Should an Independent Alberta Revoke Indigenous Special Status？ w⧸ Bruce Pardy
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
157.5933
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the long-standing question of whether or not Indigenous people should be given the same rights as non-Indigenous people in Canada as their non-indigenous brothers and sisters. Is this a non-starter?
Transcript
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you had recently um been in a debate with jeff rath and and we know jeff and you know we we
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appreciate his uh his uh gumption uh for alberta independence and you know he's he's doing some
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good things but when watching that debate something became very clear in that he didn't
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really approach your argument as charitably as as i would have liked he repeated a line several
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times if you recall where he said that essentially he tried to boil down your argument into you
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wanting to remove the rights of 300 000 albertans obviously the the indigenous population in
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alberta obviously i don't think you mean that because i don't think you were given the opportunity
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to really expand on that can you sort of explain jeff's main main problem with this with this point
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was that he believed it to be a non-starter as far as alberta independence goes so do you think it's
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a non-starter or do you think that there's a way around this right okay so those are two very
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different questions so let me do the first one first yeah thanks right so so am i trying to
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remove the rights of 300 000 people the answer is it depends what you mean if you mean would i like to
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see removing the special status of 300 000 people then the answer is yes but that doesn't mean removing
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the rights of those people that the point is that the the rights held by those people have got to be
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the same as for everybody else we're not taking those rights away everybody must be treated the same way
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in the law and to that end you're equalizing you're equalizing so just a clarification at the moment
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indigenous people who belong to uh bands who have reserves do not own plots on reserves they do not
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own they do not have title to that land it's a group right it's a group possession so what i've
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suggested is you take those reserve lands and you you make them into lots and you give title to those
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lots to individual indigenous people so that they can do with that land what everybody else can do
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with their land which is to improve it or sell it or lease it or bequeath it mortgage it whatever they
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want because that's what everybody else gets to do at the moment in individual indigenous people are
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subject to the tyranny of the group and subject to the tyranny of the group's leaders you're you're you're
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caught you're stuck within the concept of the group right you cannot make decisions for yourself
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now you can leave the reserve and go and live in the city and do what everybody else can do the fact
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of the matter is that off reserve individual indigenous people have the same rights as everybody
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else in canada and that's the way it ought to be but it ought to be that way everywhere so that that's
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my answer to that 300 000 uh people question it's it's not quite the way it was framed but there is
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some truth to it in the sense that it is it is trying to uh make put everybody on the same level
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and and have them being treated the same way there's a there's a saying i think comes from thomas soul
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he said when you're used to special treatment equal treatment seems like discrimination
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and what i'm suggesting is to get rid of the discrimination to get rid of the practice of
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seeing people in different ways in other words as far as the law is concerned there should be no such
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thing as different peoples the law should simply apply to people
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now to your second question about you know how practical this is in a political sense
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well you know you guys might know better than me because i'm not on the ground in alberta
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now on the other hand i've been in contact with a lot of albertans people have communicated with me
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in various ways and an awful lot of people have said yes we agree with the aboriginal point this has got
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to finish now this is a bad system it was bad system from the beginning and look at the results the
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results are terrible they do they do not help the people that pretending to help so why would you
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want to retain it uh so both in principle and in effect where we have it is a terrible idea
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and so if we stick to the idea that alberta wants to be a free country then to me it's a