Mr. Carney, about That Pipeline Deal—We Need to Talk

Dear Mark Carney,

You first came to my attention in September of 2024 when an investor in the film I co-directed, Sugarcane, told me, “This guy is going to be the next prime minister.” I remember the declaration so distinctly because, at the time, that eventuality seemed impossible. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals were trailing Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives by double digits in the polls. The country, along with the rest of the world, was shifting rightward. I figured Truth and Reconciliation would end when Trudeau’s party lost. But I was wrong.

At the time, I knew little about you other than that you were a former governor of the Bank of England. In your roles at the Bank of England and the United Nations, you argued that fossil fuel infrastructure, like the controversial oil and gas pipelines ploughed through Indigenous lands across Canada, could become “stranded assets.” Or, in normal speak, those projects might become abandoned hulks of ghost infrastructure left to rust until the corporations, or more likely the public, clean up the mess. You’re bullish on a transition to a clean economy, which suggests you’re a leader willing to use the language of economics against one of the most powerful industries in the history of the world. And now, you’re trying, with varying degrees of success, to stand up to United States president Donald Trump. You’re the kind of politician who, from a distance, looks like he has courage and can be reasoned with.

All of which makes some of your recent actions feel like a reversal, even a betrayal. Your budget blueprint proposes cutting funding for Indigenous Services Canada and Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada by $2.3 billion—or about 2 percent per year—while investing aggressively in critical minerals, energy corridors, and a defence buildup. The cuts affect programs that Indigenous leaders see as essential to fulfilling the promise of Truth and Reconciliation, like Friendship Centres, which offer a first point of contact for people moving from Indian reserves and other rural communities into urban areas. Your budget also slashes funding for the Inuit Child First Initiative, which helps ensure Inuit kids get the services they need—be it health care, education, or social support—at the same time when reports have surfaced that Inuit children are going hungry. Both programs will be zeroed out entirely after spring of 2026.

You also just announced a major new pipeline deal meant to fast-track export capacity to British Columbia. The project hinges on coastal routes that run directly through Indigenous territories—and despite your assurances, no serious consultation took place before this deal was announced. Reconciliation rests on the principle that our approval is required, not optional. That’s what “consent” means. But the speed and scale of this deal suggest you view consent as optional.

In short, if these recent developments are anything to go by, you seem to believe in reconciliation as a kind of luxury—something noble, maybe, but dispensable in moments of national crisis. So, I want to do my best to make the case that reconciliation is not a weight around Canada’s neck, as so many conservatives suggest and as you now seem to believe. Last March, I played in the Yukon Native Hockey Tournament. I stood in an ice rink full of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis singing “O Canada!” at the top of their lungs. It’s possible to acknowledge the enduring consequences of a cultural genocide while standing up for Canadian sovereignty against the US. Indigenous peoples do it all the time.

Because reconciliation is a measure of this nation’s character. Something that Canada has done that its southern neighbour, the US, has not. Though the two settler nations share a history of forcibly assimilating Indigenous peoples through segregated, government-funded, church-affiliated residential boarding schools. “Kill the Indian, save the man” was the American version of Canada’s “Get rid of the Indian problem.” In America, seemingly everything—even the colonizing language—is more violent. Whereas Canada tends towards the more moderate managerial tongue of the government.

Evidence, perhaps, that a country’s treatment of its First Peoples reveals something essential about its character. Consider, for example, each predominantly English-speaking settler nation’s quintessential figure in its westward expansion. America’s is the vigilante cowboy out of a Hollywood western. Canada’s is the red-coated Mountie. They’re both settler colonialists. But there is a difference. And the difference lies in the fact that, in Canada, the government is willing to say and occasionally do something about its ghastly history. Taking steps, albeit small ones, to atone for a continent of crimes.

Hear me out. Reconciliation is, in a way, kind of a perfect encapsulation of Canada’s proclivity to say “sorry.” One of the most important human qualities that Canada has to offer its citizens and the world: integrity. Otherwise, what is this country really? A nation of immigrants made up partly of English speakers loyal to the Crown and French speakers loyal to France—nice folks and good hockey players—settled atop a mass of land and natural resources stolen from Indigenous peoples?

Through its commitment to reconciliation, Canada has served as an example to the world of how to address what is, in fact, a global history of destroying Indigenous cultures by force and through policy. If you turn your back on reconciliation, what will Canada stand for and where will it lead? Perhaps you fear what else might be found if we keep searching this nation’s soul. Maybe you believe we’ll find something hard and cold. I happen to believe we may find yet more Canadian compassion for those whom Canada has wronged. A commitment to do better and be better.

• Indigenous Priorities Are Just a Checkbox When It Comes to Economic Development
• The Stark Reality Ten Years after the Truth and Reconciliation Report
• My Father Was Found in a Residential School Incinerator When He Was an Infant

It is worth pointing out that Sugarcane, directed by Emily Kassie and me—both Canadians—was the first work in any medium to document a pattern of infanticide at an Indian residential school. And our film focused on just one institution. What happened at the other 138 residential schools across Canada? Survivors, their families, and the public deserve to know. Because Indigenous peoples are still dying from the cycles of trauma, abandonment, abuse, alcoholism, addiction, homelessness, violence, suicide, and death that residential schools instigated in our families and communities.

The truest measure of reconciliation has always been truth and how much of it Canada is willing to confront. But how committed to reconciliation can a government possibly be when the very programs that gave Indigenous people and their children reason to believe this country might finally treat them as equals are marked for elimination? Programs that suggested this country might finally invest in building us up after generations spent tearing us down?

Reconciliation rooted in truth, backed by action—that is the path Canada vowed to walk. And not as long as public opinion supported it, but in perpetuity. The thing that critics of reconciliation don’t understand is that reconciliation is not an affront to Canada. Reconciliation is, more accurately, part of a distinctly Canadian tradition. A disposition now imperilled around the world but that should not die so easily here. No, Mr. Carney, you should not fear Truth and Reconciliation. You should be proud of it.

But if you continue to push Indigenous peoples aside, you should beware. Our nations still hold legal title to vast swaths of land—true leverage over natural-resource industries that will be increasingly important as Canada reorients away from the US. In many parts of this nation, Indigenous peoples are a prominent minority if not an outright majority. We have the power to grind the gears of Canadian capitalism when it attempts to steamroll us. To strand some assets, so to speak.

Judging by your budget blueprint and pipeline plans, you no longer seem persuaded that reconciliation is central to the national project. But I’m going to hold out hope that, through some combination of words and power, you can still be swayed. Because standing up for something and someone—for your teammates on the ice, for your nation, for your people—even and especially when it’s not the easy thing to do, that’s Canada’s promise.