By Signing the Manitoba Red River Metis “Treaty” Canada Continues to Fragment and Weaken Itself from Within

Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982:

35. (1) The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.

Definition of “aboriginal peoples of Canada”

(2) In this Act, “aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.

Land claims agreements

(3) For greater certainty, in subsection (1) “treaty rights” includes rights that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired.

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On November 30th, 2024, the Red River Metis and the Government of Canada signed the Red River Metis Treaty. The Treaty does not become effective unless and until Canada ratifies it by legislation.

This “treaty”, if ratified, will cause terrible harm to Canada and to all Canadians, especially “Metis” Canadians.

It will further weaken, fragment and balkanize Canada and the sovereignty of our federal government on the basis of race.

It will create a debilitating dependency mindset on the part of aboriginal “Metis” Canadians, who, with this Treaty, will be maximally positioned to join already dependency- addicted Indian and Inuit Canadians in claiming government benefits based solely on the accident of an aboriginal birth forming part of their genealogical history.

Only aboriginal Metis elites (and their opportunistic, non-aboriginal, technocratic service providers – lawyers, accountants, consultants etc.) involved in this “treaty” will benefit, mainly by getting well paid jobs relating to the implementation of it, which to the delight of these service providers, will be an uncertain, lengthy and lucrative process.

A treaty is somewhat like a contract, in which the identity of each contracting party is specifically set out.

The Treaty heading denotes the Red River Metis as the main “contractor” with Canada.

But in the Preamble of the Treaty text, it states that “the Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF) was established in order to represent and act on behalf of the Red River Métis.” 

It further states that “Canada required the MMF to incorporate Manitoba Metis Federation Inc. (MMF Inc.) in order to facilitate funding arrangements and the establishment of intergovernmental relationships.”

And strangely, the signatory at the bottom of the Treaty text is MMF, not Red River Metis.

One reasonably concludes that Canada rightly considered that “Red River Metis” is just a name- a name lacking legal personhood. As such, it lacks legal status and institutional existence and capacity. A mere name can’t be a legal party to or a signer of a treaty or any other type of contract.

 Canada rightly considered that the existing MMF, which has corporate status, and which has been in existence since the late 1960’s, had to be included in the Treaty. It also considered that a new legal entity, MMFC Inc, had to be created and included in it as well in order to have a properly- constituted, clean (meaning with no skeletons in its closet, as the MMF has),  legal “point person” with whom Canada can deal, and in order to have a rational money flow when the Treaty is implemented, (money from Canadian taxpayers being, after all,  what the Treaty is all about).

The named parties of the Metis side of the Treaty should more properly be “Manitoba Metis Federation and Manitoba Metis Federation Inc., jointly and severally carrying on their activities under the name and style of “Red River Metis”.

(All these entities will be hereinafter collectively referred to as the “Red River Metis”.)

These unusual legalities, never seen in a real treaty, are just one of the many indicia demonstrating what a stupid, artificial, unnecessary, make-work travesty against Canada this so-called “treaty” really is.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a treaty as:

 “An agreement between two or more states relating to peace, truce, alliance, commerce, or other international relations, formally signed by plenipotentiaries approved by the government of each state.”

The Red River Metis do not constitute a state. They are solely a creation of modern, fantasy-based, woke politics. And in no way can Dave Chartrand, its seeming President for Life, who signed the Treaty for the MMF, be regarded, except perhaps in his own mind, as a plenipotentiary of a state.

The Red River Metis do not constitute a “nation”, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as follows:

” An aggregate of persons so closely associated with each other by common descent, language or history as to form a distinct race or people, usually organized as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory. In early examples the racial idea is usually stronger than the political; in recent use the notion of political unity and independence is more prominent.”

The Red River Metis are not a “distinct race or people”. They are a mainly a collection of modern, urban-dwelling, disparate, totally indistinct and assimilated average Canadians who, because of the reckless, incompetent decision on the part of the framers of the 1982 Constitution Act to improperly include “Metis” in the definition of “aboriginal peoples” in section 35, and because of the Supreme Court Daniels decision that disgracefully gave constitutional relevance to so-called “Indian blood”, have a technical claim to a share of the suite of race-based benefits being afforded to “aboriginal peoples” by our political and judicial elites.

The Metis, products of mixed-race unions, were/are a post-contact product of colonialist mercantilism, which they, Indian and Inuit peoples all enthusiastically participated in.

Amongst many other historically inaccurate and legally damaging admissions against Canada’s interest made by Canada in the Preamble to the Treaty, Canada states as a purported historical fact, wrongly implying that there’s some shame in it, that Canada’s historical relationship with the Metis has been “steeped in colonialism”.

