In May 2025, newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney promised that he would continue advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Since then, his government has systematically worked to undermine what little progress had been made since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report in 2015 concluded that Canada had committed cultural genocide.
Saying one thing and doing the opposite is nothing new for politicians. Carney was a political newbie a year ago. He’s clearly not one now. Leading up to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we heard him push all the good work his government is doing on engaging nation-to-nation with Indigenous governments.
But what he kept quiet on is the bigger story: the harm his policies are causing.
First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities will continue to be impacted due to some of the biggest government spending cuts.
One glaring example is the funding and staffing reductions within the Nokwewashk sector, a banner initiative at Natural Resources Canada focusing on how to respectfully engage with and include First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in natural resources projects. At a time when major projects are a huge priority for Carney’s government, cutting programs aimed at meaningfully engaging Indigenous communities is a significant step in the wrong direction. It seems that Carney wants to undercut relationships with Indigenous governments in his flagship “nation-building” efforts, while paying lip service to reconciliation.
Carney’s staffing cuts have also limited the ability of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to implement its existing modern treaties and self-government agreements and to negotiate new ones in good faith. This means the government is actively hindering its own preferred path to establishing self-determination for Indigenous nations. When an existing agreement is affected, it can also increase financial and social hardships on Indigenous governments.
Ultimately, the Carney government is leaning into the language of reconciliation while withdrawing the resources required to implement it. Survivors of residential schools are still waiting for tens of millions of government records, detailing the crimes against them and their people, to be transferred. The federal public servants who process Jordan's Principle requests, negotiate treaty rights, facilitate the funding of Indigenous-led health services, investigate unmarked burial sites, and support MMIWG survivors are seeing their teams – and therefore their ability to deliver – hollowed out through workforce reductions.
Of course, for Indigenous federal public servants, these cuts are a double whammy. Many of the programs facing cuts employ Indigenous workers, meaning that both their jobs and the programs and services their communities rely on are at risk.
On top of the risks of job loss and rollbacks of long overdue work to begin reconciling with Canada’s colonial history, Indigenous public servants are increasingly struggling with the federal workplace itself. Strict return-to-office policies are making an already difficult situation worse for Indigenous federal workers. Indigenous employees report harassment and discrimination rates at well above the public service average.
Barrier-free telework options would ensure that Indigenous employees who live in their communities are not mandated back to unnecessary and expensive offices or forced to choose between their home and career advancement, just to commute to a building where they spend all day taking virtual calls.
There are more effective alternatives to save money that would protect the safety and rights of Indigenous workers. By its own projection, the government could save up to $40 billion over the next decade by continuing its office reduction plans and going back to more flexible work for the federal public service. This would also mean that Indigenous public servants would not have to choose between their careers, their safety, or their communities, and that those savings could be reinvested in advancing reconciliation through stronger programs and services.
The difficult but necessary work set out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has really only just begun, and has been consistently plagued by funding shortfalls, delays, and half-measures. Carney’s platitudes are less than helpful – they mask his active dismantling of desperately needed reconciliation programs at the exact time his major projects agenda is raising red flags about Indigenous rights.
Reconciliation means concrete action to begin addressing harm. We cannot let it become a buzzword for politicians to use to deflect from the truth.
Nathan Prier
President
Canadian Association of Professional Employees
