Not too close with Trudeau, Bellegarde insists as AFN race gets underway
OTTAWA — Experience usually helps when it comes to getting a job — except, it seems, when that job is at the helm of the Assembly of First Nations, where experience often seems more of a liability than an asset.
Just ask Perry Bellegarde, the incumbent national chief of Canada’s most powerful Indigenous organization, who after three years in the role has rivals accusing him of being too chummy with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government.
“Every national chief gets accused of being too close to the prime minister, to government,” Bellegarde said in a recent interview.
“We have to have a relationship with policy and legislative decision-makers.”