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Authors: Alison Loat
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nomination process that feels murky or shady, a poignant acknowledgment that even in Canada’s democracy, politics can be little more than a backroom game.
CHAPTER THREE
… Into the Fire
T he idiosyncratic nomination process is only the first of several difficult rites of passage in a prospective MP’s journey to Parliament Hill. Especially for the first-time candidate, the campaign can be gruelling. And the learning curve facing every rookie MP presents its own set of challenges. Among the many MPs who offered us insight into both passages was Gary Merasty, from the Pelican Narrows Indian Reserve in northeastern Saskatchewan. Merasty belonged to the reserve’s first generation for whom post-secondary education was considered an option. Born in 1964, the stocky and spectacled full-status member of the Cree Nation played hockey for a year after high school, took an industrial mechanics course and then worked for three years at a mine in Flin Flon, just over the Manitoba border. Then he went to the University of Saskatchewan for a Bachelor of Education degree, and returned home to teach in Pelican Narrows. He taught for seven years, and then turned his attention to politics, becoming a well-regarded two-term grand chief of the Prince Albert Grand Council.
Federal politics beckoned in 2005. The federal Liberal party had been cultivating Merasty as a potential candidate forsome time. They even took the extraordinary step of bringing to Ottawa all the chiefs Merasty represented as grand chief so that Prime Minister Paul Martin could reassure them of the good that Merasty could do in the federal government. The measure won the chiefs’ support, and on December 2, Merasty was acclaimed as his riding’s Liberal nominee. Election day was less than two months away, on January 23, 2006.
Merasty’s riding of Desnethé–Missinippi–Churchill River is almost as large as Germany. It encompasses the whole of Saskatchewan’s northern half. To campaign, Merasty drove through early winter’s blowing snow and over black ice, cruising across the arrow-straight rural roads in a Toyota 4Runner with his wife, Brenda, and his campaign manager, Bonnie Leask. And then he set out on his strategy: he thought of his riding as 70 percent aboriginal and 30 percent non-aboriginal. He was battling a Conservative incumbent. Not an aboriginal. Thanks to the goodwill Merasty had built up as a grand chief, he had the advantage. If, that is, everyone who was eligible to cast a ballot turned out to vote.
The problem, as Merasty knew, was that First Nations tended not to vote in federal and provincial elections. “The 30 percent non-aboriginal show up to vote in high numbers, typically, and the aborginals don’t,” he explained. His challenge? Mobilize the 70 percent.
Merasty knew that the tribal council elections on the province’s reserves could attract voter participation rates of 95 percent. They participated in the democratic process. They just didn’t participate in federal democracy. “It’s not that they’re not political,” said Merasty. “It’s just the relevance—they didn’t feel the federal government was relevant to them.”Nor did they feel the federal government was particularly sympathetic to their problems. And there were others, like Merasty’s own mother, who could remember needing the federal government’s permission to leave the reserve; it was 1960 before the federal government had even granted Status Indians the unconditional right to vote.
So how to make federal politics matter to the aboriginals of northern Saskatchewan? Merasty started with Pelican Narrows, where typically only a couple of hundred voted out of the fifteen hundred who were eligible. “Your vote matters,” he told them. “Only 15–20 percent of you are voting. But First Nations could decide the outcome.”
The populace was too sparsely distributed for Merasty to reach everyone. He relied on contacting the movers and shakers on each
CHAPTER THREE
… Into the Fire
T he idiosyncratic nomination process is only the first of several difficult rites of passage in a prospective MP’s journey to Parliament Hill. Especially for the first-time candidate, the campaign can be gruelling. And the learning curve facing every rookie MP presents its own set of challenges. Among the many MPs who offered us insight into both passages was Gary Merasty, from the Pelican Narrows Indian Reserve in northeastern Saskatchewan. Merasty belonged to the reserve’s first generation for whom post-secondary education was considered an option. Born in 1964, the stocky and spectacled full-status member of the Cree Nation played hockey for a year after high school, took an industrial mechanics course and then worked for three years at a mine in Flin Flon, just over the Manitoba border. Then he went to the University of Saskatchewan for a Bachelor of Education degree, and returned home to teach in Pelican Narrows. He taught for seven years, and then turned his attention to politics, becoming a well-regarded two-term grand chief of the Prince Albert Grand Council.
Federal politics beckoned in 2005. The federal Liberal party had been cultivating Merasty as a potential candidate forsome time. They even took the extraordinary step of bringing to Ottawa all the chiefs Merasty represented as grand chief so that Prime Minister Paul Martin could reassure them of the good that Merasty could do in the federal government. The measure won the chiefs’ support, and on December 2, Merasty was acclaimed as his riding’s Liberal nominee. Election day was less than two months away, on January 23, 2006.
Merasty’s riding of Desnethé–Missinippi–Churchill River is almost as large as Germany. It encompasses the whole of Saskatchewan’s northern half. To campaign, Merasty drove through early winter’s blowing snow and over black ice, cruising across the arrow-straight rural roads in a Toyota 4Runner with his wife, Brenda, and his campaign manager, Bonnie Leask. And then he set out on his strategy: he thought of his riding as 70 percent aboriginal and 30 percent non-aboriginal. He was battling a Conservative incumbent. Not an aboriginal. Thanks to the goodwill Merasty had built up as a grand chief, he had the advantage. If, that is, everyone who was eligible to cast a ballot turned out to vote.
The problem, as Merasty knew, was that First Nations tended not to vote in federal and provincial elections. “The 30 percent non-aboriginal show up to vote in high numbers, typically, and the aborginals don’t,” he explained. His challenge? Mobilize the 70 percent.
Merasty knew that the tribal council elections on the province’s reserves could attract voter participation rates of 95 percent. They participated in the democratic process. They just didn’t participate in federal democracy. “It’s not that they’re not political,” said Merasty. “It’s just the relevance—they didn’t feel the federal government was relevant to them.”Nor did they feel the federal government was particularly sympathetic to their problems. And there were others, like Merasty’s own mother, who could remember needing the federal government’s permission to leave the reserve; it was 1960 before the federal government had even granted Status Indians the unconditional right to vote.
So how to make federal politics matter to the aboriginals of northern Saskatchewan? Merasty started with Pelican Narrows, where typically only a couple of hundred voted out of the fifteen hundred who were eligible. “Your vote matters,” he told them. “Only 15–20 percent of you are voting. But First Nations could decide the outcome.”
The populace was too sparsely distributed for Merasty to reach everyone. He relied on contacting the movers and shakers on each
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