No. not “steeped”.

The Metis are a direct product of colonialism.  The Metis owe their existence to colonialism. They have never had a distinct aboriginal culture, only a colonialist, capitalist/mercantile culture with some Europe-supplied beads, thread and beadwork thrown in.

Consistent with their capitalist/mercantile origins Metis Canadians traditionally only got money through hard work, just like most Canadians.

Now, by being included in section 35, and with this Treaty, their money pursuits will be focussed not on real work and paying taxes, but on becoming passive recipients of tax-free government funding – funding for essentially sitting around, conjuring up fake “Metis cultural” projects and programs, and then getting more funding to carry them out.  

With this treaty, future day to day Metis reality will be very much about who will get to control and play with this funding.

All this is a factually, intellectually, morally and emotionally empty core reality- an amoral, wasteful core reality devoid of public good or public purpose, which will cause, as is the case with Indian reserves, debilitating social outcomes for individual Metis Canadians.

The Red River Metis have no land base, the prime requisite for state or nation status. The only “definite territory” they occupy is their address for service set out in the Treaty: their office space at 150 Henry Avenue, Winnipeg.

Historian Robert Kaplan writes that legitimate states or nations are more than communities created by mere politics. Rather, they are natural, practical communities…entities of geographic and historical association. They have hierarchical, coherent governing structures and rules-based orders developed organically over centuries. They are capable of providing and maintaining law and order. They are supported by independent institutions and organized bureaucratic systems interacting with each other on an impersonal, secular basis. They have a functioning economy and a large, educated population to maintain it.

 The Red River Metis -a government-created Potemkin nation – a legal fiction created by the computer keystrokes of irresponsible modern politicians, Metis lobbyists, bureaucrats and overly activist judges – like most other aboriginal “nations”, possess none of these vital prerequisites of state or nation status.

Their numbers are pathetically small. Only 4000 “citizens” out of a possible population of about 45000  voted to approve this “treaty”. Reflecting the realities of modern Canadian life, many of these Red River Metis “citizens” live in the Metropolitan Winnipeg area as ordinary citizens of Canada. Now, if this “treaty” is ratified, they will presumably be living under the confusing, conflicts-ridden and country-destabilizing aegis of some kind of de facto, dual citizenship regime.

In addition, as evidenced by MMF maps showing the extent of their imagined Red River Metis nation imperium, many Red River Metis “citizens” live in other Manitoba towns and cities located in areas covered by Canada-Indian Treaties 1, 2, 3 and 10. This has quickly and inevitably given rise to conflict and competition between them and Manitoba Indian numbered-treaty aboriginals over access to that aforementioned sweet suite of race-based benefits.

Within days of the signing of the Treaty two Manitoba Indian bands started a lawsuit claiming that it is invalid. More will likely do the same. This same inter-aboriginal, feeding trough warfare, for the same basic reason – competition over a finite amount of  trough feed – has resulted in similar litigation in Ontario.

Section 35 has created a confusing melee of competing aboriginal rights claims that will keep busy and prosperous for generations to come legions of Canadian taxpayer-funded lawyers, who will be fighting this trough warfare on behalf of these competing aboriginal groups.

A review of only a few of the provisions of the Treaty illustrates its intellectual bankruptcy and foreshadows the devastating financial costs that Canadian taxpayers will have to pay to finance this Potemkin charade when implementation of it gets underway.

The Red River Metis give nothing to Canada in this Treaty. They have no land, so they have no interest in land to surrender. They have no money or other assets except what Canada gives them. They will not be taxing themselves, and in fact favourable tax treatment for them is contemplated by the Treaty, so Canadians can expect that the federal treasury will likely be diminished as the result of it, with a corresponding additional tax burden on themselves.

The Red River Metis only receive. Canada gives everything and pays for everything. The Treaty is totally one-sided, and by this commonsense standard alone, it can rightly be called an inexplicably terrible deal for Canada and its taxpayers.

The Treaty says that one of its purposes is to “remedy the ongoing rift in the national fabric” purportedly caused by the Red River Metis not being given the “head start” they were promised in the early 1870’s.

Canada was in its fragile infancy then. Its virtually empty Western lands were under serious and real threat of annexation by the United States. It was a confusing and uncertain time in the history of Manitoba.

The happening of minor injustices from that period does not justify the creation now of the much greater and more permanent social and racial rift in the Canadian national fabric that this improvident, senseless “treaty” represents. One does not remedy one wrong by the creation of another, much greater wrong.

