The Paul Wells Show - Does Marc Miller, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, have the toughest job in Ottawa?

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

The Trudeau Government has made a lot of promises about reconciliation. As the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Affairs, Marc Miller’s job is to follow through on them.In this live conversation, Minister Miller talks frankly about his successes and failures in the role. He also talks about his own background, including his childhood friendship with Justin Trudeau, his time in the military and learning to speak Mohawk. This episode was recorded live at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. 

Does Mark Miller have the toughest job in Ottawa? We said we were going to end all boil water advisories, but who am I to walk into a community and say, hey community we're going to end your boil water advisories when there is no particular trust, well-earned mistrust towards the federal government, and frankly, priorities like building a new school or building a new road, which are equal. This week, meet Mark Miller, the Minister of Crown Indigenous Relations in the Trudeau government. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show.

I don't know how we got to the point where we have more information than we ever did, but we understand less than we used to. Case in point, Mark Miller has been a key member of the federal cabinet since 2019. He's the Minister of Crown Indigenous Relations, which means he's in charge of improving relations between Indigenous Canadians and the rest of us. It's a really hard job. It's about making sure that reconciliation ends up being more than a word. Billions of dollars are at stake, and Canada's international reputation, and long-deferred dignity and respect for Indigenous Canadians. And yet, what do you know about Mark Miller? Did you know he's one of Justin Trudeau's oldest friends? I actually suspect that connection delayed Miller's entry into

the cabinet until 2019. Did you know he enrolled in the army when he was 16 years old? Or that he learned to speak Mohawk after he was elected to parliament? Well, now you know. By the end of today's episode, you'll know some more about this key figure in our politics. Miller talks about some of his hardest files, compensating the victims of the failed Indigenous child welfare system, or cleaning up the water supply. But he also talks about his time in the Army, and about that kid at Braybuff College who borrowed a pen from him, and who's the Prime Minister today. Mark Miller spoke to me at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. We began by going over that hefty to-do list. Minister, thanks for coming.

As part of my prep, I read your mandate letter. It's awfully long. I read it too. Yeah. Either then when you got it or at any point since, have you simply been overwhelmed by the task that's assigned to you? Thanks, Paul. I wish I had the luxury to be

overwhelmed at times, not without underplaying what you just said. The mandate letter that I have reflects some input that I had into it. They are matters that I take seriously and that the Prime Minister thinks and believes I have the runway to deliver on and expects me to deliver on. So you look at it, my team looks at it often and reminds me where I'm not succeeding, but importantly as well, where we are succeeding for Indigenous peoples. And it is a huge undertaking. This is a government that since 2015 has made a lot of promises to Indigenous peoples. that since 2015 has made a lot of promises to Indigenous peoples.

And I think foremost, we owe Indigenous peoples a particular duty of clarity of thought and communication as well as delivering on these promises. And I think we'll probably get into this, but yeah, I mean, I think I go home at the end of the day and there's a lot of stuff twirling in my head and a lot of stuff that I want to see get done. Even though we've made a chunk of progress, there is a whole heck of a lot of stuff to do

and frankly to unwind in this big Gordian knot that is Canada. You were the first minister since the old Indian and Northern Affairs portfolio got split into Indigenous Services and Crown Indigenous Relations to hold both of those portfolios in turn. And I thought maybe you could help, because it's still new to so many of us, to articulate the difference between the two jobs. Well, one's more frustrating than the other.

So we can get into that. My current role is more frustrating, but I think for a good reason. I became a minister in 2019, coming off a pretty bitter election in a minority government a couple months before a world pandemic broke out so the way I look at my role in cabinet in that role as a minister of indigenous services so the role is to serve indigenous people I'm lucky it's in my title I can't forget it in a role that had been split based on recommendations for the

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and had never been implemented until our government did it. But the basic fundamental premise is that there should be a radical distinction between the services that they need to provide in the spirit of self-determination and actually move over to Indigenous peoples as they exercise increasingly their inherent rights to self-determination, and the relationship aspect of it, which is the role that I currently now exercise, that deals with resolving historical claims

and moving into a relationship that is outside the confines of what is a very racist piece of legislation in the Indian Act. The lens, again, that I've seen this through is through having to move in real time with a department that moves a hell of a lot slower than COVID and making sure that Indigenous peoples working with them can stay safe and alive from protecting their own people. working with them can stay safe and alive from protecting their own people. So, you know, during COVID, I had a lot of ability to move quickly, whether it is to reproduce, you know, an airline service industry into the far north, make sure that vaccines and nurses, caretakers could end, supplies could get into communities, or deploying, you know, historic amounts of funds in a way that respects people's rights and how they know how to take care of themselves.

