Pallister’s battle with Métis a politically risky strategy

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/04/2018 (2768 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Who to believe?

If you listen to the recent assertions of Premier Brian Pallister, he and his government are being extorted into paying tens of millions of dollars in illegitimate “hush money” to the Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF) in a bid ensure it doesn’t try to derail key provincial infrastructure projects.

The MMF, on the other hand, maintains that Pallister is deliberately misrepresenting an agreement that would have seen $67.5 million flow to the MMF over 50 years to acknowledge the historic claim that the Métis people have on crown lands in Manitoba.

The only thing certain right now is that the increasingly bitter war of words between the Pallister government and the MMF is unprecedented in this or any other province, and threatens to impair the provincial government’s relationship with the Métis for years go to come.

The trouble started when Pallister revealed that last July, Manitoba Hydro agreed to pay $67.5-million agreement to the MMF in exchange for a promise it would do nothing to interrupt construction of a new transmission line to Minnesota. Pallister vetoed the deal in late March.

In a commentary published in the Winnipeg Free Press a few days later, Pallister said the agreement “was using millions of ratepayer dollars to buy rights they had no right to buy, from a person who has no right to sell them.”

In one fell swoop, Pallister had called into question not just the legitimacy of the deal with Hydro, but also the MMF itself. In political terms, it was an open declaration of war.

However, what was missing was a definitive answer to a key question: do the Métis have a right to make claims against any resource or land development, public or private? The MMF argument goes something like this:

A series of legal decisions dating back to the early 2000s established that the Métis are indigenous people as defined by the federal legislation. And even though they were not party to formal treaties, and never had a land base, the Métis do have a legal interest in what the federal and provincial governments do with Crown land within traditional territories.

Two legal decisions in particular set the table for the vetoed deal between Hydro and the MMF.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) determined there had been a failure to properly execute an 1870 land-grants agreement that was concluded as part of negotiations to bring Manitoba into Confederation. The SCC found delays in administering the land grants amounted to a “breach of the honour of the crown.”

And then, in 2016, the SCC ruled the Métis should be considered “Indian” for the purposes of interpreting federal law. That meant the Crown had the same duties and obligations to consult, negotiate and settle claims with the Métis that they do with First Nations people and non-status Indians.

Unfortunately, what the legal decisions did not establish was how the Métis should be compensated.

The Pallister government and other sympathetic parties have rejected the whole idea that the Métis in general, and the MMF in particular, are owed any kind of compensation. But that does not erase the fact there is a growing and compelling body of evidence suggesting otherwise.

For example, after the 2016 SCC decision, the federal government and Métis organizations across Canada announced framework agreements to begin “reconciliation negotiations” aimed largely at fulfilling the Crown’s duties as outlined in the 2013 SCC decision.

The federal initiative largely was informed by the fact that for more than a decade, Métis organizations have been negotiating “impact and benefits” agreements with private industries and, in one instance, a provincial crown corporation. These agreements, which acknowledge in broad legal terms Métis interests in resource and land development, have produced hundreds of millions of dollars in cash compensation, equity interests and employment partnerships with various Métis organizations in resource-based developments of all kinds and sizes.

None of that seems to matter much to Manitoba’s premier, who seems quite happy to bloody noses at the MMF. We know this largely because Pallister already is using his verbal sparring match with the MMF to raise money from the PC party faithful.

Pallister repurposed the commentary he submitted to the Free Press in a fundraising email blast to party members asking for donations to help fund the Tories’ 2020 campaign war chest. That’s pretty clear evidence the premier has few regrets for portraying the MMF-Hydro deal as “hush money.”

The real question surrounding Pallister’s actions to date is: why did he not take steps in 2016 to terminate ongoing negotiations between the MMF and Hydro?

The “Turning the Page” agreement (TPA) signed between Hydro and the MMF in 2014, and which produced a $20-million agreement to help the Métis intervene in resource development projects, was already in place. And government officials have known for more than a year a second agreement was in the offing. Inexplicably, Pallister waited until he was facing a revolt by the Hydro board of directors in late March to formally reject the $67.5-million transmission-line deal.

In addition, no formal steps have been taken to terminate the TPA, which can be wound down with 30-days notice from either party.

It seems pretty clear the current Tory government has decided to go in a different direction as far as the MMF and Métis land rights are concerned. However, we have no idea what Pallister actually wants to do. Will he hold out until he is dragged into court by the MMF, an organization with significant experience with litigation? Or does he have some other strategy to mend fences with the Métis? Nobody knows.

Given the agreements being negotiated between Métis organizations and the federal government, and elsewhere in the country with private-sector partners, the Manitoba strategy seems politically risky, desperately behind the times and needlessly combative.

Unless, of course, that’s exactly what the premier wants.

At this point, it seems he is happy to use the size and number of cheques he receives from party members to determine the wisdom of his decision to go to war with the Métis.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca