The Truth and Reconciliation Report Is dead in the water

Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert in her most recent column opined that some of the recommendations of The Truth and Reconciliation Report can be implemented, provided Federal politicians possessed the necessary political will. Though I generally admire Ms. Chantal’s political insight, she is completely off base here.

It is not a question of lack of political will on the part of the politicians, that none of these 94 recommendations will be implemented. The fact is that the majority of Canadians have moved on. They are sick and tired of propping up First Nation peoples with their own hard-earned tax dollars.

Numerous surveys indicate the hard, inconvenient truth that over 60% of Canadians believe that the First Nation people are themselves the authors of their own problems. And they alone should look themselves in the mirror and fix their own culture and society.

Note that for decades, millions of immigrants have come to Canada, many escaping abusive situations for a better life in Canada, for themselves and their children. These immigrants have learned English, valued education, valued hard work, learned to integrate into Canadian society while still retaining their respective cultures.

Over time the children of these immigrants have successfully graduated university and post graduate education and are now lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers, bankers and businessmen and full contributing members to and leading members of Canadian society.

These new Canadians, who form a significant segment of Canada’s voting population, have no sympathy for decades-long complaining of these First Nations people. These are the Canadian voters all the federal politicians care about. And to blame decades and decades of dysfunction, drug abuse, violence and murders by First Nations on First Nations to a residential school system, which existed several decades ago and affected a relatively small number, is a joke.

This Truth and Reconciliation Report – which recommends that the Pope publicly apologize to the First Nations and that CBC should be given additional funding – is already dead in the water.

On a personal note, I fully anticipate that knee-jerk liberals will criticize this statement for being ignorant, intolerant and bigoted.

My response to that criticism is as follows: I am intolerant of condescending white liberal guilt, which treats First Nation members as less than second class people who cannot take direct responsibility for their own actions. Numerous objective studies (by the RCMP and police authorities –  is everyone bigoted and ignorant?) conclude that over 70% of violence against First Nation women are caused by First Nation men or women, in the same community or who have knowledge of the victims.

How is that statement ignorant, intolerant or bigoted? It is time for First Nations men who are violent towards First Nations women to take responsibility for their actions, instead of blaming their violence on the fact that their grandfathers were urged to learn English by nuns several decades ago. And somehow that gives them a free pass to rape, assault, and kill First Nation women today.