AANDC – WAYNE K. SPEAR

The First Nations Financial Transparency Act and Business as Usual in Ottawa

August 5, 2014January 3, 2015 by Wayne K. Spear, posted in Current Events, First Nations, Politics

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THE RON GIESBRECHT story is an everyone-saw-it-coming affair, and that’s among the reasons why the First Nations Financial Transparency Act has engendered both its champions and detractors. “This is the greatest piece of legislation passed by our parliament, I believe, in a long time,” Derek Fildebrandt (of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation) has been reported as saying. You can imagine him salivating these recent and delicious months, in anticipation of the handful of uncloseted Chiefs à la Giesbrecht, just as you can imagine the few rueful and disgraced Chiefs lamenting a lapsed age of innocence.

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Following the Money: Why Are the Feds Spying on Cindy Blackstock?

November 19, 2011January 6, 2015 by Wayne K. Spear, posted in First Nations

A PASSIVE listener of CBC radio as I am (it is on when my partner is home, and off when she isn’t), I first heard of the Government’s surveillance of native youth advocate Cindy Blackstock via the program The Current.

Indian Affairs Gets a Gender Reassignment

June 10, 2011January 7, 2015 by Wayne K. Spear, posted in Canada, First Nations

I now have unchallengeable objective proof that I’ve lived too long in Ottawa, and it’s this: I caught myself today wondering how the bureaucrats are going to say the new acronym AANDC, the stand-in for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. For over a century, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (known also as the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs) was Diane or Diand, or even at times Diana. Now I imagine it will be Andy or Andick, both of which lead me unavoidably to the conclusion that gender reassignment has taken place and The Man now really is that.

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