Monday, March 12, 2007

A not so Québec solidaire

As the Québec party chiefs prepare on the eve of their critical debate, those comments by the Premier on the partition may just have created the situation and distraction he indeed wished for, between 25 to 50 armed rebel aboriginals have blockaded Highway 117, north of Ottawa, with teepees, vans, firearms, heavy equipment, barrels and logs early this morning immediately stopping traffic over a reneged verbal agreement by the Charest Liberal Government, which ended an earlier protest over the refusal of granting local aboriginals living outside reserves the right to harvest trees and now they "won't let anybody pass that line"!

Guillaume Carle, chief of the recently formed Confederation of Aboriginal People of Canada, has stated that "the protest is about the government of Quebec, the Liberals, lying to us", as luxuriant clearcut logging in the region has left aboriginals without economic planning and benefit from that forestry activity, as well past the grievance with newsprint giant Abitibi Consolidated as the corporation involved, living conditions across Canada for aboriginals who live outside reserves without "no electricity, no heat, no water" and apparently no real advocate outside which makes "the conditions are unacceptable" for his CAPC to take today.

Without even a comment by the Liberal friendly Phil Fontaine as Grand Chief and his Assembly of First Nations, this upstart Confederation has began its assertion of determination, ironically his successor and predecessor Matthew Coon Come prophetically called this, with events in Oka, Ipperwash, Gustafsen Lake, Burnt Church before and Caledonia, Walpole Island, Saugeen and Nawash after, now Grand Remous making this militaristic set of actions ones that shouldn't, but will be, ignored by the politicians and perhaps, more hopelessly sinister, created by those exact politicians and only for gain politically.

If Charest's Liberals are trying hard to make a state of emergency issue, he needs to understand two very important things, one, in order to use such an issue to one's advantage, one must have a real emergency, not merely invent one instantly for the sake of convenience, two, in order to actually win it once you have created one, you must prove you are actually a statesman who can solve it, peacefully most preferably, but as you may have witnessed here with the Ontario Liberals' Dalton Mcguinty-David Peterson show in Caledonia, this can obviously backfire politically, thus isn't truly a progressive option, especially when you and your government were the exact reason for this situation itself and finally, remember, all of this optically with not only a general election on the go but also the great leadership debate tomorrow looks just ugly.

There is no mistake why this blockade is stopping the only route between the Laurentian and Abitibi-Temiscamingue regions of Québec, territory is being marked as we speak, partition is a big issue since the Cree from Eeyou Astchee territory, under Coon Come's direction, held their own referendum one week before the October 1995 one where over 96% of his people voted no on independent separation and yes on self determination, "we're being robbed" is their cry, they want their collective rights, their individual responsibilities, their personal freedoms, will the Canadian people deny them all these, the genuine ingredients which create real citizenship, or they collectively ignore these results and let those political clowns make their political indecisions, while easily playing off the fears of their electing public to keep them and their same old status quo system in power?