The Record • Wednesday, November 13, 2013 • A07
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Thrifty will be missed ◗ continued from page 6
more since the closing of our IGA. I am very disappointed that they want to now close another grocery store. I love Thrifty’s for its wonderful fresh seafood. It’s the only place I can find West
Coast seafood. All the other places just carry the seafood from Asia. I also like that they really care about our community. They seem to get involved, more like IGA, and everyone is always so friendly. I try not to shop at Save-On or Safeway. They are too expensive. Darlene Perry, via email
Report: Accountability needed ◗ continued from page 6
in other areas. The lack of accountability, the maddening pace of improvements and a political cautiousness are ingrained in the relationship. For instance, billions of dollars have been spent on treaty negotiations, with precious little to show for all that spending. Again, lawyers and consultants and bands make money via governments but can’t point to many accomplishments. The aboriginal communities receive huge amounts of government funding, yet many of their members are mired in a state of chronic poverty. Health outcomes among aboriginal people are among the worst in the country. There is a tendency among governments to simply write large cheques for aboriginal groups, as if that assuages any guilt
that stems from taking vast tracts of their ancestral lands away from them. There is little followup to ensure money is spent properly or in ways that actually improve things. But the First Nations must share in the responsibility for this situation. First Nations themselves insist on being treated as quasi-independent nations capable of managing their own affairs, albeit with significant amounts of government funding. Some can and do just that, but in many instances there is a complete failure of leadership among its leaders. And so we are left with scandalous findings like those uncovered by Turpel-Lafond. She talks about the need to stop directing money into “the big theoretical fixes” and concentrate more on the front-line services. As she points out, those front-line services have
suffered because so much money was rerouted from them in favour of all those meetings and discussions. There have been many troubling and outrageous reports on various government entities over the years, but this one has to rank as one of the most outrageous. I’m told things have improved on this front in the last couple of years, and I hope that’s true. But I have a hard believing the basic system of handing government funding over with no accountability or followup will change in any significant way. Hopefully I will be proven wrong, but given the shameful history of the treatment of First Nations by governments and by some of their own leaders, I’m not betting on it. Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C. Email him at Keith.Baldrey@ globalnews.ca.
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