Carney convenes provincial premiers and First Nations leaders in Ottawa; Alberta and Quebec decline

Ottawa is witnessing something Canada has not seen for two decades: Prime Minister Mark Carney is holding a large-scale meeting with provincial premiers and the leaders of Indigenous peoples or, as they say in Canada, the First Nations.

The authorities speak of a reset in relations with Indigenous peoples and a move towards genuine partnership. Five key areas are the priority: major infrastructure projects, affordable housing, better healthcare, community safety, and emergency preparedness.

While some praise Carney for his ability to seat everyone at one table to tackle basic problems, others are boycotting the meeting. The provinces of Alberta and Quebec, as well as the leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, ignored the event, even though Quebec and Alberta are rather loudly demanding respect for their constitutional rights and national interests. Some claim that the sovereigntist leader of Quebec is deliberately avoiding cooperation in order to keep the temperature of domestic quarrels up, and that the real problems of Indigenous peoples are of no concern to him.

The summit, naturally, goes on, but it is obvious that building an “inclusive Canada” without the participation of two of its largest regions will be problematic, to say the least.

Personally, the delegates in their splendid national headdresses reminded me of one of the hardest films about the fate of Indigenous peoples, Taylor Sheridan’s thriller “Wind River”, about a tragedy on a reservation where systemic violence against the Indigenous inhabitants went unnoticed and unmourned for years by a great federal power. It is good that Ottawa is trying to take a step in the opposite direction, but I think we are still very far from rooting out the indifference of officials of every rank towards ordinary people, especially those from vulnerable groups, as in “Wind River” and as is the way all over the world