If anything, Indigenous peoples know how to do is how to take care of themselves, particularly in the face of a pandemic. And now I serve as the Minister of Crown Indigenous Relations, which, because of priorities, did slow down during COVID. And wrapping up something that is primordial and fundamental to Indigenous peoples, which is our relationship and how we move forward in it and how we express it sometimes through our relationships or embodied in a document, as well as solving claims that in some cases predate the existence of Canada. It seems to me the definition of the job or the practice of the job has evolved even since the separate department was created where it it at first there was some effort to seek a global

reset in relations between the crown the government on behalf of the crown and indigenous peoples and now it's your work has become much more sort of down to earth and file by file, it seems to me. Or not. I don't see that, but there's probably a reason why it is perceived that way. I think initially, we made a lot of promises as a government.

There are some emblematic ones, whether it is ending boiled water advisories or saying quite rightly that our most important relationship is that with Indigenous peoples on a nation to nation basis. But what that means often is in the eye of the beholder and more often than not, that is a relationship that is perpetuated by what we've typically done in the past, which is allow Ottawa to define it, and predominantly in a position of unequal powers.

So I think what we realized quite quickly through mistakes or naivete was that we need to do this in the right way and engage with Indigenous communities to make sure that we were reflecting those relationships, the current relationships that we entertain or have with, with the Inuit, with the Crown, Crown Inuit relationship and tables that we have is one that has made a whole

heck of a lot of progress. It's about getting down to the nitty gritty and talking about their priorities. Like I, we said we were going to end all boil water advisories, but who am I to walk into a community and say, hey, community, we're going to end your boil water advisories when there is no particular trust, well-earned mistrust towards the federal government, and frankly, priorities like building a new school or building a new road,

which are equal to the lofty promise that we've made to our electors in part in order to get elected. One particular example of that is Shoal Lake 40 where we had to build the Freedom Road. We had to build a new hospital and people will say well is that opportunism? Well it's kind of pretty shitty to go in and have a new water advisory or a no boil water advisory on a school that is full of mold and needs to be replaced. What local Indigenous leader would say, I'm going to lift that water advisory on the school that we've been fighting for decades

to have replaced and no one has answered the phone? So Shoal Lake 40 that had six or seven boiled water advisories had some specific needs that had to be reflected, and they perhaps were not listened to in the first place. And now they don't have any boiled water advisories. But that manifests itself at scale, and it's a representation of the need to the federal government to engage on the terms that if we truly believe them, we actually have to respect what that other nation is saying to us and not what our priorities that we pretended we thought Indigenous people would appreciate are

and who decides them is really the question that is one that's reflected in a power dynamic that's always been uneven. I watched you try to make the case that you were moving off of the narrow boil water advisory mandate towards a broader conversation about a broader range of priorities. But it sure looked to the people at the press conference where you made that case that you were just saying, we're not going to make it on boil water advisories. That must have been a very hard case to make to Canadians at large as well as to the populations concerned. You know, that was a concern, but I go back to the point I made earlier, which is we have foremost the duty of truth and honesty to Indigenous peoples.

There is so much mistrust. One of the greatest impediments to moving our relationship forward or getting anything done is building that trust. And so when we saw the timeline and where we saw the increasing number of water advisories, which were based on short-term water advisories turning into long-term, which they do after a year if the problem isn't solved, we saw a runway that needed to be addressed in a way that was not only respectful of the relationship, but was realistic and honest.

It didn't mean we took their foot off the pedal. What we realized also relatively quickly is it was fine to make these announcements about the financial capital amounts to build new water facilities, but if you can't run, operate them, if you can't attach them to homes, if you can't run operate them if you can't attach them to homes if you can't build the roads and and and the schools that are necessary part of the community lifting the

water advisory they're not going to get lifted and so that duty of of honesty not only is important as a matter of personal integrity but it's also important foremost for the relationship that you have whether something's realistic or not. It doesn't mean you put your, you know, you drop your arms and say, we can't do it, we're going to move on to the next issue. No, you actually double down. And it's, you know, the Prime Minister has been criticized about making that promise, but I give him a whole hell of a lot of credit for actually having made it, because standing up and saying, we're going to get this done, I think it sent a shock through the civil service. It sent a signal to our partners that we're serious about things.

