MARTIN REGG COHN DISCLOSURE: I’M A SENIOR FELLOW AT THE DAIS AT TORONTO METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY, WHICH HOSTS THE TMU DEMOCRACY FORUM.
Toronto Star: He is the embodiment of the crown.
Which means CrownIndigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree is the unlikely face of white colonialism in Canada — or at least its historical legacy.
Like any other Canadian, he may not be personally responsible for the sins of Canada’s past. Today, however, the minister is politically accountable for solutions of the future.
As a Tamil immigrant from Sri Lanka — also colonized by the British crown — he is especially conscious of the colonial history that touches all Canadians. As a human rights lawyer and community activist in his previous life, Anandasangaree had been thinking about it since long before he entered politics a decade ago.
While many people may feel far removed from that colonial legacy today, geographically or historically, his answer hasn’t changed: Whether you were born here or came here, Canada is a land of opportunity today largely because of the injustices of the past — from the early confiscation of land to the ongoing suppression of Indigenous identity.
“What I have been able to benefit from in this country — whether it’s a topnotch education system … whether it’s economic, whether it’s access to health care … all of those things led me to a deeper understanding that I am benefiting from this colonial process and this system,” the minister told Friday’s Democracy Forum that I hosted at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“All Canadians, I think, need to come on board and understand that this is our collective journey.”
Anandasangaree himself has been on a journey of apology since becoming minister last year. Last summer he apologized to nine DakotaLakota First Nations communities for longstanding injustices. Last month he apologized to First Nations on Manitoulin Island for mismanagement of funds in the past, formally declaring, “The Crown failed to act honourably.”
This past weekend, shortly after our event, he flew to Northern Quebec to deliver a promised apology to the Inuit in Nunavik for the mass slaughter of sled dogs that devastated communities in the 1950s and ’60s, telling them: “On behalf of the government of Canada and of all the Canadians, I am sorry. Please forgive us.”
Are the apologies accepted? The atmosphere can sometimes be tearful, but must always be truthful.
“Apologies are hollow if they’re not meaningful … ultimately this is about setting the record straight,” the minister told me. “It’s not about compensation, it’s actually about telling the truth, acknowledging the truth.”
The reality is that progress has been painfully slow. At a Democracy Forum a few years ago, Indigenous MPP Sol Mamakwa sipped a glass of water onstage while explaining to our campus audience that he couldn’t safely do the same in his Northern Ontario riding of Kiiwetinoong because of boil water advisories on reserves.
I also recounted to the minister how as a foreign correspondent, I’d seen troops from the Canadian military’s rapidresponse DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) deployed to his native Sri Lanka to deliver clean water after the 2005 tsunami hit, while Indigenous reserves across Canada had to do without.
Anandasangaree acknowledged the double standard, onreserve and off, but argued that the federal Liberals made it a priority to dramatically reduce boil water advisories that were once in the hundreds. A government tally shows there are still 20 boil water advisories in Ontario today. Against that backdrop, an epidemic of suicide among Indigenous youth is increasing at the very time that Canadians are talking openly about mental health and driving death rates down across the country. Anandasangaree himself raised the deaths of Indigenous people in recent police shootings, noting it has received relatively little media coverage.
Future economic opportunity is part of the answer, but so too is healing — and an accounting of history, including attachment to language and culture. Those themes came up frequently in audience questions from students, who asked him how to incorporate more Indigenous content in curriculums across the country, as mandated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015.
Greater awareness of history could one day build broader public support for compromise and compensation by politicians in power, which isn’t always forthcoming. I asked the minister about the political peril of getting too far out in front of voters who might begrudge costly land claims settlements or balk at child welfare compensation (First Nations chiefs recently rejected a $47billion package as inadequate).
The inertia isn’t always with politicians; the resistance is sometimes with the public. Anandasangaree suggested that British Columbia’s NDP government may have been seen by some voters, in the recent provincial election campaign, as making too many costly concessions on Indigenous issues.
“They have moved mountains on reconciliation, they have invested heavily … they are looking at reconciliation in a very different way than any previous provincial government,” he mused. “They have encountered resistance — a reaction — from voters … there’s a gap.”
For better or for worse, that’s democracy.