Vancouver Courier
for January 7, 1998

About three weeks ago, I had lunch with Gordon Gibson, well known writer, public policy analyst and former leader of the Liberal Party of B.C.

On New Year's Day, Wendy and I had brunch with Mel and Bev Smith in their lovely home in Victoria - Mel, of course, being the well known constitutional expert and author (Our Home or Native Land).

Mel, Gordon and I keep in touch because, however much we may from time to time disagree on details, all three of us are considered mavericks by our "betters," having parted company with the "establishment" on at least two subjects, national unity and Aboriginal land claims, years ago.

We fought shoulder to shoulder on the "no" side in the Charlottetown Accord referendum in 1992. Mel and Gordon have both written extensively on Aboriginal land claims with which views I generally agree..

We are, I can report, finding it hard to know whether to find to be amused or insulted when we're called traitors and racists because we don't do along with the "higher purpose persons", in Denny Boyd's marvelous phrase.

On national unity, Mel, Gordon and I are patriotic Canadians who see those who disagree with us, which is to say most of the politicians in Canada, not as traitors for their beliefs - we know they mean well - but as misguided folk, stuck in a time warp, overwhelmed by politically correct myths and on a course which will doom the country.

On Aboriginal Land Claims, all three of us want the terrible misdeeds of the past atoned for but not at the expense of the country's economic future or, even more importantly, its principles. In fact we would argue - and our arguments have the force of logic, a scarce commodity in public affairs these days - that those proposing special constitutional arrangements for one race is classic racism.

I'm often asked my solution to the vexing problems of appropriate compensation for natives.

I have to say frankly that I have no solutions. I do, however, have some principles from which I operate and that they are not the sentimental expressions of utter contrition, remorse, guilt and generosity with future generations' birthright we commonly hear as official aboriginal policy.

Let me outline what I think must be the principles of compensation for aboriginal peoples.

1. Canada and B.C. must acknowledge that great wrongs have been done native peoples not just in land, but legal and social (especially the latter) matters as well.

2. We must strive to agree upon compensation that is reasonable and just under the circumstances.

3. Governments and natives alike must recognize that compensation can never be perfect and the more changes there have been in circumstances since the wrongs, the less perfect it will be. (For example, the Mulroney government compensated Japanese Canadians $25,000 each for injustices inflicted in 1942. That didn't come close to being full compensation but too much had intervened to make that possible. Many victims had died for one thing.

Reasonable compensation not only takes into account past injustices and present grievances but the total picture as well. It may very well be relevant to native bands that some of their ancestors some time roamed certain lands but there has developed a not always harsh reality which must dealt with as well.

4. The day comes when the Saxons must forget, if not forgive, the wrongs done them by the Normans. This is a gradual thing but after several hundred years some things must simply be accepted as part of reality.

It is also true, however, that we are dealing with a great number of individual cultures which have stayed, in varying degrees, intact. Sailing through these shoals of past wrongs and present realities, both within and without the aboriginal communities involved, is difficult and I would contend, only possible if we agree upon a set of principles, or if you prefer, guidelines.

5. It's wrong to judge the past by today's standards. That doesn't make past policies right or honourable but simply says that if one carries the "sins of the fathers" theory far enough, it becomes ludicrous.

6. Settlements must have broad public support. This is not to say referenda on each clause of each agreement but at least consensus in principle as voted upon by people, not their party disciplined representatives.

7. On no account can Canada permit the entrenchment in our constitution of what, when South Africa created them anc called the "native homelands", we condemned as racism.

It's said, of course, that we practiced raw racism for years and that's perfectly true. And it was wrong. Very wrong.

Ironically, it's that very racism that Canadian society is fighting to rectify.

Are we now to atone for past racism by creating new, ineradicable racist policies - such as an aboriginal fishery and aboriginal self governing powers equal to those of Ottawa and the provinces? And etched in constitutional stone?

No solutions, these, but perhaps some apt questions - and some principles to start with if it is not, as I fear, already too late.