It's
tempting to get annoyed at the insistence of Chief Teresa Spence, now in her
second month of fasting on Victoria Island, that the Governor General be a full
participant in top-level meetings with Canada's Indigenous leaders.
Commentators of all stripes have duly noted that the GG can't get involved in
political discussions, because his role is strictly ceremonial. If Indigenous
leaders want meetings that will bring actual progress, therefore, David Johnston
- Canada's current Governor General - needs to be absent. Insisting on his presence seems somehow perverse, naive,
self-defeating; one might even say childish in its wrong-headed stubbornness -
but that would be an awkward reminder of the ideological underpinnings of
Indians' on-going subordinated legal status in Canada.
And
it is easy to criticize Theresa
Spence; pundits have certainly not been shy about it. But she is actually
putting her health and her very life on the line. When have we ever seen such a
thing in Canada? And the thing is, Chief Spence has got it exactly right with
the Governor General. It is indeed a fact that in the ordinary course of
Canadian politics, the GG is and needs to be an apolitical figurehead. And
here's the rub: in the ordinary course of Canadian politics, nothing ever
changes for the better for Indigenous peoples (judicial decisions don't count,
being exactly that, judicial, rather
than a part of the small-p political process). So, what's needed is to step
outside of the ordinary course. How better to do that than to return to first
principles - in this case, the Canadian state's existence within the British
Crown's sovereignty?
With
regard to the Crown and its Number One representative in Canada (the GG), Prime
Minister Stephen Harper has sown the seeds of his own current troubles, and not
just once. First, in the so-called "coalition crisis" back in 2008,
he showed all Canadians that the Governor General actually matters, politically
and legally. Harper obtained from then-GG Michaelle Jean that she prorogue
Parliament in the face of his loss of the House of Commons' confidence, and
that is how he got to remain Prime Minister. On this occasion, the Crown's
sovereignty set itself squarely against the will of majority of the Canadian
people's elected representatives. According to at least one of his former
advisors, Harper was ready to appeal directly to Queen Elizabeth II if Jean was
to turn him down.[1] So much for Crown's
and the GG's apolitical role, especially in light of all that the Harper
government has done since 2008.
Second,
the Prime Minister's Office pointedly corrected Jean on a later occasion after
she had said that she was Canada's head of state: Harper's people made it clear
that Canada's head of state is in fact Queen Elizabeth, and that the Governor
General is merely her representative. Technically, the PMO was correct, but
this was largely a distinction without a difference; the only reason for the
rebuke was to humiliate Jean. Still, this was another way for the government to
affirm the Crown's importance.
Third,
it has become clear through numerous initiatives that this government is
peculiarly infatuated with the monarchy. This extended, a year ago, to the
unprecedented and inaccurate branding of a high-profile meeting between top
federal officials and Indigenous representatives as a "Crown-First Nations
Gathering" (see my blog post about this on January 29th of last year).
So,
the Harper government likes to remind Canadians that we are all under the Crown's
authority. And it likes to wrap itself in the Crown's gravitas. Let's bring in
the Crown, then. But the constitutional fact remains that "the
Crown," in Canada, is first and last the Queen, represented federally by
the Governor General.
It
has now been thirty years since the federal government stepped away, in
rhetoric if nothing else, from its long-standing attempt at assimilating
Indigenous peoples. But the old policy has not actually been replaced, as
politicians (backed by the great majority of the population) can't be bothered
to deal seriously with Indigenous claims. That is why the only way forward,
sort-of, has been the courts. But this can only go so far: if there is to be
reconciliation, a new deal between Indigenous people and Canada, it can only
happen through political discussion. Given the general uselessness of
politicians in dealing with Indigenous claims, then, why shouldn't Indigenous
people turn to the Crown itself? Isn't this, in particular, a way to show that
the PM has no clothes?
Such
a strategy is inedeed especially relevant in the age of Harper. It has been
more than a little distressing to watch the Idle
No More movement develop, and Chief Spence's hunger strike add day upon
day, and week upon week, knowing that they are facing the government most
hostile to their aspirations in decades. The simple fact is that the Harper
government is not going to change its stripes: there is just no way that
Indigenous claims to sovereignty, to control over their territory and
development are going to get any traction with this government. The Prime
Minister did eventually agree to last Friday's meeting with Indigenous leaders,
but he did so in such a way as to deepen divisions among them, and to make it
impossible for Chief Spence to claim victory. As for the substance of the
meeting, there was never going to be any.
Calling
on the Governor General, which is to say "the Crown," to become
directly involved amounts to calling all politicians' 30-year old bluff. It
also says that talking to this Prime
Minister, in particular, is not going to get Indigenous people anywhere.
[1] I have written about this
crisis in the 2010 and 2011 editions of The
USA and Canada. Europa Regional Surveys of the World (London, Routledge /
Taylor & Francis). Lawrence Martin
has written about the claim by Harper's former aide in his book, Harperland. The Politics of Control
(Toronto, Penguin, 2010).
