National Post;

Canada has paid billions upon billions to rectify past wrongs — figures that supersede what we spend on the military, and yet are still not enough.

Here’s a partial list: $23 billion to settle the lawsuit for the government not adequately covering the costs of Indigenous children in care; $1.72 billion to cover the cost of farming equipment that was promised to Saskatchewan First Nations 150 years ago but wasn’t provided; $14.9 billion to resolve special claims since 1973; $1.1 billion to settle a lawsuit by patients of federal Indigenous hospitals; $1 billion to an Alberta First Nation to adjust 19th-century treaty payments to modern dollars and $10 billion to another in Ontario, opening the doors to other nations doing the same.

And there are many more on the way. Some Manitoba First Nations are suing Manitoba Hydro for a share of the energy company’s profits, some Ontario First Nations are seeking $95 billion and the power to halt all development in Treaty 9 land without Indigenous consent. It all adds up to complete economic stagnation.

The Liberal government’s attitude of pulling punches and paying claims out the nose — and appointing judges who are open to the idea of more and more compensation — has swelled this into a problem of scales hard to comprehend. Oh, and when anyone points out the sheer cost of all this, they can expect to be accused of perpetuating the “colonial mindset.”

Be careful there, buddy.

#Pocahontas – come get your boy.

For years, Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault spoke in Parliament and at public events of his great-grandmother as “a full-blooded Cree woman.”

Now, facing scrutiny over shifting statements he made about his connections to Indigenous ancestry and, presented with records suggesting otherwise, Boissonnault’s office acknowledges that this was not true and his adoptive great-grandmother’s family in fact had Metis lineage, and she was not “full-blooded Cree.”

Questions surrounding Boissonnault’s heritage emerged following a National Post report revealing that the business he co-owned called itself fully “Indigenous” and “Aboriginal-owned” as it tried to bid on federal contracts reserved for Indigenous businesses.

The minister has said his former business partner made that bid without his knowledge and did not consent to it.

How DARE you call that Pretendian a fraud!

National Post Exclusive;

“Global Health is a wholly owned Indigenous and LGBTQ Company,” Boissonnault’s former business partner, Stephen Anderson, specified in a June 2020 bid by Global Health Imports Corporation (GHI) for a contract to supply face masks. National Post obtained the bid through an access-to-information request.

Anderson repeated the statement in a follow-up message to Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and called the company “Aboriginal” twice when submitting another bid to supply face shields.

The federal government tells potential suppliers that they can only identify themselves as “Aboriginal” if they are on an official qualified list of enterprises eligible to benefit from procurement programs that favour Indigenous–owned firms. GHI was not on it, a government spokesperson said.

Neither Boissonnault nor Anderson answered National Post’s questions about which First Nations, Métis or Inuit groups they belonged to.