Metis National Council president Clément Chartier

Today we’ve got a new entry in the Verbatim series, the transcripts we provide of our Listen to This podcast. (Just a reminder that you can catch new, original interviews every other Monday—you can subscribe with any podcast listening program by grabbing the podcast rss feed, or easily subscribing through iTunes.)

In this interview, Nick Taylor-Vaisey talks with Clément Chartier, president of the Metis National Council, about the MNC’s relationship with the federal government, the legislative successes it has forged, what still needs to be done, and how the Metis nation’s interests coincide with First Nations and Inuit constitutencies.

Q&A

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: We’re talking about the future, in this podcast, of the Metis Nation, the Metis people in Canada. We’re a couple of days into a session of Parliament, on Parliament Hill, we’re sitting just a few blocks away from those politicians down the street. What kind of role do they play in the future of Metis people? How are you going to talk to them or engage with them, over the next days, weeks, months, and years?

Clément Chartier: Well, of course, as we know, Members of Parliament form government or opposition with other parties, and basically Parliament makes the laws, and the laws, since the inception of Canada in 1867, have had tremendous effect on the Metis Nation, and not necessarily always for the good. So Parliament is very important, all institutions of Parliament. This morning I did meet with the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, John Duncan, who is also what’s known as the Federal Interlocutor for Metis. And so we had a discussion about some of the activities we’ve been doing over the past two years with his predecessor, Minister Strahl, primarily on economic opportunities, economic development, some initiatives like the Juno Beach commemoration ceremony that we had last November, where there is now going to be a permanent display with respect to the Metis veterans’ contribution to world peace. So that, you know, is something that we have been doing over the past little while.

But I have a bigger agenda that I’d like to pursue with Parliament, and in fact have written to the former Prime Minister, Mr. Paul Martin, and to the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, with respect to the big issues, such as the right of government, self-government, self-determination, the right to a land base, and that’s I suppose, when I mentioned earlier that Parliament has had an effect on the Metis, and I would think, a rather negative effect on the Metis, with respect to legislation passed in the 1800s, well, primarily 1879, which was the major one, where a system known as the scrip system was imposed on the Metis in terms of dealing with land rights. When the Metis provisional government in 1870 negotiated the entry of Manitoba into Confederation, under the leadership of Louis Riel, an accomodation was made with respect to land rights, and 1.4 million acres were set aside for the children of the Metis heads of families in the original province of Manitoba, which was called the ‘postage stamp province’ because it was 150 miles by 50 miles.

And there is a case working its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, whereby the Metis, the Manitoba Metis Federation, saying they didn’t get that promised land under Section 31 [of the Manitoba Act of 1870]. The two previous courts have ruled against them, so hopefully the Supreme Court of Canada is more favourable in its ruling. But based on that, to deal with the families, or the heads of families, the Dominion Lands Act in 1872 was amended to distribute scrip to the heads of families. And both of these initiatives worked towards the extinguishment of the unit title, preferred by the Metis. The term used at the time, of course, was ‘the halfbreeds.’ But we use the term ‘Metis’ now. And in 1879 it was expanded to include the Metis surrounding the original province of Manitoba, and basically the position of government now is that with the scrip system, and with several scrip commissions sent out, some starting I think with Treaty 8, where the commissioner was both the treaty commissioner and the scrip commissioner. And with that process the position of government, through their Department of Justice, is that whatever aboriginal rights and title the Metis had to land has been extinguished.

So that’s a big issue for us. But for the Metis in Alberta, there is no land base for the Metis within Canada. And in Alberta, in 1938, after a hearing into the issue, the provincial government set aside 12 large parcels of land for the Metis to live on. Eight of them have since been rescinded. Sorry, four have since been rescinded, eight are still in existence. They’re known as Metis settlements now, and there is provincial legislation dealing with Metis settlements and with governance on those Metis settlements. And so, again, but for that we have no land base. We were dispossessed by the system, and by and large, roughly speaking, about 240 acres per person were distributed, so-called, to the Metis population. But virtually, virtually all of it fell into hands of speculators, and so the Metis, as I say, became dispossessed.

So I did write, as I mention, to the former Prime Minister and to this Prime Minister, saying that we need to resolve this issue if the well-being of the Metis Nation is going to be dealt with, you know, the overall health of the Metis Nation, as a people, is going to be addressed and corrected. That we need to deal with this issue. And why I say that as well is, in 1994, the Metis of northwest Saskatchewan, the Metis Nation–Saskatchewan, and the Metis National Council filed a statement of claim in the court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatchewan, claiming continued aboriginal rights and title to all of the lands in northwest Saskatchewan — a statement or declaration to that effect — on the basis that the scrip system was such a sham that did not accomplish extinguishment of the aboriginal title rights of the Metis to those lands and resources. And that’s a test case. The problem is, we don’t have the necessary financing to engage the lawyers on a full-time basis to take this to court. A lot of research has taken place, but we anticipate a year-long trial, and so to engage lawyers to be involved in a year-long trial would be quite costly.

