"The Stephen Harper government has been no friend to aboriginal people in this country.

Soon after taking power in 2006, Harper cancelled the Kelowna Accord, which was a $5.1-billion plan to improve aboriginal health care, education, and housing.

This was despite an infant-mortality rate nearly 20 percent higher and a Type 2 diabetes rate three times higher among aboriginal people than the general population, according to a report in the Lancet.

Not long after the 2006 election, Harper also stated his opposition to a "race-based" fishery. It came in a letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald, which was a peculiar way for a prime minister to communicate his views on an important public policy.

The letter suggested that he didn't fully comprehend the Supreme Court of Canada's Sparrow decision in 1990, which allowed aboriginal people to fish for food and ceremonial purposes ahead of all other user groups.

One of the most glaring examples of the Harper government's disinterest in the concerns of aboriginal people came in its vote against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Canada was one of only four countries that refused to support the measure, which came before the UN general assembly in 2007.

Yesterday (November 12), the federal government abruptly reversed itself and announced that it would finally endorse the declaration."

Get the Story:
Charlie Smith: Why the Stephen Harper government flip-flopped on the UN declaration on indigenous rights (Straight.Com 11/13)