Chris Selley: Earth to Liberals — First Nations are not an anti-development monolith

National Post

08-06-2025

Sean Fraser — the federal Liberals' supposed master communicator who did a bad job as immigration minister, and then a bad job as housing minister, and then said he wasn't running again to spend time with his family, and then opportunistically changed his mind and was rewarded with the justice and attorney general portfolio — laid his first dog's egg of the Mark Carney era this week.
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Fraser said Indigenous groups don't have a 'complete veto' over natural-resource projects or any other government decisions — but that wasn't the turd in question, because it was absolutely true.
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The turd came later, apparently after getting his ears boxed by Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse: Fraser disavowed his entirely truthful statement.
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'I think even accepting the premise of the question that was put to me (about a 'veto') really made people feel like there may be an attempt by the government to work unilaterally, not in partnership (with First Nations),' Fraser told reporters in a public apology.
'Despite innocent intentions, I think my comments actually caused hurt and potentially eroded a very precarious trust that has been built up over many years to respect the rights of Indigenous people in this country,' he said.
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Coming up on 500 years since Jacques Cartier first set foot here and named it Canada, and 150-plus years after the Crown concluded the first treaties with First Nations, and with President Donald Trump suddenly bringing our crippling dependence on the United States into very sharp focus, if we can't even speak the plain truth to each other in plain language, we might be in even bigger trouble than we realized.
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But I think we can speak the plain truth to each other in plain language, so long as we rightly marginalize fringe and unreasonable voices. While apologizing for speaking the truth, Fraser also accurately pointed to 'a frankly dangerous trope that paints a false picture of Indigenous peoples as being anti-development.'
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Media mostly portrayed the Ktunaxa Nation case, which wound up at the Supreme Court in 2017, as a matter of Indigenous people opposing the proposed Jumbo ski resort in eastern British Columbia on religious grounds: They felt the development would chase a spirit bear from their traditional lands. Receiving much less attention was the fact that the equally interested local Shuswap Nation supported the project, believing their concerns had been properly addressed and being eager to reap the financial benefits.