So we sought solutions. One of the solutions we offered to the government, both the Prime Minister and the previous Prime Minister is that they, who were the perpetrators of, or the persons that passed this legislation and imposed this system on us, should have the obligation to see whether that system validly extinguished our rights as a people. The onus should be on them, not on us. But we’re saying, if you choose not to do that, then, set up a commission, like to get a judicial decision, but if you choose not to do that, we have to take it to court to get the courts to decide, and set up a commission which will examine those issues and come up with recommendations at the end of the day, and failing that, then setting up a fund from which we can draw on to move it forward as a test case that we will drive, and that they will of course be participants in as, I suppose, as opposing our petitions. We haven’t had any full discussion on that yet, and that’s something we need to engage in.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Now, you mentioned former Prime Minister Paul Martin. He hasn’t been prime minister in five years. Prime Minister Harper has been prime minister since. What kind of response have you gotten? You say you haven’t had a full discussion. That’s a long time then, that you’ve been knocking on the doors.

Clément Chartier: Yes well we did sign a protocol, the Metis Nation Protocol, September of 2008, and basically in it we’ve opened the opportunity to address that issue. But because of this government and its bent in a certain direction, we’ve been deaing mainly with economic opportunities and economic development, which are also sorely needed in our communities. So the rights agenda as such hasn’t been pushed as hard as it could be because it’s not going to necessarily be embraced fully. So we’re, I guess, biding our time, but…

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: You’re trying to work with the government on issues you can work with the government on?

Clément Chartier: That’s true, but we also want to work on this issue, and that one of the things I’ll be pushing next year, is to address some of these outstanding legal issues. And in fact, with the Prime Minister’s apology, June 11th 2008, I was there in the House of Commons, and responded to that apology, and of course it didn’t cover us, it didn’t cover those that attended Metis residential schools, because the federal government said “we weren’t resposible, we didn’t pay the clergy to run those for you, so you’re not covered.” But nevertheless, we are still, even so, still pushing all these other aspects and that’s one of them, that still needs to be addressed. But coming out of that apology, or lack thereof, for the Metis, we ended up with, a couple months later, the protocol which enabled us to address the outstanding issues of residential schools, also the outstanding issues with respect to Metis veterans who served in the wars, particularly in this case the Second World War. To this day it’s only the Metis veterans now that haven’t been dealt with properly by the state. Everybody else has, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, so that’s still another issue. But we did do the June 11th monument at Juno Beach last November, so that’s at least a step forward…

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Right.

Clément Chartier: There are still issues unresolved. So I’m hoping to move to the land rights issues, hopefully through the next year or two.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Right, now I’m looking at this protocol, which listeners should know is on the wall here on the office, and I see a lot of issues being set up for discussion: housing, child and family services, health, education, and training. A broad array of issues, and it was signed by the former minister, Chuck Strahl. But now, of course, there’s a new minister, have you, you said you’ve just met with the new minister, Minister Duncan. What kind of responses are you getting from the new minister?

Clément Chartier: Well, we had an hour-long meeting, and basically I walked through what we’ve done over the past two years with Minister Strahl, since we signed the protocol, and what led up to it, and we had a very good discussion on it, particularly emphasizing economic development, economic opportunities. And this agreement is also permissive in that we would like to draw in the five provinces, Ontario-West, within which the Metis homeland and those governments, by and large, coincide. And in fact we have been successful; we’ve had a Metis economic development symposium in Calgary, last December, where the aboriginal affairs minsters from Ontario-West, Minister Strahl, and our leadership got together for a political dinner between officials for two days of meetings, involving industry as well, and we’re going to have a follow-up meeting in January.

So in that sense it’s been doing good, that we’ve been getting this kind of engagement. And the minister this morning agreed that we would look at January 19th for the political dinner, the next two dates for our officials to meet, so he’s following up on what we developed with Minister Strahl, he doesn’t seem to be backing away from any of that. And I think our opportunities to work with him will be good. It’s hard to tell at this stage, but I get a good feeling that yes, we will continue with that momentum, and by and large because the Prime Minister as well has endorsed the Protocol and the relationship that we’re developing. We have letters from the Prime Minister, and so I think it’s an all-of-government approach with us where we’re making some small, incremental steps on the inssues, particularly economic development.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: It sounds like the relationship between the Metis and the government is different than the relationship between the First Nations and Inuit, and government; different issues, different approach. What do you think of that?

