Opinion: Harris, Trump, and deadly political rhetoric

By Maurice Switzer

When I think of Donald Trump – which I try to do as seldom as possible, especially on a full stomach –  I am reminded of Mike Harris.

Yes, the same Mike Harris who taught math to Grades 7 and 8 kids at W.J. Fricker Public School in North Bay, where he also worked as a ski instructor and managed a golf club.

For the benefit of those outside of his immediate family circle, this is the same Mike Harris who, as Premier of Ontario, oversaw the elimination of 500,000 recipients of social assistance, thereby sewing the seeds for the current ballooning rates of child poverty and homelessness in the province.

This is the same Mike Harris whose Tories went on a privatization binge, placing such public assets as toll-road Highway 407 into the hands of such good corporate citizens as SNC-Lavalin, a company that has been in headlines for months because of its good relations with folks like former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s son, and bad relations with justice ministers back here in Canada.

This is also the same Mike Harris who, after his Conservative caucus chopped the jobs of 200 nurses to cut costs in the province’s health sector, compared their situations with workers in hula-hoop factories who needed to adjust to changing times.

And, yes, I’m afraid it’s the same Mike Harris whose government contracted-out provincial water testing before seven citizens of Walkerton, Ont., died from E. coli and hundreds more became ill. A public inquiry cited government cuts to inspection services and their privatization as contributing factors.

You don’t need to remind any First Nation citizen in Ontario who Mike Harris is. We are well aware that he’s the politician who told a roomful of cabinet ministers and cops, “I want the [expletive] Indians out of the park”, about 24 hours before a provincial police sniper shot and killed unarmed protester Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park on Sept. 6, 1995.

The killing of Dudley George on his watch was merely the culmination of a trail of Harris’ conduct that betrayed a personal disdain for Indigenous rights. His government unilaterally cancelled community fishing licences issued to First Nations by the previous provincial government, and imposed a 20-per-cent “win” tax on Casino Rama profits, thereby reneging on another provincial government deal and gobbling up gaming proceeds that First Nations at the time used to pay for things like fire trucks, school computers, and cemetery maintenance.

Months before his first election as premier, Harris told a meeting of tourist operators that, “Too many [Natives] spend all their time on courts and lawyers and they just stay home and do nothing.”

Of course, the former North Bay golf pro did not personally pull the trigger on OPP sniper Kenneth Deane’s rifle that fired the bullet that killed Dudley George. But his words and actions as the top elected politician in the province carried a lot of weight and influence with government employees and police officers within his sphere of influence.

Justice Sidney Linden declared that Mike Harris’s impatience to “get the [expletive] Indians out of the park” helped create an environment that made the Ipperwash tragedy more likely to happen.

Mike Harris didn’t actually fire the gun that killed Dudley George, but his political behaviour helped provide the ammunition to load it.

What lends credence to the report’s finding is that Harris has never once acknowledged  any remorse for his government’s role in the Ipperwash tragedy, or expressed condolences to the George family.

Justice Linden rightly recognized what cops and courts call a “pattern of behaviour”, and what he wrote about Mike Harris in the landmark report produced in the wake of the Ipperwash killing is just as applicable to Donald Trump and any other person who aspires to hold public office.

If a political leader acts or speaks in a certain manner on any issue, they give licence to everyone in their society to let those words and deeds guide their behaviour. If it’s good enough for a premier or president to hold outrageous, false, or racist opinions, it must be okay for the rest of us to do so.

Fortunately for those of us on this side of the border, we live in a society whose members so far seem less prone to mimic the more outrageous behaviour of our elected leaders. While the incidence of inner-city violence is becoming more commonplace in some larger urban centres, it is doubtful that Canada will ever deteriorate into the kind of killing ground that the United States has become, with over 270 mass shootings to date in 2019. The list of 1,500 U.S. shooting casualties – including 250 deaths – is almost beyond comprehension to those of us in our peaceable northern kingdom.

When the President of the United States – who many Americans like to think of as “the leader of the free world” – refers to undocumented immigrants as “animals”, “criminals” and “rapists”, when he proposes to ban all Muslims from entering his country, when he says that some of the people marching at white supremacist rallies are “very fine people”, and when he tells Congressional colleagues who object to his racist rhetoric to, “go back where they came from”, Donald Trump – like Mike Harris before him – is providing ammunition for bigots that just might find its way into guns.

Like Mike Harris, Trump has also displayed contempt for Indigenous peoples. When he felt Native casinos were threatening his gaming revenues in the 1990s, Trump paid for a series of advertisements that referenced “Mohawk Indian criminal activities.” And he revels in name-calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren – a former law school professor with likely more intellectual capacity than the collective branches of Trump’s entire family tree –“Pocahontas”, because of her claim to Cherokee heritage.

Canadians are fond of describing themselves in terms of how much they differ from their American neighbours, but should not be overly complacent because fewer people here pack handguns.

The approaching 24th anniversary of the death of Dudley George at Ipperwash is a fitting time for Ontarians to assess the grave potential of political rhetoric to escalate and impact human lives.

Mike Harris may have an honourary degree from Nipissing University, a campus library named after him, and a plaque on North Bay’s downtown Walk of Fame, but he still has blood on his hands.

Maurice Switzer is a citizen of the Mississaugas of Alderville First Nation. He lives in North Bay where he is the principal of Nimkii Communications, a public education practice with a focus on the Treaty Relationship that was fatally breached by the Harris government at Ipperwash on Sept. 6, 1995.