Premier attacks NDP rookie

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This article was published 01/12/2016 (2701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The premier and one of his cabinet ministers launched a sustained attack Friday on rookie NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine, suggesting she spent four years on the provincial payroll but can’t produce evidence she did any work.

Before winning the St. Johns riding in the April election, Fontaine was the special adviser on aboriginal women’s issues for the indigenous issues committee of cabinet, focusing on missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Brian Pallister and Indigenous Minister Eileen Clarke tore into Fontaine during question period over her failure to produce a report to the government on the work she did in that role with the former NDP government.

“I have not seen a shred of evidence of that work,” Pallister said.

He said he’s been asking Fontaine for six months to share what she knows with his government.

Clarke said she meets regularly with victims’ families who were never included in Fontaine’s consultations.

“Only a select group was invited,” Clarke said. “We find it offensive.”

Fontaine called Clarke’s charges “the most ridiculous answer I’ve ever heard.”

The NDP accused the PCs of trying to distract attention from their own unwillingness to do anything for families.

Fontaine said the Tories didn’t appoint their own adviser and have dissolved the cabinet committee on aboriginal matters. The PCs depicted the former committee as “a bunch of NDPers sitting around gabbing,” she said.

“It is beyond comprehension that this premier doesn’t think that missing and murdered indigenous women and girls’ families don’t deserve a special adviser to work with them,” she said.

Pallister’s barrage continued during his session-ending news conference.

“I am sincerely interested in this file,” he told reporters, adding while he believes Fontaine performed work as special adviser, there’s no record of it.

“There needs to be evidence of work. I’ve received no evidence of any work ever being done, he said. “If you don’t share it, who did you do the work for? Where’s the sharing of the information you were paid to report? It has to be more than an arm around the shoulder.

“I can’t find anything… zero… nada… zilch.”

The NDP did not make Fontaine available to reporters. The party distributed Hansard transcripts of a June 17 committee meeting in which Fontaine and Pallister discussed at length her work as special adviser. At that meeting, Fontaine told Pallister, “My primary role that I worked almost 24/7 was establishing those relationships with families.”

She organized annual summits and gatherings of families and stakeholders, as Manitoba became the first province to have a strategy, she told the committee.

“Every phase that I had done with the provincial strategy was actually done in conjunction with Family and Social Services,” she said at the time. “We were the only one with a strategy.”

The committee learned both Fontaine and Pallister had spent time taking part in searches for murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.

Pallister asked Fontaine whether a written report of her work was available and was told she had been developing one before the April election and had been waiting to see what actions the federal government would take. Ottawa has since established a national inquiry.

New Democrat Wab Kinew said Fontaine is a nationally recognized leader on the subject.

“The priority should always return to the families,” he said. “The provincial bureaucracy is large, and it can be intimidating.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca