LP_468x60
ontario news watch
on-the-record-468x60-white
and-another-thing-468x60

The federal government announced late last year it would spend $40 billion to reform the child welfare system on First Nations reserves and compensate children and families for harm they suffered from the system. The money would settle court cases and Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decisions.

The Crown-Indigenous Relations minister, Marc Miller, called it “the largest settlement in Canadian history.” A First Nations advocate interviewed on CBC News Network called it “not enough.”

Characterizing $40 billion as not enough underlines how complicated it will be to accomplish reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and Canada.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission — established in 2008 to expose the impacts of residential schools on Indigenous peoples — defined reconciliation as a process of “establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples.” Its final report lists 94 “calls to action” and implies if they’re all completed reconciliation will occur. CBC News launched a website, Beyond 94, to track progress on the calls to action. In September it listed 13 as “complete,” 62 “in progress” and 19 not started.

Some calls to action are ambiguous. It’s inevitable there will be disagreements about whether they have been accomplished.

One calls on the federal government to “provide sufficient funds for Aboriginal language revitalization and preservation.” Another asks for “progress on closing the gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in a number of health indicators….” Nebulous words such as “sufficient” and “progress” are invitations to disagree.

It takes two requirements to know whether a goal is reached: a benchmark and a milestone.

  • A benchmark describes success. For a business, if its goal is to be the leading company in the industry, “leading” might mean having a 30% market share or selling a million widgets
  • The milestone is the time clock — the date when the goal must be reached, for example, selling a million widgets by December 31, 2024

Benchmarks and milestones promote consensus. Either the company sold a million widgets by the end of 2024, or it didn’t.

When the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous publics agree it’s been achieved, then reconciliation will have happened. Polls, however, show reconciliation is a long way off.

In a 2021 national poll by the Environics Institute….

  • 43% said government actions “in trying to advance reconciliation” have not gone far enough
  • 24% said government actions have been about right, and 20% said they have gone too far (14% had no opinion)

In a Nanos Research poll in May this year….

  • 29% said the federal government had done a poor job on “truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples”
  • 35% said an average job
  • 30% a good job (6% had no opinion)

Importantly, Environics found indigenous peoples (60%) “are much more likely than non-
Indigenous people to say that governments have not gone far enough to advance reconciliation.”

Canadians support reconciliation efforts, but reconciliation remains a low priority.

In a pre-federal election poll in 2019, Abacus Data asked Canadians to select three issues (among 17) that would be “most important impacting your vote.”

  • In first place, 35% named the cost of living as one of the three. In last place came “achieving reconciliation with Indigenous people” (5%)

Leger asked Canadians in June this year, “What is the number one issue facing Canada today?” Just 1% named “indigenous reconciliation” while 51% said inflation.

There is more support for specific parts of reconciliation than for the general concept. A Research Company poll in 2021 asked, “Thinking about reconciliation, how important are each of the following ideas and goals to you?”

  • 89% said ending drinking water advisories in FirstNations communities is very or moderately important
  • 86% said taking steps to end bias against IndigenousCanadians in the justice system is very or moderately important
  • 84% said investigating all unmarked gravesites near former residential schools

Another reason reconciliation will be a long journey is that Canadians have grown steadily more complacent about the problems of Indigenous people. In 1968 in a Gallup poll, 27% said the government treats Indigenous people well. The share saying treated well rose to 32% in 1989 (Gallup), 39% in 1991 (Gallup), 62% in 2013 (an Ipsos poll), and 55% in 2020 (Ipsos).

In August this year the Angus Reid Institute asked, “What best describes the relationship between Canada and Indigenous people?”

  • 44% said improving, 13% said worsening and 35% said staying about the same (8% were unsure)

Canadians also are equivocal about investigating the residential schools. In an Angus Reid Institute poll in August, 58% agreed “the harm from residential schools continues, and further investigations are needed.” But 42% thought “enough attention has been paid to residential schools — it’s time to focus on the future.”

Campaigns and protests can succeed without milestones but not without benchmarks. Consider the difference between Mahatma Gandhi and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests.

