Trudeau squandering chance to revolutionize Indigenous affairs

Wouldn’t it be nice for Justin Trudeau to have his name on public schools for all the reasons activists want Sir John A. Macdonald’s taken down?

While it’s true our extraordinary first prime minister did the foundational work of birthing the country, Sir John A’s governments and every government since have done too little to respect those who were here in the centuries before Canada came into its own.

With his commitment to “renew the relationship” with Canada’s Indigenous peoples, Trudeau the Younger promised to be different but, nearly halfway into his mandate, is only looking like more of the same.

Worse, having raised expectations to the stratosphere in Indigenous communities, and having those expectations so warmly embraced in return, Trudeau is now in danger of squandering a historic opportunity to right Canada’s enormous wrong.

Monday’s cleaving in two of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada and the importation of cabinet heavy Jane Philpott as minister of one half might be a needed step, but it is also an acknowledgment of Trudeau’s failure to deliver.

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has not been implemented. Nor have “all” of the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There is still too little clean water and far too many suicides on reserve. The vaunted inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women is a shambles.

The prime minister’s problem, other than a raft of pie-in-the-sky promises? He’s chosen to follow the conventional wisdom and work through a faulty system, instead of using his enormous goodwill to break the mould.

Every government that has worked within the system (principally the overarching Indian Act) for reform has ended up caught in its maze. Splitting the problem in two, as Trudeau has now done, doesn’t get rid of the problem.

Reform through the system always ends in nowt. It doesn’t matter if it’s Jean Chrétien in the 1960s, the Royal Commission in the ’90s, Paul Martin in the aughts, or Stephen Harper after that.

You might scoff at the inclusion of Harper in that list, but the former prime minister set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and delivered the historic apology for the residential school system in Canada’s Parliament.

The poor state of many reserves is why Harper pumped up infrastructure spending and tried his best to get education reforms passed. It’s why Harper pushed job-creating resource projects on or near Indigenous lands, while supporting efforts to bring transparency to Indigenous governance (which Trudeau has rescinded).

But as Idle No More and the theatrical Theresa Spence proved, the anger of a sesquicentennial of failure had by then reached a boiling point and a Conservative saviour wasn’t politically feasible.

Nor will any conservative saviour ever be feasible. If things are going to change for Indigenous peoples, it’s going to have to be a Liberal government that partners in that change.

In the same way that only Nixon could go to China, only a Liberal like Trudeau can go to Attawapiskat, or any of the blighted Indigenous communities that dot our land, and try something new.

For the record, something new isn’t changing the name of the federal department responsible for Indigenous affairs. Nor is cosmetic surgery such as ripping Hector-Louis Langevin’s name off a building. Even if Trudeau does get his inquiry into missing and murdered women back onto the rails it’s unclear what future problem it will solve.

To solve problems, Trudeau must first make the conversation about what’s coming, not what’s past. Canada’s shameful past must be acknowledged, but it will never be rectified through words or money. There simply isn’t enough of either to go around.

And so we have no choice but to look to the future.

As long as the majority of reserves remain economic backwaters, far from the education and opportunities that power the 21st-century economy, without the full spectrum of modern health care, with leaders who are minimally accountable to their people, it’s hard to see a tremendous improvement in outcomes.

One of the undeniable shifts of our times is the move away from the land and into cities. The government’s resources must follow the bodies. History cannot overcome geography.

If Justin Trudeau truly thinks he can make reserves great again, he must think the same of hundreds, if not thousands, of other dwindling or struggling communities across rural Canada.

More self-government for offthe-grid lands isn’t likely to yield success.

The real policy challenge for Trudeau should be how to preserve Indigenous culture, language and tradition within a thriving urban community instead of trying to preserve it where little else can grow.

If Trudeau can crack that, he’ll have earned his place on the school marquee. If he doesn’t, he’ll have to settle for something like an airport.