Pierre Poilievre shows his empathy for residential school survivors

After an introductory ramble from CFRA host Steve Madley, who muses that “we could go and argue whether [assimilation] was the right policy or the wrong policy,” Pierre Poilievre offers his thoughts on compensation for survivors, First Nations leadership, and where “all this money” is going:

“That gets to the heart of the problem on these reserves where there is too much power concentrated in the hands of the leadership, and it makes you wonder where all of this money is going. We spend $10 billion dollars – $10 billion dollars – in annual spending this year alone … now, that is an exceptional amount of money, and that is on top of all the resource revenue that goes to reserves that sit on petroleum products or sit on uranium mines or other things where companies have to pay them royalties and that’s on top of all that money that they earn on their own reserves. That is an incredible amount of money. Now along with this apology comes another $4 billion in compensation for those who partook in the residential schools over those years. Now, you know, some of us are starting to ask, ‘Are we really getting value for all of this money, and is more money really going to solve the problem?’ My view is that we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self reliance. That’s the solution in the long run – more money will not solve it.”

Full interview here.

After an introductory ramble from CFRA host Steve Madley, who muses that “we could go and argue whether [assimilation] was the right policy or the wrong policy,” Pierre Poilievre offers his thoughts on compensation for survivors, First Nations leadership, and where “all this money” is going:

“That gets to the heart of the problem on these reserves where there is too much power concentrated in the hands of the leadership, and it makes you wonder where all of this money is going. We spend $10 billion dollars – $10 billion dollars – in annual spending this year alone … now, that is an exceptional amount of money, and that is on top of all the resource revenue that goes to reserves that sit on petroleum products or sit on uranium mines or other things where companies have to pay them royalties and that’s on top of all that money that they earn on their own reserves. That is an incredible amount of money. Now along with this apology comes another $4 billion in compensation for those who partook in the residential schools over those years. Now, you know, some of us are starting to ask, ‘Are we really getting value for all of this money, and is more money really going to solve the problem?’ My view is that we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self reliance. That’s the solution in the long run – more money will not solve it.”

Full interview here.