery’s scathing indictment of the previous Liberal government that was widely credited with paving the road to Tory power in the 2006 election.

In his first report in November 2005, Gomery concluded that millions of taxpayer dollars had been skimmed by Liberal-friendly ad agencies, and some of the cash had flowed back to the party in under-the-table kickbacks.

Though he found no personal wrongdoing by Jean Chrétien, he held the Liberal prime minister politically responsible for letting things go off the rails – a finding that so incensed Chrétien he went to court to try to quash it.

Gomery followed up with a second report – released two years ago this Friday – in which he offered a recipe for changing the way business is done in Ottawa.

Among other things, he called for:

– An end to the prime minister’s exclusive power to appoint deputy ministers, the senior bureaucrats in every federal department.

– Curbing the authority of the Clerk of the Privy Council, the prime minister’s bureaucratic right-hand man.

– More money and staff for the Commons public accounts committee to boost its role as watchdog over government spending.

The overall goal was to reverse a growing trend – decades in the making – toward centralization of power in the hands of the prime minister and his inner circle, a situation that critics saw as an invitation to the abuse of power.

It was a goal that Harper appeared to share when he was in opposition, says Gomery. But since he took power “there’s more concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office than we’ve ever had before, which is quite remarkable in a minority government, but he’s pulled it off.”

Gomery also points to the Tory failure to revamp the Access to Information Act to make it easier for journalists and other citizens to pry documentation from the bureaucracy.

“The government was saying at the time (of the report) that transparency was very important and that they wanted to improve transparency. In practice it’s been an exact reverse.”

The Conservatives did expand the access law to cover many federal institutions that had previously been exempt. But that didn’t improve the actual mechanics of the process, in Gomery’s view.

There are still lengthy delays in releasing information, and too many sensitive files end up “on some minister’s desk or in the Privy Council Office someplace.”

“They’ve politicized it, and it’s not supposed to be politicized.”

Gomery also slammed Harper for abandoning the effort to install a new appointments commissioner to ensure that merit – not patronage – would be the main criterion in naming people to the boards of Crown corporations and other key posts.

Harper proposed to give the job to Gwyn Morgan, former CEO of EnCana energy corporation. But opposition MPs voted him down, contending he had a Tory bias and citing public remarks he had made linking gang violence to Jamaican and Asian immigrants.

The next step, in Gomery’s opinion, should have been to propose another candidate – just as U.S. presidents do when one of their nominees to the Supreme Court is rejected by Congress.

“The prime minister said, `Well, if you don’t approve of my appointment then we’ll just drop the whole thing.’ . . . The idea that it’s `my way or the highway’ is not exactly democratic.”

Harper’s defenders note that he came to power with his own agenda, embodied in the federal Accountability Act, which included reforms to party financing, lobbying, protection of whistleblowers and other matters that Gomery didn’t address or mentioned only in passing.

“Obviously that was our main response to ethical issues,” said Mike Storeshaw, a spokesman for Treasury Board President Vic Toews.

Some of Gomery’s most controversial recommendations sparked opposition that wasn’t confined to Conservative ranks.

More than 60 politicians from all parties and retired senior bureaucrats signed a letter to Harper in March 2006 urging him not to give up the authority to appoint deputy ministers or gut the powers of the Clerk of the Privy Council.

They also objected to other proposals that would have put the onus on public servants to ride herd on cabinet ministers on ethical matters.

That would turn things upside down, they said, and let unelected bureaucrats set policy rather than the politicians who are ultimately answerable to voters.

Harper issued a written reply in December 2006, saying there were “a number of areas where my government finds itself unable to agree with Mr. Justice Gomery.” He singled out the proposed changes to the Clerk’s role and anything that would make bureaucrats, rather than elected ministers, directly accountable to Parliament.

Gomery acknowledges his critics had some valid points. But he says that’s just one more reason there should have been vigorous debate about his recommendations.

“There was this letter signed by very eminent people, and that apparently brought the matter to a close. I don’t consider that was a debate, I consider that was simply the status quo reasserting itself.”

In delivering his recommendations on Feb. 1, 2006, Gomery asked the government to table a detailed response in Parliament within 24 months. With time due to run out Friday, he’s still waiting.

“I thought that at least they would have the courtesy to say, well, we’re not going to respond. . . It’s just as though my report doesn’t exist.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080130.wtaserteen0130/BNStory/National/home

Tasered-teen case raises new questions for MPs

BRODIE FENLON

Globe and Mail Update

January 30, 2008 at 1:00 PM EST

Troubling new questions are being raised about the police use of tasers just as a House of Commons committee hears Wednesday from one of the inventors of the controversial stun guns.

