While Canada’s reconciliation project with Indigenous peoples is showing signs of progress, it is moving much more slowly than many expected.
When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report in 2015, it presented 94 calls to action demanding action by governments across Canada on a wide range of reconciliation initiatives.
Seven years later, only about 10% of those calls have been fully answered. CBC is tracking this progress for readers with its interactive Beyond 94 websitewhich periodically updates the status of each call to action.
But with Canada now celebrating its second National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, everyone involved, the federal minister responsible for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Indigenous leaders themselves, say it’s time to step up things
“There is a lot of evidence across the country of incredibly good work being done at various levels and in various sectors of society and this is an absolutely positive response to what we expected,” Marie Wilson, one of the three commissioners of the truth. and Reconciliation Commission, he told CBC News.
“I think everything is being taken too slowly and I think the urgency of all this has not been properly realized.”
Wilson said she fears Indigenous elders will not live to see reconciliation.
“The age of survivors is advanced and advancing,” he said. “We know that every day we’re losing survivors who won’t see the benefit of some of the bigger things we hoped for.”
Follow up calls to action
Douglas Sinclair, first cousin of former Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Murray Sinclair, is the editor of Indigenous guard doga separate website that also tracks progress on the 94 calls to action.
Their website says only 11 of the calls to action have been completed (the CBC puts that number slightly higher, at 13). He said the reconciliation project is definitely not on track.
“There are positive things happening for sure,” he told CBC News. “It’s just that those positive steps are offset, in my view, by the number of problematic actions or the lack of actions. So there’s definitely a long way to go.”
Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Care Society, says the discovery of unmarked graves at the former residential schools helped focus government attention on the TRC report’s calls to action . (Olivia Stefanovich/CBC)
While both Indigenous Watchdog and Beyond 94 say the first call to action, which calls for efforts to reduce the number of Indigenous children in foster care, is winning, Sinclair said it’s not happening fast enough.
He pointed to recently released census data that said while Indigenous children make up just 7.7 per cent of children in Canada, in 2021 they made up 53.8 per cent of children in foster care, a figure that was virtually unchanged since 2016.
Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, said governments barely managed to implement any calls to action in the first six years after it was published.
“But in the week of public pressure last year, with the public leaving after unmarked graves [discovery in Kamloops and elsewhere] More TRC calls to action were implemented in the following six weeks than in the previous six years,” he said.
“This public pressure, however, has been distracted and must return to the point.”
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Mark Miller, who has been learning the Mohawk language, warns that while he has a vision of where the reconciliation project is, it’s up to Indigenous people to decide where that effort actually stands.
“I think things have been slow,” he told CBC News. “As a government, we’ve laid out a very, very ambitious agenda, and rightly so, given the nature of the challenge and the history that underpins it predates Canada.”
That ambitious agenda, Miller said, has seen historic investments in Indigenous communities since the TRC’s 2015 report was released. He admits those investments are only part of what’s required.
“It doesn’t mean that there have been mistakes. There are. And it doesn’t mean that we have all the answers, and that there isn’t more work to do,” he said.
A multigenerational challenge
Miller said what helps keep him optimistic are his meetings with residential school survivors, who have no reason to trust Canada’s governments but are hopeful that change, however let it come, meet your expectations.
“The work that governments are doing is taking root, but not for them, but for the next generation and I think that’s something that fuels my work,” he said. “It certainly gives me hope as a minister.”
Wilson said that when he helped write the TRC report, they presented reconciliation as an ongoing process.
“It’s not like there’s an end date that we have in mind and we’re either going to do it or not,” he said.
Sinclair also describes reconciliation as a “multigenerational process” that will take a long time to “percolate through the various generations as they grow up.”
Hereditary Chief Phil Lane Jr., centre, joins other indigenous chiefs and elders to lead thousands of people in a protest march against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in Burnaby, BC on Saturday, March 10 of 2018. Marie Wilson said she fears many seniors will not live to see all 94 calls to action implemented. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)
The frustration with the pace of progress, Wilson said, is what he describes as the constant changes in key personnel charged with leading the reconciliation effort.
“There is a lack of continuity in many areas, whether in government departments or in indigenous leadership,” he said.
“You can’t build momentum and move forward quickly if you constantly have to pause and restart and rebuild or move forward slowly. I find all of that really frustrating.”
Blackstock said that while the federal government has provided funding to help locate unmarked graves, it has not funded the DNA testing needed to link remains found in those graves to families.
Miller told CBC News that the issue has come up often in his interactions with indigenous leaders, but that as far as he knows, his office has not received any requests to fund any DNA testing. He said that when such a request is presented to him, there will “absolutely” be funding available.
Creation of a national council
Both Sinclair and Wilson said more needs to be done to implement Call to Action 53, which calls for the establishment of a National Council for Reconciliation that will report to Parliament annually on progress made in the previous year .
Miller introduced Bill C-29 in June, which would establish the council. It remains on second reading in the House of Commons.
“I believe in the good faith of all parliamentarians to move this forward,” Miller said. “It’s key to … measuring and quantifying response to calls to action.”
The Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led research and education centre, publishes an annual report on the state of calls to action. In his 2021 post, he criticizes Canada’s governments for going after low-hanging fruit.
The value of September 30
“Some calls to action are symbolic, while others are structural, and Canada is choosing to complete the symbolic calls with expediency without abandoning the structural changes called for by the TRC,” he said.
Wilson told CBC News that the 80 call to action, which calls for a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, may seem symbolic but has enormous value.
“That’s very important to have a public space … that keeps us present, that keeps us alive to the issues, alive to the history that has brought us to this point and really keeps us aware of all the work that remains. there and that we all have to do our part in this,” he said.
Sinclair said today’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation is a positive thing because it creates public awareness of both the horrors of residential schools and the reconciliation project.
In light of the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools over the past two years, Miller said the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation puts Indigenous voices first and gives Canadians time to reflect.
“It’s important for politicians to take the time to reflect and show some compassion and understanding,” he said.
Support is available for anyone affected by their experience in residential care or recent reports.
A National Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line has been set up to support survivors and those affected. People can access crisis and emotional referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.
Mental health counseling and crisis assistance are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by chat at online at www.hopeforwellness.ca.