Thomas Eugene Flanagan (born 5 March 1944) is an American-born Canadian author, conservative political activist, and former political science professor at the University of Calgary. He also served as an advisor to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper until 2004.
Flanagan has focused on challenging certain historical interpretations of Native and Métis history. In connection with his multi-year research and publications on Louis Riel, Flanagan published a reinterpretation of the North-West Rebellion, defending the federal government's response to Métis land claims. He began publishing works on Rielleader of the 1885 North-West Resistancein the 1970s, which evolved into a multi-year 'Louis Riel Project' that he coordinated. During the 2012 provincial elections he served as the campaign manager of the Wildrose Party, an Alberta libertarian/conservative provincial party.
As part of his political activism, Flanagan began to write as a columnist in 1997 in The Globe and Mail, National Post, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen, Maclean's, and Time. He regularly made appearances on Canadian television and radio as a commentator until January 2013, when he began a "research and scholarship leave" from the University of Calgary prior to his retirement.
Education and teaching Flanagan was born on 5 March 1944 in Ottawa, Illinois, US. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Studying political science under John Hallowell, Flanagan earned a Master of Arts degree in 1967 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1970, both at Duke University in North Carolina. He also studied at the Free University of Berlin.
Flanagan began teaching at the University of Calgary in 1968 and co-authored an introductory Canadian politics textbook. He served as Head of the Political Science Department and Assistant to the President of the University. Since January 2013 Flanagan was on "research and scholarship leave" and officially retired 30 June 2013.
Since the 1970s Flanagan published numerous scholarly studies "debunking the heroism of Métis icon Louis Riel, arguing against native land claims, and calling for an end to aboriginal rights."
Flanagan developed his concept of aboriginal orthodoxy in which he argued against aboriginal collective rights. He claimed that section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which stated that "The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed" resulted in thousands of cases involving aboriginal and treaty rights – indeed thousands of cases including residential school claims. Flanagan decried the increased influence of the courts and "[t]he sheer volume of these cases" which threaten "to take policy-making out of the hands of elected representatives and put it into the hands of a small cadre of judges, lawyers, law professors, and expert witnesses." Although Flanagan admits that he has profited as expert witness, he also believes that "[this] flood of litigation is detrimental to democracy."
Research and scholarship Flanagan has widely published in areas such as political science, public policy, political theory and aboriginal land claims, from a libertarian perspective.
Louis Riel Flanagan has written about his change of views regarding Métis leader Louis Riel:
Flanagan developed a theory that Riel could be understood as a millenarian prophet, not just as a political figure. He translated and edited Riel's diariesThomas Flanagan, ed., The Diaries of Louis Riel (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1976) and co-edited a volume of Riel's youthful poetry which won the 1978 Prix Champlain.Gilles Martel, Glen Campbell, and Thomas Flanagan, eds., Louis Riel: Poésies de jeunesse (St. Boniface, MB: Les Editions du Blé, 1977). He also published the book Louis 'David' Riel: Prophet of the New World, which won the Canadian Biography Award from the University of British Columbia.Thomas Flanagan, Louis 'David' Riel: Prophet of the New World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979). Second edition, 1996.
Flanagan later participated in the "Louis Riel Project", collecting and publishing all of Riel's writings, which have been dispersed among more than 40 archives in Canada and the United States. The University of Alberta Press published the work in 1985 to commemorate the centennial of the North-West Rebellion.G.F.G. Stanley et al., eds., The Collected Writings of Louis Riel/Les Ecrits complets de Louis Riel (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1985). In connection with this work, Flanagan also published a reinterpretation of the North-West Rebellion, highlighting how the government had responded to Métis land claims.
Litigation over Métis claims Flanagan was retained by the federal Department of Justice in litigation over Métis claims in Manitoba. His 1991 book Metis Lands in Manitoba, won the 1992 Margaret McDonald/McWilliams Medal, awarded by the Manitoba Historical Society for the best book of the year on Manitoba history.Thomas Flanagan, Metis Lands in Manitoba (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1991).
First Nations? Second Thoughts Flanagan later published the controversial First Nations? Second Thoughts, which critiqued the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The book received the Donner Prize for the best book of the year on Canadian public policy in 2000, and the Donald Smiley Prize from the Canadian Political Science Association for the best book on Canadian government and politics.
