Little room left for true reconciliation
Re Odd choice for new Indigenous minister, Talaga, Jan.
15 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s reconciliation and climate improvement efforts really began to end about two years ago at the Houston oil industry gathering when he said: “No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them.”
The remark set the tone for what followed on climate change policy and reconciliation efforts. Last year, Trudeau pledged to purchase the $4.5-billion Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.
Then last week, when Indigenous peoples were protesting against the incursion of TransCanada and its Costal GasLink pipeline into their ancestral lands, 14 people were roughed up and arrested by armed RCMP officers.
All this left no doubt that Trudeau is serious about aggressively digging out the third largest reserve of oil on the planet, even if it undermines the promise of environmental protection and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
As Trudeau is breaking up the “dream team” that was working toward reconciliation and in the midst of the Indigenous peoples’ fight for their rights and the protection of the environment, there is hardly any room left for achieving any true reconciliation on both environment and climate fronts.
Canada might pay a huge price for failing to reconcile with its environment and Indigenous peoples. Ali Orang, Richmond Hill