The Treaty gives the right to the Red River Metis to be the sole deciders of who can be a Metis citizen. Canada is given no say in this. This is wrong, and an insult to Canadian taxpayers, because they are the pipers who should have some say in calling the tune. They are the ones out of whose pockets the monies are coming to pay for all the generous benefits the Treaty contemplates Metis citizens receiving. Taxpayers should have a say about where their tax monies are going and who is getting it.

The benefits the Treaty contemplates the Red River Metis eventually receiving are similar in nature to those wide and generous benefits presently being received by Indians and Inuit. The Treaty describes these benefits generally as “Self-Government Arrangements, including Jurisdiction.”

They are listed by category as follows:

 “a. language, culture, and heritage; 

b. education;

c. health services; 

d. economic and social development;

e. child and family services;

f. administration of justice; 

g. wildlife, migratory birds, and fish harvesting and management; 

h. environmental assessment and protection; and

i. any other matters reasonably related to the self-determination, self government, or other rights and interests of the Red River Métis.”

This list should more properly be called: “Manufactured, Artificial, Pointless, Parallel Society Arrangements”.

As stated, it is wrong, divisive and imprudent that Canadians, through their elected representatives, are given no say in the Treaty over the criteria for and the number of Canadian Metis “citizens” who will be accessing these new rights, which are parallel to and in addition to rights they will already generally have by virtue of their status of being “ordinary” Canadian citizens.

The Treaty states that the Red River Metis have the right to “self-determination and the inherent right of self-government “protected by section 25 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Firstly, this cannot possibly be true or real when all the money to pay for this self-determination and self-government comes from another nation – the nation of Canada and its taxpayers.

And secondly, this heralds the Red River Metis “citizens” losing their protections afforded by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It heralds the Red River Metis community becoming, like Indian reserves and modern self-government treaty territories are now: Charter of Rights wastelands.

Section 25 of the Constitution Act states that the Charter of Rights “shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights and freedoms”.

The Treaty deems it an incontrovertible fact, which will be an admitted, conclusive starting point in any Red River Metis Charter litigation, (even though it’s not true in reality), that the Red River Metis constitute a “distinct…vibrant Indigenous collectivity with its own identity, language, culture, institutions and way of life”, and that they have jurisdiction to “preserve, promote and develop” these alleged cultural features.

The Treaty states that the Red River Metis has jurisdiction in relation to its operations and procedures, and that, in the event of a conflict between their laws in those regards and a federal law, such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Metis laws prevail.

The Treaty states that it is to be interpreted by courts to uphold Metis rights and not “abrogate or derogate from” them.

Section 93 of the Treaty states that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “applies to the MMF in respect of all matters within its authority, bearing in mind the free and democratic nature of the MMF as recognized in this Treaty.” (italics added)

In the recent Vuntut Gwitchen case the Supreme Court of Canada shamefully ruled that in the event of a conflict between an Indian Band law and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Band law prevails if its ostensible purpose is  to protect “indigenous difference”.

As the result of this decision Indian reserves and modern, self-governing treaty territories are now de facto Charter-free zones.

The conclusive acknowledgment of “Indigenous difference” in the Red River Metis Treaty, coupled with the other Treaty provisions listed immediately above, foretell the same illiberal situation befalling the Red River Metis “citizens”.

This constitutes a shameful sellout by Canada of individual Red River Metis citizens’ Charter rights vis a vis their own Metis government and the further legal and social unequal division of Canada and the further unequal application of Canadian law based on race.

As to the matter of justice generally, and this is typical of all the fantasy, “national” institutions and functions mentioned in or contemplated by the Treaty, the Treaty posits the Red River Metis having their own justice system, involving their own laws and their own court system to administer them.

The Treaty even gives them the right to imprison “citizens” found guilty of breaking their laws.

But the reality, which will always be the case, is that the Red River Metis have no laws (except one “harvesting” law) and no court system to administer them, and never will.

As shown in the Vuntut Gwitchen situation, and it’s the case with the Red River Metis, there is a total lack of institutional existence, history, capacity and expertise on the part of all aboriginal “nations”, which exist mainly on paper only.  

As necessarily happened in Vuntut Gwitchen, the Red River Metis, with the consent of the province of Manitoba, (which is not a party to the Treaty and must consent to this, and strangely, is barely mentioned in it), will have to piggyback whatever they have as a justice system onto the existing Provincial court system.

To the extent that aboriginal “nations” function as sophisticated organizations at all, never mind functioning as “nations” per se, their functionality is entirely dependent upon non-aboriginal institutions and expertise and, because they don’t tax themselves, upon the permanent, continuous flow of Canadian taxpayers’ monies.