Clément Chartier: I’m not sure it’s different issues, but what it is, it is a different approach because, again, after 1870, particularly in the west, the government treated with the Metis differently than it did with the First Nations people. Treaty 1 was signed, I believe, in 1871. And in the meantime, with the Metis, who were looked at as individuals, and individual allotments were put in place with no guarantees of anything else. And with the treaty nations, of course, you have the treaties with guarantees in them, for land, for education, for assistance in times of need, you know, those kinds of things, and you have the Department of Indian Affairs, which is guided by the Indian Act. And even that, that is a big issue for us, and another one we’re trying to deal with, with my letters to the prime ministers, the former prime minister and this prime minister. In 1867, when Canada was formed, you have the federal powers under 91 [section 91 of the Constitution Act of 1867] and the provincial powers under [section] 92. The 24th head of power [section 91, subsection 24] for the federal government is “Indians, and the lands reserved for the Indians.” And the position of the federal government is that ‘Indians’ means Indians covered by the Indian Act. And in 1939 the Supreme Court of Canada said “no, ‘Indians’ includes Inuit.” There was a reference case. But the federal position is “yes OK, the term ‘Indians’ in 91-24 covers status or treaty Indians and the Inuit, but not the Metis, therefore Metis are a provincial responsibility.” The provinces said “no, Metis are a federal responsibility, constitutional Indians or Indians in the generic sense, ‘Indians’ and ‘aboriginal peoples’ having the same meaning.” And so that’s our position as well. And so it’s not that they’re necessarily responsible to run our lives, but it’s that they have the jurisdiction to deal with us on a government-to-government basis, so that we’re not divided up between five provinces and have five different kinds of regimes.

So that jurisdictional issue is still bedevilling us today. And so the federal position, by and large, for example, under health we have the First Nations and Inuit health branch, so the Metis aren’t covered there, except we have broken into it a bit since Prime Minister Paul Martin’s 2004 first ministers’ meeting on health. It brought us in to a small degree, but by and large we are excluded from a lot of the federal programs and services. Again, it’s based on that issue of jurisdiction and 91-24. So once they’ve dealt with us via the scrip system, and said our rights are gone, they just washed their hands off us. So that issue is one that we still need to resolve, and so that’s going to be an on-going issue, along with the land rights issue, it’s this whole jurisdictional issue.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: We’re talking about the future of the Metis in this podcast, and I wonder how the definition of the Metis Nation — you just explained it geographically, historically — how do you ensure the survival of that nation long into the future? Not just years or decades, but centuries?

Clément Chartier: Well, it’s not only our challenge, if I understand you correctly. The First Nations communities as well, I know several years ago the Assembly of First Nations mentioned that there — because of the Indian Act definitions — that there are two reserves in Manitoba that have already reached the point where there are no ‘Indians’ left, by definition, and that in the future most of the reserves or ‘the Indian people,’ by definition of the Indian Act, would disappear. So we have to move to, and we’ve done that, we’re going based on citizenship, not like “OK, you have so much Metis blood in you,” so to speak. It’s basically those that have a connection to the Metis Nation historically, and can prove that. And that’s really all that’s required to be a citizen. And our culture is getting stronger. We’re working hard to preserve the Michif language. And we’re working hard to aquire our rights to a land base, not that we expect a whole lot of people to move onto a land base, but at least those that do want to live on a land base, that they should have that opportunity. But they should also have opportunities to enter into partnerships with resource industries to develop areas that were traditionally our homelands. And be part of that economic mainstream. Not to pillage the land but to sustainably develop and make a livelihood for ourselves.

So I think basically it’s identifying with a culture and with a people, and I think that is growing stronger as opposed to weaker. And I think that will stay in place. And I think that will be the same thing for First Nations as well, as long as they move to their citizenship criteria, that they have the right to manage and control and deal with, rather than the federal government saying “this is who — the person that’s recognised by us.” I don’t see imminent danger of the Metis people and culture disappearing. Now, if it’s only based on being, you know, Metis is only someone with mixed blood, and over time that goes away, and they have no culture or history or anything to latch on to, then I could see that possibly happening with that sector of the Canadian population, but not with those that identify as a people and as a nation with a history and a culture, and basically, an existence. So I really see no danger in that. I can’t see that happening.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Sure. Aboriginal education seems to be… there’s a lot of momentum gathering behind that. Inuit, First Nations, Metis leaders, including yourself, have all come out saying this needs to be on the national agenda. How can that contribute to the preservation and the celebration of the Metis Nation?

