All for benevolent dictatorship: Chief Louie believes tough love and economic development will rebuild native communities. Is Ottawa finally listening?

Although the received wisdom has it that democratic style of government is the best of a bad bunch, I've always had a soft spot for the idea of benevolent dictatorship. A resolute, all-powerful leader with the interests of his people at heart seems preferable to a vacillating Parliament of political whores like those in Ottawa. And such a paragon would definitely be an improvement on the kleptocracies that tend to control Canada's Indian reserves.

These small, nepotistic groups--usually consisting of the chief and his extended family--are represented nationally by the Assembly of First Nations, comprising the chiefs of Canada's 630 First Nation's communities. The AFN is currently led by veteran Ottawanian Phil Fontaine and receives more than $20 million of our money to serve the chiefs and their inexhaustible demands for more cash and power. While the AFN and Fontaine clothe their demands in heart-rending calls to end "child poverty" and "inequality," at no point have Fontaine or any of his predecessors suggested the kleptocracies bear any responsibility for the social disasters that are the majority of Indian reserves.

Attempts by federal governments to introduce more responsibility, accountability and transparency to the controlling cabals on the reserves alarm the AFN. The Harper government is currently trying to pass Bill C-44, which amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to include treaty Indians. This would enable the serfs on reserves to lodge complaints when they felt their rights were being violated by band council aristocracies. Fontaine, with a straight face, called the initiative "a recipe for ineffectiveness," claiming it would inundate band councils with claims, creating expense and delay and otherwise interfering with the Swiss precision with which we know all bands operate. Another recent federal initiative, giving Indian women a claim to on-reserve matrimonial property when hubby dies--instead of having it snatched back by the band--is also being resisted by an AFN that fears the diminishment of oligarchical power. Such things, says Fontaine, should be handled at "the community level" (and by that he means by the foxes, certainly not the hens).

Five years ago, you'll recall, Liberal Indian affairs minister Robert Nault introduced the First Nations Governance Act. It would have applied strict rules of accountability and transparency to how Indian bands choose councillors, spend money and pick executives. Thankfully for the chiefs, Nault's hurtful and racist bill came along in the midst of the leadership shift, and the AFN lobbied front-runner Paul Martin to put an end to the nonsense. PM Martin killed the bill and replaced it with a promise of $5 billion in cash announced in Kelowna in the fall of 2005. Harper beat Martin in the 2006 election, and the Kelowna infusion stalled. Fontaine and the AFN, with Liberal and NDP support, continue to lobby for the destalling, and one fears Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice and his minority government may be forced to cave. Watching democracy serve the demands of the kleptocracies, one's yearning for benevolent dictatorship is only enhanced.

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Benevolent dictatorships don't officially exist on any of Canada's Indian reserves, but occasionally one will run into semblances. The late Senator Walter Twinn, chief of the Sawridge Band near Slave Lake, Alta., ran his reserve with a tight rein, and as a result the band's oil revenues--unlike those squandered on other reserves--were transformed into an enduring business empire, including a hotel chain, that has survived Twinn and the exhaustion of the oil well. Drunkeness and sloth were not tolerated by Twinn, and membership on the reserve was, and still is, limited to those who will work and stay sober.

Similar tough love is being practised today in the south Okanagan by Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band. Louie, 47, has been on a mission of self-reliance for his 423-member band since being elected chief of the dysfunctional and bankrupt organization 22 years ago. Today the Osoyoos Indian Band Development Corporation, of which Louie is CEO, employs 1,000 people, supports its own social programs, and brings in annual revenues of more than $14 million from 10 business ventures, including a golf course, a construction company, a four-star hotel and the Nk'Mip winery. In 2000 Louie vowed the reserve would be self-supporting in five years--and it was. Its employees are chosen on merit, not nepotism, meaning a high proportion of non-natives provide expertise.

"You cannot run businesses based on race," Chief Louie told the standing Senate committee on aboriginal peoples when it was through Kelowna in late 2005. "You do not put natives in charge of million-dollar ships when they do not have the qualifications or the skills. I do not care who they are, band members or not. Half of our businesses are run by First Nations people. Two of those are Osoyoos Indian Band members, but they had to earn those positions. They had to leave the community, go down to the States and get their degree. Even when they came back, they did not immediately get the job. They had to work under the non-native manager for x number of years before they were promoted."

As might be gleaned, Chief Louie is not your garden-variety AFN whiner, but neither is he an apple (white on the inside, red on the outside). He can criticize residential schools, the Indian Affairs Department and inequitable land claims treaties along with the best of them, and he is all for self-government. The difference between Louie and the Phil Fontaines of what he disparagingly refers to as "the industry of misery," is that he believes his people should stop whining about past injustices, get off their butts and work towards what, to Louie, is a sacred cause: economic development. After 20 years of business success, he now finds time to get out and spread the word.

As he told the Senate committee: "I will now start going to some of the AFN meetings and I will tell those national chiefs across the country, 'Quit wasting everybody's time and money doing what you have been doing for the last 20 years. We need First Nations people with business sense and who want to create jobs and make money ... I always tell people when I stand up at these Indian meetings, 'None of you ever talk about this, but the two things I like doing are: first, creating jobs, [and] second, making money.'"

Louie likes quoting the statistic that, of the $8 billion in Canadian taxpayers' money spent on Indians, 96 per cent is spent on social programs and just four per cent on economic development. The father of two girls and one boy is not shy about criticizing the indolence of his fellow Indians--especially the young, male variety for whom the American gangsta drug culture has become the model. Signs posted around band offices underline the message: "Native people have always worked for a living," says one. "If your life sucks, it's because you suck," reads another.

There are those who attribute the OIB's success to the real estate and tourism boom in the south Okanagan. But there are plenty of reserves in similarly blessed areas--the Penticton band just up the road, for example, or those oil-rich cesspools of drugs, crime and ennui in Alberta--who've done nothing to improve their conditions, other than sometimes to hand out bigger welfare cheques. Their problems are the same attitudinal ones plaguing Phil Fontaine's misery industry: We have been soooo hard done by, how can you possibly expect us to function as mature adults?

"I am sick and tired of welfare programs coming down from the federal and provincial governments," Louie told the senators. "I just hope that your committee gets the message to the federal government, the provincial governments, that you want to deal with aboriginal poverty by giving First Nations the dignity of jobs--the ability to create our own and make our own money."

Unfortunately, that particular federal government--Paul Martin's--did not get the message. With luck, the current one will. In April, Minister Prentice appointed Chief Louie chairman of the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board, providing hope that some of Louie's commonsensical prescriptions might find their way into federal Indian policy, and that the kleptocratic stasis on most reserves might be shaken off. With a de facto dictator like Chief Clarence Louie out there preaching the gospel of tough benevolence, the great dream of aboriginal betterment might finally start coming true. Perhaps he should be made emperor.