Harper denounces Mulroney
'When he says I'm stupid, he's calling our people stupid'
Wed Sep 21 2005
By Paul Egan
FORMER Manitoba MLA Elijah Harper gave his first public response yesterday after being accused of "stupidity" by former prime minister Brian Mulroney, saying he's proud of his stand against the Meech Lake accord and that Mulroney's comments insult all aboriginal people.
"I was listening to the people," Harper told the Free Press. "When he says I'm stupid, he's calling our people stupid.
"We're not stupid. We're the First Nations people. We're the very people who welcomed his ancestors to this country and he didn't want to recognize us in the Constitution."
In 1990, Harper played a key role in the death of the Meech Lake constitutional accord when he blocked the unanimous consent required to debate the pact in the Manitoba legislature. His quiet stand in the face of virulent opposition, holding an eagle's feather, made him a national figure.
Peter C. Newman's new book, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: The Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister, quotes Mulroney as blaming Harper's "stupidity" for the failure of the Meech Lake accord.
"Aboriginals are not to blame for Meech's failure, despite Elijah Harper's stupidity," Mulroney is quoted as saying in the book, which is based on 12 years of tape-recorded conversations between Mulroney and Newman.
"He turned down a sweetheart deal."
Harper mentioned Mulroney's published comments in a speech he gave yesterday at a conference in Winnipeg on increasing aboriginal voter turnout. He expanded on his comments in an interview following the speech.
Harper said he believes Mulroney made his comments when emotions about Meech Lake were still highly charged and he likely regrets them today or at least regrets the comments being made public.
However, Harper said Mulroney has made no attempt to apologize to him and he does not expect Mulroney will do so.
"He wanted to be the prime minister to be known as the one who united Canada," Harper said of the former Conservative prime minister. Meech Lake "was almost a desperate move to be better than (former Liberal prime minister Pierre) Trudeau and to be known as the man who brought Canada together."
Harper said he does not regret his opposition to Meech Lake or worry about Mulroney's criticism.
"Many people have come and said to me, 'Thank you for the stand you took' -- not just aboriginal people but many ordinary Canadians," Harper said.
Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, cited Harper as an example of the influence aboriginals can exert on national affairs when he spoke yesterday at the two-day conference organized by the Assembly of First Nations and Elections Canada.
"If we hadn't had Elijah Harper in the Manitoba legislature and if we hadn't had Elijah Harper's determination... we would have had this imposed on us," Fontaine said of the Meech Lake accord.
The conference is intended to come up with strategies on how to get more aboriginal people to vote in federal elections.
Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Canada's chief electoral officer, told the conference at the Fairmont hotel that aboriginal Canadians are about 20 to 25 per cent less likely to vote than Canadian voters as a whole.
Harper, who in addition to more than 11 years with the NDP in the Manitoba legislature served as a Liberal MP for the northern Manitoba riding of Churchill, discussed in his speech some of the obstacles to aboriginal voting and to getting aboriginal members elected to provincial legislatures and Parliament.
He noted that since aboriginals did not have the right to vote until 1960, they do not have the family history of electoral participation that most Canadians do. He described attending caucus meetings at which his colleagues described stories about their parents and grandparents being involved in elections.
"I never heard my dad or my grandfather or anyone talk about voting, because they weren't allowed to vote," Harper said.
Also, many aboriginals who support self-government see federal elections as something foreign that they should not participate in, he said.
"They don't associate that institution Parliament as something they could work with; they see it as an institution that has taken away their rights."
Poverty is also an issue, Harper said. Although voting in a federal election is free, political party candidates must be nominated and that involves selling party memberships to voters. Even the concept of one person, one vote is somewhat foreign to aboriginal culture, where leaders were historically chosen through consensus, he said. Similarly, the criticism of political opponents that is expected of candidates is foreign to his culture, he said.
"Our elders teach us to respect everybody."
paul.egan@freepress.mb.ca
Chretien and Mulruney should be bum buddies in a cell as far as I'm concerned.
