Transcript
Transcript: The 10 Principles at Work at Justice Canada
Prakash Diar: I'm Prakash Diar, I'm acting Senior Counsel at the Reconciliation Commission at Department of Justice, you would probably know by now that the Prime Minister has said many times that the most important relationship for the government of Canada and the people of government of Canada is the one with the Indigenous Peoples. And so in twenty seventeen, the government released in the summer of twenty seventeen, the ten Principles governing the relationship between the government and Indigenous Peoples.
And so in twenty seventeen, the Deputy Minister Madame Drouin mandated us at the Reconciliation Secretariat to develop and deliver a training on the principles to all Justice employees. I thought it was imperative that we set the Principles in context. And what I mean by that is to trace the historical relationship between the Indigenous Peoples and the Crown. I thought that this was an important thing because most people in Canada, including public servants, don't really have a true understanding of the real history of Canada, including the Indian residential schools experiment in particular. It's a very sad part of Canadian history.
In my respectful view, equally said, is what I've already mentioned, that most Canadians, including all public servants, are not fully aware of this historical past. And I think, putting this as a foundation to our cause really helped us, so the balance of the course, of course, of the training comprised of the Ten Principles, Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982. And we also try to give examples of made up facts where the denial of rights was compared to the recognition of rights analysis. And so we made up some fact case scenarios to help participants through this. We added modules to this because we thought cultural bias or cultural competency was a really important topic and also alternative dispute resolution. Just a word quickly about the Principles.
You know, the government is, of course, committed to achieving reconciliation. It instructs all federal public servants to shift from the historical position of denial to the one of a recognition of rights, and this is a fundamental shift, a complete 180 degree turn. It the principles also recognizes the need for a renewed relationship based on, as I said, the recognition of rights, respect, cooperation in part, and partnership as the foundation for this transformative change that Canada is undertaking. And I underscore partnership because that has been lacking all these years. The principles also encourages the public servants to think outside the box and to think of real innovative solutions.
So the principles in a sense forces us to think about our own values, our own assumptions, our own biases towards the status quo. And of course, this includes the legal and policy concepts. Just one quick example of where the principles were really successfully applied in a specific claim that was told in dispute, so to say, for about a decade at least. So negotiations were going on, and when the principles were introduced, some of my colleagues, together with their indigenous partners, started to think outside the box.
What they did was very simple in the end. They just said, we are confirming our past historical agreements and that didn't offend anybody. And this small little change, thinking outside the box led to twenty nine claims being settled at one time. And here's the thing. Indigenous communities were not asking for more money. It didn't cost anybody anything else except that they were able to preserve their dignity, so to say.
So I can say a lot about this, you can see I'm quite passionate about this, but all this to say that we have so far delivered this training to over two thousand justice employees and it has been extremely and overwhelmingly, positively received.