Clément Chartier: Well we’re looking at the capacity and the ability to be engaged in the education of our people, not necessarily outside of mainstream education as such, because we have a good track record in Saskatchewan. We have the Gabrial Dumont Institute, which is this year celebrating its 30th anniversary. And one of the programs under the Gabriel Dumont Institute is called SUNTEP (Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program). And it’s graduated close to a thousand people, or teachers, with a Bachelor of Education. And so they’re instilled with their own values, of course. They know the culture, and of course they study the Metis history, and also the other prerequisites to become an educator. And so they can then go into the schools and impart that knowledge. And that’s been very helpful for us. They don’t all stay in the education field, some go off to do other things, but they still have that in-depth knowledge. And we also have, that’s GDI, we also have Dumont College which is affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan, and they offer some arts programs and things of that nature. And so it’s getting involved, not assimilated but intergrated, into that system, and getting our poeple into the system of education itself and also then into the communities. I know in my community, in Buffalo Narrows in northwest Saskatchewan, a lot of the teachers are now Metis, a lot of them are right from the community, whereas in the past, when I went to school, it was all outside non-aboriginal people coming in, into the schools. So I think we’ve come a long way in that respect. The Metis, however, don’t get the same degree of education assistance as the First Nations and Inuit. They probably don’t get enough as it is, but they do get some, which is beneficial. And we don’t hold that against them at all.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Any final words for listeners?

Clément Chartier: Well, the Metis Nation has a lot of challenges, but we’ve also had some successes over the years, with different prime ministers, different political parties that have formed government over the years. We just continue to persevere and we believe that as a people we will continue to make movement forward. The big issue for us, though, is to address this whole issue of land and jurisdiction, just so that we can get back to the table to the same degree that other aboriginal peoples and nations are.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami leader Mary Simon

In today’s episode of Listen to This, associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey brings us the second in his three part series of interviews with Canada’s top aboriginal leaders. In Podcast #017, Nick talked with Clément Chartier, president of the Metis National Council.

Today, Nick talks — by a crackly phone connection — with Mary Simon, leader of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national organization of Inuit people, about the issues that are most pressing for the approximately 55,000 Inuit people that ITK represents, including education, mental health, the massive threat of climate change, a landmark lawsuit against the European Union’s ban on seal products, and more.

Metis National Council president Clément Chartier

In this edition of Listen to This, associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey brings us the first in a three part series we’ll be running throughout this fall, talking with the leaders of Canada’s First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples about the current political environment and their relationship with the government. With a new Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, John Duncan, taking over the portfolio over the summer, we thought it was time to look at where Canada’s aboriginal people stand, and the path forward from here.

Today, Nick talks with Clément Chartier, president of the Metis National Council, about the MNC’s relationship with the federal government, the legislative successes it has forged, what still needs to be done, and how the Metis nation’s interests coincide with First Nations and Inuit constitutencies.

You know something is afoot in Ottawa when the lobbyists are worried. When those brave souls who venture to Parliament Hill in search of handshakes and backslaps—and make a small fortune in the process—get their hackles up, something is surely out of order.

This week, order was shaken off its moorings by Rahim Jaffer.

Since Jaffer was hauled before a Parliamentary committee, it’s been a bit awkward for even the best influence peddlers in the nation’s capital. That’s because lots of people who usually don’t pay too much attention—mostly journalists but civilians too—are talking about the ethics of lobbying.

Of course, one organization has been talking about these issues, as well as others, for the better part of two decades. Democracy Watch has fought for stronger ethics rules since the final months of the Chrétien Era. And the organization’s public face, Duff Conacher, has been there the whole time.

I had a chance to interview Conacher about why he does what he does, what’s left to do (hint: a lot), and how he puts up with it all. Under our normal schedule we wouldn’t put the interview up until May 3rd, but we’re moving it up to Monday, April 26 because the issues that Conacher and I talked about have quickly become hot topics. (Depending on scheduling, we’ll either return to our regular podcast schedule with a three-week gap, or just embrace this lost week and keep going every other Monday. Haven’t decided yet.)

Visit this.org/podcast next Monday for the podcast interview. You can instantly subscribe to the podcast through iTunes by visiting this.org/itunes

[Editor’s note: today we launch “Verbatim,” which will be a regular feature where we provide a transcript of our new podcast series, Listen to This. We’ll put these up on the blog shortly after each podcast goes online.]

In the first installation of our new, relaunched podcast series (Oh! And we’re now on iTunes!) Nick Taylor-Vaisey interviewed Scott Gilmore of Peace Dividend Trust, a development NGO based in Ottawa and New York, with projects currently underway in Afghanistan, East Timor, and Haiti. PDT promotes a buy-local strategy for international development, helping connect international aid agencies with local suppliers in the countries where they work. By directing funds to local businesses, PDT believes they see faster, more stable economic recovery in post-conflict zones, with lower overhead costs for funders and higher incomes for local businesspeople.

Listen now at this.org/podcast, or subscribe on iTunes for new interviews every second Monday.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Tell me about Peace Dividend Trust, where it came from, the first moment of its life.