And it meant, I think, a lot about our commitment to getting a very basic thing into communities. And we've doubled down on it, doubled down on investments, and making sure we're doing it in the right way. So there's over 130 water advisories that have been lifted and a couple dozen left. Each one has its own particular reality and what the timeline is to getting it lifted.

But there's an untold story about the importance of actually maintaining momentum and creating and having the proper conditions to making the investments stick, which means, you know, using local expertise that exists. Some of these water operators are the pride of their communities in many circumstances, and they will make sure that those assets are maintained and water is available into communities. There's a story of discrimination in all this. And one of the, we may talk about lawsuits, but one of the lawsuits that we did settle was a class action dealing specifically with water in the communities,

which had a multi-billion dollar investments, not only in making sure people were compensated for the discrimination that they suffered over years of these advisories being in place, but also making sure that those investments, regardless of the government that followed, would be maintained over the course of, over the settlement time. So that's very important. It goes again to that issue of trust. I very much do want to get back to some specific files, some of the harder files that you're facing. But I mean, it occurred to me before we were going to talk that not so long ago, a minister of your prominence with a portfolio and the challenges that you're facing would have been the subject of more profiles

in newspapers and magazines. We would just simply know a lot more about you. And I don't. Let's start with this. What's your relationship with Indigenous communities, your interest in Indigenous issues, going back before politics? It's sporadic at best, I would say.

I see what my kids are learning in school these days, and I was never taught that, and I don't suspect you were taught that at Westbury or certainly not in Paris. And that's odd in the context of a guy like me whose dad taught at McGill Canadian history for 45 years. You would expect I would know a little more about Indigenous history.

So you pick it up along the way. A lot of it is romanticized, stylized, and has a lot of systemic racism in it. You know, I had a couple friends that I served with in the armed forces that in a particular context of our history in and around the Oka crisis that I now have re-established friendships with, but my interaction with Indigenous people

is like 95% of the population. I have great relationships with people now, but prior to my entry into politics, I worked in New York City and Stockholm, so close to no interaction with Indigenous people. Clearly there's a learning curve soon after you enter Parliament because in 2017 you delivered a speech in Mohawk and so we're going to put down a marker, come back to that, but you signed up for the army quite early. How come?

I guess it was better than bagging groceries at Steinberg's. I'm dating myself but I don't know if it was Steinberg's at the time but the I wasn't qualified to do anything at 16 years old my dad had to sign a waiver because you can still sign up the Canadian army at 16 if you're 17 on the year that in the year if you turn 17 on the year and you know a sense of wanting to serve my country obviously and that adventure that comes with it that you can't get it, you know, bagging groceries at a store. But so I joined and did my basic training in Montreal, Valcartier and Longpoint and spent the summer of 1990 in Valcartier just

before the outbreak of, of the OCA crisis. You know, the armed forces is, I guess it doesn't get as much play as it does in the united states it is the ultimate one of the ultimate levelers in society you know people of all backgrounds the people i interacted with were not the people i interacted at plébeuf which is a french private school uh in montreal um different backgrounds and you're all equal because um you know you rely on each other and you're only as because you rely on each other and you're only as strong as the weakest link.

So it's created a lot of friendships that I will have and I still maintain. And yeah, it did give me a sense of duty and it was good money for a guy my age. So I did that for about four years and then I'm really glad I got out of it because where I was going as a person of that age, like 21, 22, was not where I wanted to be going. But I still have pretty vivid memories from it.

Where you went was Université de Montréal for law, starting out? So I did law at McGill University. But after I'd done political science at Université de Montréal and then a master's. And I was Stéphane Dion as a teacher that I then had as... Why is everyone laughing? He's a lovely teacher. He's a super bright guy.

I've tried to be in arguments with Stéphane Dion. He wins. He always wins. He'll do your homework for you too, which is good. Not if he's teaching you. There's very strong must-be-this-tall-to-ride vibes with Ambassador Dion. Back up to Brie Boeuf. One of your classmates, eventually one of your good friends, was Justin Trudeau. How did you guys meet and interact, and how did that happen?

We were both in the same advanced English class. How did that happen? We were both in the same advanced English class. And back then, and it's changed radically, because my eldest spent a few years at B'nai B'ath. It's much more diverse than it was then, but there was essentially well-off, outre-mant élite French-speaking Quebecers.

