Unmeetable demands and incendiary accusations in place of practical solutions will achieve nothing for Indigenous Canadians
Marion Buller has done no one any favours with her inquiry’s sweeping denunciation of Canada as a society of mass killers.
She’s done nothing to enhance support among Canadians, who will mostly dismiss her report’s most contentious finding out of hand. She has offered no aid to a federal government that would desperately like to do something right on Aboriginal claims but has just been told it’s running an extermination project.
And she certainly hasn’t helped Canada’s First Nations, which are likely to see their place on the national priority list fall deeper into the status of hopeless causes as people conclude there’s simply no means by which their demands and aspirations can be satisfied.
That’s a sad thing. Because despite the conclusion of the inquiry that Canada’s goal in its treatment of its native people is one of annihilation, there exists a great well of sympathy for the conditions they have been reduced to, an acceptance that past practices have been wrong-headed and damaging, and a willingness to go to considerable lengths to make it right. But people can only do the possible, and demanding the impossible is no road to success.
Even Justin Trudeau appears to grasp that fact. This prime minister, more than any previous occupant of his office, has made reconciliation and progress a top priority of his government.
For the rest of this article: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-inquiry-wasted-the-chance-to-right-some-wrongs-for-first-nations