Canada’s Deafening Silence: A Decade After Truth and Reconciliation, But a Loud Voice for Manufactured Foreign Narratives

Toronto – 4th June, 2025 – In 2015,Canada took what was meant to be a historic step forward. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), after years of painstaking work, released 94 Calls to Action—a moral and political blueprint to mend the broken relationship between Canada and its Indigenous peoples. Ten years have now passed.

So where do we stand?

According to independent tracking, fewer than 15 of the 94 Calls to Action have been fully implemented. Indigenous communities still grapple with boil water
advisories, inadequate healthcare, underfunded education, and disproportionate incarceration rates. Words like “reconciliation” and “decolonization” may pepper political speeches, but they rarely translate into concrete change.

Yet, while silence persists on the home front, Canada’s political landscape finds its voice elsewhere—oddly and controversially, in international affairs rooted in falsehoods. The Ontario Legislature, for instance, (in 2021) passed Bill 104: Tamil Genocide Education Week, a deeply polarizing motion not backed by the United Nations, nor by any recognised international body. The Act pushes an inflammatory narrative that not only distorts the final stages of Sri Lanka’s civil war, but erases the brutal acts of terrorism committed by the LTTE—an organization Canada itself banned as a terrorist group. 

It is worth highlighting that in April 2021, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development of Canada officially confirmed that the Government of Canada has not made any finding of genocide in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, Canada designated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a terrorist organization in 2006, and reaffirmed this designation as recently as June 2024. Source: Government of Sri Lanka –Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 2024.

It is worth noting that one of the MPs that invented the narrative also bought forward a Motion in the house of commons and now the Minister of Public Safety, the body that oversee the same banned terrorist list. We can only speculate the next moves. 

Why, then, is the government so invested in resurrecting unverified foreign claims while shelving its own moral obligations at home?

The answer is political expediency. Identity politics and vote banks have become the low-hanging fruit of modern democracy. By championing overseas causes—often controversial and historically contested—politicians garner ethnic support while diverting attention from their failures within Canadian borders.

But this is more than a political misstep—it’s a moral failure.

It’s an insult to survivors of residential schools, whose truths were documented in detail by the TRC. It’s a betrayal to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit families who still wait for justice, restitution, and dignity. And it’s a dangerous precedent when foreign narratives, especially unverified and divisive ones, are elevated above our own responsibilities.

Reconciliation isn’t a buzzword. It is, or should be, Canada’s national conscience. The country’s silence on the TRC’s calls to action, contrasted with its loud proclamations on
issues it neither fully understands nor has jurisdiction over, paints a disturbing picture: one of distraction over dedication, and political theatre over truth.

If Canada truly values justice, then it must start at home—with clean water, honest education, mental health resources, and true accountability for its colonial legacy. Until then, no amount of foreign virtue-signaling can fill the void left by ten years of broken promises.