Parliament is being urged by the Senate to pass Bill S-2. As amended by the Senate, this bill would, among other things, end the so-called “second generation cut-off” rule. These were changes to the Indian Act introduced in 1985 to prevent the transfer of status to a person who has at least one grandparent and one parent who does not have status — the so-called “second generation cutoff.” If passed by Parliament, S-2 is projected to add approximately 300,000 new registrants to the Indian Act status list by 2066. These amendments are estimated to result in at least $1 billion in annual benefit expenditures, driven primarily by the Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program and post-secondary funding.In short, S-2 would make 300,000 mainly white people with some Indian heritage “status Indians” and make those people the lucky recipients of all of the very rich benefits that status Indians receive. Few Canadians are wealthy enough to afford those expensive benefits for their own families, but must pay for the benefits that the 831,720 status Indians receive every year. Except there would soon be 300,000 more.Leaving aside for the time being the $1,000,000,000 these changes would add to Canada’s debt every year, the obvious unfairness of this bill comes screaming through. And our own Senate is the group lobbying for the passage of this egregiously unfair legislation. .GIESBRECHT: The Cowichan Decision threatens not just private property — but Crown land, too.What are some of those health-related entitlements a status Indian is entitled to? The list is too long to include in a short article, but here are a few of the benefits.Free dental care, free pharmaceuticals, free over-the-counter products, like vitamins, free glasses, hearing aids, and travel expenses for you and a companion when travelling by airplane for medical appointments anywhere. That includes hotel, restaurant, and incidental expenses that can add up to a small fortune. In short, a status Indian receives health coverage that the average Canadian could not possibly bear the cost of. Only wealthy Canadians can afford those plans. And the rich health plan is just one of many expensive benefits that status Indians receive. .GIESBRECHT: Were BC indians cheated by not having treaties?.The argument by the claimants is that being a “status” Indian is part of their heritage. It denotes a special kind of citizenship that recognizes a “nation-to-nation” separate status going back to 1763..This is revisionist history. The “status” concept was created by Canada’s founders to designate a type of junior citizenship. The belief at the time was that most of the Plains Indians were simply not ready for full citizenship. Their ancient semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life had come to an end, and disease, inter-tribal warfare, and whisky threatened their very survival. As Canada’s founders saw it, Indians had to be protected until they could assimilate (integrate) into the nineteenth-century version of the modern world. So Indians were made “wards” and declared to be “in tutelage, like children in school.” The goal was to have them graduate from “tutelage” and become ordinary Canadian citizens. Ottawa’s long-term plan was to phase out the “status” category entirely. But not all Indians were status Indians. An Indian who graduated from university, for example, was no longer kept in the “status” category. That person had “graduated” and no longer needed “status” protection. Similarly, an Indian who became a minister, doctor, or lawyer lost his “status.” This was not meant as punishment. It was just part of Ottawa’s plan to eventually merge Indians with the general population — the same plan Ottawa had for all of the different ethnic groups that were streaming into Canada from all parts of the globe..GIESBRECHT: Cory Morgan doesn’t back down — and shouldn't.In legal terms, these Indians who had graduated from universities or had become professionals became “enfranchised.” Although most people associate “enfranchisement” with voting, it actually means much more than that. An “enfranchised” Indian not only was able to vote, but became a full Canadian citizen in all respects, and no longer needed the second-class citizenship that “status” denoted.The official government policy of “enfranchising” Indians made sense. Indians would gradually assume their place as full Canadian citizens as they learned to provide for themselves in this new world. “Enfranchising,” and thus phasing out “status,” was thus not “racist” — it was the exact opposite of racism. It was meant to help Indians become productive Canadian citizens. “Stripping them of their culture” was never part of the plan. Indians could practice their culture as they pleased — except for truly regressive practices like slavery, polygamy, self-harm, and related customs, like Potlatch and Sundance.The 1985 “second generation cut-off” change was consistent with this plan. They were not “unfair” at all. “Status,” namely, treating Indians like children, was to be gradually and fairly phased out..Unfortunately, Ottawa gradually lost sight of its sensible plan and began giving in to demands by Indian chiefs for more and more money to preserve uneconomic reserves and to add more