Trudeau’s complicated, contradictory legacy

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/09/2024 (354 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Justin Trudeau is the most progressive prime minister for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis in Canadian history.

However, the bar to achieve this title is very low.

This is not to debate the merits of his governments; this is just a fact.

Take, for example, Trudeau’s first cabinet in 2015, where Jody Wilson-Raybould was appointed attorney general and justice minister — the first Indigenous person in these posts.

Trudeau’s first six months in office included ambitious goals — ending all First Nations boil water advisories by 2021, creating an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, protecting Indigenous languages, creating legislation to recognize Indigenous and treaty rights and implementing all 94 calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Trudeau also committed to settle the 1.4-million acre land claim with the Manitoba Métis Federation.

In various ways, Trudeau took action on all of these promises. In the 2016 federal budget, $8.5 billion over five years was promised alongside an end to the two per cent cap on federal funding to First Nations by previous Canadian governments.

This led to a sort of “Trudeaumania” in Indigenous communities. Throughout 2016 and onward, the PM received numerous headdresses, blankets, gifts, and even a traditional name from Tsuut’ina Nation: “Gumistiyi,” meaning: “the one that keeps trying.”

And try he did.

Over the next few years his government created the MMIWG inquiry, funded the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and created a National Council for Reconciliation. His government also began holding dozens of “exploratory tables” on Indigenous rights with Indigenous leadership — a potential end to the Indian Act.

The Trudeau government also installed more Indigenous leaders in the Senate than anyone in history, one of them being the former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair (my father).

By 2018, Trudeau’s government announced the replacement of the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs with two new federal departments: Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, and Indigenous Services.

Then came Trudeau’s announcement of his commitments to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as an “international human rights instrument that identifies rights of Indigenous peoples” and his government’s plan for a recognition and implementation of Indigenous rights framework.

There was, of course, the many apologies — a hallmark of Trudeau’s legacy. From 2017 to 2019 he made four apologies: in November 2017 to residential school survivors in Newfoundland and Labrador, in November 2018 for the mistreatment of six Tsilhqot’in chiefs in the 1860s, in March 2019 to Inuit for the ways the Canadian government infected them with tuberculosis, and in May 2019 for the mistreatment of Chief Poundmaker in the late 19th century.

Trudeau’s most impactful rhetorical move was in June 2019 in response to the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls — when he acknowledged the commissioner’s claims of an ongoing Canadian “genocide.”

By this point, though, Trudeau was also making controversial — and somewhat contradictory and anti-reconciliation decisions, too. The largest of these came in March 2018 with the $4.5-billion purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline from oil giant Kinder Morgan.

These decisions came with a cost. Soon after, Assembly of First Nations chiefs rejected the Indigenous rights framework.

There was also a litany of Trudeau blunders, like the confrontation between Grassy Narrows Indigenous protesters at a Liberal fundraiser in March 2019 and the infamous blackface incident uncovered during the 2019 federal election campaign.

A real mess emerged when Trudeau clashed with Wilson-Raybould over the SNC-Lavalin scandal — resulting in her removal from caucus and eventual resignation.

In the 2019 election, the Liberals experienced a nearly eight per cent drop in support from on-reserve First Nations voters.

By the beginning of 2020, a sense of disappointment over his treatment of Indigenous issues was emerging — particularly when a lands-rights struggle in Wet’suwet’en territory over the Coastal GasLink pipeline escalated — sparking a wave of anti-Trudeau sentiment.

After weeks of protest, relief would come in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, it’s worth noting the uneven record of Trudeau in supporting Indigenous communities during the pandemic — which by December 2020 represented a $4-billion commitment.

At the same time, the Trudeau government’s attempts to change Canada’s legislative relationships with Indigenous nations continued.

A trifecta of bills made their way through Parliament: C-91, an Act respecting Indigenous Languages (February 2019); C-92, an Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis youth and families (February 2019); and C-15, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (December 2020).

The language bill, frankly, was ornamental while there were mixed reactions over the handing over of a problematic child-welfare system to Indigenous nations and organizations without funding commitments. This created an ongoing conflict with provinces (who have jurisdiction over the issue).

The UN declaration, on the other hand, requires the federal government to “take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of Canada are consistent with the (46 articles of the) declaration,” and “prepare and implement an action plan to achieve the objectives of the declaration.”

On the face, the Act requires drastic amendments to laws that have historically denied Indigenous and treaty rights.

Underneath, C-15 gives no timeline, no parameters or principles that guide implementation nor deals with the problem of jurisdiction or constitutional change.

Still, these represent the prime minister’s most likely lasting changes — and an end to the Trudeau legacy on Indigenous issues.

Since this time, only two significant pieces of legislation have been passed.

The first, Bill C-5, was passed in June 2021 and made Sept. 30 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This law should have been remarkable, but the opportunity was lost when Trudeau didn’t attend a vigil and ceremony on the first holiday he helped create.

The second wasn’t a Liberal bill but required Trudeau’s support when NDP MP Leah Gazan forwarded a motion in 2022 to recognize residential schools as a “program of genocide.”

Since then, economic issues like inflation, interest rates, and the carbon tax have dominated the Trudeau government’s attention rather than issues impacting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities.

Today, the Trudeau Liberals have fallen into the old legislative trend of reactive decisions instead of proactive policy.

Examples are found in the $20-million commitment to co-fund the search for slain Indigenous women in a Manitoba landfill or the $40 billion paid to on-reserve victims who were forced to enter the child-welfare system because of Canadian-imposed poverty.

Over this same time, these laws pale in comparison to Trudeau’s completion of controversial projects in Indigenous communities — such as the Trans Mountain pipeline and the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

More ugly news came when Auditor General Karen Hogan announced the Trudeau government failed to meet promised on-reserve housing and infrastructure commitments.

The AFN also issued a report around this same time identifying the on-reserve “infrastructure gap” as “more than $425 billion.”

Good, bad, great or ugly, Trudeau is still known as a prime minister who has a complicated and contradictory legacy on Indigenous issues.

On one level, his government’s engagement and success in repairing many First Nations water issues, a small level of success creating a “renewed relationship” with Indigenous nations, and introducing unprecedented bills on Indigenous languages, child welfare, rights, and the creation of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation that will likely have long-lasting impacts.

His inconsistency to deliver on a much-promised “renewed relationship” and his own contradictory actions (not to mention arrogance and hubris) has created new senses of apathy and anger — something Indigenous communities do not need more of.

This is a condensed and edited version of an essay that appeared in The Trudeau Record: Promise v. Performance, edited by Katherine Scott, Laura MacDonald and Stuart Trew (James Lorimer & Company, 2024).

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca