In the wake of the discovery of the mass grave of Indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops, there was a lot of attention directed to the prime minister, particularly on the slow rate of progress on implementing the calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Trudeau, for his part, stated that sure, Cabinet could have swooped down and unilaterally taken actions, but that they would have been the wrong actions because they need to be done in consultation with Indigenous people, and consultation takes time. (Indeed, it seems that every time the government is ready to move forward on something, a number of Indigenous groups declare that it’s all wrong and demand that they start over again with grassroots consultation).

Another recurring narrative throughout the day was the demand for more funding to search other sites, and pointing out that the federal government denied the TRC the $1.5 million they were asking for to do that work in 2009 – but most people failed to follow up and see that the current government did fund that work for up to $10 million in 2016, on top of other ongoing funding for this kind of work to carry on. The minister, Carolyn Bennett, also noted that communities did not want the government to simply hire archaeological firms to do the work, but wanted to do it on their own, which is why the government is providing funds for those who want to do it (though there seems to be some contention about that in the Kamloops case when it comes to who was paying for the ground-penetrating radar).

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1399364989081767937

A couple of other observations – one is that I find the Conservatives’ sudden insistence that this government move expeditiously to implement all of the Calls to Action to be a bit precious given that they dragged their feet on taking this action when they were in government (including denying the funding to search for such grave sites), generally contenting themselves that they made the official apology and established the TRC. (Similarly, their demands that the MMIW National Action Plan be completed immediately also rings hollow considering they resisted calling such an inquiry). The other observation is that the Catholic Church has yet to acknowledge any culpability or apologise for what happened at residential schools, or to offer any compensation, remains a problem, but I’m not sure just how much pressure the federal government is able to put to bear on them for it. Of course, we have seen similar abuse scandals and mass graves in other countries, where race cannot also be considered a factor, and this will complicate the simplistic narratives being applied to this discovery. There is a lot for us as a society to come to terms with, and there shouldn’t be easy answers to be drawn from it.

https://twitter.com/Froggy7777777/status/1399578376516497413

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau has been spotted walking with a cane after spraining his ankle.
• Here is a good debunking of the talking points around vaccine procurement – we didn’t rely on CanSino, weren’t late with other vaccines, and couldn’t scale up.
• The government is set to approve travel exemptions for the NHL, because hockey.
• Chrystia Freeland is planning to attend the G7 finance ministers’ meeting in June, and promises to quarantine properly upon returning to Canada.
• Big city mayors pressed Freeland for more money for housing, and in particular for urban Indigenous housing, but Freelend would not give them a timeline.
• David Lametti and Carolyn Bennett are urging senators to quickly pass the UNDRIP bill before the summer.
• François-Philippe Champagne says he’s open to amending the digital privacy bill after the Privacy Commissioner had concerns about it.
• The Canadian Coast Guard is moving toward gender-neutral uniforms by next year.
• The NDP want the Auditor General to audit CRA’s ability to go after large companies and wealthy Canadians using tax evasion and avoidance schemes.
• Kevin Carmichael talks to the CEO of CN Rail about their acquisition of KCS, and the move to both on-shoring production and moving goods in a greener way.
• Susan Delacourt sees the discovery of that mass grave in Kamloops as helping to galvanize Canadians to the tragedy of the residential schools.
• Colby Cosh looks at the “classic bargain” between the Canadian state and the Catholic church, and how that resulted in the horrors of the residential schools.
• Robert Hiltz offers a reminder of the mass deaths on François Legault’s hands, and some of his cruel pandemic policies, as people lionize him about the re-opening.

Odds and ends:

My latest Loonie Politics Quick Take video debunks a couple of the current false talking points around Bill C-10.

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