collective (tribal) race-based rights. The financial benefits of becoming a “status” Indian mushroomed. After 2015, this already massive expenditure for all things Indian virtually exploded, more than tripling in size. The person who can now succeed in getting on the “status” list has virtually won the lottery. For the steadily increasing class of privileged — often mainly white — “Indians,” the benefits that include income tax exemptions even for the wealthy can easily add up to a million dollars over the lifetime of their family. That’s a million dollars paid for by taxpayers, most of whom couldn’t possibly afford those expensive entitlements for their own families.So we get more and more groups trying to get on the rich list of rich entitlements. Métis groups are trying, as are these “second generation” people. Many of them are far more non-Indian than Indian. I won’t include a picture of the woman who is leading the campaign to get these “second generation” benefits, so as not to embarrass her. But pictures of her show her to be a very attractive white woman. She looks Scandinavian or Northern European. Apparently, she has some Indian heritage, and I’m sure that’s true. My point is not to embarrass her but to point to the obvious fact that these “second generation” claimants are no different than the millions of Canadians who have some Indian heritage. So what? Why should that entitle them to have other Canadians pay their way?I wrote a column on “status” a decade ago that caused outrage in the Indian community. It was published in a number of newspapers, one of which was Thunder Bay’s Chronicle Journal.My title for the article was “A Modest Proposal.” As readers of Jonathan Swift will know, that article was satire. To make his point that the English were treating the Irish unfairly, Swift’s “modest proposal” was that babies from impoverished Irish families should become part of the upper-class Englishman’s regular diet. In any event, an editor changed my title (as editors are wont to do), and the article came out under various titles. In it, I proposed, satirically, that all Canadians — many of whom have Indian ancestry — should be granted “status” and hence eligible for all of the rich special entitlements that status Indians receive. I suggested that Canada’s economy could endure this additional load for about five minutes, after which we can correct the problem by eliminating “status” for everyone, including Indians.Needless to say, this “modest proposal” did not go down well. Indian groups offered the usual “racist” and “anti-reconciliation” accusations. But so did sanctimonious newspaper editors and the like..I will be criticized for this column as well. It will be called “insensitive,” “mean-spirited,” and offensive to “reconciliation.” I call it stating the facts and telling the truth. It is time that people claiming to be “Indians” are held to the same standards as all other Canadians. It is time to end the bigotry of low expectations that is the basis of all race-based policies, from Gladue sentencing to pretending to believe the clearly false Kamloops graves claim. And it’s definitely time to begin dismantling an Indian industry that is making every Canadian poorer by the day.It’s also time to stop pretending that these race-based policies are somehow helping the great majority of Indians, who remain poor and dependent on hopeless reserves, and on the mean streets of cities like Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, and Regina. An income tax exemption doesn’t mean anything to someone who doesn’t earn any income. Expensive secondary education benefits don’t “benefit” people whose children won’t even graduate from high school. And the most expensive health benefits in the world won’t “benefit” a population that lives lives far more unhealthy and shorter than non-Indians. The people who benefit from these rich programs are mostly privileged, strangely white “Indian” bureaucrats, academics, and politicians. Adding more mainly white “Indians” to the status list doesn’t do anything to solve the real Indian problem that has plagued the country since its inception.Time to end the race-based problem and not add even more people to the entitled list. Concepts like “status” Indians with “status cards” — just like the apartheid South African equivalent — should have been trashed long ago. Instead, our myopic Senate is demanding that potentially 300,000 more status cards be issued. What a giant step backwards! The fact is that the overwhelming majority of Canadians want a country where everyone has equal rights. It is our elites who insist on keeping these race-based policies in place. The Senate - our so-called “chamber of sober second thought” — is pushing Bill S-2, a bill that is both massively unfair to taxpayers and a further extension of the race-based policies that should have been gone a hundred years ago. The sad truth is that our Senate has degenerated into just another body of lobbyists demanding tax money to serve the special interest groups that put them there. The Senate has become the Indian industry’s best friend.I invite readers who agree with me to contact their local MPs and urge them to reject the Senate’s demands and vote down the “second generation cut-off” amendment.
