It’s hard to blame First Nations for resorting to blockades and other illegal actions to protest land claims. For one, knowing how lousy governments are at respecting rights, it’s almost always the case that the natives have a legitimate beef. For another, it works so well. As one refreshingly frank Alberta chief once told me “‘Blockade’ seems a bad, bad word, But it’s not. It sometimes brings both parties that are in dispute together to fix it.”
Sure. But this ain’t the Gulf of Aden. When Canadians get screwed over, we don’t resort to seizing property and demanding ransom to release it. We go to court. And with so much at stake, governments had better start insisting that First Nations do the same, as I explain in my column in the September issue of the Financial Post Business Magazine: