Dear Mark Carney,
You first came to my attention in September 2024, when an investor in a film I co-directed Sugar canetold me, “This guy is going to be the next prime minister.” I remember this statement so clearly because at the time such a possibility seemed impossible. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals trailed Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives by double digits in the polls. The country, like the rest of the world, was shifting to the right. I figured Truth and Reconciliation would end when Trudeau's party lost. But I was wrong.
At the time I knew little about you other than that you were a former Governor of the Bank of England. During your time at the Bank of England and the United Nations, you argued that fossil fuel infrastructure, such as controversial oil and gas pipelines running through First Nations lands across Canada, could become a “stranded asset.” Or, in layman's terms, these projects could become abandoned hulks of ghostly infrastructure, left to rust until corporations or, more likely, the public clean up their act. You are optimistic about the transition to a clean economy, which suggests that you are a leader willing to use the language of economics against one of the most powerful industries in world history. And now you are trying, with varying degrees of success, to confront US President Donald Trump. You are the politician who, from afar, looks like he has courage and can be reasoned with.
All of this makes some of your recent actions feel like a turnaround or even a betrayal. Your budget proposal proposes cutting funding for Indigenous Services Canada and Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada by $2.3 billion – or about 2 per cent per year – while investing heavily in critical minerals, energy corridors and defense build-up. The cuts affect programs that Indigenous leaders consider essential to fulfilling the promise of Truth and Reconciliation, such as Friendship Centers, which offer the first point of contact for people moving from Indian reservations and other rural communities to urban areas. Your budget also cuts funding for the Inuit Children First initiative, which helps ensure Inuit children receive the services they need – be it health care, education or social support – at the same time as reports emerge that Inuit children are going hungry. Both programs will be completely phased out after spring 2026.
You also just announced a major new pipeline deal to speed up export capacity to British Columbia. The project is reliant on coastal routes that pass directly through First Nations territories and, despite your assurances, no significant consultation took place before this deal was announced. Reconciliation is based on the principle that our approval is mandatory and not optional. This is what “consent” means. But the speed and scale of this transaction make consent optional.
In short, if these recent events are anything to go by, you seem to believe in reconciliation as a kind of luxury—something noble, perhaps, but unnecessary in moments of national crisis. So, I want to do everything I can to argue that reconciliation is not a burden on Canada's neck, as many Conservatives suggest and as you now seem to believe. Last March I played in the Yukon First Nations Hockey Tournament. I stood in a skating rink full of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people singing “Oh Canada!” in the upper part of the lungs. It is possible to acknowledge the enduring effects of cultural genocide while simultaneously asserting Canadian sovereignty against the United States. Indigenous people do this all the time.
Because reconciliation is a measure of the character of this nation. Canada did what its neighbor to the south, the United States, did not. Although the two settler countries share a history of forced assimilation of indigenous peoples through segregated, government-funded, church-linked boarding schools. “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” is the American version of the Canadian “Get Rid of the Indian Problem.” In America, it seems, everything—even the language of colonization—is more violent. While Canada gravitates towards more moderate government management language.
Perhaps this is evidence that a country's treatment of its first peoples reveals something significant about its character. Consider, for example, the typical figure of each predominantly English-speaking settler nation in its westward expansion. America is a cowboy vigilante from a Hollywood Western. Canada has a red-coated Mountie. They are both settler-colonialists. But there is a difference. And the difference is that in Canada the government is willing to talk and sometimes do something about its terrible history. Taking steps, however small, to atone for crimes on the continent.
Listen to me. Reconciliation is, in some ways, the perfect embodiment of Canada's penchant for apologizing. One of the most important human qualities Canada has to offer its citizens and the world: integrity. Otherwise, what is this country really like? A nation of immigrants, partly composed of English-speaking people loyal to the Crown and French-speaking people loyal to France – nice people and good hockey players – settled on a mass of land and natural resources stolen from indigenous peoples?
Through its commitment to reconciliation, Canada has provided the world with an example of how to combat what is essentially a global history of the destruction of Indigenous cultures through force and politics. If you turn your back on reconciliation, what will Canada stand for and what will it lead to? Perhaps you fear what else might be discovered if we continue to probe the soul of this nation. Maybe you believe that we will find something hard and cold. I believe we can find even more Canadian compassion for those who have been wronged by Canada. A commitment to do better and be better.
It is worth noting that Sugar caneThe film, directed by myself and Emily Cassie (both Canadians), was the first work in any genre to document the practice of infanticide in an Indian boarding school. And our film was dedicated to only one institution. What happened at the other 138 residential schools across Canada? Survivors, their families and the public deserve to know. Because Indigenous people are still dying from the cycles of trauma, abandonment, abuse, alcoholism, addiction, homelessness, violence, suicide and death that residential schools unleashed on our families and communities.
The truest measure of reconciliation has always been truth and how willing Canada is to confront it. But how committed can a government be to reconciliation when the very programs that gave Indigenous people and their children reason to believe this country could finally treat them as equals are set to be destroyed? Programs that suggested this country could finally invest in building us up after generations spent tearing us down?
Reconciliation, rooted in truth and backed by action, is the path Canada has vowed to follow. And not as long as it supports public opinion, but forever. Critics of reconciliation do not understand that reconciliation is not an insult to Canada. More precisely, reconciliation is part of the Canadian tradition. Now this character is under threat all over the world, but here it should not die so easily. No, Mr. Carney, you should not be afraid of Truth and Reconciliation. You should be proud of this.
But if you continue to alienate indigenous peoples, you should be careful. Our countries still have legal title to vast tracts of land, providing real leverage over the natural resource industries that will become increasingly important as Canada shifts away from the United States. In many parts of this country, indigenous peoples constitute a significant minority, if not an outright majority. We have the opportunity to engage the mechanisms of Canadian capitalism when it tries to trample us. Throw away some assets, so to speak.
Judging by your budget and development plans, you no longer seem convinced that reconciliation is central to the national project. But I will hope that through some combination of words and force you can still be influenced. Because standing up for something and someone – your teammates on the ice, your nation, your people – even and especially when it's not easy to do, that's Canada's promise.