Scott Gilmore: You know, I think this was a baby that was born twice. The first time I was working in East Timor for the UN and was paying $500 a month to a Timorese fellow who had lost everything in the Indonesian fighting and had lost his company and lost his house, and what he had done is basically put a tin roof on the remains of his house, white-washed the walls and charged me $500 to rent the top two floors, because there was no housing there at the time. And one day I saw him hauling into the yard of the house, the burnt-out wreckage of a bus and I thought nothing of it. The next month, right after I gave him my next rent cheque, he had bought tires for it and he had bought a new engine. The next month and after the next rent cheque he was repainting it and in about three months he had a working bus. After about a year an half, he had a fleet of working busses, and had gone from being virtually homeless and jobless with no money, to becoming one of the most successful businessmen in that neighbourhood, employing the most people in that neighbourhood and becoming the seed of recovery in that particular part of town, and it was all because of my rent cheques. So the light bulb went off one day. The international community had arrived, the aid money was going nowhere, (it had not touched the ground), and yet this man had suddenly become a major employer simply on the backs of my rent cheque, and I thought, “Wow, that’s an interesting phenomenon.”

The second moment came when every night after work, myself and some other people that used to work for the UN, would get together for drinks at a grass hut on the beach and complain about our jobs, and complain about how things like the aid money wasn’t arriving, or that the UN jeeps weren’t getting out into the districts because they were missing license plate holders, (even though there were no licenses to put in them), but UN regulations said you had to have a license plate holder so these jeeps sat on the wharf until somebody brought these in from Italy. And we began saying, “there must be a better way to do things”, and one of us suggested that there are a lot of good ideas out here about how to fix peacekeeping and how to improve aid, we should try doing something about it. And that’s where it began about 10 years ago.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Let’s talk a bit about you, let’s go back. You were in East Timor hanging out with some UN associates, how did you get there, what was your route to that route?

Scott Gilmore: It was sheer luck, I had joined the foreign service and was looking for my first posting and Indonesia was falling apart, and I thought, “that would be an interesting place to be.” The government was collapsing, Suharto, the dictator, had resigned, and so I volunteered for it and was sent out to Jakarta. And because I was a low man in the embassy I was given the crap files and one of them was East Timor, because at that time it was a forgotten conflict, there was nobody on the ground, the UN wasn’t there. The only foreigners anywhere near it were nuns and the Red Cross.

So I would go out every couple of months to silently bear witness, to talk to the nuns very furtively, to find out what the latest atrocity was, (or human rights abuse), to record what was actually happening on the ground and report that back up to Ottawa and our permanent mission in New York. It was very depressing and very upsetting, and a very futile exercise as a junior diplomat.

What happened was that, bizarrely, one day, the new Indonesian president just announced he was going to hold a referendum for independence for the Timorese. And suddenly what became a lost cause became the cause celebre. The UN arrived and the donors arrived and the media arrived, and there was only about two or three of us at the time, Western diplomats: somebody for the US embassy, somebody from the Australian embassy and myself, who actually had been paying any attention, who knew any of the Timorese, who could speak the local language, who knew how to get a hold of the guerrillas. So we had very valuable skills for a short period of time and so it wasn’t long going from that to working for the UN because, frankly, there weren’t very many Timorese experts. And even those who had been very, very active on university campuses in Canada and amongst human rights NGOs, who were very big Timor proponents, had no Timor experience, and so we were rare commodities. That’s how I ended up working with the UN.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: So what was your role then, you were the expert in the area?

Scott Gilmore: I had a very strange job. It was a very unique UN mission because it was one of the first times the UN actually ran the country, as opposed to just trying to broker peace or maintain peace. The UN was running everything from the health department to creating the East Timorese defense force and I landed in an office called the National Security Advisory office, where myself and a colleague who I had actually known from grad school, found ourselves sitting across a desk from each other at a very young age, doing things like designing with the defence agency for what East Timor should look like, or with the intelligence agency for what East Timor’s supposed to look like, and actually trying to create these things on behalf of the Timorese.

Pretty preposterous actually, given the fact that as a Canadian diplomat, you are by definition a generalist and what I knew about creating a department of defence or intelligence agency can fit an 8-by-10 piece of paper.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: So then at that point, you started talking to your colleagues and looking at some problems that existed within this project to rebuild Timor —

Scott Gilmore: That’s right. What happened was there were a lot of us in these preposterous positions, people that were in charge of human rights, people that were in charge of procurement, logistics, police, who were all facing the same challenges. We had a very small amount of time to take a war-torn country and put it on its feet. And whether that meant trying to set up food distribution networks, or a police system, or an intelligence agency, we were all facing very similar problems, which were things like: being able to get paperwork to move through the UN, being able to hire the right people in a quick time, being able to move around the country.

These were nuts and bolts problems–logistical problems. We spend so much time in Western universities and elsewhere debating these grand problems like, what is universal human rights? You know, what are the normative features of democratic reform? How does gender empowerment affect the bureaucratic structure of a third world country? But once you get on the ground, none of that really matters. What matters is, how do you get power into your office? How do you find some local staff? How do you train them? How do you get pens? How do you get from the national capital or the provincial capital if there’s no vehicles?

