truth and reconciliation

Saturday July 30, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday July 30, 2022

Pope Francis says Canada trip showed he may need to retire

July 26, 2022

Pope Francis has said that he can no longer travel like he used to because of his strained knee ligaments, saying his week-long Canadian pilgrimage was “a bit of a test” that showed he needed to slow down and one day possibly retire.

Speaking to reporters while traveling home from northern Nunavut, Francis, 85, stressed that he had not thought about resigning but said “the door is open” and there was nothing wrong with a pope stepping down.

“It’s not strange. It’s not a catastrophe. You can change the pope,” he said.

Tuesday April 5, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 5, 2022

The Vatican holds billions in assets. Residential school survivors say the Pope should step up on compensation

March 29, 2022

As a Canadian delegation prepares for its final meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican Friday, a growing chorus in Canada is hoping Francis commits to immediately remedying the Roman Catholic Church’s broken compensation promises to residential school survivors.

Canadian bishops announced a renewed fundraising effort last fall —  $30 million over five years — and say work is well underway.

But critics are skeptical. Even if that money can be raised, they say it’s wrong to make the dwindling number of elderly survivors wait that long. They say that if Canadian bishops won’t do it immediately, the Vatican should.

Although all the full specifics of the Vatican’s holdings are unknown, a tabulation of known assets puts them in the tens or possibly hundreds of billions of dollars.

September 5, 2018

Survivors say the compensation money isn’t for them — it’s to fund addictions and mental health supports, job training, recreation, language preservation and other programs for their descendants suffering through intergenerational trauma.

“It affected my children, my grandchildren. So many are lost,” said survivor and mental health worker Audrey Eyahpaise of the Beardy’s & Okemasis Cree Nation.

The survivors say the Vatican is just as responsible as the local religious orders and dioceses.

October 18, 2018

“This has been a struggle for many years. They’ve been patient. They keep hearing broken promises,” said University of Saskatchewan Indigenous studies professor and Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation member Bonita Beatty.

“It’s a hierarchy. They report up to the Vatican. So yes, he [Pope Francis] is responsible for the various arms of his government. He can’t just wash his hands of it.”

Francis’s supporters say he has moved the church toward greater transparency, but a definitive dollar figure of the Roman Catholic Church’s wealth remains unavailable.

CBC News collected publicly available information to obtain a partial list of the church’s assets. They include:the Vatican, Vatican Bank, art and architecture, investments, and land. (CBC) 

 

Tuesday November 2, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 2, 2021

Justin Trudeau just rolled the dice on reconciliation

June 2, 2021

Justin Trudeau has made a dangerous bet he can right a long-standing wrong against Indigenous children without instead setting back the cause of reconciliation for years. Canadians can only hope he wins this wager.

On Friday, his government bitterly disappointed people across the country when it launched a last-minute court appeal against a ruling requiring it to pay billions of dollars to Indigenous youngsters who were discriminated against in the child welfare system.

The PM and his Liberals don’t deny responsibility for this wrongdoing. Nor do they reject their obligation to come through with significant compensation. Even so, they ignored the pleadings of Indigenous groups as well as the opposition Conservatives and New Democrats by appealing orders from both the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and the Federal Court to pay up.

June 1, 2021

If that had been the extent of this government’s action last week, it would deserve the universal condemnation of Canadians today. But the government’s response was more complex and nuanced. And herein lies the nub of the prime minister’s risky gamble.

On Monday, his government began negotiating with the Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society to settle the dispute out of court — by the start of December, no less. Until then, it has put on hold its appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. That means if the talks result in a mutually agreeable deal, there will be no appeal and everyone can go home happy.

In addition to this, the government will not appeal a second Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order that would result in Indigenous children receiving access to government services without delays caused by jurisdictional disputes.

February 29, 2020

There is cause for guarded optimism but, even more, deep concern in what the government has done. In rejecting the most direct route to a just settlement, it has opted for a winding, rock-strewn path that may take it over a cliff. It’s hard not to agree with Indigenous leaders who point out that this battle for compensation began 14 years ago and the Trudeau Liberals have had ample time to work out a fair settlement.

But they didn’t. And in 2019, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal declared the government had “wilfully and recklessly” discriminated against First Nations children living on reserves by underfunding child and family services. As a result, children were taken from their communities and put into government-run programs.

July 13, 2017

Because of the undisputed harm this caused, the tribunal ordered Ottawa to pay $40,000 each to as many as 54,000 Indigenous children who were removed from their homes after 2006, as well as their relatives. The Federal Court upheld this decision on Sept. 29.

The government insists the Federal Court erred when it concluded the tribunal had acted reasonably in ordering compensation for First Nations parents and grandparents as well as children. In so doing, the government might argue it’s trying to defend the best interests of taxpayers as well as those of the Indigenous people being compensated.

January 15, 2014

But Trudeau is walking a fine line. He has long proclaimed there is no more important relationship for his government than the one it has with Indigenous peoples. If he is seen as merely trying to save money in this case, he’ll further alienate Indigenous people while doing a disservice to all Canadians. And if his government can’t secure a deal this month, it will only make things worse by dragging things out with a Supreme Court appeal.

What comes next can’t be brinkmanship designed to force a settlement. Canadians have to see good-faith, productive negotiations. For this country’s sake, the government’s goal can’t be the cheapest deal but rather the one that’s fairest for every Indigenous victim. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

Wednesday October 27, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 27, 2021

That’s enough, Jean Chrétien

Jean Chretien Cartoon Gallery

The former Indian Affairs Minister has had decades to ponder his failings. It’s not clear he even understands what the residential schools were.

“This problem was never mentioned when I was minister. Never.”

