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How many houses should be built every year considering the a population of 2000? Dont forget that the biggest cost associated with any house is the land it sits on, if you arent paying for the land you get a lot of bang for the buck.

So I would say that of that 500k they received last year they could have built 7 houses, and for the sake of argument lets say that over the last 10 years they have been given 2.5 million from CMHC which would equal 35 new homes.

Just to play the devils advocate, most homes in the ROC last for more than 40 years so in my opinion they have received more than enough money to meet their housing needs.

We also mention that they have received 90 million from the federal government, but no one mentions the rest of the money they receive which doubles their total income. So we can say that 18 million a year isnt much but what about the other 16 million the band makes. That is what stinks and makes this situation sketchy is that they do get a tonne of money every year yet they live in shacks and tents.

I still fail to see how this is the governments fault

   

I think the bottom line is that if the Federal Government REALLY wanted to prevent these kinds of things from happening, they would have done so long long ago. They would have sat down with the Provinces and the First nations leaders and CONSULTED with them and they would have come up with something that produced results.

The reason this hasn't happened is because the Federal government actually PREFERS to just throw cheques in the mail as DISCRETIONARY PAYMENTS whenever some crisis and negative media attention forces them into making some show action.

Minister of Aboriginal Affairs is probably one of the few positions in the country where you can actually keep your job in the face of a disaster by saying: "But..but...I've spent tens of millions with no results!"

   

The problem is that First Nations have become a sacred cow. They were treated terribly in the past so nobody has the gonads to say that they can't get away with the shit they are allowed to get away with these days.

Public sympathy for First Nations is very low. The only people jumping in there to support the indefensible are the usual rent-a-mob types who join demos for anything against the mainstream.

Until Canadians do more than moan on forums about native issues, nothing will happen and the natives will carry on taking Federal welfare and sink lower into the abyss of dependence and corruption.

   

Mike Holmes says stop building crap homes and a lot of the housing problem might solve itself. There's no reason to believe that the same sort of house built in suburban Calgary or Toronto is the appropriate type of house to build in a swampy community on the south shore of Hudson's Bay. Build the homes appropriate to the local environmental conditions and the mould infestations won't even happen at all.

Only one home per lifetime per family though. There's absolutely no justification at all for us to keep building houses for some assholes on the reserves who destroy the walls with bullet holes, rip up the insides for firewood, or burn the place down while partying. If they do that even once then tough fucking luck for those kinds of idiots because they shouldn't be entitled to another one ever again.

   

How is living in a mouldy house and having to shit in a bucket "getting away with shit"?

If you're referring to misappropriation of funds by the band leaders that is not the same thing as "the First Nations." In fact most of the people who live under corrupt band leaders are as likely to see those leaders as crooked Federal Government henchmen as anything else.

   

Who else lives in free houses? Who else gets free everything?

   

Mike Holmes' show is an exercise in how to spend $100,000 to fix a $2,000 problem. It's the classic garage rip-off: sell the dumb old lady with an oil leak a $2,000 valve job when all she needs is a $10 oil filter. He's the Home Depot's Sham-Wow-guy. I wonder home much they're paying him.

   

It'd be nice to see natives who get training stay in their own communities to improve the lot of their people. However, like most people from small rural communities, they get used to the ammenities they find in larger urban centres. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If you takwe a comparable(in poopulation) non native community anywhere else in Canada, you'll find skilled tradesmen in these non native towns. Mechanics(big and small motor), plumbers, electricians, carpenters and people experienced in construction or heavy machinery operation and maintenance. In a reserve these tradesmen have to be flown in.

People need to be encouraged to stay in their communities to make them liveable places where you can raise a family with opportunities. The non native communities are able to do this, althought the drain to the cities continues. They do it, through their own initiative, on their own dime. Natives have schooling/training opportunities not available to non native. So why, do reserves for the most part, continue to be in such dire straits? the chiefs and their cronies are the reason for the most part...keep the people ignorant and poor so they can continue to run their own little fiefdoms without a challenge from the plebes. A prosperous reserve/community with businesses and industry owned and controlled by people living on the reserve will mean the end of their own wealth and power.

As long as collecting welfare and blaming whitey for anything and everything is the only business on the reserve, the corrupt chiefs will remain in power and and the cycle of despair and despondancy will continue. A good start would be with letting natives own their homes. They want repairs or additions done, they pay for them. Ownership will go along way in helping to instill a sense of pride. It's one step, but it's the beginning of a journey back from the brink.

   

Well, they don't own the houses, so they don't get "free houses" and considering the extremely poor quality of the housing and the sanitation, does it count for anything. If I took a crap on a dinner plate and said "Hey Eyebrock, 'here's your free dinner'" would you feel like you were getting special treatment?

And by the way...they don't get "free everything". They still have to pay for food and gas and clothing...all of which costs a forture in places like this because of the remoteness of the locations, some of which arent even accessible by land for much of the year. And in many cases it was the Federal Government that relocated them to those isolated areas in the first place.

   

people are responsible for maintaining their own level of sanitation. It's up to you, whether or not you live in your own excrement. My mom grew up with an outhouse, until they moved into town, and our cabin had an outhouse, but it was in no way shape or form unsanitary.

Where we lived in northern Manitoba, the lake water was cleaner than the stuff coming from the water treatment plant. No one had gone in and scrubbed the holding tanks in ten years.

   

Stop giving Native Bands Billions of tax payers money every year and tell them it's time to stand on their own two feet and join the 21st Century.

   

Nah. He's exposed too many fly-by-nighters who really ripped people off with some of the hack renovation jobs they've shown on his show. He might cost more, which is to be expected from a professional who regularly warns people not to fall into any of that do-it-yourself trap that Home Depo pushes. But quality costs money. Do it cheap or do it right, but 99 times out of 100 you can't do both. It applies as much to building a house as it does to manufacturing a car or building a nuclear power plant.

Besides, Holmes was talking about renovating shipping containers with fully developed interiors. or providing to the Natives the type of modular homes that are identical to the ones used in the work camps at the oil sands sites. Fully synthetic interiors so there's no mould to worry about eating into the drywall or wood. It might not be luxury but it'd be a lot better than what the Natives are living in right now.

   

So there's no such thing as public sanitation??? Any idea what your neighbourhood would look like if the taxpayer-funded street sweepers didn't come by once a while?

Also interesting you make note of the water treatment plant and the lake. You might recall stories a few years back about Kashechewan First Nation in Ontario, where the Federal gov't built the village on the flood plain of a river and also built the municipal water intake downstream from the sewage outlet. The Province of Ontario had to evacuate the village first for E.Coli, scabies and impetigo outbreaks due to all the feces in the water supply (the federal gov had refused to do so). And then six months later the village was evacuated again for flooding. The Federal government did fix the water supply but did not do anything regarding the flood plain, citing the cost.

   

It appears that not all the residents of Attawapiskat feel the same way as the Chief.




Suprise Suprise.

http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/cana ... le/1461854

   

What would Donny Brasco do?

   

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