Nobody pays any attention to these really important nuts and bolts things and Peace Dividend Trust was created to try and pay some attention to some of these things and fix some of these things.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: So how long has Peace Dividend Trust been around?

Scott Gilmore: We’re young. The idea started around 1999 or 2000. I quit my day job in 2004, so PDT’s been around for about five or six years. We’ve operated in about 12 different countries so far. We currently have permanent offices in Afghanistan, Haiti, Timor, and we’ve got a project office in the Solomon Islands. And of course, our headquarters is in New York. And in 2010 we will likely be opening an office in Africa.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: What kind of work do you do in these countries? You saw problems when you were in Timor, and you weren’t the only one, so how do you fix these problems?

Scott Gilmore: If you take a lot of the type of work we do, it seems very diverse on the surface. Everything from trying to improve procurement systems, to economic research, to creating wikis for the United Nations. What the common strand is, is that we find and test and implement new ideas for making peace and humanitarian operations work better. So we only do projects that are new projects, in the sense that they’re new ideas.

To give an example, we will never go out and do a microfinance project or build wells in Africa; however, if somebody comes to us and they say, “We have a new idea for building a better well,” or “We think that there’s a better way to manage and target microfinance projects”, then we’ll do that. So we only test new ideas, which is why some people refer to us as a do-tank.

We’ll only do projects that focus on the nuts and bolts; the management, the operations of aid and peacekeeping. We feel this is really the neglected sweet-spot for trying to improve the impact of places like Afghanistan and Haiti. So what do we do? In Afghanistan, we found that the vast majority of the aid money wasn’t actually entering the local economy. Stuff was being bought overseas and flown in, and that was billions and billions of dollars of missed opportunity.

So we put a team of people on the ground whose job it is, is to make it as easy as possible for the laziest procurement officer to buy local, to find an Afghan entrepreneur to provide him with the wheat or water or tires as opposed to finding it in Dubai or Italy. And so far it’s redirected over $370 million of new spending in the Afghan economy. It’s created thousands of jobs, and because of its success, the U.S. government, the British government, NATO and the UN have all changed their procurement policies globally, recognizing one of the fastest and healthiest ways for them to help local economies is to buy local.

In New York, we have a team of people that have been working on this problem that the UN has done 50 peacekeeping missions and they’ve actually never figured out how to do it, they’ve never mapped it out, they’ve never put together a procedural manual on how to launch a peacekeeping mission. So we did that for them. We sat and put our people in their offices in New York and we figured out, okay, what’s a peacekeeping mission supposed to look like? What are you supposed to do in the first ten days? When do you set up your fuel depot? When do you fly in your secretaries? What type of forms are your secretaries supposed to use? And it’s now a pocket-sized baby blue manual called the Mission Start-up Field Guide, which is what every UN manager uses around the world.

So we do very diverse things, but they’re all focused on the nuts and bolts and they’re all new ideas.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Now, it seems like your friends in the West probably love what you do because essentially you make their lives easier, I mean you create a pocket-sized handbook about how to start a peacekeeping mission, but I’m wondering, as helpful as you are to those people on that side, do you find that you are still a foreign voice, you’re still foreign people in foreign lands. What about the local people in Afghanistan and East Timor? How do they react to your presence?

Scott Gilmore: Frankly, they’re more positive, and supportive, and helpful than internationals are. The nationals recognize, whether they’re Afghans or Timorese or Solomon Islanders, that there’s an incredible amount of money being spent on these missions and there’s a lot of foreigners that are being flown in, but that the change on the ground is not as dramatic as everyone expected. You know, they’re not seeing the jobs being created, they’re not seeing roads being improved. And one of the reasons they like PDT and why the local governments and local people are so supportive of PDT is that they recognize that we’re actively trying to change this, that we’re trying to drive money into the local economy, and we’re doing it.

One of the frustrations that I found as a diplomat and now as somebody who’s in the aid industry, is that you pull a random project proposal or project description, from something that’s funded by an international agency in a place like Afghanistan or Somalia and read it, and it will says things like, “This project will seek to support the creation of conditions that will facilitate empowerment of locals to improve this, this, this and this.” But it doesn’t actually do anything. It doesn’t actually say anything. It talks about setting in place processes and holding workshops and this and that, whereas what we’re doing is very simple, we’re pushing money into the economy, we’re making sure Afghan businessmen will get more money and create jobs, and so it’s very tangible, and so they see it.

Compare that to the internationals, they’re not always as supportive because our mere presence implicitly criticizes the aid industry. We’re basically saying that things aren’t working, things are incredibly inefficient. There are so many problems in the way that the international community does its job, whether it’s in Rwanda or Afghanistan, that we’re only having a fraction of the impact we should be having.

