CANADA
Hamilton Spectator
By Bruce Cheadle
OTTAWA — The time for frank apologies for Canada’s treatment of its first peoples is over and must make way for a change in behaviour, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said on the eve of his long-awaited report’s release.
“Truth and apologies are achieved through words, important words, yes,” Justice Murray Sinclair said Monday.
“But the next step, reconciliation, is achieved only by acting differently.”
Five years and $60 million have gone into the six-volume study of Canada’s residential schools, which were established in the 1840s to “take the Indian out of the child” and lasted until the ’90s.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper kicked off the long reconciliation process with a moving apology from the government of Canada in the House of Commons in June 2008, with the commission getting off to a wobbly start the following year.
The original cast of three commissioners all resigned before the project hit its stride, eventually visiting hundreds of communities and hearing testimony from 7,000 survivors.
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