What’s Happened with Indigenous Reconciliation?

INDIGENOUS WATCHDOG: HAMILTON – June 10, 2025

As of June 4, 2025, the 10th anniversary of the release of the TRC Summary Report, more of its 94 Calls to Action have NOT STARTED than have been COMPLETED.

That’s a problem!

Think about that. 14 Calls to Action out of 94 completed after 10 years vs 15 that are not even started. CBC’s Beyond 94 identifies 14 as complete and 17 as not started.

What’s the problem?

In the most recent “What’s New in Indigenous Watchdog: 277 New Entries May 1 – May 31, 2025“, 144 of the new entries were classified as “Current Problems” – up 31% from the previous month. Two of the 16 Themes addressed in “Current Problems” accounted for 46% of the total: “Government Commitments to Truth and Reconciliation“: 34 of the 38 posts relate directly to Bill 5 in Ontario, Bills 14 and 15 in BC and Alberta’s threat to secede from Canada; “Treaties and Land Claims“, 20 of the 28 posts relate to the same issues:

Province	Legislation	Govt. Commit. Posts	Treaties & Land Claims posts	Total
Ontario	Bill 5: “Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act: 2025”	12	11	23
BC	Bill 14: The Renewable Energy Projects (Streamlined Permitting Act) Bill 15: The Infrastructure Projects Act	7	4	11
Alberta	Alberta separation from Canada	11	1	12
Canada	Proposed “One Canadian Economy” legislation to fast- track nation-building projects	4	4	8
		89%	71%	54

All of the above “Current Problems” reflect broad-based Indigenous opposition across the country to the threatened violation of fundamental issues regarding Indigenous rights: Honouring the Treaties and Indigenous territory and Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

Add the following “Government Commitments to Truth and Reconciliation” and “Treaty and Land Claims” issues and you can see that reconciliation is heading in the wrong direction.

Bill 97: An Act Mainly to modernize the forest regime in Québec” against the protests of the Assembly of First Nations Québec-Labrador (AFNQL)
Protests in Nova Scotia and PEI over Canada refusing to acknowledge the Mi’kmaw Moderate Living Fishery as recognized by the Supreme Court in the Marshall decision in September, 1999
Métis Nation-Saskatchewan taking the governments of Canada and Saskatchewan to court over their refusal to negotiate a long-standing land claim
Premier Scott Moe’s 10 priorities for Saskatchewan that say nothing about First Nations or Métis rights and lots about protecting the resource economy which is aligned with the Saskatchewan First Act that asserts ownership of all the natural resources in the province

And that’s just from May, 2025.

Now add the following results from analyzing data from the 6,214 posts added to the Indigenous Watchdog site over the last 28 months:

Systemic Racism is still rampant across the country. Of all the posts in each of the following categories, the % represents those tagged as systemic racism:
- Child Welfare= 28%
- Education = 33%
- Health= 39%
- Justice= 64%
The following Calls to Action specifically asking for the critical data essential for designing and implementing potential solutions to address the myriad issues plaguing Indigenous communities are still either NOT STARTED or STALLED – after 10 years!

The issues around the lack of critical data to measure meaningful progress and systemic racism are compounded by structural, legislative and institutional barriers across society that still persist after 10 years. These could all be fixed quickly and effectively if all levels of government would address the number one problem: the lack of political will to address core issues around land, true self-government and recognition of Indigenous laws, legal traditions and governance systems.

That ties directly into Canada’s “One Canadian Economy“, Bill 5 in Ontario, Bills 14 and 15 in BC. All of them represent a direct threat to Indigenous rights with their explicit “pre-approval” that overrides existing laws and environmental regulations and that will have a disproportionately negative impact on Indigenous People.

Governments can choose to eliminate the ongoing exploitation of the last 158 years and choose to be fair, honest and equitable in paying a fair price for resources in Indigenous territory and reasonable in protecting the environment for those whose homes will be impacted the most. Government and business extracted hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth from Indigenous territory to enrich the country over the years. All this at considerable expense to Indigenous people who got nothing for the pillaging of their lands.

Now, we are entering a new “gold rush”? Will history repeat itself? Will governments maintain the status quo and determine – without consulting impacted First Nations – how they will carve up their territories. And how will they compensate them if they do? Their solution right now is to offer First Nations “loans” – to be paid back of course – for the right to earn any money from the resources that they already own.

Where is the justice in that: having to pay for what is already yours?

Will the environment be sustainable – and inhabitable – for the next seven generations?

What happened to Indigenous Reconciliation?