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AFN Pleased With Trudeau's UN Address

Friday, 22 September 2017 13:43

Perry Bellegarde says Trudeau's speech told the truth.

The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says he was impressed with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's speech to the United Nations General Assembly, where he spoke of Canada's shameful history with its Indigenous People.

Perry Bellegarde says as he listened to Trudeau's speech yesterday, he thought that to be a leader on the world stage “you have to be honest with yourself and tell a country's true and complete history.”

He says that is what Trudeau did, when he spoke of the devastating legacy left on reserves by residential schools, and addressed chronic problems with safe water, crime and suicide.

But one Conservative M-P accused Trudeau of focusing on domestic issues when he should spoken about international problems, such as the plight of Myanmar's Rohingya, refugees, U-N reform or North Korea.

N-D-P indigenous critic Romeo Saganash, a residential school survivor who worked for more than two decades on the U-N Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, also took aim at Trudeau.

During question period, Saganash referred to ongoing basic problems like water advisories, asking “How can the prime minister keep claiming to the world that this is the most important relationship when in reality, he is letting them down?”

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(The Canadian Press)

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