And then a few people from Vietnam, a few people of the Jewish faith, some other racialized folks, a Protestant, and then, you know, this guy whose dad had been the Prime Minister of Canada. And those that were in the advanced English class tended to band together, and they were those who were more often than not of diversity or had a background that had exposed them to English.

And so we met in that class and he didn't have a pencil and I lent it to him and we hit it off. And I didn't know he was, right? And so we've been friends since 1984, which is going on 40 years and been quite close. And so there's been lots of questions about you know our friendship and how it's impacted our relationship and I think it's important to talk about because you realize quite quickly that there's a commodity in Ottawa which is based on your proximity to the

prime minister that's something I didn't particularly appreciate having always been really really close to him but it is something people peddle in, and it can also present a lot of pitfalls. So we've been friends, and we will remain friends, regardless of where the next years take us, which is very important to me personally, but we've also had to develop quite quickly a professional relationship. And I was perhaps part of a handful of people, most who are gone now, that backed him

when he was in a Liberal Party that didn't want him. And that's a documented part of the road that he took. But it's one of those situations where, you know, glad to raise some money for him, glad to help him out, and things just sort of went exponentially from there, but very tenuous at the beginning. And it's a relationship that we've developed very much a professional relationship, particularly given my role in cabinet now. This is not something I want to belabor, but just to annotate that for better comprehension,

that was during Dion's leadership of the Liberal Party when Trudeau wanted to run in by-elections and kind of had to shop around for a riding because there were places where he was not wanted as a candidate. Is that the sort of period that you're talking about? Yeah, and I think the after-effects of some very public internal squabbles. And I think when you look back at Stéphane Dion, he did him the biggest favour ever in running in Papineau, which was, at the time, probably current, is one of the least wealthy communities in Canada ridings in Canada

where he really did have to prove to people a lot of them were newcomers didn't know he was what he was made of and he did a lot door to door so he you know he did dust what Dion did to him which is to make him earn it and he did earn it because he ran against some pretty fierce opponents that uh that gave him a run for his money so uh yeah that that was it was an interesting time because he had this notional celebrity power that was ascribed to him but he also had to prove to others that he had the medal after the break i'll talk to mark miller about learning mohawk and about his plans for the year ahead After the break, I'll talk to Mark Miller about learning Mohawk and about his plans for the year ahead. I want to take a moment to thank all of our partners.

The University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. The National Arts Centre. Our founding sponsor, TELUS. Our title sponsor, Compass Rose. And our publishing partners, the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Fast forward to 2015, new government, a lot of commotion. You are, as much as any rookie MP, is substantially left to your own devices. You didn't go straight into cabinet on greased rails or anything like that you learn mohawk how come

and tell me about mohawk tell me you know an outsider's perceptions of it as a language system so it's one of the hardest things i've ever done. And I'm still learning it. I joke that I speak Mohawk like Tarzan speaks English. If an elder is speaking, I get lost and bewildered. And if the second language, people slow it down, I'm like a really old computer where the hourglass is turning. And then I'll figure out 20 minutes later that that was what they were saying. And I answered in a shitty way. So I'm getting there.

But I work and I've been consistent in trying to get an hour a day, and sometimes with more success than others. But it is an absolutely beautiful language that expresses ideas, thoughts. And I don't want to speak for the Indigenous people that are listening to this or in the room, but it expresses a particular relationship with land that I don't identify with English or French, which essentially are equal mother tongues um it is what they call a polysynthetic language where uh there are pronouns that are put in the front of the of the word onto a root and then

suffixes polysynthetic i guess is the is the linguistic term and it you can have these really really long words uh based on a root and your relationship uh with what is around you is expressed through the pronouns you use and the pronouns are um there are about five times more than are in english so if a male is talking to two women the pronoun changes if it's two women talking to someone else an inanimate object that the word changes and how it's being so it's very hard you can if it's two women talking to someone else an inanimate object that the word changes in house so it's very hard you can imagine it's very hard to have a an alphabetical dictionary of it and the articulation can be quite complicated if you're trying to learn it as a second language i think if you're trying to learn it as a child it's much more intuitive it is one of the most threatened languages in the world with only a few thousand speakers and an increasing aging population of folks that will take entire mental dictionaries with them to the next world.

