How Bill C-5 adopted the language of Canada's Conservatives

National Observer

7 hours ago

In June, as Bill C-5 wound through parliament and talk of nation-building projects rose to national prominence, so did the voices of Indigenous leaders concerned by the lack of consultation. By no coincidence, June also marked a record spike in mentions of one particular term in Canadian news: 'economic reconciliation.'
It's a loaded term with a range of implications, depending on the speaker.
For proponents of C-5, 'economic reconciliation' encompasses Indigenous consultation, partnership and a share in the jobs and profits generated by new industrial projects under the new bill.
'Indigenous peoples are not just participants in our economy. They are rights holders. They are the original stewards of this land,' Energy Minister Tim Hodgson told the Toronto Regional Board of Trade on June 25, the day before C-5 received Royal Assent. 'If we are serious about retooling our economy, then economic reconciliation must be front and centre.'
But for critics, 'economic reconciliation' is a dangerous twist on a familiar term, deployed by politicians and industry to justify a power grab.
'Economic reconciliation stalls true reconciliation,' ran the June 17 headline of an emblematic critique by Melissa Dupuis, an Innu activist and campaigner for the David Suzuki Foundation.We'll no doubt be hearing less about reconciliation and more about economic reconciliation,' Dupuis wrote,'the same threat that for years has translated to, 'Either you sign and you'll get money, or you don't sign, you get nothing, and we'll do it anyway.''
In the eye of the beholder
For all its volatility, the term seems irresistible to some politicians. Conservatives — both provincial and federal — have taken a particular shine to it.
For proponents of Bill C-5, "economic reconciliation" encompasses Indigenous consultation. But critics see it as a dangerous twist on a familiar term, to be deployed by politicians and industry to justify a power grab, Arno Kopecky writes.
In 2018, Andrew Scheer — then leader of the federal Conservatives — began invoking 'economic reconciliation' on a regular basis, and it made it into subsequent leader Erin O'Toole's 2019 election platform. In BC's 2024 election, Conservative leader John Rustad's platform didn't mention 'reconciliation' on its own — just 'economic reconciliation.' The same was true of Pierre Poilievre's platform in this year's federal election. Since then, Doug Ford has repeatedly emphasized the importance of economic reconciliation in his efforts to gain First Nations support for mining in Ontario's Ring of Fire region.
Mark Carney and his officials are also happy to invoke 'economic reconciliation.' But while Carney's election platform did mention it twice, it also discussed reconciliation five other times without that modifier. In the Liberals' platform, reconciliation means everything from funding Indigenous-led conservation and supporting the search for unmarked graves at residential schools to implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 Calls to Action.
That's a far more holistic view of reconciliation than Conservatives tend to articulate. But when it comes to Bill C-5 and the current push for nation-building projects, that word 'economic' has an undeniable bipartisan appeal.
By the time the bill passed at the end of June, Carney's Liberal government appeared to realize the risk it was running in alienating Indigenous leaders. It was then that Mandy Gull-Masty, the Cree Minister of Indigenous Services Canada, told reporters the prime minister would host an 'engagement session' with First Nations leaders from across the country in July. Striking a conciliatory note, Gull-Masty said it was up to Indigenous communities to set the terms. The government, she said, wanted to know: 'What does economic reconciliation mean to you?'
'Looks like marketing'
Unsurprisingly, it depends who you ask.
'The concern with this focus on economic reconciliation is that it's reductive. It reduces [reconciliation] to a matter of dollars and cents,' says Bruce McIvor, a Metís lawyer and partner at First Peoples Law LLP.
There are times when the consequences of a particular industrial proposal outweigh the benefits. 'It's not just about the money — it's about protecting the water and lands for future generations,' he says. Framing a proposal entirely in financial terms 'has the real potential to lead to a consequence where the government says: 'First Nation, we offered you economic reconciliation, you turned down the equity deal, so now you're just being obstructionist. You're standing in the way of the national interest, and we're going to push this project through. … I think a lot of non-Indigenous people will be receptive to that or to that argument.'
That concern is shared by chief Joe and many other Indigenous leaders across Canada who have been promoting 'economic reconciliation' for years.
