Gary Vidal

I hate to weigh into this stuff but I’ve witnessed enough bullshit in recent days that it’s not hard to. The idea that the reason that Indigenous peoples have poorer economic and social outcomes than non-Indigenous Canadians is because they come from a hunter-gatherer culture is precisely wrong. In fact, it’s this type of paternalism that led to the Indian residential school system in the first place and continues to hold too many Indigenous people back. Left- and right-wing paternalism has caused us to impose a form of socialism on Indigneous communities—including limited property rights, large-scale government transfers, poor access to private capital, and so on—and the results are predictably bad. That’s why the most exciting developments these days involve land-use and tax reform, economic partnerships and growing own-source revenues—what the @MLInstitute and others have come to call “economic reconciliation.” The growing number of Indigenous communities thriving today under market-based conditions is a direct rebuttal to the notion that somehow Indigneous peoples are just culturally wired to be poor. Paternalistic policies have made them poor. Freedom, enterprise and self-sufficiency can make them prosperous.

On April 28th, we can choose hope over fear.

“The largest private news outlets in the country are seeing millions of dollars in government-orchestrated payments landing in their bank accounts as they report on the campaign, the parties, their policies, and leaders.” – Rudyard Griffiths & @Sean_Speer

“In the past two weeks, with little fanfare and virtually no reporting, news outlets large and small started receiving millions in cash payments from something called the Canadian Journalism Collective” – Rudyard Griffiths & @Sean_Speer

Ovi made sure everyone on the Caps was out to shake Flower’s hand 🌸🤝