National native leader Phil Fontaine warned a blue-chip audience on Tuesday that the anger felt in many First Nations communities has reached a breaking point.

"Frankly, we are fearful of the effect this is having on the well-being and public safety in our communities," said the chief of the Assembly of First Nations in an eloquent speech to the Canadian Club of Ottawa.

Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine, speaking to the Canadian Club of Ottawa on Tuesday, suggested his tactic of favouring diplomacy over barricades has garnered few results.
(CBC)

"So here I am again today, hammering away at another group. Many of our communities have reached the breaking point. The anger and frustration are palpable."

A report in Tuesday's Globe and Mail quoted a First Nation leader in Manitoba threatening widespread economic disruption and a potential blockade of CN rail lines connecting Eastern and Western Canada.  

Fontaine did not dismiss worries about possible confrontations this summer.

While he has a track record of favouring quiet diplomacy over barricades, he suggested to his audience that this tactic has yielded few results.

"Consider where that attitude has gotten us — obviously not very far," he said.

Fontaine also urged governments to work harder to settle more than 1,100 outstanding land claims, noting that at the current pace of negotiations, it would take 130 years to resolve them.

Pointing to severe overcrowding in many native communities, Fontaine spoke of visiting Pikangikum, an Ontario reserve about 300 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, where he witnessed as many as 28 people living in small two-bedroom homes where people are forced to sleep in shifts.

Some parents go without rest so that their children can sleep, he said.

"How many of you in this room would be able to function Monday morning without sleep?" Fontaine asked.

The Conservative government has pledged $46 million over the next five years for the embattled community, which has been plagued by suicides and a lack of basic services such as indoor plumbing.

Fontaine has repeatedly called on the federal government to spend an additional $5 billion over five years to help ease aboriginal poverty.

"We only want what you already have," he said Tuesday.

'A great deal of rhetoric': Prentice

The Conservatives shelved the previous Liberal government's $5-billion Kelowna Accord to address the gap in quality of living between Canadians and First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. The deal set targets to improve education, housing, economic development, health and water services, but details of how much of the money would be spent and who would provide the services were left to be negotiated at a later date.

Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice responded to a speech by national native leader Phil Fontaine by saying blockades are 'counterproductive.'
(CBC)

Speaking outside the House of Commons on Tuesday, federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice said Fontaine had a responsibility to convince aboriginal communities and their leaders not to hold blockades, which he called "counterproductive" and harmful to the "goodwill" Canadians show toward First Nations communities.

"Someone is going to get hurt and I call on all chiefs, and the national chief in particular, to make sure that doesn't happen," Prentice told reporters.

He added the government is making progress at land claims tables, and suggested Fontaine was not accurately representing the state of negotiations.

"There seems to be a great deal of rhetoric," the minister said.

Children taken from families due to poverty: Fontaine

Fontaine also spoke of how deep poverty in many First Nations communities leads child welfare officials to remove children from their families.

"The number of First Nations children today who have been removed from families and placed into state care is now three times the number of children that were in residential schools at the height of this terrible experience.

"It is my understanding that is not usually because of deliberate physical or sexual abuse, but because of poverty and its terrible consequences.… It isn't because of lack of parental love, as has been suggested," adding that the Assembly of First Nations has filed a complaint about First Nations child welfare with the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Fontaine pointed out that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Children states that child welfare officials must not remove children from homes due to poverty.

He then drove the point home by asking his audience to imagine how they would feel as parents if they were to return home to find their children had been taken into state care.

"Think of what it would do to them emotionally, and to you," he said. "Hopefully, you'll feel uncomfortable enough to do something about this."