So I learned it in the context of, and I was immensely naive about it, some roundtables that I was doing with Minister Bennett at the time. immensely naive about it, some roundtables that I was doing with Minister Bennett at the time, and we heard about the importance of preserving Indigenous languages, which we call one of the first large pieces of legislation that we put through just before the legislation on child and family services. And it is perhaps the time where the Prime Minister has gotten a huge round of applause at the Assembly of First Nations. Because it is so emotional,

and because of the fragility of languages and the importance it is to Indigenous people as to their identity. And I thought to myself in these roundtables, why can't a guy like me pick up the language that was spoken on the land that I now represent, and how hard can Mohawk be? And it turns out I was pretty naive about what that meant. I met this guy in Six Nations called Awanadeka Brian Maracle and his daughter Zoe Hopkins,

who is a second language speaker but also a filmmaker, and they took a risk on me, and I owe them more than they can really imagine for actually teaching me about things that my department can't teach me about and probably giving me better briefings than my department can give me because I meet people that are passionate

about their language. They're not necessarily political in terms of elected governance, but they are people that have a very strong notion of who they are, and I try to make an effort to meet people like that in communities. So I got lucky in a sense,

and some people joke that I talked my way into the position, but I learned a whole hell of a lot thanks to just a twist of fate. I'd like to say there was some deliberation to this, and this was part of some plan of mine, but it wasn't. I got lucky, people took a risk on me, and I put some hard work in here and there. I got lucky, people took a risk on me, and I put some hard work in here and there. I imagine on the one hand there'd be a sense of gratitude the way any linguistic community feels

when someone takes the trouble to learn their language, but also perhaps a sense that you are doing it to show off. Are you nervous about how it comes across among native speakers? I mean, I'm not a huge fan of public speaking in the first place. And as a politician, you've got a couple tools, and your ability to communicate is probably your most important tool. So if you mess it up, you're basically undermining your ability to do your job effectively. And in this

context you layer over something that is really really emotional because guys in my position and it is guys uh would have put in place systems to remove those languages from people and so uh it's nice that people acknowledge that i'm making the effort i do it out of respect and if there's anything i've learned from this is not to use it as a sword. In telling people what to do or how to reacquire their languages, I shut the hell up. But I do my best not to tell people how to do things. But people expect me to understand their reality and provide the supports. And in the case of language acquisition, particularly those who've been fighting people like me over generations, our role is to get money into those institutions that know how to revitalize their languages and then get the hell out of the way. I guess acknowledging that is important, but it is also important to stay respectful because there are a lot of people out there that want to reacquire their language.

And the privileged guy in my position needs to be very careful on the ground that he treads. One element in your mandate letter was a request from the Prime Minister that you come to fair and equitable compensation terms for the horrible mistreatment of so many Indigenous children in First Nations child and family services. And then there's kind of an extraordinary moment over the course of the past year where you put $20 billion to settle claims on the table and $20 billion for long-term reform of the Indigenous child welfare system. And the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal says that's not enough what was that day like for you and and and how do you move forward from there

you know I it wasn't as dramatic as as as you set the stage for Paul um we I do that for a living we had a sense that it may not be perfect and the offer that we put on the table which was worked on with assembly first nation chiefs of ontario many other indigenous regional organizations the work of the caring society which can't be underplayed in this um to do two things which is to stop the historic federal discrimination and underfunding of communities which were seeing children ripped away from their communities and placed into non-indigenous ones was the culmination of putting three class actions together as well as a Canadian human rights tribunal with a limited jurisdictional mandate because essentially there was some overlap and in some cases harm that went

back to the 1990s that the Canadian human rightsunal, which was the one that was the most in the spotlight, was dealing with, in some cases, exactly the same kids. And so we were looking at this, and when we sat down with the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister of Justice, to say what is the package that we put in front of people, to the Prime Minister's credit, he said we could solve this tomorrow,

but will the discrimination end? And that was something that was running through a lot of our minds as to you know where do we go from there we could solve all these lawsuits individual casement have people go to four different places to get different chunks of compensation and then on day two after having solved this uh still be in a situation where you have more lawsuits but i think more importantly kids that are in the same position and not getting the proper long-term reform of a system that is broken. And so putting 40, now $44 billion on the table was key to signaling to our partners that we're serious about ending this discrimination and serious about compensating people in a fair,

