On sorry excuses

Kady's liveblog of the Public Accounts committee may not have intended to focus on the First Nations issues set out in a report on child and family services by the Auditor General. But even dealing with that issue only in passing, her account offers a stunning indictment of the Cons' cluelessness:

Meanwhile, the government members keep wanting to go back to The Residential Schools Apology, and how it made everything better, which, when you think about it, would be a question better posed to a First Nations person than bureaucrat.

Now, it's probably true to say that to the extent the apology may have had an impact, that would probably be better determined by asking the people actually on the receiving end of the apology. But under the circumstances, it's asinine to try to claim that a symbolic apology would have "made everything better".

Indeed, the report mentions the residential school system in passing as only one of the factors in the disruption of First Nations families. The Auditor General's focus was on a multitude of factors affecting the well-being of children on reserves, including socio-economic conditions, jurisdiction, program design and availability of services - all of which would be within the purview of the federal government.

But apparently the Cons' talking points don't involve any interest in how their party is actually handling the substantive issues facing First Nations. (Which would be an equally easy source of softball questions if they had done anything which they believed to be worth highlighting.)

Instead, they've apparently been told to try to pretend that a single symbolic moment should somehow negate any need to deal with the actual challenges - presumably the better to lay the groundwork for a future claim that it's not worth bothering. And that should speak volumes about how little the Cons think should be done to improve the conditions facing First Nations at the moment.