The Reform Party has landed in hot water again for bigoted comments by one of its MPs. Just days after saying publicly that Atlantic fishermen are “charity cases,” Reform MP Herb Grubel turned his guns on First Nations peoples.
Grubel criticized the federal government because it “has given in to the demands of the native community to give them more physical goods to allow them to live on their South-Sea-island equivalent.” Grubel, born in Germany in 1934, added that this has resulted in “lazy houses,” and compared native people to “children” living on handouts from a rich uncle.
Chief Francis Flett of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in The Pas, Manitoba responded by saying that Grubel doesn’t know anything about First Nations life. “We challenge our rich uncle to put on his sunglasses and Bermuda shorts and come visit us in our South Sea paradises where he can get a good look at our five-star lifestyles,” said Flett in the Kamloops Daily News.
