Fontaine won with almost 76 per cent of the vote, fending off a challenge from prominent B.C. chief Bill Wilson, who claimed Fontaine was too close to the former Liberal government to be effective in dealing with the new Conservative administration.

Fontaine stressed that his first priority as leader would be to bring the Kelowna Accord negotiated with the Liberals back to the table. The deal, aimed at improving living conditions and education for Aboriginal people, was cancelled by the Conservatives.

“People are very concerned about poverty, the cost of poverty,” he said. “We of course see this as the most important social justice issue faced by this country.”

He said the cost of poverty is rising rapidly.

“By 2012 it’ll [cost] $12 billion,” he said. “The Kelowna Accord was a well-developed plan that was going to cost the government $5 billion.”

Fontaine, who’s from the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba, was first elected as National Chief in 1997 but stepped down after his first term to become Chief Commissioner of the federal Indian Claims Commission.

He ran again for the assembly’s top job in 2003.

Wilson, a lawyer from the Cape Mudge band on Vancouver Island, argued Fontaine had become too cozy with the Liberals and that the Tories would view him as more independent.

Wilson said he ran because issues such as Aboriginal suicide, land title and treaties weren’t being discussed in the leadership campaign.

“The issues in regard to youth and the desperation that produces suicide must be eradicated, not by some government program but by restoring pride into them, by restoring the opportunity into them, by allowing them to develop to their full potential,” Wilson said in his concession speech.

“The enemy is out there and it isn't the non-Indian people. It's their institutions and discrimination and racism and other things.”

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