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Winnipeg Free Press
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Canada still doesn't understand respecting Indigenous rights
Opinion Thirty-five years ago this week, history was made in Manitoba. Events this week in Ottawa point to just how little we have learnt from that history. In Manitoba in June of 1990, Elijah Harper, MLA for what was then the third party NDP Opposition in a minority government, said 'No', and opposed the Meech Lake Accord. The backdrop was clear. A crisis. In this case, the 'need' to include Quebec in the constitution. The solution, Canadians were told, was the Meech Lake Accord. It was agreed to by Canada's premiers with an artificial deadline set by then-prime minister Brian Mulroney. He talked about rolling the dice. There was one problem. There were many people opposed to Meech Lake. In particular, Indigenous people were clear. It not only excluded Indigenous people, but threatened to be a major step backwards. Elijah Harper was the voice for Indigenous Peoples when he came out against the Accord. What is often missed is how Elijah Harper said 'No'. He said no to procedurally giving leave to rush through the ratification of Meech Lake. Despite great pressure from the federal government, Speaker Denis Rocan ruled in favour of the key point of order brought forward by Elijah Harper arguing that the proper notice procedure had not been followed. There was no closure and the Legislature could not pass the Accord before the deadline. Thirty-five years later, in Ottawa, the House of Commons is rushing through Bill C-5 without consultation. It is a bill that claims to respond to a crisis. That somehow Canada's response to the so-called existential threat with Donald Trump is to throw out our existing processes for approving major projects, and instead we must speed up approvals by threatening to sideline Indigenous rights and environmental protections. To achieve this, the government is relying on the full support of the Conservative opposition, not only to support the legislation but to bring in closure, limiting debate. A handful of MP's have spoken out against both the contents and process of Bill C-5. The Green and NDP MPs who face a challenging situation because they do not have party status have opposed it. Even one Liberal MP called out the unfairness of the process. What is different is that in 1990, despite all the pressures, the Manitoba legislature followed its own procedures based on hundreds of years of parliamentary democracy and did not ram through the Meech Lake Accord. The actions of not only Elijah Harper, but so many other Indigenous people forced Canada to recognize the need to respect Indigenous rights. In many ways, it was a major first step towards what in subsequent years has been reconciliation. What has been happening with Bill C-5 in 2025 couldn't be more different. There has been a blatant disregard for the process you would expect for a bill of this significance. The hasty introduction and closure being attached to Bill C-5 fly in the face of the consultation you would normally expect on any bill, let alone the constitutionally required consultation on matters involving Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples have been clear in opposing both the process and substance of the bill. Many people have been calling out what is seen as a betrayal of reconciliation. We learned a major lesson in 1990. That Indigenous peoples will defend their rights. That reconciliation starts with not only recognizing Canada's history of genocide against Indigenous peoples but that provincial and federal governments must recognize the limits of their own powers in the context of Indigenous rights. But as Santayana said 'Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it ' Sadly, in 2025, key political leaders have chosen not to remember these lessons of history and are repeating Canada's failure to recognize Indigenous rights. There is one more lesson too. We also learned that the 'crisis' of 1990 was greatly exaggerated. Despite subsequent efforts with the failed Charlottetown accord, the constitutional question was never finally closed. But Canada continues. The so-called crisis we are facing currently will go the same way. What will matter is not just how we react to Donald Trump or any other political leader or economic threat. In terms of history, it is how much we will have acted in accordance with our own values based on our own distinct history. The events of 1990 set us on a better course. The events of 2025 with Bill C-5 threaten to set us back dramatically. Steve Ashton is a former member of the Manitoba Legislature. He was the NDP House Leader during the debate on the Meech Lake Accord in the Manitoba Legislature in 1990. Niki Ashton is the former NDP MP for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski
National Post
a day ago
- Politics
- National Post
Raymond J. de Souza: Reconciling with history on National Indigenous Peoples Day
