Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-29, An Act to provide for the establishment of a national council for reconciliation. This is not a simple bill as some believe. A statement was made by a member of the transitional committee advising the reconciliation council for parliamentarians to take off their political caps when considering this bill. This was an ignorant remark and silencing tactic showing how little some Indigenous peoples understand what has happened to their own.

Reconciliation is not the simple act of removing a cap or passing legislation. When you are born already trapped in the Indian Act, you are not wearing a cap; you are a political entity. The oppressive systems of the act reshaped our identities, communities, lives and spirits, and that violence still lives within us as First Nations. Understanding and unbraiding the complex racist colonial systems that were involved in the making of the Canadian state is a lifelong process. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, stated:

The Survivors acted with courage and determination. We should do no less. It is time to commit to a process of reconciliation. . . .

The Senate has the responsibility to ensure that this process is doable and that it is transformative.

When I asked Minister Miller if he was open to amendments, he assured us that he was. As First Nations’ lawyer Ken Young said, we have one chance to do this right. We need to ensure that it does not negatively impact or interfere with section 35 rights.

Honourable senators, the complexity of Bill C-29 involves the intentional lumping together of different peoples who have been impacted by colonialism in different ways: First Nations, Métis, Inuit and non-status. Some are at different levels of engagement and some are not engaged at all with the federal and provincial governments, and we all have unique, unresolved issues specific to our histories. The Calls to Action are based on the stories of residential school survivors, so how are the people who didn’t attend or aren’t intergenerational residential school descendants going to be able to use the interpretation of reconciliation of this bill as based on the TRC? As Manitoba Métis Federation President David Chartrand said, “The vast majority of the TRC and its recommendations were aimed at reconciliation with First Nations.” As such, First Nations should constitute 50 plus 1 of the committee membership.

In the book entitled Visions of the Heart: Issues Involving Indigenous People in Canada, Joyce Green, in the chapter on enacting reconciliation, writes:

 . . . it is important to note that the Commission’s terms of reference did not include consideration of the many day schools deployed for the same objectives as residential schools, nor did they permit consideration of or compensation of the many Métis and non-status Indian students who were the subjects of the same kinds of abuses and deprivations as were status Indian students.

To include the four Indigenous groups — First Nations, Métis, Inuit and non-status, which includes many Sixties Scoop survivors — in one national council for reconciliation does a disservice to all. As I have said, each has different outstanding issues that have not been resolved by the federal government. All deserve to have their own version of reconciliation that is meaningful and transformative. Pitting one against the other, as we are doing in this bill, is not reconciliation.

Honourable senators, when considering the TRC’s final report, conciliatory efforts are involved in Calls to Action 43 to 94 and will need to be monitored as per clause 7(b) of Bill C-29. Monitoring multiple calls to action is a huge task for one committee that involves disparate groups.

According to the Library of Parliament’s gender-based analysis on this bill:

Other commissions and inquiries, including those covering matters related to diverse groups of Indigenous peoples, have recommended mechanisms to review implementation of their recommendations. For example, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous women and Girls … was mandated to ‘report on the systemic causes of all forms of violence against Indigenous women and girls.’ The National Inquiry published its final report in June 2019, which included 252 Calls for Justice. … However, Bill C-29 does not require the Council to examine the implementation of the National Inquiry’s Calls for Justice.

The complexity of Bill C-29 involves individual and collective reconciliation for those who have been impacted by residential school. The majority will be First Nations. What, then, will reconciliation look like for the different groups of Métis and for the non-status, including the Sixties Scoop survivors? How can the committee determine reconciliation efforts when these varying histories and their effects have not been established?

Honourable senators, the uncertainty surrounding Bill C-29 includes the term “reconciliation” itself. Reconciliation has different meanings for different groups and its lack of definition in the bill will cause problems. In The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools and the Challenge of Conciliation, by David B. MacDonald, the author states:

. . . reconciliation implies the need to revisit some point in time when relationships between Indigenous peoples and settlers were productive, respectful, and healthy. Where the term reconciliation works better may be among Indigenous peoples, where various aspects of colonialism severely weakened some families and communities, introducing forms of lateral violence and inter-generational trauma, while also disrupting several millennia of interdependent relations with animals, plants, waters, and lands.

For greater clarity, the TRC defined “reconciliation” by stating:

It’s about coming to terms with events of the past in a manner that overcomes conflict and establishes a respectful and healthy relationship among people going forward. It is in the latter context that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has approached the question of reconciliation.