The Red River Metis will be on permanent life-support courtesy of the much maligned, “settler” taxpayers of Canada, like the “independent, self-governing” Vuntut Gwitchen, 560-person “nation”, and like the more than 600 “independent, self-governing”, similar Indian and Inuit “nations” across Canada.

In essence here, with the Red River Metis, as with most of these cloud castle, aboriginal “nations”, non-aboriginal Canadians will be paying for the setting up and running of a race-based, parallel, duplicative, faux-society/culture – a totally unnecessary “separate but equal” regime like that which American Blacks suffered under for a hundred years after the American Civil War, and no doubt a regime that will produce similar, illiberal, dismal, socio-economic outcomes.

According to the Red River Metis Treaty Canadian taxpayers will be paying:

 ” a. to ensure that the MMF has access to sufficient fiscal resources to meet its Expenditure Need;

b. to advance the goals of:

 i. Red River Métis Citizens having equal opportunities for well-being to those of other Canadians,

ii. achieving and maintaining equity in socio-economic outcomes between Red River Métis Citizens and other Canadians,

iii. supporting the political, social, economic, and cultural development of the Red River Métis,

iv. the MMF having the means to preserve, protect, use, develop, and transmit the language, culture, and heritage of Red River Métis Citizens and the Red River Métis, including the past, present, and future manifestations of that culture, and contributing to the revitalization of Michif, and

v. Red River Métis Citizens having access to public programs and services that are reasonably comparable to those available to other Canadians.

As only partially evidenced by the immediately above, the Red River Metis Treaty creates profound, permanent and onerous financial obligations on non-Aboriginal Canadians owed to this inorganic, manufactured, racially composed category of totally assimilated, modern Canadians, for which there is no underlying historical, legal or moral basis.

Section 35 is the technical basis for it, but just as progressives curse, downplay and discourage the use of the notwithstanding clause, so should Canadians downplay and discourage the putting of any flesh on the real-world meaninglessness and insubstantiality of the term “Metis” in section 35.

More fundamental and more important than the profligate waste of money and human resources inherent in and to the entire Red River Metis Treaty undertaking is Canada’s deliberate and recklessly negligent further weakening and fragmenting of federal Crown sovereignty which the ratification of the Treaty would represent.

In the Treaty Canada harmfully agrees that the state-destroying UNDRIP applies to it.

In the Treaty Canada harmfully commits to enhance:

 “…the “nation-to-nation, government-to-government relationship based on the recognition, affirmation, and implementation of the rights of the Red River Métis, including Red River Métis section 35 rights, as well as respect, cooperation, and partnership.” (italics added)

Canada acknowledges in the Treaty that it is “a treaty within the meaning of sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982”.

All the immediately above means that the Treaty is constitutional in status and thus cannot be unilaterally changed or abrogated by Canada. Canada is tying its hands with this Treaty and there’s no going back on it.

Being in possession of express section 35 rights means that the Red River Metis – in reality a small group of clever and bold opportunists mainly residing in and operating out of downtown Winnipeg – can, along with Indian and Inuit bands who already have this right, demand the right to be consulted and accommodated in relation to any proposed Manitoba resource project or other similar private or public undertaking that they merely assert will adversely affect their section 35 rights, such as their asserted hunting, fishing and gathering rights.

And when they inevitably do so the delaying, costly blackmail/danegeld process begins.

The very harmful Section 35, which should be repealed, has permitted Indian and Inuit Bands to argue, not without reason, that they are in effect sovereign “substates” within the state of Canada with sovereign rights that supersede federal and provincial law. They are now claiming, not without reason that they have a veto over all proposed resource development projects taking place on their “traditional lands”, the latter phrase meaning whatever they say it means. This has caused enormous damage to the proper working of the marketplace, to the revenue of our Crowns, to the economy of the country, to the Enlightenment principle of equality under the law, and, as stated, to the necessarily sole and sovereign rule of federal and provincial law.

The Treaty, if ratified, will expressly authorize the Red River Metis to join this sorry blackmail/danegeld process.

The public interest requires that the scope of section 35 be repealed or drastically limited, either by constitutional amendment or Supreme Court reinterpretation, to restore sole federal and provincial legal sovereignty.

It is manifestly against the public interest to increase the scope of section 35 by expressly including within its scope a new, manufactured group of race-based Canadians, in this case the Red River Metis.

For the above reasons and many more, the Canadian Parliament must refuse to ratify the Red River Metis Treaty.

Peter Best

December 12, 2024

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