In his 2002 review, Yale D. Belanger, compared Alan Cairn's publication entitled Citizens Plus with Flanagan's First Nations? Second Thoughts. He concluded that the ideas in First Nations? Second Thoughts should be made publicly available and read as a companion piece with Cairn's Citizens Plus. The books were written for very different audiences: Flanagan wrote First Nations? Second Thoughts (2000) for the lay reader while Cairns wrote for an informed academic audience. Belanger questioned why Flanagan as a professional academic did not access more robust peer-reviewed scholarly resources regarding analysis and statistics, preferring instead to make extensive use of newspaper clippings from the Calgary Herald, the National Post, and The Globe and Mail and the conservative magazine the Alberta Report. Flanagan did not visit any First Nation communities to research the publication nor did he quote any Aboriginal leader in support land privatization in exchange for the end of the reserve system (Belanger 2002:107). Belanger described Flanagan's tone as "distasteful", "militant", and "sensationalist." He claimed he echoed "the assimilation rhetoric of 19th century policy makers and politicians" which perpetuates a stereotyped image of First Nations as "uncivilized" and "unwilling to shake the social pathologies he suggests proliferate all reserve communities." But he felt that readers would have a more holistic understanding of the complexities of the debate by reading both books.
Pamela Palmater, a Mi'kmaq lawyer who holds a new chair in indigenous governance at Toronto Metropolitan University, argued in her review that First Nations? Second Thoughts provides a summary of Flanagan's convictions that "since First Nations in Canada are uncivilized and their governments produce 'wasteful, destructive, familistic factionalism,' they should not be entitled to self-governing powers, special tax exemptions or federal funding, but should be assimilated and their reserves divided up into parcels of individually owned, 'fee simple' lands available for sale to non-aboriginal people and corporations."
According to Suzanne Methot's review of the book, Flanagan claimed that "European civilization was several thousand years more advanced than the aboriginal cultures of North America" and colonization was therefore "inevitable" and "justifiable."
Flanagan wrote a book on property rights in 1979,Anthony Parel and Thomas Flanagan, eds., Theories of Property: Aristotle to the Present (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1979). a book on game theory in 1988,Thomas Flanagan, Game Theory and Canadian Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). and another about conservative Canadian political parties in 1995.Tom Flanagan, Waiting for the Wave: The Reform Party and Preston Manning (Toronto: Stoddart, 1995); second edition 2009. Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007); second edition 2009. His books on Preston Manning and the Reform Party, and Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party, were based on his experiences as political adviser and campaign manager (discussed below).
In 1996, Flanagan was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy II). The citation mentioned his contribution to the study of Louis Riel and the Métis, Western Canadian history, and Canadian political parties.
Beyond the Indian Act In their 2010 publication, Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Aboriginal Property Rights, co-authors Thomas Flanagan, Christopher Alcantara and André Le Dressay, introduced the First Nations Property Ownership Initiative (FNPOI). The book, with a foreword by C.T. (Manny) Jules, was a finalist for the Donner Prize. According to an 28 August 2016 article by Sasha Boutilier in Policy Options, they misrepresented the FNPOI in Canada, which Boutilier described as a "proposed piece of opt-in legislation that would have allowed First Nations to grant fee-simple interests to First Nations members". Boutilier said that their criticisms of the First Nations Land Management Act (FNLMA) which he calls a "quiet success", are "quite simply inaccurate", and that the authors, while acknowledging the FNLMA’s "effectiveness in reducing transaction costs", would leave "each First Nation on its own to develop its own system of property rights and failed "to provide technical assistance in the form of model land codes and zoning regulations." Boutlier says that these "criticisms ignore the First Nations Lands Advisory Board, in existence prior to 1996, and the First Nations Land Management Resource Centre, operating since 1999 and incorporated in 2004, which provide exactly the support Flanagan and his co-authors say is lacking. Indeed, the 1996 Framework Agreement specifically states that the role of the Lands Advisory Board and the Resource Centre is “developing model land codes, laws and land management systems” as well as “assisting First Nation[s] in developing and implementing” such laws and systems."
Role as historical consultant and expert witness
In 1986 Flanagan became the historical consultant and primary expert witness for the Federal Department of Justice in the Manitoba Métis Federation v Canada case (Flanagan, Metis Lands vii). He criticized the recognition of the Indian title of the Métis (1885 Reconsidered) and of the "Métis as an Aboriginal people in the Constitution Act, 1982 (Case Against; Metis Rights) and traced the original evolution of what can be called the 'doctrine of the derivative aboriginal rights' (History)8. Among other things, the Calgary School political scientist has asserted that, during the Resistance in 1869-70, not only did the Métis "never describe themselves as an aboriginal people with special land rights" (Blais 160) nor demand "special treatment as an Aboriginal people" (History 73) but that there "was never a demand for special treatment of the Métis as a group" (Case against 316; Metis Rights 231), nor for a land grant or anything like it" (Reconsidered 2nd ed. 65) (O'Toole 2010:140)."