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OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised to end Ottawa’s “paternalistic” approach and to focus on economic reconciliation in his first in-person address to the Assembly of First Nations in Montreal on Thursday.

Poilievre, who has been criticized for past comments deemed insensitive on residential school survivors but who has apologized since, attempted to showcase his vision as an aspiring prime minister as one of collaboration and partnership with First Nations peoples.

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“This is my first meeting with you in person, but I hope it will be the first of many,” he said.

Poilievre’s appearance at the AFN was tense at times. Some veterans and delegates chose to turn their back on him during the speech. And the question-and-answer portion got a little testy, with two women telling him to “educate” himself on inherent treaty rights.

Poilievre spoke about the shared values between Conservatives and first peoples, values of faith, family, work, tradition and entrepreneurship. He also explained how his core promises, including the one to axe the federal carbon tax, would benefit them.

He said he supports the Chiefs of Ontario’s legal challenge against the federal government on the carbon tax, which they say is discriminatory for people living on reserves.

“I have good news. When I’m prime minister, the Chiefs of Ontario will not have to spend any more money on lawyers, because I will axe the tax and, when I say it, I mean it.”

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But the first round of applause came when Poilievre promised to support an optional First Nations resource charge that he said would allow them to “take back control” of federal tax revenue generated by resource projects on their lands.

“I don’t deserve the applause,” he said. “This was a First Nations developed idea. I simply came along and accepted it, put it in my platform. You all did the hard work of developing this idea. I’m simply here to follow your marching orders and make it happen.”

Some more applause followed after he issued a challenge to CEOs in the neighbouring office towers of downtown Montreal to train Indigenous youth and offer them jobs instead of flying in foreign workers.

As he has said many times before, Poilievre insisted that he wants to “run a small government with big citizens free to make their own decisions and live their own lives.”

For too long, you’ve been held back by a broken system that takes power away from you and places it in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa

Pierre Poilievre

“For too long, you’ve been held back by a broken system that takes power away from you and places it in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa. That’s why I’m committed to ending the Ottawa-knows-best paternalistic system,” he said.

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Poilievre said he would like to see more economic growth and development, which will give people “better jobs, more opportunities and powerful paycheques” and vowed to listen to First Nations’ concerns about development projects but also act on their support.

“If reconciliation means anything, it means saying ‘yes’ to economic opportunities that First Nations are asking for,” he said.

Poilievre also addressed the federal government’s “painful and destructive” past decisions for Indigenous peoples, most notably the residential school system that he said “removed children from the love and care of their families” for decades.

“It was a monstrous abuse of excessive governmental power to cut your children off from their cultures, languages and traditions. In many cases, students were neglected and abused tragically. Too many young children never came home,” he said.

“Those were terrible crimes by a big and imposing government against each victim and against your communities.”

In 2008, hours before then Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology to residential school survivors, Poilievre openly wondered in a radio interview if, by compensating survivors, the government was “really getting value for all of this money.”

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“My view is that we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self-reliance. That’s the solution in the long run. More money will not solve it,” he said.

A recent biography about Poilievre described this moment as one of the biggest mistakes of his political career. The next day, Harper “dressed him down so sharply that people outside the room were embarrassed,” according to one account in the Globe and Mail.

Poilievre later apologized for his comments in the House of Commons.

Sixteen years later, the aspiring prime minister speaking to the AFN declared “there is more work to be done” to right the wrongs of the past and promised to “be a partner to the First Nations” while recognizing it “won’t be easy.”

“We won’t always agree, and you’ve heard enough promises and enough performative reconciliation,” he said. “What we need are honest and direct conversations and a partnership based on a nation-to-nation relationship and mutual respect.”

A few minutes later, AFN delegate Judy Wilson went up to the microphone to call out Poilievre for failing to acknowledge the LGBTQ community, missing and murdered Indigenous women or climate change in his speech.

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“How can we dismiss the climate crisis? It’s real. It’s happening. We have heat domes people are dying from. We have wildfires. That has to be one of your top agendas, not just the economy and business,” she said.

Mary Teegee, a hereditary chief for Takla Lake First Nation, said First Nations endured “the worst… years ever” under the Harper government and said that “an apology (for residential school survivors) without actions… are just hollow words in the wind.”

“We want to ensure that what we endured under the Harper regime, we won’t go through that with you,” she said.

Wilson and Teegee both blasted Poilievre for not acknowledging First Nations inherent treaty rights, with Wilson adding “you need to educate yourself on that.”

The last time Poilievre addressed the AFN was with a video message in December 2022. At the time, he received some boos from the people in attendance.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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