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First Nations University of Canada, Saskatoon Campus First Nations Participation in Federal Elections April 1, 2005 Chief Electoral Officer's speech Good morning, everyone. May I first thank Elder Walter Linklater, for his invocation prayer this morning, and my good friend, Phil Fontaine, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. I also wish to thank Chief Bird for his hospitality. I am speaking to you today in Treaty Six territory and since my arrival in Saskatoon, the hospitality has been absolutely first class. I am also very appreciative to Dr. Wheeler, both for the opportunity to meet with her earlier this week and for the opportunity to be here. As well, a thank you to Prof. McNab. I wish to thank everyone in that respect. I am here to address the issue of Aboriginal people's participation in federal elections. My mandate as Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) is to run federal elections as an Officer of Parliament. This is done so very impartially, without favouritism to any party. Once appointed, the CEO holds the position until 65 years of age. The CEO has the same authority as a judge of the Supreme Court, which ensures the impartiality and the independence to fulfill the mandate. While preparing myself for this presentation, I was reminded of something I learned on the international scene. One gets the impression that when we participate on the international scene we are only giving. Well, this is not quite the case. We also receive. As one of the university's professors was saying to me earlier today, he is not only a professor, he is also a student. And it is the same thing when one goes on the international scene. I recall a saying that one of my colleagues from Bangladesh taught me many years ago: "The people you leave behind slow you down, and the people you cast aside drag you down." And that to me was a clear indication at the time of the importance of obtaining the public's participation in the electoral process. It also prompted me to ask myself some questions: Where are the people who voluntarily opt out of the electoral system in our democracy? Have they been left behind? Are they leaving themselves behind? Does it matter? Is it the chicken? Is it the egg? I was also reminded of an excellent article written by Kiera Ladner, published in the November 2003 edition of Electoral Insight, dealing with Aboriginal people's participation in elections. By the way, Electoral Insight is an Elections Canada publication and I will be leaving this copy behind, but you can obtain one at any time through Elections Canada's Web site at www.elections.ca. You can also visit the Web site to find a section dealing specifically with Aboriginal electors' participation, including the products and programs that my Office puts together to reach out to the Aboriginal community. In her article, Prof. Ladner discusses the phenomenon of alienation to explain the non-participation of Aboriginal Canadians in the past. In essence, what we will call mainstream society was leaving people behind, and therefore slowing down all of society. She also discusses the concept of "nations within." She proposes that Aboriginal people in Canada have formed nations with distinct cultures, traditions and visions, and must decide how to structure the relationship between their nations and Canada and the manner in which each nation should participate in the affairs of the other. She suggests Aboriginal peoples within Canada would in effect be putting aside the notion of a "nation within" if they participated in a federal election. I do not have the answer to that question and I am not here to provide one. I am here really to raise the issue and question whether it is better to be in or to be out of the federal electoral process. I suspect a lot of groups in Canada could be asking themselves that question. I think that they ask the question with respect to the past, which can be instructive to a certain extent, but I do not think that the whole answer lies there. I think the question is more pertinent for the present and certainly more for the future. It may be instructive to look at the past to see some results. I have brought along some statistics because we always like to quote statistics to ease our way into a topic. Since 1867 – and when I read these statistics which my staff kindly provided to me, I made some of my own calculations – there have been 4 Inuit members of Parliament, 11 Métis and 6 First Nations, for a total of approximately 21 MPs of Aboriginal ancestry. My Office asked the question to people after the last election, "Did you vote? Did you not vote?" I will tell you, the fact is that 60.9 percent of Canadians voted at the 2004 federal election. That is a fact. Through our interviews, 83 percent said they voted. Among the general population, there is a feeling that when asked whether one voted, the conscience takes over and 22 percent are actually not telling the truth. They are saying that they wish they had, in fact, voted. We also isolated the Aboriginal group in those statistics and, among the Aboriginal population, 63 percent said they voted. I took that and subtracted 22 percent, because I happen to think that the level of honesty is about the same in all the population groups in the world. And our statistics indicate that too, which means that effectively 40 percent of Aboriginal electors showed up at the polls. Fifty-two percent of the Aboriginal people living on reserve said they voted; sixty-seven percent of Aboriginal people living off reserve said they voted. It is important to note that because it denotes a difference between the two. I invite you to subtract that 22 percent from both counts. We also know that first-time voters in Canada voted at a rate of 37 percent, which is still lower than the 40 percent. Unfortunately, I do not know the rate of Aboriginal youth. We were not able to subdivide our data to that fine a degree. I wanted to raise these points with you this morning to discuss whether it is desirable for Aboriginal people to participate in the electoral process. Is it something inherently good or something that one should shun? This also applies to becoming candidates, because there are two elements to an election. And, by the way, these are constitutional rights, the right to be a candidate and the right to vote. A restriction on candidates, which is slightly more severe than for electors, is that one must be free to circulate. In other words, in order to be a candidate, one must not be incarcerated. But one can be incarcerated and have the right to vote, as it has been declared a constitutional right for every person in the land. Both of these are very important constitutional rights. I thought I would raise that question in order to feed our thought processes. Is it desirable? And hopefully if the answer is yes, this will be an opportunity to discuss suggestions on how it is to be achieved. I mentioned earlier about our Web site, but I also brought along today examples that demonstrate the many tools we have developed over the years in consultation with Aboriginal Canadians. One of them that stands out in my mind concerns the 1992 referendum. I often wondered, how many Aboriginal Canadians knew at the time that the referendum question had been translated and made available in written and audio-cassette formats at every polling station in the land in 37 Aboriginal languages? Elections Canada mounted one of the most extensive communications programs ever undertaken by a parliamentary agency to communicate in a total of 45 Aboriginal languages. We brought along some samples. But that is only one example. We have also developed other tools to reach out to Aboriginal people. We certainly need to do more. We need to do better. In order to do more and to do better, we need to understand from Aboriginal people how to go about this to make it meaningful. But first I think that we need to answer the basic question whether there is value in participation in the electoral process for Aboriginal people. Thank you.
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