In 1930 Gandhi led India’s momentous salt march. His followers protested the British Empire’s controls on salt, a vital part of Indians’ diet that Britain taxed heavily and banned Indians from making. Gandhi also called for independence from the British Empire. After a year of Gandhi-led marching, the British relented on salt. But India didn’t gain independence till 1947.

The American journalist Joe Nocera recalls that the Occupy Wall Street protestors “had plenty of grievances, aimed mainly at the ‘oppressive’ power of corporations but never got beyond their own slogans.” It’s not enough to point out what you don’t like, he said. “You need a clear idea of what you want instead.”

Marc Zwelling is the founder of The Vector Poll™ (www.vectorresearch.com) and author of Public Opinion and Polling For Dummies (Wiley, 2012) and Ideas and Innovation For Dummies (Wiley, 2021).


This content is restricted to subscribers

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


When you’ve worked in politics or journalism for a while, you kind of lose your idealism, you know?

In particular, you sometimes lose track of what got you into those things in the first place.

It happens because, in politics and journalism, you get exposed so regularly to the very worst in human nature. Lying, deceit, wrongdoing: you see a lot of it. Too much of it.

So you develop ways to cope. Some drink, some do drugs, some screw around. But most everyone in politics and journalism lose some (or all) of their passion. They get tired, they get cynical.

Most of all, they lose their capacity to feel outrage.

Having dabbled in both politics and journalism, I sometimes feel like that. That – after seeing too many scandals and hearing too many lies – I can’t feel actual outrage anymore.

You know, outrage. The dictionary people all define it as “a feeling of anger and shock.” Not anger or shock. Both.

That’s what I felt when my colleague Brian Lilley called me, Thursday, to tell me where Justin Trudeau was. I had just gotten off the line with my Indigenous daughter, and I thought Brian was joking, at first. But he wasn’t.

Justin Trudeau was in B.C., on a surfer’s beach. That’s what Brian Lilley told me.

What was astonishing about that was twofold. One, the Office of the Prime Minister had flat-out, bald-faced lied about where he was. They issued an official statement, on PMO letterhead and everything, that said Trudeau was in Ottawa.

He wasn’t. He was three provinces to the West.

But here’s the other reason why it was such a shock – why it has whipped up a tsunami of anger and rage: Justin Trudeau was surfing on the very first Truth and Reconciliation Day.

The day that his government declared to commemorate, chiefly, the wrongful deaths of thousands of Indigenous children at residential schools across Canada. Children and babies, thrown in unmarked graves, like they were garbage. That day.

Here’s what Justin Trudeau said about the day set aside – by him! – for Truth and Reconciliation. Here’s his own words: “Today, I invite everyone across the country to recognize and observe the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It is a day to reflect on the painful and lasting impacts of residential schools in Canada, and to honour survivors, their families, and their communities. It is also a day to remember the many children who never returned home, and an opportunity for us all to learn more, and to affirm the need for reconciliation and commit ourselves to the work ahead.”

A day to “reflect on the pain.”  A day to “honour survivors.” A day – he actually said this – “to remember the many children who never returned home.”

Who says things like that – who gives pious, sanctimonious speeches like that – and then lies about where he is, and goes surfing? Who would dare to do such a thing?

When I expressed my anger and my shock online – when I expressed my sincerely-held, bona fide, in-my-bones outrage – some Conservatives sniffed. It didn’t surprise them, they said. It isn’t anything new, they said.

They made me almost as outraged as Justin Trudeau had. In a way, they had become as cynical and misanthropic as Trudeau has.

What can you say, when a leader debases himself like this? What can you do? History helps.

History, you see, doesn’t record whether Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt or Harry Truman went golfing when US soldiers discovered thousands of Jewish bodies at the Nazi killing center in Dachau in April 1945. Nor do the historians have a record of Winston Churchill cheerfully puttering around in his garden when, also in April 1945, Britishtroops found 60,000 Jews starving at the Bergen-Belsen death camp – and where at least that many had been slaughtered.

History doesn’t have a record of those things, because no true leader would have dared do something like that. You know: slinking away to go surfing on the actual day set aside to remember dead Indigenous children.

Justin Trudeau is not a real leader. He is a disgrace. He is a deceiver. He is a delinquent.

And he is profoundly, irredeemably, deserving of this:

Outrage.

[Kinsella was Jean Chrétien’s special assistant.]

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.