Getting Aboriginal People to Vote in BC

March 13, 2001

Natives sought for election

CBC Radio
March 13th

Clark:
"...many other studies across Canada and the world in democracies, that,
two groups of people generally don't vote or get registered and one of them
is poor people and the second is young people. The Aboriginal population is
a poor and the very young and we know from other studies that Aboriginal
people have not really participated in federal, provincial or municipal
elections. And since I've been elected as the President of the UNN and
we've had these two elections I've been over meeting with Elections BC
trying to raise these issues and get some movement within Elections BC to
ensure that Aboriginal people are going to be involved and remove any type
of barriers that are preventing them from voting and getting enumerated.
And what I learnt is that there are a number of barriers that just don't
seem to be getting addressed such as in our northern communities where we
have many First Nations communities that are very isolated and it's quite
an effort just to get enumerated and get voting. Two, I didn't realize the
province is not doing an enumeration process, and three they're basing on
their previous voters list.... And what I did..one of our staff members
check out with one of our housing societies I cross referenced the voters
list with the housing resident members. And what we found was seventy per
cent of the people living in that housing society were not on the voters
list. So these are very serious issues for me.

Question: So what do you think should be done to make the system more
inclusive?

Clark:
"Well there's a number of things that we made requeasts to Elections BC.
One very important is to do a voter enumeration especially as it impacts
our people. Two is to sensitive Elections BC to Aboriginal issues and
differences within our communities. Three would be to start to hire and
train Aboriginal people in the upcoming election. But not only there also
within Election BC's office as well as to start creating a dialogue with
their electoral officers and their district registrar of voters and trying
to create that network with these groups to remove those systemic barriers
that are preventing our people from getting involved.

Question: What would you say to someone who might suggest that hiring and
training Aboriginal people to run the stations may be giving them special
treatment.

Clark:
"Well if you look at the process they have in place...Elections BC comes
under the provincial government their employment equity they're answerable
to employment equity. I found out that they're going to hire over thirty
thousand people with the upcoming election. I honestly to tell you the
truth right now at this moment I don't know how many district electoral
officers they have or deputy positions that are Aboriginal at this moment
in time. I don't know how many people are in their office that are
Aboriginal. And we don't know if they're complying with the employment
equity component within their hiring for elections. What we're saying is
that if you're going to hire thirty thousand people, and five per cent of
the Aboriginal five per cent of the population in BC is Aboriginal then
let's look at targeting fifteen hundred Aboriginal people throughout the
province to get involved which would then have a rippling effect to not
only our young people...we have high unemployment rates so we've got the
bodies but it would also send a message that ya this process is friendly to
us as long as we get involved from the ground up.

CBC: OK Scott we're going to talk to somebody at Elections BC right now
thank you for giving us your side of this issue we'll get the other side
now. We've been talking to Scott Clark, the President of the United Native
Nations now we're going to talk with Jennifer Miller she's from Elections
BC and we've reached her in Victoria. Hello Jennifer

Miller:
"Good evening how are you this evening

CBC:
"Fine, you heard what Scott had to say what's your response?

Miller:
"Well there's a few points I first of all want to raise is that we have
enumerated we did a province wide enumeration in 1999 and we processed over
six hunded thousand updates to the voters list. it was a very substantial
enumeration. What we did was we distributed a generic Are You on the
Provincial Voters List householder to over one point five million
residential addresses in the province. And any residence that we didn't
have a registered voter we actually sent a we are missing you package to
addresses to which no one was registered. This enumeration went on for over
a year and a half and it was very substantial. So we have enumerated.

CBC:
So how do you explain what Scott said about the whole housing unit
residents in a housing unit none of them had been enumerated?

Miller:
"We can't put someone on the voters list until they sign an application for
registration. So we can go out there...We Are Missing You Package we
included an application for registration a prepaid postage envelope but
unless they fill it out and send it back to us we can't just put them on
the voter's list.

CBC:
What about hiring and training Aboriginals to help out at election time in
the booths.

Miller:
"Oh, well employment opportunities are available to all individuals living
in the province. What happens is when an election is called we hire
approximately thirty thousand people which I know Mr.Scott Clark mentioned
and any individual seeking employment during the election should contact
the district electoral officer or district registrar of voters. We have
discussed this issue with our staff and district registrar of voters and
told them to review and ensure a sensibility to all communities and
including Aboriginal communities and reiterating they need to ensure
diversity is represented in our selection of election officials and voter
registration officials. So in areas for instance like Skeena where there's
a large Aboriginal population we have asked that they ensure that they have
people that represent the community as voting officials.

CBC:
Will you be making any changes before the next election?

Miller:
"Well we actually recently in the last few weeks have since a meeting with
Mr. Scott (Clark) back in January have hired an Aboriginal liaison officer
and she'll be working with us through the election. Also what we have done
to try to contact all Aboriginal people living in the province we sent out
an information package to tribal councils, band offices and friendship
centres and included information on the election process and what we're
going to do is have our Aboriginal liaison officer follow up by contacting
every single one of those individuals.

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VICTORIA (CKNW/AM980) -- There are calls for Elections B.C. to get more of
the aboriginal population involved in the upcoming election.

Scott Clark of the United Native Nations wants to see more aboriginals
hired and trained to help organize the upcoming election.

He says they could reach out to impoverished natives who do not vote
because they do not feel the system caters to their unique needs.

Clark would also like to see an enumeration of native peoples before the
vote is called.

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