Ignoring The Problem Will Not Make It Go Away

To be fair we can't lay this entirely at McGinty's feet as for decades the problem of homegrown terrorism has been ignored and you can't blame the indians for working the give an inch take a mile tactic.........

National Post editorial on Dalton McGuinty's Caledonia policy: 'The coward at Queen's Park'

It's been a long time since we've received as much response to an article as we did following our Jan. 17 editorial, Caledonia redux. A huge number of Ontarians from the Caledonia area -- many of them with first-hand stories to tell about militant native activity -- thanked us for shining a light on the problems they've suffered. Few could understand why their provincial government is standing by as violent protesters wreck the region's economy, intimidate private citizens and render local homes and businesses virtually worthless.

As reported earlier this week, the freshest outrage to come out of the land claim by the Six Nations band in southwestern Ontario amounts to an extortion racket. Members of an entity calling itself the Haudenosaunee Development Institute (HDI), which apparently has the official blessing of the Six Nations council, have been confronting developers along a 10-kilometre swath on either side of the Grand River --a tract potentially almost 300,000 square kilometres in size -- demanding exorbitant development fees and "royalties." Even just to "apply" for a permit to operate on land the band claims as its own can cost up to $7,000. Businesses that don't pay up are threatened with blockades and standoffs of the kind that have paralyzed the Douglas Creek Estates development at Caledonia, southwest of Hamilton, for the past two years.

Were a motorcycle gang or organized crime family shaking down the same entrepreneurs for protection money, the Ontario government and the province's police force -- the OPP -- would move swiftly to identify the guilty parties and lay charges. But because the culprits this time are members of a politically correct minority -- aboriginals -- and because the government of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty is deathly afraid of any and all confrontations with natives, which they fear might summon memories of the Ipperwash standoff in 1995, the best it can bring itself to do is advise business owners not to pay.

It is a case study in cowardice, and everyone who voted for Mr. McGuinty should be ashamed of it.

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