May 26, 2008 04:30 AM
Jim Coyle
When Premier Dalton McGuinty was explaining why Legislature rules
needed changing, he liked to say that codes written in the time of gas
lamps were hardly suited to a BlackBerry age.
It didn't take him long to update them to his tastes.
Native leaders, wondering why a Mining Act dating to the days when
prospectors staked claims with picks and shovels should still apply in
an age of multinationals and high-tech machinery, wish McGuinty would
react with half the alacrity to their concerns.
Today, natives begin a four-day encampment on the grounds at Queen's
Park, hoping to focus attention on their demands for new mining
legislation and press for the release of aboriginal leaders jailed for
contempt for trying to stop drilling on their lands.
In February, Ardoch Algonquin spokesperson Robert Lovelace, who turned
60 in jail, was sentenced in Kingston to six months for peacefully
protesting uranium mining on the traditional Ardoch homeland.
In March, six leaders of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation
were sentenced to six months in a similar case in which they were
protesting the drilling for platinum on their traditional boreal forest
lands 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. They were released on their
own recognizance last week, but just for five days pending their next
court appearance on Wednesday. They could land back in jail after that.
Jail terms and heavy fines for peaceful protest have "further eroded
respect for both the legal system and the government of Ontario in the
eyes of First Nations people in this province," says a spokesperson.
Native leaders want an end to the free-entry system mandated by the
Mining Act, under which the mining industry has access to lands in its
search for minerals regardless of who owns surface rights.
The Mining Act, passed in 1873, fails to recognize aboriginal and
treaty rights, native groups say, and violates the established
constitutional right of indigenous peoples to consultation prior to all
government decisions that might affect their interests.
The current system in Ontario means mining supersedes all other land
uses, says Anna Baggio of the Wildlands League. "It's time for the
province to halt exploration and staking and comprehensively reform its
mining laws."
Student associations, labour organizations, faith groups,
environmentalists and other supporters of the native protest are to be
welcomed to the Legislature lawns this afternoon by masters of ceremony
Thomas King, the celebrated author, and Cathy Jones, from CBC's This
Hour Has 22 Minutes.
If they don't get the premier's attention, perhaps a letter he received
last week will.
It was sent by Robert Kennedy Jr., scion of another famously clannish
Irish-Catholic liberal political family with which the McGuinty tribe
is occasionally compared.
Kennedy, senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council in
the U.S., told the premier it was "appalling that this could happen to
aboriginal leaders in Ontario who are standing up for their people and
their traditional lands in the face of antiquated and unjust mining
laws."
While the laws are reformed, drilling should be stopped and "these
honourable men and women" released, Kennedy said.
To such earlier requests, McGuinty has said his government "inherited
an imperfect system," that work on legislative reform is under way and
– jumping a claim staked by the TTC – that native leaders shouldn't
"doubt for one instant our determination to find a better way."
To which NDP Leader Howard Hampton has replied, in near daily questions
on the issue, "When are we going to hear the end of talk and see some
action from the McGuinty government?"
Perhaps a Kennedy's call to action will help light a fire under the
premier.
At this point, as far as today's demonstrators are concerned, even a
gas lamp would do.
Jim Coyle's provincial affairs column will resume during the first week
of June.
