24 | Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
The 1998 federal response to RCAP ignored the "Royal Proclamation" recommendation. It did include an expression of regret for past wrongs and a federal pledge to focus on four priority areas: renewing the partnership, strengthening Aboriginal governance, developing a new fiscal relationship, and supporting strong communities.
There have been several attempts to assess the implementation of the RCAP recommendations but their number and scope complicate such an assessment. While the Auditor General has produced periodic reviews of Aboriginal programs, the majority of these audits look at the performance of existing programs. They do not, however, assess the government's progress in implementing programs that the RCAP Final Report recommended in order to meet needs identified by the Commission.
Thus far, the federal government has made little effort to monitor its own progress in implementing RCAP's recommendations. For example, Canada committed to developing an "Aboriginal Report Card" in 2004 but this was never completed. Treasury Board did provide two Aboriginal-specific sections in its 2004 and 2005 "Canada's Performance" reports. These reports were discontinued in 2006.
In 2006 the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) issued a ten-year report card that looked at the RCAP Final Report's recommendations. This report card gave Canada a failing grade in over half (thirty-seven of sixty-five) the categories of recommendations.[1]
Academic as well as political assessments have been critical of Canada's failure to acknowledge, let alone implement, the majority of RCAP's recommendations. In his 2008 book A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada, political philosopher John Ralston Saul lamented the federal government's missed opportunity to "engage" with RCAP's recommendations as a "most foolish refusal."[2] However, he pointed hopefully to examples where Canadians have made progress in adopting RCAP's core principles, and he cites its Final Report directly: "This great document is slowly making its way because it is the most important statement we now have of our reality—one that embraces 'a relationship of mutual trust and loyalty' and deals with the real role of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada." He also notes that Aboriginal peoples have much to teach the rest of the country about reconciliation.
Non-Aboriginals appear to be moving ever so tentatively toward reconciliation, which would be a first step toward understanding the situation differently. As always in our history, the elegance and generosity when it is a matter of reconciliation comes largely from the indigenous side, from those who have been wronged. All around us there are a multitude of negotiations and complaints and concerns. As they are resolved in a pattern that increasingly gives Aboriginals room to manoeuvre and re-establish their role as players and leaders in their own worlds, so they also gain the room to play an important role in Canada as a whole.[3]
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is of the opinion that the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples identified the key issues to be addressed in righting the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Although RCAP did not identify a specific role for the churches in addressing a reconciliation process, such participation clearly is captured by the spirit of RCAP's recommendations. Furthermore, RCAP's guiding principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect, sharing, and mutual responsibility are critical to any reconciliation process.
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- ↑ Assembly of First Nations, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples at 10 Years: A Report Card (Ottawa: AFN, 2006), http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/aboriginals/pdf/afn_rcap.pdf.
- ↑ John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008), 25–26.
- ↑ John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008), 98–99.
