Last Updated on September 29, 2025
A decade after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) delivered its calls to action, the country stands at a crossroads it refuses to acknowledge. One after another, governments have drafted laws that promise to reinforce Crown control, strip power from Indigenous nations, and turn land and water into sacrifice zones for industry.
The Building Canada Act is the centerpiece of this strategy, but it is far from alone. Ontario’s Bill 5, British Columbia’s Bill 15, Quebec’s Bill 97, and Nova Scotia’s Bill 6 each reveal how reconciliation is being turned into a cheap slogan that justifies the very practices it was meant to end.
Ontario’s Bill 5: Framed as legislation to streamline approvals for the Ring of Fire mining corridor, Ontario’s Bill 5 represents yet another chapter in the province’s history of pushing resource extraction at the expense of Indigenous rights. Rather than centering free, prior, and informed consent, the bill accelerates permitting and environmental assessments to fast-track development in one of the most ecologically sensitive regions of the country.
British Columbia’s Bill 15: BC has claimed to lead on implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Yet Bill 15, dealing with amendments to the Land Act, revealed the opposite. It is widely criticized for bypassing meaningful Indigenous participation and risking the entrenchment of Crown authority over land use. In a province where most land is unceded, such legislation perpetuates the fiction of settler sovereignty while branding itself as reconciliation.
Quebec’s Bill 97: Though it was just scrapped last week, Bill 97 would have entrenched provincial control over forest management while sidelining Indigenous governance and stewardship. Quebec framed it as modernization, yet it would have continued the old colonial bargain that treats forests as economic assets rather than living homelands.
Nova Scotia’s Bill 6: Introduced in February 2025, Nova Scotia’s Bill 6 repeals the prohibition on uranium exploration and mining and lifts the moratorium on high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking). In a province whose Peace and Friendship Treaties promised coexistence, Bill 6 is nothing less than a declaration that the province is prepared to poison the land for the sake of short-term industrial profit. The Mi’kmaw have yet to be consulted.
If the Truth and Reconciliation Commission envisioned reconciliation as structural transformation, the past decade has shown us the opposite: structural entrenchment.
Canada’s legislative agenda has not dismantled colonialism. It has refined it. These bills reinforce Crown control, expedite extraction, and recast land as commodity, all while claiming the mantle of reconciliation.
Against this backdrop, Governor General Mary Simon’s recent remarks that reconciliation is compatible with major development projects deserves scrutiny.
The Governor General told the Canadian Press that, “Reconciliation is a value. It’s not a policy issue. And so when it’s a value like empathy, happiness, you know, it’s something that you carry with you.”
“In terms of the economic development of the country, there is a commitment to make sure that indigenous people are working with the governments and developers and businesses; to provide for partnerships, to provide for better jobs… That they will no longer just get some of the more menial jobs like… cleaning,” she said.
Such statements reflect the core contradiction of the spirit and intent of reconciliation. It is not a value or a symbol that can be reduced to a single day of remembrance. Nor is it some rhetorical assurance that coexistence is possible while bulldozers advance.
It demands a fundamental shift. More specifically, it demands laws that recognize Indigenous jurisdiction as binding, resource projects subject to Indigenous consent as a starting point, and economies built around stewardship rather than sacrifice zones.
Anything less is not coexistence—it is colonial continuity under another name.
The question is not whether Canada can build its future alongside Indigenous nations. The question is whether Canada is willing to stop building its future on top of them. Until that choice is made, the Building Canada Act and its provincial counterparts will stand not as monuments to reconciliation, but as monuments to denial.
Across the world right now, Indigenous peoples are facing a renewed assault on their lands, rights, and ways of life.
From extractive industries pushing deeper into ancestral territories, to governments rolling back hard-won protections,
the threat is global—and it is growing.
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