Apology is required

Page 5

Apology is required - and right now

Something stinks about the fact that the Stephen Harper government does not want to apologize for the residential school system. We try hard to give the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn't add up.

A Canadian Prime Minister has apologized to other groups on the receiving end of destructive government policies over the years: the Japanese Canadians interned in camps during the Second World War, the Chinese Canadians who were charged a discriminatory head tax.

But nothing for the residential school survivors. Oh, a few thousand dollars each to compensate for several lifetimes of pain and suffering, but nothing even close to a squaring of accounts. Pennies on the dollar, really.

The decision was made here early on to call those people who attended residential schools "survivors" even though it is not a neutral word. No one disputes the residential school system was a wrongheaded public policy that was devised and executed by the government of Canada with some help from the various churches involved. To us, it's a matter of fact that those schools were designed to do something that the world community would call racist and wrong.

When the Assembly of First Nations' National Chief Phil Fontaine told to us last month that the Harper government was not willing to deal with the issue of an apology, the disconnect between the federal response to residential school survivors and those other groups was instantly apparent.

It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that Aboriginal people are seen as less deserving than the others. But we give Mr. Harper and his government a little more credit than that. Such a naked show of racism rarely happens anymore, especially with the calibre of people who reach the Prime Minister's Office.

So this lack of political will to apologize in this case was a bit perplexing. But one of the first rules of journalism is to "follow the money."

That's when the government's approach starts to come into focus. The "follow the money"

approach was triggered when a document reached our attention this month that lays out in stark and disturbing detail some of the most horrific examples of the social dysfunction of some remote communities. The author of that paper refused to discuss his work with us and forbade us from publishing his words.

We could have published the paper against his wishes. Newspapers do that all the time when documents of a compelling public interest are acquired. The public has a right to know.

In fact, we would have except for the concern that the wrong approach to such serious and complex issues could have disastrous consequences. Instead, we will compile our own evidence and bring it to you in future issues of this publication.

The document was leaked to us by a frontline worker who saw it as a powerful chronicle of the human misery that persists in too many remote communities.

In it, the author laid that misery right at the feet of the residential school system. No doubt was left about that. As we sought guidance this month on how best to approach this sensitive matter and not to do even more harm, we spoke to many survivors.

They spoke of the agony that came every August when the Indian Agents arrived to cart the newly school-aged children off to school. It was cited as a soul-destroying moment for the community; the time when things started to come apart. What happened later to those children in too many of the schools added to the destruction, but it began with that awful moment of forced separation.

The disruption of a family, the reminder of just how powerless you were - so powerless that you couldn't even protect your own children from abduction - started in those heartbreaking, hellish days each August. It was completed within the schools. The effects linger into the present day across the generations.

Canada did that. Canada, along with the churches, is responsible for it.

And it's going to cost hundredsof billions of dollars, not just a couple of billion, to make things right. And Canada should make it right. And the longer Canada waits, the worse - and the more expensive - it's going to get.

But when you ask yourself if there's any sign that Canada truly wants to make it right, you run into the Conservative refusal to apologize.

Why not apologize? Because the government knows full well the true extent of the damage caused and what it would cost. An apology would acknowledge that damage and legally expose the government to the full liability for the harm done.

Once you realize that liability is a heck of a lot more than a couple of billion dollars, the reason for the lack of an apology becomes crystal clear.