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To everyone’s shame, it looks like Canada’s Aboriginal dilemma will be invisible in Campaign 2015.

And if Canada’s First Nations needed another reason to actively work for the defeat of Stephen Harper, they got one during last Thursday night’s debate.

It came via a gigantic insult that inadvertently displayed Harper’s true feelings about the Aboriginal file.

In quintessential uber-divisive fashion, Harper split the country into “new and existing, and old-stock Canadians.”

His ostensible reason was to claim that both groups supported his former government’s decision to abolish a program that covered costs for refugee claimants whose claims had not been processed. Not true. The legislation was heartless, inhumane, and illegal and Canadians knew it.

Not only were medications completely cut from the program, including for women and children, but the decision on how to allocate diminished resources was based in part on where a refugee claimant came from. Harper’s boast that the policy was widely supported was exactly what you’d expect from a crowd that pays for its Facebook likes – fact fiddling and fakery with a generous sprinkling of xenophobia.

The Federal Court found that the Harper government’s plan actually endangered lives and violated the constitution — just as protesting doctors on Parliament Hill claimed. It was struck down and the government was ordered to come up with new legislation that was Charter-compliant. Given his unfailing instinct to pass illegal laws, someone should have told Steve a long time ago that his job was to uphold, not upend, the Constitution.

But just who did Harper mean to identify by the use of “old-stock Canadians”? After separating out Canadians who were immigrants, he described old-stock “as the rest of us…Canadians who have been the descendants of immigrants for one or more generations.”

What about the old-stock Canadians who have been here for millennia? And therein lies the insult. Canada’s First Nations were completely omitted from Harper’s definition of who constitutes old-stock.

It was a telling moment in the debate. It was also perfectly in keeping with the Harper government’s view of indigenous peoples. They are invisible, except when beating drums or wearing feathers at one of those ghastly public ceremonies the Harperites like to substitute for real action on the injustices facing Aboriginals. Here’s just one example among many: Shoal Lake #40 – a reserve without safe drinking water for 17 years and counting.

The Crown-First Nations gathering of January 2012 promised renewal of the relationship and real engagement between the two parties. A year later, it was the same old same old. The Governor General didn’t even bother showing up for the anniversary. And that was a big diss since David Johnston represents the Crown, and First Nations treaties are with the Crown — not with any crass politico who fills an office by representing something less than a majority of Canadians.

Although AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo attended that anniversary meeting, he was so badly wounded by Harper’s foot-dragging on expectations heightened in 2012, that many chiefs boycotted the meeting and their own leader, and sided instead with hundreds of members of the Idle No More movement.

They didn’t miss much — some Harper drivel about native support in the War of 1812, a dubious apology for the residential school debacle, and “direct dialogue” with the head of the government i.e. with Steve himself.

In a case that had already dragged through the court for 16 years, outliving the man who started it, the Harper government appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. You know, the court he detests — and, whenever possible, undermines — for its uppity interference. In a case that had already dragged through the court for 16 years, outliving the man who started it, the Harper government appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. You know, the court he detests — and, whenever possible, undermines — for its uppity interference.

It would be hard to imagine a person for whom talk is cheaper than Stephen Harper. Point of fact: Harper record on Aboriginal issues is abysmal. Under the Constitution Act of 1982, Section 35 expressly affirms native treaty rights. In 1995, under the same section, Canada recognized that First Nations have an inherent right to self-government.

But instead of hitting the reset button, instead of consulting with First Nations as required by law, and moving towards full implementation of treaty rights and native self-government, Harper has lowered the boom on Canada’s natives at every opportunity. He wouldn’t meet Chief Teresa Spence but he did sic Deloitte on her and publish their audit during her hunger strike.

First, Harper poisoned the relationship by ramming through omnibus legislation, Bills C-38 and C-45. Both of them had a profound effect on native concerns for the environment and sharing in resource development.

They had cause to worry. Under these anti-democratic laws, if the Northern Gateway Pipeline went through a community, community consent was no longer required — just the consent of individual landowners on the pipeline route. The National Energy Board was a government ally; native protesters were subversives. Perhaps that is why Harper sent CSIS and the RCMP to spy on them.

The Harper government also made surreptitious and unilateral changes to the contribution agreements with Canada’s 630 bands. These contribution agreements are their primary source of income. Conditions buried in the appendix to the agreement appeared to suggest the bands would have to support the government’s omnibus legislation in order to access their funding.

After setting up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to get to the bottom of the residential school fiasco, referred to by former prime minister Paul Martin as “cultural genocide,” the Harper government refused to hand over documents requested by the commissioners. In the end, the Commission had to sue the very government that created it in order to do its job.

When the Federal Court came in with a landmark ruling in the Harry Daniels case, finding that non-status Indians and Metis were Indians under the Constitution Act of 1867, and therefore Ottawa’s responsibility, the Harper government appealed.

The PM’s answer when he also lost in the Federal Court of Appeal on the Metis question? Open negotiations to define what status would look like? No.

In a case that had already dragged through the court for 16 years, outliving the man who started it, the Harper government appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. You know, the court he detests — and, whenever possible, undermines — for its uppity interference.

Then came the infamous piece of legislation with the funny name; the First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act.

With the minister still firmly in charge of the curriculum, more of an Indian agent than a partner for reform, and none of the $1.9 billion to be spent until 2016 – after the election, it was rejected by the Confederacy of Nations and later by First Nations Chiefs. The only control given to Aboriginals was in the Orwellian name cynically pinned to the status quo and Bill C-33.

That fact cost Shawn Atleo his job.

No inquiry into more than 1,000 missing and murdered Aboriginal women. No government representative to meet those kids who walked from Hudson Bay to Parliament Hill through the dead of winter. Yet, somehow the PM finds time to greet rented Chinese panda bears at Pearson Airport.

Despite having been in office for a decade now, Stephen Harper doesn’t know a thing about the real old-stock people. But in 51 ridings across Canada where First Nations have a say, maybe he’s about to learn.

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Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

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