Duncan’s double-standards as Indian Affairs Minister continue
Here’s my quote of the day, to be filed under ‘I’ for irony:
“It is easier in First Nations politics to be aggressively contrary to something than it is to be supportive. That is an observation that I will make and stand behind.”
— Indian and Northern Affairs Minister John Duncan, during a Senate committee hearing on Bill S-11, the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act *
And Minister Duncan would know all about such ease first-hand. As I noted last September and November, prior to his current stint as a rookie Cabinet member in The Harper Government,™ Duncan made it his stock-in-trade to be an aggressive contrarian as a member of the opposition, something you can repeatedly glean from the record, such as this gem:
‘Mr. Speaker, the Department of Indian Affairs has been repeatedly criticized for its lack of accountability. To this department and the minister, the Canadian taxpayer is nothing more than an afterthought.’
That said, choice quotes such as these flew off Duncan’s indecorous lips as a member of a party that wasn’t in power: in that role, it was precisely his job to be, well, oppositional.
Still, for the man to now try and make himself out to be some high-above-the-fray statesman? Puh-lease. He’s been knee-deep in the muck-slinging with the rest of us.
* Thanks to APTN National News for the quote.
Like a lot of racial characterizations, this view of “First Nations politics” could just as easily be said about any politics. Why claim that being “aggressively oppositional” is unique to First Nations?
And what do First Nations have to be contrary about, anyway? It’s not like I grew up drinking uranium-tainted water or anything…
because its part of the colonial discourse to reify legitimate claims of injustice as “empty complaints of an irrational minority”….propaganda 101, my friend. also called “crazymaking” in domestic violence theory