respectful way that doesn't re-traumatize them. So we struck a deal. We didn't know if it was perfect. And, you know, people get things wrong, but I think the tribunal rightly said this is a huge change in the federal government's position. It is to be underlined, but there's more work to do. And so that's currently work that's underway. And I am very hopeful about the outcome,

foremost because people will get compensated, particularly those that suffered the most egregious harm. My reflection with respect to the CHRT is they can only award $40,000. They can award the $120,000 for someone who is entitled to that, having been through seven foster homes, abused in ways that are indescribable, and is rightly entitled to a lot more. So packaging those together had a very important role

in making sure that those people could go to one source to get their compensation, but importantly that we were moving on on long-term reform of a system that has been devised in the offices of Indigenous Services Canada and not in partnership with Indigenous communities. There are interim orders currently in place that get prevention money, so going from a system where kids are no longer ripped from their families, but you can

have money going into communities to make sure that there are proper prevention activities and communities are seeing the differences. So there are differences happening today in communities that we weren't seeing a couple years ago, but we're not out of the woods in terms, I'm not going to tell you right now that we're out of the woods because there are differences happening today in communities that we weren't seeing a couple years ago But we're not out of the woods in terms I'm not gonna tell you right now that we're out of the woods because there are some tense conversations that will be going over Will be going on for the next couple weeks to make sure that we resolve this in the right way. I Think properly the Prime Minister the Prime Minister's office have have made sure that this portfolio is Almost all of your cabinet responsibility. I looked at the cabinet committee list. Except for the economy and climate cabinet committees, A and B,

you're on B. And everyone's on one of those. But apart from that, you didn't have other cabinet committee responsibilities until the prime minister asked you and Marcy Ian to co-chair the Task Force on Government Services in the wake of a summer of terrible muck-ups on passports and at airports. What did that task entail and how has it gone? We hit, as you know, coming out of COVID in a way that I think rightly caught us a little by surprise, particularly with people that wanted to travel.

They wanted to get out of their houses and in some cases leave the country. In the face of a global airline industry that logistics of which are really complicated and don't necessarily depend on anything going on in Canada had been operating at a level where we had to get up to speed pretty quickly. I'm not trying to shift blame here, but I think it's important to realize that context where Canada had lockdown more seriously than its southern neighbor

and more seriously than some of its partner, and that saved lives. In the meantime, there were people at home that wanted to get out of their houses and wanted to get some deals and just relax because this has been really hard on people's mental and physical health. And I think it's important that we do own this. We did, over the period of that time, encourage people to mail in their passports. And I guess that accumulated to a backlog that was entirely unacceptable. And so you can point to a backlog that was entirely unacceptable.

And so you can point fingers right, left, and center as to what the cause of that, but basically that was a failure to get things done in the ordinary course and ramp up in a way that could get the proper document into people's hands, as well as a couple, you know, shakes in the airline industry and some challenges with getting the proper documentation for people coming into this country to visit themselves, right? And so all those things sort of congeal together. And I think what we did, what we did worse than government, which is we went from moving in a COVID atmosphere where we were breaking down a lot of silos in the public service and moving together in lockstep to get ahead of COVID, or at least react in a way that could save lives, to what is probably the worst of government, which is to work in a very

siloed way. And so what the Prime Minister said going into the summer break, where cabinet committees do not typically meet and cabinet does not meet, was to ask Minister Ian and I to work with our, and I didn't want to be that guy, and Marcy didn't want to be that person that would be breathing down people's necks, telling them how to do their jobs, that they had already taken some steps to start remedying, but to work together and put our heads together

and have some really honest conversations, some really tough conversations about where the failures were, whether it was with the public service or with us ourselves, and to come up with some recommendations to the Prime Minister pretty quickly as to how to clear some of the backlog. And so I'm not going to say that that services committee was the be-all and end-all, but we were able to move on the fly and to break down those barriers that had congealed really quickly coming out of COVID and we're causing real problems for Canadians that were looking at us not for excuses but for a solution so on a number of levels throughout

the summer we were able to move to a more normalized situation and I think when it comes to passports that backlog is and the service standard has been increased significantly over the last little while. And in terms of the airline industry, help the Minister of Transport work to get some investments and changes in the airports and making sure that we are staying on top of an industry which, surprisingly in Canada, because Air Canada is still seen as a crown corporation in people's minds,

