Canada is a sovereign country, and every person whose parents were Canadian citizens at the time of their birth are Canadians.
So are those people who have entered Canada over the years and have since applied for and become citizens.
If the ‘world court’ will accept that powers vested in the federal and provincial governments as outlined in the Constitution Act of Canada has any merit, we as Canadians are obliged to recognize that and conduct ourselves accordingly. No exceptions.
We can argue till the end of the day about status. The reality is that we all came from somewhere else at some point in time, Indians and Eskimos included.
We could then argue that we are all indigenous, aboriginals, and/or natives. More importantly, we are all Canadians.
We all have this in common: none of us had any choice regarding whether or not we wanted to come to this earth in the first place, let alone where we arbitrarily would arrive.
Regardless of where we came from and when, while we contemplate the issues related to lands and claims, it’s important to keep in mind that while we all have some rights, we also have responsibilities.
Regardless of who we are and where we came from, we are all responsible for our own well-being and for those we bring into this world. Again — no exceptions.
The struggle for land and political power between the federal and provincial governments and the Natives has only started, and the time is long overdue to settle these issues.
We can argue the French and the British never had any rights to colonize Canada in the first place.
We can further argue that our current federal government has no right to continue to colonize Canada, while at the same time proposing to settle issues of land and other claims.
To add to the confusion, our provincial government is now recognizing groups of Natives as ‘nations’, and arbitrarily negotiating huge land and monetary settlements government-to-government.
It’s time for our prime minister to come out of the bathroom.
Andy Thomsen
Summerland