Canada can work for everyone

As Canada celebrates 150 years, there’s much discussion about the need for reconciliation to make this country work for everyone.

There’s no doubt Aboriginal people were treated badly as Canada came of age. Other groups, such as the Chinese and Jewish people — who have also been the subject of intense discrimination — have managed to put this dark history behind them. They have moved on. But this is not the case with most Aboriginal people.

So reconciliation is necessary. The question is how to bring it about.

But reconciliation is a two-way street. What can Aboriginal people do to make it happen?

I recently listened to an interview of Romeo Saganash on CBC Radio. Saganash is an Aboriginal MP from Quebec. He is also a graduate of a residential school and he advocated successfully to rename the Langevin Block in Ottawa. He clearly saw himself as a victim and described feeling hurt every time he walked by that building.

It didn’t seem to occur to him that he was able to live the highly privileged and comfortable life of an MP due in no small part to the fact that he received an education at schools that Langevin helped to establish. (A fact that is true for almost all of the Aboriginal leaders of the past century.)

Canada is the generous and progressive country it has become in large part because of the admittedly flawed giants of Canadian history, like Hector-Louis Langevin. Aboriginal leaders need to get a grip. A little more balance in their perspective, please.

Although a growing number of Aboriginal people are productive members of the workforce, far too many rely on the government for support. Welfare has become an entrenched way of life on most reserves.

This country is working for a steadily increasing number of Aboriginal Canadians who have moved into the mainstream economy, but in a way that has allowed them to retain their Aboriginal identity. These people should be role models for those who are still finding their way.

It’s this successful integration, achieved through individual effort, that brings an end, once and for all, to the unhealthy gap between the two populations. That’s what reconciliation needs.