and very few people blame the President for Delta breaking down or that. But people seem to blame Justin Trudeau for Air Canada not being able to make its connections. But there is a sense that it's still a crown corp. We are relatively decentralized compared to Britain. So the range of ability of the federal government to act decisively on this is limited, but it isn't inexistent. So that complexity was, I think, lost on most people, and we had to compose with that to make sure that we were putting our best foot forward and moving in the way we could as a federal government to make sure that things were moving and people

could take their vacations. And this goes to, I guess, a greater point about this government, which has been very ambitious in its policy when it comes to immigration. And there are a finite number of public servants that do the triage for passports or visas. And we have put a lot of stress on a system that, in many ways, from a data perspective, is archaic and moves in archaic ways. We've asked them to do a lot through three very important waves of refugee resettlements, whether it's Syrians or Afghans or Ukrainians, and I don't think Canadians would forgive us if we did otherwise, but there aren't a limited amount and finite amount of public servants to do a triage, and that has ripple effects on student visas, on worker visas, and creates that appearance that

we're not on top of things. But we have, as a country, made some very important decisions about who we welcome in this country, and I think rightly so. But it's an important reminder in government that those important high-level policy decisions have ripple effects that sometimes have unintended consequences. Jagmeet Singh-Willing, you've got another year or so in this government. What would you like to accomplish in your role over that next year and change? I've got a lot on my plate. I think there are two, and there were two, large class actions dealing with the legacy of residential schools that had been ongoing from 2019. In fact, they were referred to as two elements in 2019 that would test our commitment to reconciliation that

deals with the destruction of language and culture in residential schools which was a separate class action that we had not resolved until January and in January we announced that we would support an independent trust for indigenous communities 325 indigenous communities to support the revitalization of language and culture to the tune of $2.8 billion, which closed a big chapter on a very sore and painful aspect of an already painful piece of litigation that we had solved the individual aspect of a few years prior that Minister Bennett had done, as well as another class action on indigenous boarding homes, which were not part of some of the original class actions. So those were the two remaining pieces of a five-piece puzzle

dealing with residential schools, which obviously is the top of people's minds. So we still have some work to do to get the fairness hearings in front of the court through. I am working on a number of important legal settlements with respect to our treaty areas. And this is sort of a lost piece of our history, the constitutional documents or understandings with Indigenous peoples that opened up Canada to settlement and extraction that we are not taught about in law school, but that do have financial consequences for the government of Canada

for not having honoured them. In some cases, it deals with the number of treaties that go all throughout the West, to the Robinson-Huron and Robinson Superior Treaty agreements that we just haven't paid the bill on since the 1850s. And there's often a misconception when we talk about reconciliation about what that actually means, and is it just about Canada paying for these harms

that were notional and are hard to define? Well, in this case, some of the greatest liability that Canada faces is about the promises it made, sometimes in black and white on paper, and has failed to honour for decades. And when we talk about trust and about building trust, and even economic reconciliation, which can become a catchphrase, I think it starts with paying the bill. Like, you can't sit down with someone you don't trust and ask them to do something for you. It's just human nature. And that sort of replicates itself on a systemic level.

So there's a lot of those claims that are kind of in the system that we want to move on. We settled perhaps one of the larger financial land claims in our history with the Blackfoot in Siksika First Nation in May of this year, but it dealt with essentially a reserve that was, half of which was removed in 1910 by the federal government without proper compensation. So when I sit in front of cabinet colleagues and try to explain them why this item has such a financial sticker shock to it. The dollar amount is large and it causes people to jump back. But the easiest part of my job is having them read

or at least walking them through the memorandum to cabinet because you see the fact pattern and people are like, oh my goodness. And I think that sort of goes to the weapon that is ignorance in this society. And when you walk Canadians through our obligations to Indigenous peoples, not in catchphrasesases but in long-term formats like this everyone goes this is something we need to fix i think that's why long-term boil water advisories is so evocative

because it's easy to to typify but it's also uh when you walk people through that long form of an answer as to why this needs to be done, 99% of people are on the same page. So I'm glad that while I didn't learn it in school, you didn't learn it in school, that my kids are coming home talking about it and it isn't because I taught it to them. Mark Miller, thanks so much for giving us some of your time tonight. Thanks, Paul. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the National Arts Centre

and the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. It's published by the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Thanks to our founding sponsor, TELUS, and our title sponsor, Compass Rose. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Haley Choi. Our executive producer is Lisa Gabriel.

Stuart Cox is the president of Antica. If you're enjoying this show, tell a friend. We'll be back next Wednesday. Thank you.