The progression started after Phyllis Sutherland, a band member from the Peguis First Nation, sent me an envelope with her chief and council’s pay information as well as some of her concerns with the situation.

The pay numbers were off the charts – the chief and council had pay packages that were either more than the Prime Minster of Canada, or not far off. Needless to say, when we released the information to the media the story took on national attention.

Not before long, whistleblowers from reserves across the country began contacting me with leaked documents from their communities – in other cases they wanted help finding out what was happening locally. However, I received a lot of feedback from aboriginal and non-aboriginal people living off reserve too.

One thing that became abundantly clear to me early on was that everyone had an opinion on aboriginal policy in Canada.

I’ve often felt that if we could get 100 random Canadians in a room and discussed what “needed to be done” to address the deplorable conditions on many reserves, we would probably receive 100 different answers.

The bottom line is it’s a complex issue and can be quite divisive.

This past week, after releasing five ideas the CTF put forward on what we thought the government should explore, our offices received a ton of feedback – from the general public, people that have signed up as our supporters, the media and even some of the grassroots band members I’ve worked with over the years like Phyllis.

Some loved all the ideas, some hated them, others said “I like ideas 3 & 4, but not the others” or “1, 2 and 5 are great but the others don’t make sense.” The point is, everyone had an opinion on this important topic and they wanted to share it – that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

“Buried” in the first paragraph of our news release was a call for the federal government to consider the five ideas we put forward and to discuss them with Canadians – aboriginal and non-aboriginal – before moving forward (noted in the final paragraph as well.) However, we also stressed the need to discuss the policies with grassroots aboriginal people as simply meeting with the chiefs doesn’t always provide the same viewpoint.

When I spoke with Phyllis and Michael Benedict from the Odanak First Nation (another accountability advocate I’ve been working with) they also expressed some concerns with some of the policies we put forward.

My response was “great, tell your MP what you like and dislike.”

After all, when we released the ideas we knew some had widespread support (eg. greater accountability) while others were a bit more provocative (eg. helping people transition from high unemployment, economically bleak remote communities to places where there are more jobs and better opportunities.)

The point of the process was to try and get a dialogue going in this country about constructive ideas – not the same old “throw more money at the problem” approach.

Personally, I think the Idle No More movement has been good at getting people focused on the relationship between the federal government and aboriginal communities, however I think it has failed when it comes to providing new, constructive ideas.

The movement took an “anti-Harper” tone early on too, so I feel that also hurt the discussion. Why would the movement want to alienate 30-40% of the voting public that supports the Prime Minister? Especially as one of the things the movement protested was something the Harper government did in response to requests fromsome aboriginal communities in B.C. – greater control over their land.

We need a big discussion in this country that focuses on poverty on aboriginal reserves and the merit of different ideas rather than who is proposing them.

So with that being said, if you haven’t taken a look at the five proposals, you can read them here. Take a few minutes to digest each one and then let your Member of Parliament know what you think by contact them - here.

Whatever you do, don’t ignore the problem. Our country has done that for too long.