Policy, not words, needed to help First Nations

Re: “Comments on residential schools were a slap in the face,” March 14

What a wonderful editorial comparing the Holocaust to Canada’s residential schools! I guess I already knew that exterminating over 6 million Jews was a major bad thing. What never crossed my mind until today was to compare that with how my ancestors here in Canada tried to bring our aboriginal people out of the stone age that they were living in prior to European settlement of Canada.

So, on to another important point of how life has improved for these people over the last 50 or 100 years since residential schools were phased out and finally eliminated. Personally, I get to drive through Brocket, Gleichen and Stand Off a few times every year for the last 40 years or so. Not much to be proud of here. Revell’s fellow journalists periodically point out the ugly statistics of alcoholism, drugs, gas sniffing, suicide, incarceration, murder, assault, diabetes, diminished life expectancy, etc. of modern-day life on the reserve.

My question is, what is Canada doing to “right the wrongs of Canadian history” other than shutting down the residential schools and replacing it with...?

I don’t see much good policy coming down the road in the near future when we have MPs and senators using insane comparisons of events a couple of generations ago to lament the deplorable living conditions of today'\’s First Nations.

In the short term Canada will continue with its policy of decision-making based on race and/or ethnicity (and be sure to not call it racism) to appease a sizeable group of people who live in Canada but aren’t too sure that they want to be called Canadian?

Obviously, someone a whole lot smarter than me will have to figure out the solution here.

Keith Pearce Medicine Hat