Bruce Cheadle, Canadian Press: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Canada.com (full article)
Parliament has voted to resurrect a $5.1-billion program for First Nations health, education and housing but the minority Conservative government will ignore the measure. A private member's bill requiring the Canadian government to "fulfil its obligations under the Kelowna Accord," easily passed in the House of Commons by a 176-126 vote on Wednesday. But private member's bills cannot compel the government of the day to spend money, and the Conservatives insist they are charting their own course. Liberal, Bloc Quebecois and New Democrat MPs supported en masse the bill initiated by former prime minister Paul Martin. Conservatives were uniformly opposed.
Martin, who counted the Kelowna agreement as the crowning achievement of his short, two-year stint as prime minister, has called the accord "a historic opportunity" that should not be squandered. "It's wrong for the current government to turn what is essentially a moral issue into partisan gamesmanship," Martin said last week. Brian Mulroney, the former Conservative prime minister, also expressed support for the accord in a CBC program on the weekend. "We've existed for 140 years and we have this shameful situation . . . and why?" Mulroney said on the program The Next Great Prime Minister. "Very simple: we stole their land." Mulroney said he "absolutely" supports the Kelowna agreement.
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