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"Victoria has a tenacity and focus and determination that I believe is inherited from her grandfather. I believe her ancestors would be very proud of her for all she's done in her career." JUDGE DAVID ARNOT, SASKATCHEWAN'S TREATY COMMISSIONER Possibly her proudest moment was her work on the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, where she led efforts to protect aboriginal businesses. Only Canada had thought to do so during its negotiations with the United States and Mexico and, though De La Ronde says she was part of a team, she made sure it happened during 11th-hour negotiations. "I was very happy to be there and catch that," she says. "No one else had the background in that area so it wouldn't have got done." Then there was the time De La Ronde's research company opened a huge can of worms by releasing a study in the late '90s that said Canada's native community would rank on par with some restrictive Middle Eastern nations in terms of quality of life. While Canada as a whole traditionally sits in the top three on the United Nations' Human Development Index, De La Ronde and a research partner put our aboriginal population at 65th. Native rights had become a contentious issue following the Oka Crisis involving Mohawks on the Kanesatake reserve in Quebec in the summer of 1990. De La Ronde argued against making those findings public, but the findings were leaked to The Globe and Mail in October 1998, and the government fumbled for words to defend the results. "It gave the government a com- fort level to move towards responding to the findings of the Oka Report from 1991," says De La Ronde. "Clearly there was a gap between the two populations." De La Ronde had peripheral involvement in Oka. As a rep- resentative of INAC, she was asked to mediate a tax dispute that sprung up when the Kanesatake iron workers, after origi- nally being told they were exempt from paying income tax while building the skyscrapers of New York, later found tax had been deducted from their paycheques. De La Ronde helped sort out the problem by bringing the two sides together to negotiate. It was a precursor to her treaty work. "One of the big misconceptions in our country is that natives don't pay taxes. It is simply not true, there may be some exemptions for those living on the reserve, but they actually pay thousands of dollars in taxes." De La Ronde is Métis. Her grandfather was Cree and her grandmother German. She grew up in a house speaking four languages — French was the family's other tongue. Through Grade 8, De La Ronde was the only admitted aboriginal person in her school. "So many [aboriginals] deny any connection to their ancestry. They decide to stay hidden. Living as an aboriginal wouldn't open doors," says De La Ronde. "But in Meadow Lake it was common knowledge that I was Métis. My grandfather looked Cree." Her grandfather Paul was a hunter and trapper of note in northern Saskatchewan in the 1880s. A lake in that area is named in his honour. One of her former colleagues believes there is a connection between her character and his. "Victoria has a tenac- www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com JULY 2011 25 ntitled-2 1 6/10/11 9:19:55 AM ity and focus and determination that I believe is inherited from her grandfather," says Saskatchewan's treaty commissioner, Judge David Arnot. "I believe her ancestors would be very proud of her for all she's done in her career." Yet another amazing thing about De La Ronde is she's accom- plished all she has while ignoring worsening eyesight, along with the roadblocks of her race that she's ignored. For 50 years she has suffered from retinitis, a progressive disease that rendered her legally blind. Unable to read print for the past six years, she makes use of software that turns the written word into audio. "I was at a crossroads back in the '70s when I was trying to decide between going to law school and medical school. It was because of my eyesight that I went into law," she says. "I was seeing less and less and I knew that I wouldn't be able to see what I needed to see under a microscope to be effective as a doctor. So I went to law school." Despite her eyesight, De La Ronde has been a woman of vision. WOULD YOUR CLIENT QUALIFY FOR ENTRY UNDER A PROVINCIAL NOMINEE PROGRAM? A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PROVINCIAL NOMINEE PROGRAMS IN CANADIAN IMMIGRATION LAW EDITORS: RANDOLPH K. HAHN AND DAVID GARSON Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs) are a key part of Canada's immigration strategy, exerting growing influence over selection. 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