Enough of the self-abuse, Justin

This past July marked 150 years since the establishment of the confederation of Canada, which started out with just four Provinces.  An occasion for celebration, you might think, and for much of the country it was just that.  In Ottawa, however, there was a distinct odour of self-loathing. Commemoration of the country's many real achievements was almost entirely drowned out by hand-wringing over the way the country has mistreated its indigenous peoples.  Anti-Trudeau segments of the media were vocal in castigating the government for setting such a downbeat tone on a supposedly happy occasion.

It hardly need be said that the treatment of indigenous peoples by Canada (and by our larger neighbour to the south) has been shockingly bad.  Best estimates suggest that there were about 25 million people living in North America when the white man "discovered" the place.  A very high percentage were killed by diseases to which they had no natural immunity (notably smallpox) and the rest were either penned into smaller and smaller tracts of their traditional territories or subjected to forced assimilation. It's not without justification that Canada's indigenous peoples like to render the first line of the national anthem as "O Canada, our home on natives' land".

Given this sad history, you can certainly make a case for the Government to acknowledge past transgressions at the Sesquicentennial celebrations, and to pledge to do better in the future.  After all, that was directed mainly at a domestic audience.  But how, then, do we explain Justin Trudeau's frankly bizarre speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week?

At a time when madmen in Washington and Pyongyang are uttering blood curdling threats of nuclear annihilation; a time when a Nobel Peace Prize winner is presiding over ethnic cleansing in Myanmar; and a time when the ongoing stream of refugees on Europe's southern shores is starting to be matched by a similar influx at Canada's southern border, Trudeau chose to air Canada's dirty linen to the world. Much of his speech focused on the sins many generations of white Canadians have visited on their indigenous neighbours, leaving many still living in inadequate housing, with no access to clean water and facing poverty, unemployment and a variety of addiction issues. He also described to the Assembly members, who must have been mildly bemused by this detail, the steps his Government is taking to try to fix the problem, including splitting responsibility for indigenous affairs between two ministries instead of one.  

Worthy as all of this is, it's surely a matter for domestic consumption rather than something to be paraded before the most distinguished international assembly in the world. What makes this even harder to explain is that Canada has been busily lobbying for a seat on the UN Security Council.  Trudeau described Canada as "a work in progress"; it may well be that the Security Council will tell him to apply again when he's finished his homework.