Attawapiskat squalor is our shame

[styky]

The real math behind Attawapiskat’s $90 million
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... 0-million/

[Ben Kenobi]

"energy-efficient, environmentally friendly"

As the old saw goes...

[Kate Shaw]

It is not MY shame. As in cases of Black folks trying to blame White folks for their current failures by citing slavery, I never oppressed any Indians and in point of fact have documented Oneida and Swamp Cree ancestry as near as the 19th century.

Anything that happened before my parents were born is not my fault. Anything that happened during your lifetime is YOUR fault.

[backhoe]

It is not MY shame. As in cases of Black folks trying to blame White folks for their current failures by citing slavery, I never oppressed any Indians and in point of fact have documented Oneida and Swamp Cree ancestry as near as the 19th century.

Anything that happened before my parents were born is not my fault. Anything that happened during your lifetime is YOUR fault.

Precisely.

[doggedlyright]

Styke

when Fiscal conservative first reported that link to the financial statements, I went to the link and reviewed the statements that were available and stated:

Fiscal Conservative

The financial statements are not audited. The auditors simply cross added the statements and made sure they totalled to that in their books of record.

These numbers are not vouched and would require further detailed review by an audit firm, maybe even a forensic auditor.

There was no management report attached either, so we could read their comments.

Sorry, but explanations are required first from the band and second from Indian Affairs for lack of oversight.

That is what I saw at that time. When I click on your link, and look at the financial statements, I now see that the audit firm has a statement on the returns (I looked at 2009,2010, and 2011) where they did perform an audit (vouching of the backup of the numbers disclosed).

They are audited after all. Apologies if anyone was upset with my original statement. I was not suggesting that the accounting firm was do anything inappropriate

In those statements from your link, one can see where the money is spent and yes, it is how Ezra's accountant explained. Also there is a management report in these statements. That is what you should read as it brings forward issues of reporting of invoices, etc.

[styky]

A tiny decrepit slice of Attawapiskat, right here in my Toronto backyard

Jonathan Kay Dec 5, 2011 – 12:29 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 5, 2011 2:05 PM ET

There are exactly three houses in my neighbourhood that are owned by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. These also happen to be the same properties that, for the last decade at least, consistently have appeared to be falling apart, and have garbage strewn over their lawns. Coincidence? Not quite.

It’s famously said that, in the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car. The same principle applies to real estate. The people who live in public-assistance properties aren’t necessarily any lazier or messier than the rest of us. But they have no economic motivation to beautify or maintain properties in which they have no economic interest. So they tend to let their living spaces fall into ruin and filth.

The difference between these properties and resident-owned properties is remarkable. The three city-owned properties I refer to in the first paragraph carry the street numbers 6,8 and 10. The property immediately to the north, number 12, is a world apart — a beautiful, well-maintained house that the owner has tastefully set apart from his neighbours with a wooden fence. The contrast couldn’t be more telling.

Now imagine a whole community of homes that contains no 12 — just variations on 6, 8 and 10 — a place where real-estate ownership is not only discouraged, but actually outlawed.

Actually, we don’t have to imagine: These places exist all across Canada. They’re called native reserves. Land in these areas is owned by the federal government, which then designates its collective usage by this or that native band. The 400,000-plus people who live in these communities don’t “own” their homes and the land under them any more than do the families sitting in those three Toronto Community Housing Corporation homes in my neighborhood. While some communities have developed ersatz property-certificate programs, in most cases it is the band council that decides who gets to use what piece of property, and where and when new homes are built.

This explains why outsiders who visit reserves typically are shocked by the dilapidation they see — homes falling apart and lawns converted into garbage dumps. Why spend your time and money maintaining (let alone improving) a property that you don’t own, and which might not be yours tomorrow?

“[The] Problem is housing, not money, say residents forced to live in tents,” is how a Dec. 3 Toronto Star headline put it, in reference to the James Bay Cree community of Attawapiskat. That’s a good way to describe a housing stock that’s mould-ridden and structurally substandard. It also reflects the fact that the Attawapiskat housing budget actually is in surplus these days. It’s not that there’s no money to build homes; it’s that the occupants are destroying them faster than they’re being built.

Here’s a thought experiment for the homeowners reading this column. Go back over the last decade and catalog every stitch of home-improvement you’ve conducted. Now imagine what your home would look like if you hadn’t done any of it. Instead of fixing the roof leak, you’d just put a bucket under the leaky spot. Instead of bringing in a contractor to redo your basement drywall at the first sign of mould, you just stopped using your basement. Same thing with the termites, the rotting timbers on the porch, the clogged drainspouts, the dirty furnace filter, and all the rest. Would your home even be habitable? Or would it look like one of those photos from Attawapiskat?