When we go to the UN and say, “Listen, we’re going to help you create a Mission Start-up Field Guide,” what we’re also saying implicitly is, “Oh my God, it’s been 50 years of peacekeeping and you still haven’t created a Mission Start-up Field Guide”. So while we’re not that overtly critical, we’re implicitly critical and we don’t get this sort of open-arm support form the internationals anyways.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Is anyone else doing what you’re doing?

Scott Gilmore: No.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: And why is that?

Scott Gilmore: Well, because it’s not sexy. It’s not sexy, for example, with the donors. The donors, frankly, are much more likely to look at supporting a conference on gender empowerment in Afghanistan, or a workshop that supports capacity building for empowering Afghan government officials because that checks off all the boxes. They’re less likely to get behind something that does something as dull as fixing a logistic system or a communication system, or fixing the way that the UN hires, or the way that the donors plan because it’s just not sexy.

So we don’t have any competitors, but that’s changing because we’ve been remarkably successful. In five years, the impact that we’ve had on peacekeeping, the impact that we’ve had on the way aid is spent has been pretty significant, and now in these difficult economic times a lot of agencies, a lot of Canadian NGOs in particular, are really suffering because money is being cut back, whereas with us we’ve doubled every year. We’ve gotten twice as much donor money every year than the year before and so people begin to realize, “wait a second, these guys are attracting attention and they’re doing good work”, and so we’re now seeing some agencies trying to replicate what we’re doing.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: The reason I ask is because there’s no shortage of people who are critical of development in a broad sense, you know, this idea that Western countries are imposing their solutions to other countries’ problems with just a broad stroke, but you don’t do that.

Scott Gilmore: You know, I find in Canada and in New York, every week there is a conference, or seminar, or brown bag lunch being hosted by agencies, you know the usual suspects of Montreal or Ottawa, to talk about these issues. The neo-imperialism of aid trying to impose these evil World Bank policies on these poor unsuspecting aid recipients.

I frankly have no time for them because the vast majority of the people that are attending these conferences are academics who have had no experience on the ground. They’re espousing positions on behalf of Kenyans or Afghans or others without having actually spent too much time in those places, and they’re using theoretical arguments and ridiculous jargon to make these positions. And when you go in the ground you have to dig pretty hard, for example in Kabul, to find an Afghan who says the international community should pull out here, who says it’s worse now than it was before, you have to dig pretty hard. But you can find one or two of them, and the one and two you can find, get flown to Canada, they get put on the talk shows and they get moved around to universities and they stand up at these conferences and, quite frankly, it’s ridiculous.

I can tell you that the Afghans that I know roll their eyes at these arguments because what they’re more concerned about right now is the fact that their girls can now go to school. Or that fact that the infant mortality rate in Afghanistan has dropped, from 2001 to now, so significantly that every year 30,000 babies survive to their first year who wouldn’t have otherwise under the Taliban. That’s more than all the children in Ottawa under the age of five. So it’s very easy for an academic to stand up and say, “Oh, it’s worse now, we’re trying to impose these Western ideals on a culture that doesn’t want them,” but it’s pretty hard to do that when there’s 30,000 kids looking at you.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: I’m wondering about then, what works and what should be avoided because, no matter the social change that has been sparked by the regime change in Afghanistan, there’s still a pretty brutal war going on, and there’s a lot of combat and Canadians know all about it. What about that strategy?

Scott Gilmore: Well listen, Afghanistan’s a mess, there’s no denying it. And the war, I hesitate to comment too explicitly on what Canada’s doing in Afghanistan right now and what’s working and what’s not, but it is a horrible, horrible mess. And in many ways and many places or parts of Afghanistan, things are worse now than they were ten years ago, there’s no denying it.

But here’s the moral dilemma that I face as a Canadian voter, as somebody whose spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, as somebody whose has worked in Afghanistan; it’s that it’s going to be very, very difficult for them to be happy ending in Afghanistan, but if we were to pull out now, whether it’s pull out Canada’s military, or reduce our aid or withdraw our efforts to just urban centres, it will reduce the moral angst that we have to deal with here in Canada, it will make it easier for Canada politicians, but people will be suffering on the ground.

If one were to do the thought experiment to say, ok let’s say, you can’t pass a Canadian campus without seeing all the posters about “Stop Bush’s war, pull out now”, so let’s imagine, let’s just do that thought experiment, let’s pull out. Let’s pull out all the troops, pull out all of the Canadian forces, what’s going to happen?

Well, let’s say we try to keep our aid there. We’ll only be able to keep our aid there for a handful of months. People forget that before September 11th, the Taliban had kicked out every Western aid agency, and in fact in the days before September 11th, they’d even kicked out the last few Doctors Without Borders that were there. So that would happen again because we would also have to accept that the Taliban will be able to push out the fledging Afghan military and Afghan government.

