In a memorable moment during her 1993 federal election campaign, Kim Campbell suggested an election campaign isn’t an appropriate time to debate substantive issues.

In a similar spirit, Public Safety Minister Robert Runciman suggested last week the current provincial election campaign isn’t an appropriate time for testimony about whether the provincial police used excessive force in gunning down an unarmed man.

But it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate time for Runciman to finally be obliged to explain how it was that a police sniper — in the force Runciman supervised — came to open fire on Dudley George, who was armed only with a stick.

The George case still festers like an open sore eight years after the shooting, when some 200 heavily armed provincial police converged on a small group of native protesters who had occupied a strip of Ipperwash provincial park in an apparent attempt to draw attention to their claim to a traditional native burial ground.

The officer who did the shooting, Kenneth Deane, was convicted of criminal negligence causing death, after the judge ruled Deane had “concocted” his story that George had a rifle.

Even so, Deane was given only a two-year conditional sentence and required to perform community service.

But the central question has always been: What role did the newly elected Conservative cabinet of Mike Harris play in the September, 1995 killing. Did Harris — and others currently in the cabinet, including Runciman — intervene in a way that escalated things to the point that an overarmed police troop advanced in the dark against about 25 unarmed men, women and children?

Up until then, Ontario had traditionally approached native land-claim occupations with peaceful methods.

But this time was different. Amnesty International, as well as George’s family and others, have argued for a public inquiry to determine what role the provincial cabinet played in the change of tactics.

The Tories have steadfastly refused, leaving the family no choice but to bring a private lawsuit (which they’ve offered to abandon if an inquiry is called).

Runciman convinced the court last week he was too busy with the election campaign to testify in the lawsuit, as if the case involved nothing but a small, private matter.

But what could be more relevant to the political choice we have to make in this election than whether the Tory cabinet — often cited for its hostility toward the poor and the powerless — overstepped its authority and pushed the police to use excessive force against members of one of the province’s most marginalized groups?

There’s a great deal wrong with the way this case has been handled. It’s grotesque that George’s relatives, after losing a family member, have been left to seek justice privately through the courts, at great personal expense. And they’ve had to fight cabinet ministers, who have been able to draw on a bottomless pit of public money in their efforts to run interference in the case.

The government has portrayed the native protesters as a lawless band; one government lawyer implied in court that they were “terrorists.”

But the occupied site was part of a tract of land guaranteed to native people by the British Crown in 1827. It was appropriated for use as a military base under the War Measures Act during World War II and never returned. Repeated attempts to get it back had failed.

So if anyone was unjustly occupying anyone else’s land, that would be us non-natives. And if anyone was introducing violence into the dispute, that again would be us, with our military-style assault on a group of civilians.

Interestingly, the OPP had a plan for resolving this occupation peacefully, through negotiation and a court injunction, according to a new report by Amnesty International. But police tactics changed suddenly after high-level emergency meetings at Queen’s Park.

One possible explanation for the turnaround can be found in notes made at the time by a senior government legal adviser. Describing the then-premier as “hawkish” on the occupation, the adviser noted: “The longer they occupy it, the more support they’ll get. He wants them out in a day or two.”

The next evening, heavily armoured police moved in. George was shot three times. Badly bleeding, he was driven by his brother and sister in a car with a flat tire to a local hospital, where both siblings were promptly taken into police custody, and unable to verify what happened to their brother, Amnesty reports.

Election campaigns are apparently a good time for politicians to ride around on tractors, but a poor time for them to explain why Dudley George had to die.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...