When it comes to home repair, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But when you have to pay for the ounce (in the form of home maintenance), and the government is paying for the pound (in the form of a new home), it makes more sense, from a resident’s point of view, to go the latter route.

Collectivist land-ownership schemes fit in well with the mythology that surrounds native reserves: On some unarticulated level, it is imagined that natives, by dint of their spiritual connection with the land, have some magical, indeed supernatural, ability to transcend all of the normal economic rules of behaviour that govern every other human civilization on earth. On this basis we create a real-estate scheme that is guaranteed to turn even the most pristine landscape into a dump, and which (as a bonus) denies reserve-resident natives the ability to own and sell real estate, the path to riches for generations of Canadian immigrants. So not only do we lock them in filth, but in poverty, too.

This, more than any other reason, explains the backward and destitute state of Attawapiskat and the many other reserves like it. When some brave Canadian politician finally does have the courage to end the reserve system as we now know it, and gives natives the chance to own their land in the same way that every other Canadian does, we will be ashamed that it took us so long.

The quickest way to turn a man’s home into a castle is to tell him that he owns it. Deny him that ownership, and you’ll manufacture a ruin.

Just ask my neighbours.

National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... -backyard/

[styky]

I have one question......will this school be built and maintained to the same standard that their present housing is?



Duncan promises new school for Attawapiskat
The troubled northern Ontario First Nations community of Attawapiskat will remain under third-party management for now, but Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan suggested the measure may only be temporary.

Duncan met with Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence on Thursday in Thunder Bay to try hammering out a plan to deal with the First Nations community's many problems...........http://m.ctv.ca/topstories/20111215/att ... 11215.html

[DianaDS]

The real shame is that the media won't show us the people in Attawapiskat who live ordinary lives in ordinary homes. If that's not racism I don't know what is.

[Dogpatch]

Boob Rae

Bob Rae calls Attawapiskat 'our Third World'
17/12/2011 9:13:02 PM

CTVNews.ca Staff
Liberal Leader Bob Rae called the bleak conditions at the First Nations community of Attawapiskat 'our Third World' Saturday, during a visit to the reserve that has been hit by a housing crisis and other problems.
read more at: http://news.sympatico.ctv.ca/home/bob_r ... d/b84353af

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Blazing Cat Fur

A Lesson For Bob Rae On What 3rd World Poverty Looks Like...
‘This is our Third World,’ Rae says at Attawapiskat


Attawapiskat


The 3rd World

[styky]

Rae ignores history of neglect


First posted: Monday, December 19, 2011 07:00 PM CST
Great Canadian explorer Bob Rae journeys up to the deep north of Ontario over the weekend and discovers a Native community called Attawapiskat living in squalor on the shores of a mammoth bay named James.

"This is a Third World," he cries, as if his eyes are the first to bear witness. "And it is right here. Right here at home."

We are uncertain if he also cried, "Eureka!"

But perhaps he did.

We remind him, therefore, that this should not have been a Jacques Cartier moment.

We remind him, in fact, that he was premier of Ontario at the time former Attawapiskat chief Ignace Gull appeared before a royal commission to talk about appalling living conditions on his northern Cree reserve -- about scores being crammed into poorly-heated huts, about lack of water, about abuse both sexual and physical, about rampant alcoholism, and about how the reserve's youth were killing themselves huffing gasoline fumes.

And it was "right there," right in his own backyard, 20 years ago when he was not only the NDP premier of Ontario but the provincial overlord of Attawapiskat's provincial money.

So spare us if his cries over the weekend don't move us.

Bob Rae did nothing 20 years ago when he could have, and should have.

He ignored Ignace Gull's pleas.

And he is doing nothing now but lay blame at other doorsteps, namely the Harper government's, even though it was largely a Liberal government that did nothing for over the last two decades to alleviate the hell that remains the frozen septic tank of Attawapiskat.

No, to Bob Rae, now interim leader of the Liberal party that failed Attawapiskat so miserably, it is all Stephen Harper's fault.

It was one quote in particular from Rae over the weekend, however, that left us cold.

"We can't go on like this for the next decade or the next 20 years without some real improvements," he said about Attawapiskat.

Why not? He let it go 20 years ago. The Chretien Liberals let it go for 20 years.

If Rae wants to play the blame game, he can start with himself, and then move up the line.

Just don't feign ignorance or innocence.
http://www.winnipegsun.com/2011/12/19/r ... of-neglect

[The Islander]

[styky]

There are actually some really great comments from people that took the time to read the letter.

