April 17, 2008

Politics

Indian Affairs’ Strahl denies YouTube campaign’s effect on government policy

OTTAWA

Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl says a growing YouTube campaign to support native students on one of Canada’s poorest reserves is having no effect on official policy.

Yet, his department is back at the table with leaders of the remote Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario who’ve fought for eight years for a new elementary school.

“The YouTube thing has nothing to do with it,” Strahl said when asked why Indian Affairs officials have resumed education talks on the James Bay reserve.

“We have set up a working group with both the school board, chief and council, departmental staff ... that will look at all opportunities to improve educational outcomes for the kids.”

But a new school isn’t in the cards for the 400 children depicted on a YouTube video that has been watched more than 30,000 times, Strahl said.

The three-minute video, set to John Lennon’s version of Stand By Me, was put together one weekend by NDP MP Charlie Angus. It strings together photos of Attawapiskat kids and the cracked walls of their makeshift portables covered with hand-made signs asking for a new building.

Their old school was shut down in 2000 after illnesses were blamed on a diesel leak dating back to 1979. Talks with Indian Affairs went so far as to nail down the actual size of a new building before federal officials suddenly said last December that there was no funding for the project.

The YouTube video has inspired heavyweight support from Ontario teachers’ unions, along with letter-writing and video campaigns at schools across Ontario and in Quebec, B.C. and New Brunswick.

The minister dismissed what he called Angus’s “YouTube fetish.”

“I don’t watch YouTube to get direction on this stuff,” Strahl said outside the House of Commons.

Canadian Press

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