So the aid’s gone now, the military’s gone, what’s going to happen to the Afghan people? Well, there won’t be any clusterbombs, that’s for sure. There won’t be any collateral damage anymore, but you will go back to the beheadings in the markets and in the stadiums, you will go back to things like the typical way (pre-2001) for Afghan prisoners to be executed, which was to put them into a shipping container and do one of two things; leave it in the sun until the people inside it literally cooked to death, or if you were merciful you threw in a couple grenades.

I will never forget in 2002 when I first entered Kabul, there was all of these shipping containers lined along the side of the road that had been blown up from the inside and I couldn’t figure out how they were damaged this way, and that’s what it was from. The Taliban, or the other warlords would push their enemies into these shipping containers, throw in a grenade, and that was the end of it.

So when you do a thought experiment about us pulling out of Afghanistan and just accepting defeat now, it’s a pretty miserable place that you end up with. None of the girls would be going to school, the infant mortality rate would go back up, the women would be pushed out of civil service, and so this is the dilemma I struggle with. Where things are going well, but the international community is not doing a very good job, frankly, but if we throw in the towel the alternative is pretty nasty.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: So does that mean sticking with Afghanistan until it’s helicopters on the roof of the US embassy?

Scott Gilmore: Yeah, see that’s the struggle. You know, if your neighbour’s house is on fire and there’s kids on the upper floor who are screaming for help, how long do you try saving them even when you know that the house is going to burn down? And I don’t know the answer to that. It’s a decision I’m glad I don’t have to make. But it’s a debate that’s not being had in Canada, unfortunately, because both sides are being disingenuous.

On the side of those who are for keeping us in Afghanistan, one of the things that’s frustrating me is they’ve continually changed the reasons why as we get worse and worse at it. Originally we were in Afghanistan to get rid of Al Qaeda, and then we went into Afghanistan to cut poppies and opium, and then it was for women, and then it was for economic development, and then it was for AfPak. And as each reason becomes less and less likely to succeed, they change the reasons, so they skew the debate.

The other side, those that want us to pull out, they skew the debate as well because they talk about well, you know, we could be doing so much more in Sudan, that’s a usual, you know, the Canadian military should pull out of there and we should go back to being peacekeepers in Sudan. Well there are two problems with that. Canada has almost never been a peacekeeping nation. No one’s asking for Canadian peacekeepers anywhere, and surely they’re not asking for them in Sudan. The Sudanese government would never allow Canadian peacekeepers in Sudan. And the situation with Sudan is just as messy and just as complicated, but we don’t know about it because there are very few people reporting on south Sudan and Darfur.

It’s a very poor debate that we’re having in Canada and it’s a very, very difficult moral dilemma, and I’m glad I’ve got a day job that doesn’t force me to resolve either one of them.

We’ll be posting new Q&As with some fascinating Canadian thinkers, talkers, and doers over the next few months (at least until summer), which will be available both in audio format, and transcribed versions posted here on the blog.

Head on over to this.org/podcast, which is where it’s all happening. The series debuts with associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey, based in Ottawa, and his interview with Scott Gilmore, founder and executive director of the Peace Dividend Trust, a Canadian-based NGO that promotes local buying in post-conflict regions. They’re currently at work in Afghanistan, East Timor, and Haiti, and Gilmore has some interesting things to say about the strengths and weaknesses of traditional aid, and how he believes PDT can improve it.

The podcast isn’t yet available on iTunes, although we’re working on that and hope to be easily accessible in the iTunes story shortly; we’ll keep you posted here on the blog.

Your feedback is welcome any time, just email editor (at) this magazine (dot) ca, or leave a message in the comments section. Suggestions for future subjects are also great.

Scott Gilmore

This is the first in our relaunched series of podcasts from This Magazine. Over the next few months (we’ll go at least to the beginning of summer and then likely take a break) we hope to introduce you to some of Canada’s most interesting thinkers, talkers, and doers in politics, art, and activism. I’ll be splitting the podcasting duties with Nick Taylor-Vaisey, an Ottawa-based journalist and frequent contributor to the magazine. We’ll also hear from other contributors as we go along.

Today, Nick brings us the first entry in this new series, a conversation with Scott Gilmore of Peace Dividend Trust, a development NGO based in Ottawa and New York, with projects currently underway in Afghanistan, East Timor, and Haiti. PDT essentially promotes a buy-local strategy for international development, helping connect international aid agencies with local suppliers in the countries they work in. By directing funds to local businesses, PDT believes they see faster, more stable economic recovery in post-conflict zones, with lower overhead costs for funders and higher incomes for local businesspeople.

We’ll put up the transcript of this interview on the blog at This.org shortly, as we hope to do with all of these podcasts.

Please note that Listen to This isn’t yet available in the iTunes podcast directory; we expect it will be soon.

Update, 15:42 — So, uh, in a textbook rookie mistake I posted the podcast without actually attaching the MP3. It’s fixed now. Sorry!