Pointing out ‘obligations’ is one thing; meaningful action is next step
Politics could get in way of progress on report into unmarked graves at residential schools
Special interlocutor Kimberly Murray, joined by Indigenous leaders, hands her report into missing children and unmarked graves and burials at residential schools to federal Justice Minister Arif Virani at a gathering in Gatineau, Que., on Tuesday. (Photo by Kierstin Williams)
Call them obligations, recommendations or calls to action, but if the federal government doesn’t act on them, there won’t be much progress in identifying the unmarked graves at Canada’s former residential schools.
Special interlocutor Kimberly Murray deliberately didn’t make any recommendations when she presented her final report into missing children this week. Her language was stronger. She called them “obligations.”
“Canada has a legal and moral obligation to ensure that a full investigation is conducted into the deaths of these children,” she said.
Murray is the Mohawk lawyer appointed by the federal government in 2022 to recommend a new way for the government to ensure respectful treatment of unmarked graves and burial sites of children at former Indian Residential Schools.
Her final report — titled Upholding Sacred Obligations: Reparations for Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Burials in Canada — included 42 obligations the federal government has.
They include creation of an Indigenous-led reparations framework and to ensure a full investigation into the disappearances and deaths of children at residential schools.
They are “obligations” because governments notoriously fail to implement recommendations in reports.
But that’s semantics. A government is equally capable of failing to meet its obligations as it is of failing to implement recommendations.
After the pain that the residential school system caused, Murray’s two-volume, 1,000-page report shouldn’t just sit on a shelf waiting for a government to act on it.
However, Canada’s current political landscape means the timing is bad for the federal government to act on any new ambitious projects.
Canadians will definitely go to the polls in less than a year — and potentially in weeks.
Leading up to the election and during a campaign, politics will be a distraction. It will be hard for the current government to make any meaningful progress on the obligations Murray identified.
And opinion polls suggest there will be a new government on the other side of the next election.
Realistically it could be a year or more before any federal government sinks its teeth into Murray’s report.
That’s why Canadians, politicians and the media should keep it top of mind as an election approaches, asking politicians “what’s next?”
Last week in Iqaluit, Nunavut MP Lori Idlout encouraged people at Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.’s annual general meeting to think hard about who they’re going to vote for in the next federal election.
In Ottawa, opposition parties are giddy at the prospect of toppling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government.
After the next election, how likely would a Pierre Poilievre-led Conservative government be to make Murray’s obligations a high priority?
Then again, the Liberals have lost both credibility and momentum for working with Indigenous Peoples.
Once upon a time, Trudeau’s Liberals offered the best prospect for furthering reconciliation. In 2015, Trudeau said, “there is no relationship more important to me — and to Canada — than the one with First Nations, the Métis Nation, and Inuit.”
And realistically, it’s unlikely the NDP will form the next government.
So, with Murray pointing out the obligations, one thing Canadians have to, as Idlout put it, think hard about is who’s most likely to live up to them.
Canada has a history of trying, but not too hard.
Decades ago the Liberal government wanted to do something about the former residential schools. They collected all the records from all the schools. Boxes and boxes of paper records. Some typed, most hand written during more than 100 years.
Then, what to do with those records? The decision was made to computerize them. Eventually the task was assigned to a team. The team tried, but gave up after about 250 records. A second team was formed and given the same task. They got through about 600 records before giving up. However, the commitment to “do something” was strong. Eventually a third team was assembled. They got about 1000 records into a computer database before they, too, gave up.
It seemed like an impossible task. But Jean Chrétien was not one to quit. He asked a consultant to try. The consultant was someone he knew, but she knew next to nothing about computers. She said she would take the assignment.
Strictly against government confidentiality rules, she mentioned the project to a couple of friends who did not work for any government.
I was one of those friends. The next day the 3 of us met again and I told her how to do the project.
A few months later she told us that the computerization of the Residential School records was complete. About two months after that Jean Chrétien announced the Residential School Settlement.
It happenned, but it almost didn’t. Canada’s obligations should not depend upon a chance encounter with a friend of a friend. Canada needs a more robust government. It needs a government that goes beyond intent, all the way to implementation.
So, too, does Nunavut
I’m curious. 10 down votes, no up votes. Are Nunavumiut in favour of ineffective government, are they in favour of a bureacracy that stalls initiatives until the polititians give up / retire, or are they in favour of no government at all?
I think they’re not in favour of crony-ism… friend of a friend getting government contracts and all… on Parliament Sphill…
The first actionable step is for the media to apologize for fabricating a moral panic around ‘mass graves’.
It would take Jim Bell level courage to address the many nuances that attend to this issue. By far one of the most complex stories of our time.
There are really no next steps other than pulling up your socks and getting on in life.