Trudeau says sorry for vacationing on Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Day

“I think the ‘how it happened’ is far less important than that it happened, which I regret,” Trudeau said at a news conference, during which he pledged to “do even more on the path of reconciliation,” including investing in support for Indigenous children.

On Sept. 30, shortly after his Liberal minority government was reelected after a snap poll, Trudeau and his family flew to Tofino in British Columbia, the same province where Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc is located.

Earlier this year, the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found in unmarked graves near or on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The discovery was made by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc.

That particular finding — together with hundreds more unmarked graves that were later uncovered — prompted a national reckoning over Canada’s mistreatment of its First Nations.

Trudeau’s official itinerary on Sept. 30 originally indicated he was in “private meetings” in the capital, Ottawa. He later defended himself in a tweet, claiming that he had been on the phone with residential school survivors, “hearing their stories and getting their advice on the path forward.”

The prime minister spent the previous night at a ceremony marking Truth and Reconciliation Day.

Over the weekend, Trudeau called Casimir to apologize. He also said he plans to visit Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc in the coming weeks.

But by then, the absence of the prime minister was already widely criticized.

Cindy Blackstock, a prominent Indigenous rights activist, slammed Trudeau’s no-show in a TV interview as a “complete letdown.”

“The prime minister decides that he can have a vacation day — he could have had the vacation day tomorrow. I support vacation, I know that they work hard, but not on the very first national day when we’re supposed to be spending the [time] doing the duty of reconciliation,” she said.

RoseAnne Archibald, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said in a statement that “hollow apologies will no longer be accepted” and demanded that Trudeau “demonstrate through actions that he is committed to the healing path forward.”

The backlash around Trudeau’s vacation came shortly after a Canadian judge dismissed a legal challenge from the federal government, paving the way for billions of dollars in compensation to be paid to First Nations children removed from their families and placed into state welfare.

Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and church-run boarding schools, which were set up in the 19th century to assimilate them and operated until the late 1990s. Many children were forcibly separated from their families to be placed in the schools.

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that many of the students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the schools, which barred them from practicing their traditions and speaking their languages. It said the schools carried out “cultural genocide” and effectively institutionalized child neglect.

The Kamloops School, like many others, was run by the Catholic Church. While Pope Francis has resisted calls for the Vatican to apologize, Catholic leaders in Canada expressed “profound remorse” last month for the Church’s operation of the schools.

The Tofino trip is not the first time Trudeau has been attacked for his vacations. In 2017, Canada’s ethics commissioner said in a report that the prime minister had violated the country’s ethics code by vacationing with wealthy investor and philanthropist the Aga Khan on the latter’s island home in the Bahamas in December and early January of 2016.

Amanda Coletta in Toronto contributed reporting to this article.