This was Jean Chrétien’s response on Radio-Canada’s Tout le monde en parle Sunday night when asked about the abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools when he was minister of Indian Affairs from 1968 to 1974. It might even be true: Maybe none of his underlings bothered telling him. Alas, that can’t save 87-year-old Teflon Jean this time. If he didn’t know it, he bloody well should have.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report records that in 1970, Jacques Serre, a child-care worker at the Anglican residential school in La Tuque, Que., advised Chrétien’s Indian Affairs ministry in writing that another employee had “taken liberties (with a student) in the presence of a third party.” The ministry asked its Quebec director to look into it, but no one even bothered tracking down the alleged victim, who had left the school.

A year later the La Tuque school’s administrator, Jean Bonnard, called the gendarmes over his suspicions that another child-care worker was conducting “certain ‘activities’ of a sexual nature” with his charges. Bonnard duly informed Indian Affairs of this. The police interviewed four boys, concluding the behaviour had “been going on for some time,” and then nothing happened.

June 2, 2021

Not only was the La Tuque school Chrétien’s responsibility as minister of Indian Affairs. It was in his riding.

In the early 1970s, Chrétien’s ministry received at least four complaints from the Catholic St. Anne’s residential school in Fort Albany, Ont., including of physical assault and of at least one teacher keeping “guns and live ammunition in class to scare the students.” This week, NDP MP Charlie Angus produced a letter from a teacher at St. Anne’s addressed directly to Chrétien, complaining of a “prejudicial attitude” among staff members to the Indigenous people of the community.

The Truth and Reconciliation report records the case of Harry Joseph, an employee at the Anglican residential school in Alert Bay, B.C., who in 1970 pleaded guilty to indecent assault after having been fired for having “interfered with two other girls by removing (their) bed covers and fondling them.”

November 9, 2018

Perhaps this news never made it down the telegraph to Ottawa. But it was the ministry itself that cashiered child-care worker Claude Frappier from his position at the Catholic residential school in Whitehorse in 1970 — though it didn’t bother informing the victims’ parents or the police. (Frappier was belatedly convicted in 1990 on 13 counts of sexual assault on boys aged eight to 11.)

The Truth and Reconciliation report records the case of Harry Joseph, an employee at the Anglican residential school in Alert Bay, B.C., who in 1970 pleaded guilty to indecent assault after having been fired for having “interfered with two other girls by removing (their) bed covers and fondling them.”

PM Merch

Perhaps this news never made it down the telegraph to Ottawa. But it was the ministry itself that cashiered child-care worker Claude Frappier from his position at the Catholic residential school in Whitehorse in 1970 — though it didn’t bother informing the victims’ parents or the police. (Frappier was belatedly convicted in 1990 on 13 counts of sexual assault on boys aged eight to 11.) (Continued: The National Post) 

 

Wednesday June 30, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 30, 2021

Make Canada Day a time for reflection

By almost any standard, Canada can be judged one of the world’s best countries. Yet its riches, rewards and life-changing opportunities are not enjoyed equally by all who inhabit this land.

June 25, 2021

By almost any estimation, Canada’s history is filled with rousing stories of courage, vision and achievement. Yet there remains a long and shameful record of past injustices — many of which have yet to be set right.

Most notably, evidence of the glaring wrongs done to the people who first called this place home is now out in full public view as never before. As shocking as the recent discoveries of almost 1,000 unmarked gravesites at former First Nations residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan have been, they have also provided one more necessary jolt to this nation’s collective conscience.

All these contradictions and paradoxes explain why it is so difficult for people to know how to mark Canada’s 154th birthday on Thursday. Do we wave the flag or lower it to half-mast? More than a year into a devastating pandemic and just as the arrival of another summer offers glimmers of respite, many Canadians ache for something to celebrate, something like the festive national holiday they’ve cherished in years past.

June 2, 2021

Yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has wisely called for this July 1st to be a more sober affair. Having reached a similar conclusion, many communities across the country have cancelled their traditional Canada Day festivities.

This is not the same as cancelling Canada Day itself, however, and no one is seriously recommending such a move that would, even for this one, fraught year alone, deny the country its nationwide holiday. But let’s also agree that after the discoveries of the graves of so many First Nations children, many Indigenous people would understandably consider the traditional celebrations with their parades and fireworks to be completely tone-deaf. 

We do not anticipate a clear national consensus on the matter of July 1, 2021. Whatever people do or don’t do this Canada Day, we would only urge everyone to pause and reflect upon what Canada is, how we got here and what remains for us to do — together.

There are abundant national treasures for which we can all give thanks. Judged by our national living standard, our health care and education systems and by the enviable rights and freedoms we enjoy, it is easy to see why this is so. The land itself, in all its staggering beauty and enormity stretching across a continent, lies waiting for new generations to explore. No wonder hundreds of thousands of people from around the world arrive eagerly each year to start a new life with this goal in mind: becoming new Canadians. And how wonderful it is that they do.

June 26, 2018

But none of this can or should drown out the voices of the Indigenous people who knew and loved this land for millennia. They are reminding us daily of what we need to regret, lament and correct. For this to happen, the Trudeau government must move from reflection to taking the action it has promised for years. It continues to ignore far too many of the recommendations from the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

The recent passage through Parliament of new legislation, Bill C-15, could bring overdue, transformative change by codifying with greater meaning than ever before the rights of Indigenous people to their land and self-government. But an even greater commitment to learn and change must be there, not just for our federal leaders but for all of us.

When that happens, even those who feel unable to celebrate the creation of Canada 154 years ago may be able to support something different: the creating of a new Canada today. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)