The report continues:

. . . there has to be awareness of the past, acknowledgment of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behaviour.

In the same report, when the question was asked, “. . . how, given the history of the residential schools, could Canada be a better place,” survivor Victoria Grant-Boucher said:

I’m telling my story ... for the education of the Canadian general public ... [so that they] can understand what stolen identity is . . . how it affects people, how it affects an individual, how it affects family, how it affects community.... I think the non-Aboriginal person, Canadian, has to understand that a First Nations person has a culture.... And I think that we, as Aboriginal people, have so much to share if you just let us regain that knowledge.... And I also take to heart what Elders talk about ... we have to heal ourselves. We have to heal each other. And for Canada to heal, they have to allow us to heal before we can contribute. That’s what reconciliation means to me.

Allow us to heal before we can contribute — this is a profound statement. Individual healing is required. Collective community healing is required. These are both essential to further conciliation effects at institutional levels which will require different forms of action. Reconciliation will require “. . . real social, political, and economic change.”

Colleagues, when considering the individual healing that needs to occur, we must acknowledge that such healing will be a different journey from person to person, but it will also be markedly different between men and women. As Joyce Green writes in her paper entitled Enacting Reconciliation:

. . . colonialism has been gendered, thus, its effects are experienced differently by men and women, and reconciliation itself must be gendered. The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) writes that “The ongoing violation of Indigenous women through systemic subjugation, marginalization and violence is a legacy of colonialism in Canada . . . .” NWAC notes that Indigenous women have also been subjected to intergenerational “gendered injustices of marginalization, dispossession and violence within their own communities as well as in the larger Canadian society” as a consequence of colonialism and the residential school experience . . . . The truth of this is evident in the numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women . . . .

Until the issue of gendered violence against women and girls is addressed, there can be no reconciliation.

Honourable senators, we must also reflect on Bill C-29 in light of this chamber’s recent passage of federal legislation to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP. In the book Pathways of Reconciliation, author Sheryl Lightfoot states:

. . . the TRC linked reconciliation and implementation of the UN Declaration so tightly together that it is now simply impossible for one to support the TRC and not support full implementation of the UN Declaration.

She continues:

As a standard-setting tool, the forty-six articles of the UN Declaration are intended to guide state action toward relationships with Indigenous peoples; they are based on justice and serve as a framework of mutual recognition and respect, with the self-determination of Indigenous peoples at its core.

Lightfoot quotes S. James Anaya, former United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, who offered the following suggestions for steps toward UNDRIP implementation:

First, State officials as well as Indigenous leaders should receive training on the Declaration on the related international instruments, and on practical measures to implement the Declaration.

This training must be mandatory for the council’s committee members. Anaya continues:

Additionally, States should engage in comprehensive reviews of their existing legislation and administrative programmes to identify where they may be incompatible with the Declaration. . . . On the basis of such a review, the necessary legal and programmatic reforms should be developed and implemented in consultation with indigenous peoples.

States should be committed to devoting significant human and financial resources to the measures required to implement the Declaration. These resources will typically be required for the demarcation or return of indigenous lands, the development of culturally appropriate educational programmes, support for indigenous self-governance institutions and the many other measures contemplated by the Declaration.

Lightfoot concludes:

As the TRC Summary Report noted, ‘Studying the Declaration with a view to identifying its impacts on current government laws, policy and behaviour would enable Canada to develop a holistic version of reconciliation.’

Colleagues, the TRC rated reconciliation in UNDRIP as being intertwined variables. If we pride ourselves in collectively passing UNDRIP, why do we continue to pass legislation that goes against the principles of UNDRIP, and accordingly against reconciliation itself?

Honourable senators, to have this bill be truly conciliatory, changes must be made to get it there. Under the heading Purpose and Functions, section 7(a) should be amended to say, “develop and implement a multi-year national action plan to advance reconciliation based on the framework of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

There are profound questions surrounding the lack of guaranteed funding. The issues with this bill are large, and the approach it takes is not conducive to reconciliation. I urge you to think about these matters when considering the bill. Kinanâskomitin. Thank you.

Yes, please.

Thank you for the question. No, I’m not aware of that. I did look into it, and, at one point, they were included. I saw this when I looked at the final report, and then they were removed at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs. I don’t know what the reason for that was, but that is something that needs to be addressed in the committee.

When it goes to committee, I urge that this issue is not rushed through — we need at least two or three weeks of discussion because there are about 10 people that I will ask to present. Canadians need to know what the issues are behind this bill, and we need to do it justice. Thank you.