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By Doug Collins

One Man's Opinion

COLLINS: Truth and reconciliation — where are we?

Oct 2, 2025 | 6:00 AM

DEPENDING ON WHO YOU TALK WITH, it’s going too slow, or just about right. No one is saying we’re moving too quickly on all the recommendations in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, which was released several years ago after lengthy hearings across the country.

Tuesday, we participated in the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. That day was set aside to remind us of the travesty of the residential school system, one of the blights on our history we cannot forget. Governor-General Mary Simon, herself an Indigenous person, summed everything up neatly when she said we’re making good progress in some areas, but we still have work to do.

I really think those who suggest we’re not making progress quickly enough need to take the rose-coloured glasses off. Some of the 94 items in the report are well on their way. We’ve made some progress in making the public more aware of the accurate history of our Indigenous population. Many activities based on old customs are making their way into the classroom. More time is now being spent on looking through the lens of our First Nations residents. That’s an important part of the healing process.

And we must never forget the elephant in the room — the residential school system, where young children were grabbed from their homes and placed in these schools where many were tortured and abused, and if they died, were interred in cemeteries, or just as often, in makeshift areas on various tracts of school property. We are discovering more and more the truths of the system.

The reconciliation may never be totally completed. And discussion of the issues involved in the reconciliation process should indeed be discussed thoroughly, because they cut across land title, they cut across provincial boundaries, municipal boundaries, reservation boundaries and all that entails, including all the infrastructure that must be dealt with. So when you say that we’re not moving forward fast enough, remember it took us 150-plus years to create this mess, it’s not going to be resolved in one or two decades.

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The goal should be, at the annual Truth and Reconciliation ceremony, that we can stand together and point out those areas where we’ve progressed, and outline areas where we need to do more. By its very nature, reconciliation speaks to resolving differences, coming together to ease long-standing issues. There’s a lot of ground to be covered. And both sides must recognize that both sides have been part of the problem. And both sides must come together in a spirit of healing. If that doesn’t happen, the opportunity for progress and the Truth and Reconciliation report will wind up on a library shelf, gathering dust. Someone will drag it down sometime in decades to come and wonder how we could have screwed up this opportunity to make real progress in bringing us all together.

I’m Doug Collins and that’s One Man’s Opinion.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.