'I get cringy when it looks performative, it looks like marketing,' says John Desjarlais, the Métis director of the Indigenous Resource Network [IRN]. The IRN is a pro-industry group that advocates for Indigenous involvement in resource extraction, and Desjarlais has come out in support of Bill C-5. But in conversation with Canada's National Observer, he tempered that support with a cautionary note that acknowledged the tricky position Indigenous leaders across Canada now find themselves in: wanting to advance development and create wealth for their communities, yet wary of industry taking advantage of the general haste to cut unfair deals and evade environmental oversight.
'We knew we're going to be walking a tough line,' Desjarlais said. 'Expediency is possible, if there's a relationship built on mutual trust and respect. But the flip side of that is, if there is a nation that has done their due diligence and they say no, we need to respect that.'
Dawn Leach, chair of the National Indigenous Economic Development Board, agrees. The board has produced multiple reports advocating for economic reconciliation; according to Leach, the term grew out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Call To Action #92, on Business and Reconciliation, which 'call(s) upon the corporate sector in Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework.' Leach has dedicated much of her career to improving economic conditions for Indigenous communities, but she's wary of efforts to do so that bypass Indigenous involvement — like the crafting of Bbill C-5..
'They want to expedite the process, and we do too,' Leach told Canada's National Observer. 'But we need to be brought in at the beginning of the process. After the election, everything took place without our people at the table.'
Leach is skeptical of proponents of Bill C-5 who invoke economic reconciliation — 'it's something that's in place now to appease us' — but she doesn't feel it's too late for Carney to correct course. 'I think we can get back on track, but it's got to be really meaningful going forward from here. You can't have meetings without us.'
Should that happen, Leach warned, 'that's where all the problems start. That's where all the court cases will happen.'
A best case scenario?
If you ask Leanne Joe, a hereditary chief with the Squamish nation, there are as many interpretations of 'economic reconciliation' as there are Indigenous communities. Chief Joe is a co-author of ' Step Into The River: A Framework for Economic Reconciliation,' a 180-page guide to this concept, published by Simon Fraser University in 2022.
'To me, it is decolonizing well-being and wealth, and looking at it from an Indigenous world view,' she said. 'My son is not wealthy because he has one dollar more in his bank account than you or I. He is wealthy because he can get out on the land, he can hunt, he can fish, he can gather, he understands place names, he understands landmarks, he understands his origin stories.'
Chief Joe doesn't deny that money plays a huge role in First Nations' well-being, but even here she challenges the notion that politicians can simply cut Indigenous communities into the profits. 'It's not just about having a seat at the economic table,' she says. 'We already have that. I need to transform the table.'
Asked what exactly she means by that, she doesn't hesitate: 'Let's go with the obvious: Land back, cash back. Let's begin there.'
One standout example she cites is Sen̓áḵw, a huge development project in the heart of Vancouver owned by the Squamish nation. Sen̓áḵw was the original name of a seaside village the Squamish nation occupied long before Europeans arrived; in 1913, the BC government burned the village to the ground and forced its inhabitants onto a barge that was set adrift at sea. Almost a century later, in 2003, the Squamish won a decades-long legal battle that returned four hectares of the original site to the nation. In 2022, backed by a $1.4 billion loan from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation — the largest in that organization's history — construction began on an 11-tower, 6,000-unit housing complex.
Chief Joe is quick to acknowledge her nation's unique circumstances.
'Squamish Nation happens to be in a place that is unprecedented for our nation,' she says. 'We have gone from a state of dependency, in less than three generations, to a nation that will thrive financially.' But for all the importance of financial restitution, Chief Joe emphasizes that well-being — and reconciliation — involves far more than money.
'That's not going to solve the amount of [Indigenous] children that continue to be in care. It's not going to solve the amount of injustices in the justice system. It is not going to solve the increasing amount of Indigenous women, girls, LGBTQS+ individuals that go missing and murdered in this country.'
Chief Joe doesn't remember exactly when 'economic reconciliation' entered the vernacular. The term was used in South Africa during the post-apartheid years, but it wasn't until after Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission published its report in 2015 that it started popping up here. 'It was a term that people were starting to glom onto,' she recalls.
'It's like 'reconciliation.' It's a term that just managed to land with settler Canadians, so you run with it.'