Top of mind for many MPs will be the acquittal Tuesday of a 17-year-old Halifax girl who was charged last year with assaulting police and resisting arrest after she was tasered in her bedroom during a confrontation with three officers.

Politicians will also be interested in a Chicago study unearthed by CBC News which reportedly found the weapon may not be as safe as the manufacturer claims.

Tom Smith, co-founder of Arizona-based Taser International Inc. and chairman of the company, is scheduled to appear before the Commons public safety committee Wednesday afternoon.

His testimony follows a provincial court decision Tuesday in which a Halifax judge had harsh words for the city’s police service for stunning a teenager when she resisted arrest inside her home.

“The spectacle of a 17-year-old girl being tasered in her bedroom is a very disturbing and disconcerting one,” Judge Anne Derrick said.

The arrest happened last February in Dartmouth after the girl’s mother asked police to remove the teen from their home. Two male officers and a female officer confronted the girl in her bedroom.

When they tried to arrest her for breaching the peace, she fought back. Two officers struggled with the teen while a third hit her once with the taser.

Judge Derrick said the police had no legal grounds to arrest her, because there had been no breach of the peace, said Megan Longley, a legal aid lawyer who represented the teen.

“I still am astounded that … three-full grown police officers cannot find some way to deal with a 17-year-old girl apart from using a taser,” Ms. Longley said, noting her client was unarmed at the time and has no criminal record.

“It certainly highlights for me the need for specific policies on taser use,” she said.

Halifax police did not immediately return calls.

Mike Taylor, president of the Nova Scotia Criminal Lawyers’ Association, agreed that the case raises serious questions about when and why police officers use tasers.

“To me, the taser is the last line before the gun is drawn. It’s supposed to take the place of that,” said Mr. Taylor, a former Calgary police officer.

“It’s just completely ludicrous that they would taser a 17-year-old because she was being non-compliant when there was no weapon,” he told globeandmail.com.

Mr. Taylor said his view on the necessity of the taser as a police tool has been shaken recently by some high-profile arrests and deaths. He said he welcomes the committee hearing in Ottawa.

“There has to be something done in a formal fashion, because some internal report from a police force is not going to satisfy the public at large that the police are being monitored appropriately in the use of the taser.”

CBC News reported Wednesday on a study by a team of doctors and scientists at the trauma centre in Chicago’s Cook County hospital that found 11 pigs stunned twice with tasers were left with heart rhythm problems. Two of the animals died from cardiac arrest, one three minutes after being shocked, CBC reported.

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080125.wagendaderrick0128/BNStory/robAgenda/home

Privatizing Crown forests is worth exploring

ELMER DERRICK

Globe and Mail Update

January 25, 2008 at 6:00 AM EST

Canada’s forestry-dependent communities need to be revitalized. Crippled by a seemingly interminable down cycle of the forest economy, they are in need of a fresh approach to break out of this morass, and the idea to privatize Crown forests is worthy of exploration.

Over the years, various investors have tried to breathe life back into a sick pulp and lumber company in B.C.’s northwest. Some plans nearly succeeded but, ultimately, all were failures. Left behind was the carcass of Skeena Cellulose Inc., its few remaining assets auctioned off to the highest bidders.

The investors could do only so much, given the confinement in which the company was forced to operate. Uncertainty of forest ownership, fibre costs and security of access were all leading contributors to the failure of SCI. With a lack of stability in the operating environment, investors were unable to secure the financing necessary to allow aggressive restructuring. This experience has been repeated elsewhere in British Columbia and Canada.

Businesses – which rural communities depend on – haven’t been able to afford to reinvest and modernize operations. These companies, and their decaying assets, are starved of capital to the point that they can’t succeed in the face of growing global competition.

The problem isn’t the strong Canadian dollar. The problem is that we make it near to impossible for new investment to come to our communities. This has everything to do with government policy and regulation at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. It cuts across the areas of taxation, regulatory burdens and ambiguity in ownership.

For its part, the Gitxsan First Nation wants and desperately needs economic activity. Time and again, investors have told us that the uncertainty over the ownership of the land is a major and fundamental disincentive to the flow of capital into our communities. In the meantime, our kids are dying. Facing a future with little to no foreseeable economic activity – along with an unemployment rate that is more than 90 per cent – the suicide rate for Gitxsan youth has reached epidemic proportions. While the media has helped gather the attention of government agencies, the problem continues to grow. Revitalizing our economy is an issue that has become life or death.

