May 2001
The Dignity of Being an Ordinary Canadian
by Gordon Gibson
Is there finally a way out of the Indian tragedy in Canada? Will science convince government policy makers where common sense and basic morality have failed? Recent evidence from the human genome project proves conclusively that racial differences between human beings are negligible. Is there any chance, therefore, that our political masters will begin to treat Indians like ordinary human beings?
After all, the doctrine of human equality has served our society well. Political equality (one person, one vote), equality before the law, due process, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms have gone a long way toward making us free. Concepts of private property and the free market system have gone a long way to making us rich. Ideas of transparency and accountability, while still primitive by modern standards in our senior governments, deliver a reasonably honest administration of the public sector. And we insist (with the exception of Indians) that the state is the servant of the individual, not the master.
Given that all of this that works so well for ordinary Canadians, why have we established a legal structure and financial incentives for Indian Canadians based on different, collectivist concepts than the above success story, and with demonstrably awful results?
The mistake began in 1867, with the making of the Canadian constitution. The central government was given responsibility (in Section 91(24)) for "Indians and lands reserved for the Indians"—seven dreadful words that spawned 133 years of sadness and misery. Those words made it legally possible (though not required) for the government to treat Indians differently from everyone else.
The colonial world of 1867 was racist and sexist and bigoted. Indians and Jews and women and Catholics and Asians were all considered inferior. One hundred and thirty-three years later, Jews and women and Catholics and Asians are all comparatively fine. None of them were mentioned in the constitution. There was no legal basis for different treatment, nor the foundation of an industry based on racial difference. For them, gradually common sense and simple morality prevailed. Indians were not so lucky.
The history is not as well known as it should be, but the end result is clear: a little over two percent of Canadians self-identify as aboriginals, and their social and economic estate is miserable on average. (It is notable that those of aboriginal heritage who no longer self-identify as aboriginals are indistinguishable from other Canadians on socio-economic indicators, giving further proof of the irrelevance of race.)
The different treatment has spawned an immense industry based on the maintenance and elaboration of the claimed difference of Indians, all on the pretext of cultural support. The power, status, and incomes of a host of Indian elites and (largely) white lawyers and consultants are absolutely dependent on this claimed difference.
The "difference" is bolstered by different law and financial incentives, on a carved-out (and inadequate) land base managed by a communistic system where the collective is deemed more important than the individual, the whole propped up and funded by billions of taxpayers’ dollars whose use even Members of Parliament are not allowed to track.
In turn, control of these funds is used to reward those who support the system and the elites, and penalize those who do not. What could be more natural? Indians are, after all, ordinary human beings who know how to work a system to advantage. And the cry from the elites is always for more of the same—more money, more "self-government," and more "modern treaties."
The civil servants that toil in this rotten system are often beaten down or numbed by it all, but a surprising number actually buy into this proven failure. How can honest, intelligent, decent public servants support governments based on race? In a recent article in Fraser Forum I speculated it might be a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome.
And the politicians, our representatives? They hate the Indian file. It is all misery: always higher costs, minimal results, and no political upside at all. It is no fun being a flak-catcher, and the best protection is a wall of money. And so it goes from Davis Inlet to whatever is the latest remote and miserable community in the news, or the most recent and unremarked upon overdosed and deceased hooker on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
In the rest of our society we know quite a bit about how human nature works, and the incentives and support systems that produce results. Given that, what moral right have we to subject a newborn Canadian baby to a clearly failed governance system, based on race and buttressed by our laws and our money, simply because that baby is an Indian?
There are those who say that if Indians are treated like ordinary people, Indian culture and Indian communities will disappear. Surely that is a matter of choice for the people concerned. Jews maintain their Jewishness, Hutterites their communes, and others whatever distinctions they think important.
Unlike individuals, cultures have no merit of their own. Apart from actual persecution, which is certainly not about to happen in Canada in 2001, cultures survive and flourish just so long as they are useful to their adherents and no longer. None of us has a right to put our fingers on the scale of that individual choice.
Indians have some special property rights and a lot of problems arising from history. The rest of us have a legal obligation to respect property rights and a moral obligation to help with the problems. The first step—the very first step—is to give each Indian the dignity of being an ordinary Canadian. If the human genome can teach us anything, let it be this.
Gordon Gibson (gordong@fraserinstitute.ca) has an MBA from Harvard and is The Fraser Institute’s Senior Fellow in Canadian Studies. He has served in the Prime Minister’s Office under Pierre Trudeau and as both an MLA and as leader of the BC Liberal Party (1975-79).
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