CANADA
Toronto Star
By: Steve Bonspiel
Published on Tue Jun 02 2015
As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wraps up its five-year mandate this week in Ottawa, I am both proud of the heroes who testified and disappointed in a country that is failing them all over again.
The commission attempted to give some form of healing to those who suffered the most in residential schools, but in a few important ways it fell short.
TRC Justice Murray Sinclair pointed to 2008’s residential school apology in the House of Commons as hollow words. He was right.
With unconstitutional bills like Bill C-51 (the anti-terror bill), land claims moving at a snail’s pace, and many of our communities without proper infrastructure, sewage and running water, Native people have all but given up on healing with Stephen Harper as leader.
And then there was the commission itself. Many who attended the events (myself included) came away with mixed emotions. There was sadness, of course, but also quite a bit of anger that wasn’t only directed toward the priests and nuns who routinely sexually, physically and mentally abused the children.
I came away from it angry at the process.
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