What is the Truth about Reconciliation? 2024 Year-End review: Indigenous Watchdog

What is the Truth about Reconciliation? 2024 Year-End Review: Indigenous Watchdog

INDIGENOUS WATCHDOG: HAMILTON – February 5, 2025

The above chart represents the pulse of reconciliation over almost 6 years since Sept. 15, 2019 when 43% of the 94 Calls to Action (CTA) were either NOT STARTED or STALLED. As of Dec. 31, 2024 38% are still either NOT STARTED or STALLED, the same as Dec. 31, 2021 – 3 years ago! See TRC Calls to Action: Status – Jan 1., 2025 for a complete list of Not Started and Stalled C2As.

That’s not much progress. Why?

There are 4 main reasons that progress is almost non-existent:

1. Lack of political will across all jurisdictions to address core Indigenous issues in a number of the themes tracked by Indigenous Watchdog including recognizing and respecting Indigenous laws and governance that existed long before the Doctrine of Discovery when Indigenous self-government was a way-of-life
2. Systemic racism is still entrenched throughout society and especially in the Legacy Calls to Action – in Child Welfare, Education, Heath and Justice
3. Structural barriers that negatively impact Indigenous people still preventing access to the fundamental rights that most Canadians take for granted
4. Lack of making quality “national” data on Indigenous issues available. All levels of government – federal, provincial, territory, municipal – are responsible for failing to address this fundamental issue.

Consider the following table that highlights those Calls to Action that ask directly for governments to deliver access to data that are either NOT STARTED or STALLED.

CTA Theme	CTA #	Current Status	Call to Action Outcome
Child Welfare	2	Not Started	Publish annual child welfare reports. 53.8 % of children in child welfare system in Canada are Indigenous (2021) vs 52.2% in 2016. (BC = 68%, AB = 73%, SK = 81%, MB = 90%)
Education	9	Not Started	Prepare and publish annual education reports: Gaps in High School completion between FN on reserve 60%, Inuit (56%) vs Non-Indigenous (90.7%);
Health	19	Stalled	Establish measurable goals to identify and close health gaps and publish annual reports. On virtually every health measure Indigenous people score considerably worse http://(https://www.indigenouswatchdog.org/subcategory/health)
Justice	30	Stalled	Issue detailed annual reports that monitor and evaluate progress in eliminating overrepresentation of aboriginal people in custody. 32% of all inmates in federal jails are Indigenous; 50% of all women. Indigenous people make up 5% of the population.
National Council for Reconciliation	55	Not Started	Provide annual reports or any current data requested by the National Centre for Reconciliation so that it can report on the progress towards reconciliation. Almost 10 years after release of TRC Report the National Council doesn’t exist.

Good policy and program development requires good data. How else can you measure if reconciliation is succeeding or not in closing the socio-economic gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. So why – almost ten years after the TRC asked for it – can’t any level of government provide answers? Show us the data!

Look at the following table that aggregates all the posts added to Indigenous Watchdog over 2024.

As you will see, the positive “Actions and Commitments” that in theory are advancing reconciliation are outnumbered by the “Current Problems”. Why the gap? What can be done to eliminate them?

NOTE: The above numbers include entries assigned to multiple stakeholders and serve as a general guide as to what is happening within the top 7 themes (out of 30).

Where are the problems? All details are drawn from curated articles posted on Indigenous Watchdog.

Click on the following link to read the full article on Indigenous Watchdog:

https://www.indigenouswatchdog.org/2025/02/01/what-is-the-truth-about-reconciliation-2024-year-end-review-indigenous-watchdog/