Attawapiskat chief demands funding, denies accusation
'Tell me where the trust is,' Theresa Spence asks in angry letter to aboriginal affairs minister..................http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2 ... riday.html

[styky]

'Communication issues' hampering aide for Attawapiskat reserve: Tory MP


By Thandi Fletcher, Postmedia News January 7, 2012 8:07 PM

OTTAWA — A Conservative MP says there is a serious communication gap between the federal government and the chief of the troubled Attawapiskat, Ont., First Nation enveloped in a dire housing crisis.

“Clearly there seems to be an issue with communication . . . but what I urge them to do is to move past that issue,” said Kyle Seeback, in a CBC Radio interview Saturday. “Right now it’s winter. We should be working together to make sure that people have a warm and safe place to stay.”

Attawapiskat First Nation declared a state of emergency on Oct. 28 over deplorable living conditions in the community of about 2,000.

Families in the northern Ontario community have been living in overcrowded tents and shacks for the past two years.

Seeback, who is a member of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, spoke on the radio talk show The House in response to an open letter written earlier this week by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence.

In the Jan. 5 letter to Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, Spence implied Prime Minister Stephen Harper made false comments in the Commons about how the First Nation leaders used federal funding.

“Your Prime Minister accused our First Nation of mismanaging funds and made remarks in the House that are untrue and have caused irreparable damage,” she wrote in the five-page letter.

Over the past five years, the federal government has provided $90 million of funding to the small troubled community — not all of which was pegged for housing costs.

The government has made claims of financial mismanagement, but has also said that an audit would be required to verify that claim.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/life/Communicatio ... z1iq7MewxC

[wildernessvoice]

The real math behind Attawapiskat’s $90 million
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... 0-million/

No more money for Attawapiskat.

Nothing. Zip. Nada.

It is simple.
Give them back there land and control of it.
Close down the blood suckers at Indian Affairs.

Attawapiskat new source of money?
They can go 30 miles through the brush, knock on DeBeers door and ask for a bag of diamonds that is being plucked out of their land.

or...... keep letting the taxpayer foot the bill and let the bankers that own DeBeers keep flying the diamonds over to their vaults in Europe/
.

Too damn simplistic.

Imagine, 140 years and land claims never settled.

On another note, my father served in Europe during WW2. God in heaven he liked those "Injun" soldiers.
He had incredible respect for the natives when he come home in 1946.
....and as he would tell you he can home but a lot of his fellow natives didn't.

Bottom line? Let them go free and they will prosper!

[styky]

Practice auditing theory

By: Editorial 1 Jan 7

Posted: 01/9/2012 1:00 AM |
Huge sums of cash that flow through the Aboriginal Affairs Department and into the hands of First Nations bands are tracked by volumes of paperwork to ensure projects meet criteria and that bands can and do pull off the promised work. That's the theory. A recent audit of infrastructure spending on reserves shows that departmental monitoring and assessment of the $1 billion in annual spending fall short.

Most major capital projects are managed well enough, the audit notes. But the many millions spent on smaller projects, and on operating and maintenance programs, are not well tracked. "We found that there is no assurance that First Nations are spending O&M funding for the purposes intended."

While that does not mean that the money wasn't appropriately spent, the audit said that regional office officials often accepted project completion reports compiled by the bands themselves, rather than by independent parties.

More disturbing was the finding that, prior to a special national assessment, no inspections of reserve water and waste treatment plants had been done for a year or more. That national report last year found a disturbing 39 per cent of First Nation water facilities were at high risk of being unsafe.

And the audit could not determine whether a program to train First Nations people to monitor water and waste systems is working, because of insufficient information.

Many of these problems were identified in a 2008 audit. Tightening up on assessment and reporting mechanisms was underway, but, ironically, its implementation was derailed when the Harper government introduced its stimulus program in 2009, triggering a spending spree across Canada.

The $500 million in stimulus spending on reserves was also not well monitored, a separate audit found. The audit also noted Ottawa used the stimulus funding to launch on-reserve prevention programs for child-protection services in two provinces. That transgressed the stimulus program's criteria, but it made the cash for a critical program quickly available.

First Nations complain they buckle under the weight of reports they are asked to submit to funding programs, but the audit indicates Aboriginal Affairs seems to have a similar problem. A better assessment would report whether the funds granted actually produced results expected. Then taxpayers, too, could decide whether the paperwork is worth it or whether much of it is merely suffocating bureaucratic meddling.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 9, 2012 A10

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinio ... 25833.html