Way back in 1984, on his last day in Parliament as prime minister, Pierre Trudeau shot down opposition leader Brian Mulroney’s bid to apologize to Japanese Canadians for their treatment during the Second World War.
“I don’t think it’s the purpose of government to right the past,” the elder Trudeau said. “It cannot rewrite history. It is our purpose to be just in our time.”
Trudeau accused Mulroney of catering to “a particular pressure group” over “one wrong in Canadian history,” suggesting one apology would lead to another, and another. Undaunted, four years later when he was PM, Mulroney formally apologized to Japanese Canadians and agreed to a compensation package worth $238 million. It was a historic precedent.
More than 20 years later, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was not a case of political pandering – it was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history, worth $2 billion.
When the apology finally came, in June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not directly acknowledge day students, and they were denied compensation under the Common Experience Payment fund extended to former resident students. However, as shíshálh Nation hereditary chief Garry Feschuk pointed out last year, a major section of the apology applied as much to the day scholars as the other survivors.
It’s a section that talks about separating children from their families, undermining the ability of many First Nation people to parent their own children, and the institutional abuse or neglect that they suffered “far too often” in the schools.
“These children were powerless in those schools, and when they came out, they were powerless as parents,” Feschuk said, “because those same cycles of abuses were handed down from generation to generation.”
Many Canadians share the view that Pierre Trudeau expressed more than 30 years ago and don’t believe in apologizing or paying for the wrongs of the past. But we live in different times, and justice in our time has a different meaning than it had in 1984. In the case of residential schools, First Nations have the law on their side.
There’s no going back. The best thing the government can do at this point is settle quickly, end the legal battles and let everyone move on.
That’s the only way forward that would be just in our time.
