Hon. Kim Pate: Honourable senators, I thank my colleagues for their speeches on this matter.

I speak today to urge that we work together to uphold one of our most important duties as senators. As we well know, we share a responsibility to ensure that all perspectives are heard. Far too often, the perspectives of those most marginalized seem to be intentionally ignored. Today, we have an opportunity to ensure they are not.

Here are some important facts.

The 1881 agreement between the Government of Canada and CP Railway provided CP Railway access to traditional territories of First Nations peoples, both unceded lands and treaty lands. Clause 12 of the contract between CP Railway and the Government of Canada states:

The Government shall extinguish the Indian title affecting the lands herein appropriated, and to be hereafter granted in aid of the railway.

This blatant disregard for the rights of Indigenous peoples underpins and forms crucial context for Motion No. 14.

The lands transferred between CP Railway and the Government of Saskatchewan are governed by three treaties — 4, 6 and 10 — signed with the Cree, Saulteaux, Chipewyan, Ojibwe and Assiniboine. These were agreements negotiated in good faith between the Crown and Indigenous peoples but that have not been honoured by the Canadian government.

Tempting as it is to try to list the depth and breadth of all these broken promises, time today does not permit it so, for additional details, I will urge anyone interested to review the documents of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

In order to provide you with just a taste of the sorts of issues involved, however, I feel it is important to give a few examples.

The first breach concerns the settlement on an area known as the “treaty ground,” a place that was agreed to be set aside to conduct treaty business. It was the site where Treaty 4 was signed and where Indigenous peoples received their annual treaty compensation.

In 1882, Treaty 4 peoples were told to receive their payments on their reserves instead of on the ground. Although this decision was met with resistance by the First Nation, Indian Affairs unilaterally transferred the treaty ground to the Department of the Interior in 1894. It took more than a century for Treaty 4 peoples to get this land back.

Treaty 6 was signed when the Cree were in constant threat of starvation, as the bison population, their main source of food, was being hunted to extinction by arriving settlers. This was such a serious issue to the Indigenous peoples that they included a “famine and pestilence clause” in the treaty. Despite negotiating that provision, successive governments have failed to ensure First Nations enjoyed food or health security. Indeed, these, as well as economic insecurity, remain serious issues, with food insecurity alone ranging from the horrific average rate of 48% to the genocidal figure of 60% in too many First Nations communities.

Treaty 10 was not signed until 1906 — 25 years after the agreement between CP Railway and Canada. Even then, this treaty was nearly immediately breached with both the Canoe Lake Cree First Nation and English River First Nation not being given the full amount of reserve land promised.

There are also further concerns. Although, according to the government, treaties extinguished Indigenous land “ownership,” all the First Nations involved maintain that they agreed to share, not sell, their lands.

There are also disputes about the nature and extent of the rights covered by these treaties. It is well recognized that during their negotiation, government representatives made oral promises that were not then reflected in the written versions of the agreements, otherwise known as the treaties.

The Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Badger created the principles to govern treaty interpretation in light of these facts. Furthermore, Justice Sopinka wrote that even when the written version of an agreement was faithful to the oral promises, there were still linguistic and cultural barriers and unfamiliarity with the common law system that created an obligation to examine treaties in a special light. Treaties must be interpreted in the sense that they would naturally have been understood by Indigenous peoples at the time of signing.

These facts may be uncomfortable for Canadians to hear and learn. However, Canadians agreed to grapple with this difficult past in pursuit of a brighter future. Canada has adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, many articles of which focus on remedying past colonial wrongs and rely on the good-faith negotiation of nation-to-nation relationships with Indigenous peoples. The government has committed to implementing the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Calls for Justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Most recently, Canada’s commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples was tabled as a top priority for the Canadian government and is included in the mandate letters of all 36 current members of the cabinet. Part of reconciliation requires that Canadians know, understand, acknowledge and work to rectify the truths of our racist colonial past that were for so very long ignored. Only then can we move on in the spirit of reconciliation.

This motion deserves this contextualization and more, dear colleagues, and I thank you for your time.

Meegwetch. Thank you.