With Walpole Island being a part of Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, and a big part of the Sydenham Current readership, we asked the candidates in the Federal Election to tell us how they, and their party, plan on supporting First Nations communities and their residents.
Bev Shipley, Conservative
“We will continue, we have had land claims, we are supporting another land claim that is happening at Walpole. We want to make sure that regardless of the citizens, that we give opportunities to individuals to be successful and for companies to be successful.
I have worked well with Walpole and with the chiefs over the time while I have been a Member of Parliament and I will continue to do that. We have been able to support them in many cultural and environmental projects that they have had. I have had a great tour with the general manager in terms of their agriculture programs and with their farms. They do a great job up there in terms of the farming. I would suggest that is likely the largest industry that they have on the Island and they are doing a great job at that. We will continue to support them in those types of endeavors also.”
Jim Johnston, Green Party
“Our ‘Vision Green Statement’ has a 20 point program relating to changes that we need to make in order to facilitate the success in the lives of First Nations. We strongly believe in autonomy and that First Nations needs to be a part of planning the course towards the future. We believe that the Indian Act needs to be revamped to remove restrictive portions of it and make sure that we get discussions on a true nation-to-nation basis with First Nations across the country. We need to invest in infrastructure and education, clean water, we need to make sure the Federal Government carries its responsibilities because I don’t know if a lot of people realize that there is a jurisdictional problem between federal and provincial governments.
So the Federal Government is actually responsible for providing education to First Nations instead of the Provincial Government so it really causes a problem because federal offices does not follow through and provide those services. So there is an awful lot to do in terms of helping First Nations get back to where they should have been in the first place.”
Rex Isaac, NDP
“That’s going to be a multi-prong approach again as well. One of the things that Romeo Saganash, who is the MP for Northern Quebec, Niki Ashton who is the MP for Northern Manitoba, myself and Tom when we were at the meeting in Montreal for AFN (Assembly of First Nations.) Tom made his speech to all the chiefs in assembly, that was huge. I know that the commitment is a nation-to-nation relationship. We haven’t heard anyone say that before. The other commitment that Tom had made is that we are going to have a special committee, a cabinet level committee who’s going to look at issues that involve First Nations and Tom himself is going to chair that. So that itself is huge news.
As a First Nations member, as a member of council on a First Nation, I have heard since I was a little kid that First Nations wanted to have more power. We want to be more in control of our own destinies. Not be the wards of the Crown. So this is what I’m hearing and I know Romeo, Niki and myself and everybody are looking forward to Canada electing our first NDP Government and be able to roll this out because it is going to be very exciting. With First Nations, everybody is at a different level. Sixth Nations is a humongous First Nation and they have 25,000 members, they have multi-million dollar corporations but then we have other northern isolated First Nations that are dealing with clean drinking water issues. They don’t have the capacity to be self governing in that sort of thing.
We need to have that nation-to-nation approach and deal with all the issues on a local level. That’s what I’m really excited about the NDP Government because we are not only going to do that with First Nations, we are going to do that in Provincial and Municipal Governments as well. We can’t have this just big paint brush approach. We have got to get down and get our hands dirty and get involved at the grassroots level of governance and with everybody that’s involved so that we are making good decisions as a government. So that everybody has a say in that, so to me that is huge.
The other thing obviously that’s going to be huge for First Nations is that within 100 days, Tom has committed that we will launch a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. Addressing poverty. That is a huge thing on there. Our healthcare platform with the pharmacare program added in there. That is going to be huge. There are so many things, it’s an exciting time and I hope that people are going to be excited with their NDP government.”
Ken Filson, Liberal
“I know that Walpole Island is in your neck of the woods but we certainly have four other First Nations in this large riding.
The first thing that the Liberals have committed to do with regards to First Nations is an inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women. I can’t for the life of me understand why this government will not take the steps necessary to provide for an inquiry into, I think we are over 1,200 missing and murdered Indigenous women. It’s just a shame and we should be shaming this government because they won’t actually create an inquiry.
The next thing we are going to do is we have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and they went through a lot of work and they have provided a report and we will implement all of their recommendations. We will not pick and choose. We will implement all of their recommendations. That is going to be a starting point to turning around our relationships between the First Nations and the Federal Government. We are going to work with First Nations on a nation-to-nation basis. We will again implement respect for the First Nations and work with them on a nation-to-nation basis.
Part of our job and something that is so far behind in First Nations, is education. We are going to provide $2.6 billion, that’s $900 million more than the Conservatives didn’t actually get spent. We will spent that money to rebuild and ensure that every First Nation child have a proper education from preschool to Grade 12. We will also invest in the actual schools themselves and invest in secondary education for First Nations.”
Election day is Oct. 19.
