[A-List] A taste of Tom Flanagan

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tom  Flanagan is a good friend of Stephen Harper and a senior adviser in
the Conservative Party of Canada...

Excerpts from Tom Flanagan's Book First  Nations, Second Thoughts (June
2000)

  "European Civilization was several  thousand years more advanced than
the aboriginal cultures of North America, both in technology and social
organization."

"Sovereignty is an attribute of statehood, and aboriginal peoples in
Canada had not arrived at the state level of political organization
prior to contact with Europeans."

"Owing to this tremendous gap in civilization, the European colonization
of North America was inevitable and, if we accept the philosophical
analysis of John Locke and Emer de Vattel, justifiable."

"Current public policy is flooding reserves with money, enticing people
back, enticing people to stay and weakening their resolve to participate
in Canadian society."

"Aboriginal government is fraught with  difficulties stemming from small
size, an overly ambitious agenda, and dependence on transfer payments."

"In practice, aboriginal government produces wasteful, destructive,
familistic factionalism."

"Perhaps the damage to Canada would be tolerable if it meant that
aboriginal peoples would escape from the social pathologies in which
they are mired to become prosperous, self-supporting citizens"

"Prosperity and self-sufficiency in the modern economy require a
willingness to integrate into the economy, which means, among other
things, a willingness to move to where jobs and investment opportunities
exist."

"Contemporary judicial attempts to redefine aboriginal rights are
producing little but  uncertainty. Recent Supreme Court of Canada
decisions define aboriginal title in a way that will make its use
impossible in a modern economy."

"The treaties mean what they say. Their reinterpretation has the
potential to be both expensive and mischievous for the economies of all
provinces in which treaties have been signed."