Article content Thirty years ago, the Sacred Assembly, a national meeting on Indigenous affairs organized by Elijah Harper, called for a 'National First Peoples Day,' the first of which was observed the following year on June 21, 1996. It coincides with the summer solstice, highlighting the importance of the sun in various Indigenous religious beliefs. It has been observed ever since, now using ' Indigenous Peoples ' rather than 'First Peoples.' Article content Four hundred years ago, in June 1625, French Jesuit missionaries — Jean de Brébeuf amongst them — arrived in Quebec, whence they would launch their religious and cultural work in Huronia, northwest of what is now Toronto, amongst the Wendat (Huron) people. Article content Article content Exactly a century ago, on June 21, 1925, Brébeuf and his martyred Jesuit companions were beatified in Rome, with a contemporary celebration at what is now the Martyrs' Shrine in Midland, Ont. They were canonized five years later, in 1930. Article content Ten years ago this month, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its executive summary and 94 'calls to action.' Justin Trudeau, then the leader of the third party, announced that he would accept the TRC report and all its claims without exception. By December 2015, when the entire six-volume report was released, he was prime minister. Article content The TRC was massively influential. Eighteen months after its full release, the 2017 celebrations of the sesquicentennial of Confederation were relatively muted. The TRC recasting of four centuries of history through the singular prism of the residential schools made the entire Canadian project out to be an unrelenting campaign of genocidal brutality, a massive criminal enterprise. What then to celebrate at Canada 150? Article content In 2021, the apparent discovery of 'mass graves' in Kamloops set off a global firestorm, the flames of which were fanned by the prime minister himself. Statues of his first predecessor, Sir John A. Macdonald, were splattered, shattered, scrapped and shuttered. Article content A new statutory holiday was rushed through in a matter of weeks, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, observed for the first time on Sept. 30, 2021. Article content That was the TRC's impact. In the 1990s, Indigenous leaders had called for a day to celebrate Canada's aboriginal heritage. It is a day of commemoration, but not a statutory holiday. The TRC statutory holiday, in contrast, says, in effect, that the residential schools are the most important thing in Indigenous history. Article content Just four years ago, the future of Canada's history seemed to be definitively different from its past. And then much changed. Article content In 2022, the exaggerated false claims about Kamloops were exposed — not least by journalist Terry Glavin in these pages — but not as a whitewash of Canadian history, and certainly not as exculpatory of the residential school policy. Quite the contrary in fact. Article content That summer Pope Francis visited Canada on a 'penitential pilgrimage' and offered apologies, but he also said things that had not been said for a long time, praising the good work that the European missionaries did, not least in preserving Indigenous languages and defending them against the depredations of colonial authorities. Article content The upshot is that now, four hundred years after the Jesuits' arrival in New France, three hundred years after their beatification, 30 years after the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 10 years after the TRC, a more truthful — and thus more reconciling — history is now being told. Article content A significant step came last year with the publication of Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie, who writes meticulous history in bracing style. (He recently published a biography of Pierre Poilievre.) Article content Attempting the 'first secular' biography of Brébeuf, Bourrie is not writing hagiography. It's not obvious that a 'secular' telling can capture the lives of saints, who are, almost by definition, outside the usual historical categories. His assessment of Brébeuf would offend many pious ears, even as he insists that we ought not 'judge the people of these worlds through a 21st-century lens.' Article content It is a worthy project, history seeking truth, rather than today's politics shaping history. The truth can be difficult to read. Bourrie shows how the Huron and Iroquois were war-making peoples, and that the gruesome martyrdom of Brébeuf by the latter followed their usual practise of torture. The 17th-century was like that; Brébeuf left Europe in the midst of the bloodletting of the Thirty Years War. The Europeans were war-making peoples with their own tastes in torture. Article content Would Biblioasis, the impressive new publisher in Windsor, Ont., have published Crosses in the Sky just five years ago? Perhaps, as they seem a doughty band. Would it have been received to critical acclaim then? Unlikely. Article content Earlier this year, the Jesuits from Martyrs' Shrine took the Jesuit relics across Canada on a tour to commemorate their anniversaries. The relics were received with honour by Indigenous leaders at the Seven Chiefs Sportsplex near Calgary. A more complex, more accurate, history is now being told, 10 years after the TRC buried its own research under a political agenda. Article content Article content