All Canadians have a vested interest in reversing the tide. We see an opportunity in the privatization of Crown lands to create a viable commercial forestry. Worldwide, most land used for commercial activity is held in private hands, not public. In these places – South America, the U.S., Europe and Russia – private ownership has fuelled massive investment in resource sectors. Today, despite our skill, experience and abundant resources, tens of billions of dollars of investments are going elsewhere. They should be coming to Canada.

We are certainly all too aware that the status quo hasn’t worked. And we are prepared to get creative and work with governments on a fair and reasonable basis so that first nations get a fair piece of the economic opportunity pie. Clarity on land ownership will help us get there. It is precisely what’s needed to kick-start investment flows and economic activity.

The Gitxsan are eager to get on with it. We are eager to have the means and tools necessary to become a constructive partner with the private sector. We want to train and employ our people, have a direct financial stake in success, and assume the risk that goes with it. We want to become full-fledged economic participants, not be handcuffed to arcane, centuries-old legislation that isolates and marginalizes us. The Gitxsan want to seek practical, workable and sensible solutions. We are keen to get down to the business of building an economy. Yet there are fundamental institutional and structural problems that must be dealt with. These sometimes appear too onerous for anyone to want to deal with. They sometimes appear intractable. So political leadership has thrown up its hands and the monkey has been thrown to the courts. Consistently, they have established the basis for our property rights. But at its core, this is a public policy and political challenge, not a legal one.

The only people that have feasted on this process are lawyers and consultants. Our kids certainly haven’t. First nations have felt they have had no choice but to go to the courts because the politicians sometimes do not even acknowledge that we exist. The courts at least acknowledge our representations.

These problems won’t get magically resolved with government largesse. The Gitxsan don’t want to be beggars, and this is not a problem that can be solved merely by throwing money at it. We don’t want to be a burden on the Crown; at the same time we don’t want to be burdened by the Crown. Gitxsan and other aboriginal people need to get off the dependency cycle. Two generations of Gitxsan have not worked and have to learn how to sweat again. We are capable of creating new economies and enabling our people to look after ourselves. It will take time, but we can do it.

There are three distinct economies in Canada. The urban economies are doing well. Communities in the rural heartland are hurting and are in rapid decline. And the reserves, home to a majority of Canada’s one million aboriginal people, are drowning in poverty and despair. That must not be allowed to continue. Bold thinking and leadership are urgently required. We need to shift the discussion from our traditional and seemingly inflexible poles, and meet somewhere in the middle in order to align our interests and foster economic growth and social progress.

We understand the need to create an attractive environment that attracts, not repels, investment. It’s the only way to stem the widening gap between Canada’s urban economies and Canada’s dying heartland economies. A good start would be a frank discussion about how to free a large group of Canadians from economic isolation, poverty and social despair. Without free economic access to our land, we don’t have the tools to build a new generation of entrepreneurs, attract investment, and develop our economy. It’s time for all of us to recalibrate. It’s time for us to sit down and figure out what we need to do to save our communities and save our kids.

Elmer Derrick is a First Nations Hereditary Chief of Gitsegukla, one of seven communities of the Gitxsan Nation, and is chief negotiator for the Gitxsan Treaty Society. He is also a director of BC Hydro and Powerex Corp. He can be reached at yoobx@gitxsan.com

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Williams urges caution on rate of emission cuts

KAREN HOWLETT and JUSTINE HUNTER AND IAN BAILEY

Globe and Mail Update

January 29, 2008 at 4:45 PM EST

Vancouver — Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams defended Alberta’s widely assailed climate change plan Tuesday, saying it cannot afford to curb emissions faster because it will remain the engine driving Canada’s economy for decades to come.

The climate change meeting, which opened in Vancouver Tuesday morning with 12 of the 13 provincial and territorial leaders in the room, was proposed by B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell to focus attention on how to adapt to climate change.

While Mr. Campbell hoped to steer the meeting to tackle the impact of global warming on Canada’s forests and water resources, Newfoundland’s Mr. Williams said the importance of jobs created by the energy sector can not be easily discounted.

“We have to be sensitive to that,” Mr. Williams said. “Obviously we can’t do [anything] to the detriment of the environment, but we have to allow them time to adjust.”

Mr. Williams, who spoke to reporters for the first time since the premiers began meeting in Vancouver Monday, was asked about the impact a more aggressive plan adopted by Alberta to combat greenhouse gas emissions would have on other provinces.

He echoed Ed Stelmach’s comments Monday, when the Alberta Premier noted that energy projects in his oil-rich province are providing jobs for Canadians commuting from as far away as Thunder Bay, Ont. And St. John’s.

“I could be glib and say a lot of Newfoundlanders would come home to work because there are obviously a lot of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians in Fort McMurray,” Mr. Williams said.

“But there is an overall effect; there is a domino effect on the economy. You can’t slay the goose that lays the golden egg.”

With the exception of Mr. Stelmach, who left the two-day meeting Monday night, the provinces and territories were set to talk about what they are calling “adaptation” to climate change.

While the premiers made little progress on how to stem rising greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Campbell’s proposal was to focus on the results of global warming, such as extreme weather patterns that can lead to floods, fire and drought.

“I would hope that we can move ahead and British Columbia will be moving ahead certainly with a water initiative with Alberta. We hope Saskatchewan and other provinces will join us,” he said moments before the closed-door session began,” said Mr. Campbell.

“We have a major initiative, I think, on forestry that will be beneficial to everyone.”

Mr. Williams said that if Alberta’s contribution to the Canadian economy is not there, it would have to be replaced with something else.

“Canadians have to understand we have to strike a very, very delicate balance,” he said.

But Mr. Williams also stressed that every premier is concerned about climate change.

Mr. Stelmach was conspicuously absent from Tuesday’s session on climate change. He attended Monday’s portion of the meeting but returned home to Edmonton Monday night. Alberta’s Environment Minister is taking his place at the table Tuesday.

“There’s not just paying lip service because this happens to be a topic that’s of general interest to Canadians,” Mr. Williams said. “Governments are very, very concerned about the implications of climate change and they’re actually doing something about it.”

Mr. Williams said his province can use its abundant hydroelectric resources to provide other regions with a clean source of electricity. But he said it will cost billions of dollars to develop hydroelectric projects on the Lower Churchill River in his province and then build the transmission lines to export some of the power to other provinces. He said it is imperative that the federal government get involved in helping to finance such an initiative.

Despite the desire by the premiers to grapple with climate change, in particular the impact on the country’s lakes, forests and wildlife, he played down expectations of just how much his colleagues could achieve during the meeting.

“I don’t think a memorandum will be produced that will lay out all the solutions,” he said.

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Ottawa bureau chief Laghi on federal politics

Globe and Mail Update

January 29, 2008 at 1:20 PM EST

“Stephen Harper has tried to sell the war in Afghanistan by making it into something noble,” The Globe’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Brian Laghi wrote today in his analysis How a gentler Harper is working to sell the war

“Perhaps that’s why he resisted the temptation yesterday to put his foot on Stéphane Dion’s throat.

“While he is admired for many other attributes, polls suggest Mr. Harper’s take-no-prisoners approach to politics is one quality many Canadians don’t particularly appreciate.

“Yesterday, in detailing his government’s response to John Manley’s report on Afghanistan, the Prime Minister could have given in to that inclination by exploiting the divisions in the Liberal Party over extending the mission.

“Instead, he offered a pacifying tone that suggests the Prime Minister now realizes that, if he wants to sell this controversial war to Canadians, he can’t demean it by trying to score points off it.”

Regardless of whether you think the Prime Minister’s new approach is a strategic shift to position himself for the next federal election or a short-term tactic to manipulate public opinion, it’s an interesting twist for the Conservative Leader as he nears the second anniversary of being sworn in as PM.

We’re pleased that Mr. Laghi will be online today (Wednesday) from noon to 1 p.m. EST to take your questions on Mr. Harper, Mr. Dion, the war in Afghanistan, the next election and the resumption of Parliament this week.

Join the Conversation at that time or submit a question in advance.

Your questions and Mr. Laghi’s answers will appear at the bottom of this page when the discussion begins.

Mr. Laghi began his journalistic career 25 years ago as a reporter for a small daily newspaper in Fort McMurray, Alta, and also worked as a reporter in Saskatoon, Sask., before moving to The Edmonton Journal, where he covered politics and served as that paper’s legislative bureau chief.

He moved to The Globe and Mail in 1995, covering Alberta and the Arctic for the paper until 1998, when he moved to Ottawa.

Mr. Laghi spent much of the next six years covering the conservative movement in Canada and the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance. He became The Globe’s bureau chief in Ottawa in October, 2004.

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