Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning to overhaul the way the federal government relates to Indigenous Peoples in Canada, including a new legislative framework designed to pave the way towards stronger rights and greater control over their own destiny.
“We need to both recognize and implement Indigenous rights,” Trudeau said Wednesday in a speech in the House of Commons.
“Because the truth is, until we get this part right, we won’t have lasting success on the concrete outcomes that we know mean so much to people.”
The prime minister said the new approach, to be developed in partnership with First Nations, Metis and Inuit, is needed to tackle the many challenges facing their communities, including overcrowded housing, unsafe drinking water and high rates of suicide among Indigenous youth.
“All of these things demand real, positive action – action that must include the full recognition and implementation of Indigenous rights,” Trudeau said. “We need to get to a place where Indigenous Peoples in Canada are in control of their own destiny, making their own decisions about the future.”
WATCH: Trudeau says ‘government-wide shift’ is needed to renew relationship with Indigenous Peoples
The new Recognition and Implementation of Indigenous Rights Framework – to be unveiled later this year following consultations led by Carolyn Bennett, the minister for Crown-Indigenous relations, and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould – will include new legislation.
Trudeau said the Liberals intend to implement it in time for the 2019 election.
“This framework gives us the opportunity to build new mechanisms to recognize Indigenous governments, and ensure rigorous, full and meaningful implementation of treaties and other agreements,” he said.
It would allow the federal government to find new ways to help Indigenous communities rebuild, including through self-government, and could lead to new, more collaborative ways to resolve disputes.
WATCH: Trudeau talks about his meeting with Colten Boushie’s family
Trudeau said it will not, however, require reopening the Constitution, where Section 35 already recognizes these rights.
That recognition, Trudeau acknowledged, came only after the “outspoken advocacy” of Indigenous Peoples, since the Liberal government at the time, led by his father Pierre Trudeau, had not originally planned to include them.
The problem, Trudeau said, is that federal governments have not been fully implementing those rights, forcing Indigenous Peoples to turn to the courts to enforce them, time and again.
“This will give greater confidence and certainty to everyone involved,” Trudeau said.
Wednesday’s speech comes as the family of Colten Boushie wraps up their visit to Parliament Hill, where they said they have felt both welcomed and supported in their effort to press the federal government for change following the acquittal of the man charged in Boushie’s death.
Trudeau mentioned his meeting with the family in his speech.
“Through all their grief and anger and frustration, their focus was not on themselves and the tragedy they have endured, but on how we must work together to make the system and our institutions better,” Trudeau said.
“Reforms are needed to ensure that – among other things – Indigenous Peoples might once again have confidence in a system that has failed them all too often in the past.”
A number of visibly Indigenous people were excluded without cause from the jury that last week acquitted Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley, 56, in the shooting death of Boushie, 22, a member of the Red Pheasant First Nation.
The Liberals have long promised justice reforms, but are now promising to review the use of peremptory challenges, which allow lawyers to reject jury candidates during the selection process.
The Liberal government began signalling this new approach last summer, when Trudeau announced that Bennett, who had been in charge of the Indigenous Affairs Department since 2015, would be joined on the file by former health minister Jane Philpott.
Since then, Bennett has been focused on efforts to improve the relationship, leading consultations on how to dissolve the department and create two separate ministries.
Her mandate letter said that would include being part of a ministerial working group – alongside Philpott and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould – tasked with developing this new “recognition of rights framework and ensuring the Crown is fully executing its legal, constitutional, and international human rights obligations and commitments, including constitutionally protected treaty rights.”
Trudeau also said at the time that the Liberal government was taking steps to move beyond the Indian Act, a 141-year-old statute that has been widely criticized by Indigenous leaders as colonial and paternalistic.
Last November, the Liberal government said it would support a private member’s bill introduced by NDP MP Romeo Saganash that calls for the full implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which examined the legacy of the Indian residential school system in Canada, also recommended an entirely new way of viewing the relationship, including by calling for a “Royal Proclamation of Reconciliation” from the Crown.
As Liberal leader, Trudeau promised to implement all 94 recommendations in the commission’s 2015 report.
Earlier Wednesday, Boushie’s cousin, Jade Tootoosis, told a news conference the family felt excluded and ignored by the justice system following the fatal 2016 shooting in Saskatchewan, but their meetings on and around Parliament Hill this week have made them feel they are finally being heard.
“It’s those welcoming arms, it’s those open doors that’s not only impacted us as a family, but shown that leadership is serious about the issue and the experiences that we have felt,” Tootoosis said.
Tootoosis said the family will continue working to root out what they describe as systemic racism plaguing the Canadian criminal justice system, and that education and open dialogue will help bring about unity.
“We will we back. We will be speaking out. This does not end here,” she said.
“We will continue the dialogue and we will press for concrete changes within the system so that no other families, no other Indigenous lives are taken before changes are made.”