Railway’s reconciliation plan

CN Rail released a long-anticipated reconciliation action plan this week, one initially expected to be made up entirely of recommendations from its former Indigenous advisory council - that being before they all quit en masse last year.

That 12-person advisory council had been tasked with delivering recommendations for how CN could move toward reconciliation. They all resigned last December, however, after CN’s board and the group couldn’t reach an agreement over the implementation of their recommendations, APTN revealed.

The Eastern Door sought an interview with leadership at the rail line in the hope of learning how the advisory council’s prior work informed the new three-year action plan, but saw the request declined. Instead, CN chose to respond in writing.

“The Indigenous advisory council has provided CN with invaluable guidance on what it takes to achieve genuine reconciliation. A lot of that guidance helped inform this action plan, and we intend to leverage that guidance as we continue our journey towards reconciliation,” wrote senior vice-president Olivier Chouc, also responsible for Indigenous relations at the company.

The advisory council had been co-chaired by the late Murray Sinclair, previously the commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as Roberta Jamieson, the first ever Indigenous woman to earn a law degree in the country. In addition to having representation of Indigenous people from First Nations across the country, it also had one Metis and one Inuk member.

Their recommendations to CN had been based on a country-wide consultation process. CN’s network of trains operates within or just adjacent to over 100 First Nation and Metis communities. Kahnawake is not among them.

In February of this year, two months following the resignation of the advisory council, five working groups were formed internally at CN to work toward the creation of the action plan. Chouc couldn’t say precisely how many of those employees were Indigenous, citing confidentiality, but said there were many actively engaged in the process either directly or indirectly.

“Indigenous employees were involved in the process, as both the Indigenous relations team and the Indigenous employee resource group were part of the action plan’s development,” he wrote. “We also had Indigenous employees reach out directly to members of the working groups to share their comments and ideas, which were taken into consideration and are reflected in the plan.”

Each of those working groups was assigned a pillar to focus on. Those pillars make up the five focus areas listed in the action plan, which have 16 commitments attached to them in total.

Among the company’s most ambitious commitments is the promise to “explore” the redirection of land taxation payments to communities alongside governments, as well as the creation of an inventory of lands to “potentially” be returned.

Though CN asserts in its action plan that “reconciliation starts by acknowledging Canada’s colonial history,” the 34-page document neglects to mention much of the company’s history. In a timeline included in it, a section for the years 1919 to 1995 simply notes that “all relationships involving Indigenous communities are handled by the Government of Canada.”

“As you may know, CN was privatized in 1995 and even though we recognize the past, and this is part of the cultural awareness training delivered to employees since 2014, CN is a private entity and not the crown corporation it used to be,” Chouc wrote when asked about the decision to omit close to a century’s worth of history.

He pointed to the plan’s opening acknowledgement statement, which he said is “dedicated to acknowledging the past, including the role railway played as an instrument of colonial policies.”

That nearly 300-word statement acknowledges the “intergenerational economic, cultural, and social effects” these colonial policies had on Indigenous communities, in addition to how the construction and operation of the railways “affected the land and its original people, their cultures, traditions, and ways of life,” but fails to mention more than that, like how CN’s trains were used to transport children to residential schools, for instance.

The company is expected to publish annual updates on its progress made toward the 16 commitments laid out in the action plan.

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