While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Rose LeMay.
On Dec. 15, 2015, I stood in a hotel in downtown Ottawa as the commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission shared the 94 Calls to Action. I remember the room with auras of super-bright colour as if the children who were lost had travelled from the stars to share in the moment. We stood in awe of these leaders...
The Prime Minister’s Office is taking a decidedly corporate approach. Then it should make sure that the essential piece of corporate governance is included by being transparent with the board of directors. In this country, the board is made up of voters.
On Nov. 12, Dr. Ivan Zinger, the correctional investigator of Canada, dropped his most recent annual report on the state of prisons. The truth is harsh: mental health supports in prisons are outdated, without sufficiently trained staff, force is used when mental health and therapeutic interventions are needed, and more. Five federally operated regional treatment centres are “not fit for...
Much has been said about this year’s budget, and its coming in a time of austerity, a time of economic pressures. But there’s the issue. This federal government maintains and moves money for First Nations health care, but doesn’t pay nearly the amount per person that all other Canadians receive. This federal government also moves this money with a shocking...
In a time of fiscal restraint, why is it that inclusion and reconciliation are so easily dropped? Is it because it costs, and the inclusion of minorities is not worth the money? Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke after the recent United Nations meetings, and it was a speech for the history books, one of the best that Canada has done...
Did you hear? The premier in Quebec wants to outlaw prayer in public. It sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch, but it isn’t. It seems this bullish push to enforce a neutral society builds on the previous laws to enforce nobody speaks anything but French, and no one can wear any religious symbols. Asking for a friend, but has...
The federal government needs to stop hiring generalist policy writers and start hiring experts in their field, and then hire managers and leaders with people and management expertise. That’s how we modernize this government.
There are no good ethics in trampling over the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the rush for national projects. That's actually the very definition of colonial. Who knew that Canada would so easily cave on its reconciliation commitment when faced with a threat?
It was a very good Speech from the Throne, given by royalty. The humility from King Charles III about reconciliation and his ongoing learning journey was touching, and the right tone for today. The content and tone meant to push off the American tyranny was also a work of true art. Congratulations to the writers.
As the newly elected parliamentarians start this session of government, they will be swamped with learning about the processes and procedures—how to do things correctly, how not to do things incorrectly. Isn’t it interesting that the moment an election is won on platform and goals, then the system inundates MPs on process, rules, and procedures. Relationships are the key, not...
If anybody should have left Canada, it was First Nations. Secession: it’s a serious word for uniquely Canadian dumb ideas. Some Albertans are saying things about their unequal treatment, and, for the record, it’s not true. Alberta has not been treated badly, and neither has Quebec.
This is a request to pause to consider a priority that escaped discussion during the campaign—reconciliation and the wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples of this country. Congratulations to Prime Minister Mark Carney on your unique entry into politics and successful campaign. The lack of drama and empty slogans was refreshing and calming. The strength shown to take control of the Liberal...
Many experts have voiced that this election is one of the most important for this country, and it’s hard to disagree. Canadians seem to be more involved this election, if everyday chitchat is a measure of their involvement. As a quick recap: United States President Donald Trump is threatening funding to American universities to force them to stop being so...
The 2025 election leaders’ debates are set for April 16-17, and speech writers are furiously writing and rewriting blurbs in anticipation. The election is necessarily focused on “the Tangerine’s” tantrums in the south, and the impacts on this country. But we can do better than run a one-issue election. Here are a set of questions that could spark some depth...
It’s truly breathtaking to hear U.S. President Donald Trump muse about the Canada-U.S. border and show his complete ignorance about history. As Canadians know, the border was negotiated in the late 1700s through a number of peaceful discussions—peace treaties, actually. Treaties were signed from 1783 and clarified in the Jay Treaty of 1794, and further detailed in treaties through the...
Team Canada is on the centre line with the prime minister and premiers standing shoulder to shoulder, facing a much larger and meaner opposing team. And then there’s Pierre Poilievre chirping and sniping his own team, “I’d do it better” as he slides around the blue line. If one were to believe his snipes then it’s all Trudeau’s fault, even...
It's obvious that the goal of this tyrannous Trump administration is to break government and democracy. There won’t be any 'going back.' We need to do the best we can to move beyond the frozen horror, and get to doing the work to protect democracy here and abroad with all allies we can find.
Canada is land. From the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic to the Atlantic, from the Coast Mountains to the Saint-Elias range to the Arctic Cordillera and over to the Torngat, from the Kazan to the Churchill to the Bonaventure, from the grasslands to the tundra, it’s all Canada. One ironic piece of Canada is that many Canadians have never been...
Why did U.S. President Donald Trump wipe diversity, equity, and inclusion off the American government’s map? MAGA doesn’t want to talk about the accurate history of their country, they only want to talk about how great it is. Talking about their history of slavery, genocide against Indigenous Peoples—you know, the truth—gets in the way of feeling great and exceptional. Talking...
We might look back on Jan. 6, 2025, as the date on which Canada set itself up for failure. Instead of choosing national solidarity across federal and provincial/territorial systems to stand united against the existential threat of tariffs, the Liberal Party put itself first in spectacular fashion by choosing prorogation. Hindsight is always 20/20—and the fodder for columnis
What’s the future of Métis National Council? The federal government has always dealt with Métis differently than First Nations, and scrip is a good example. On the one hand, the early Indian Affairs Department was busy signing treaties with First Nations communities in the late 1800s, but, on the other hand, would only offer scrip or land ownership to a...
There may be a bit of an issue of ever-expanding budgets in federal departments. If we ever needed a federal government adapt to responding to multiple crises, it is now. Instead, the civil service is getting bent all out of shape trying to find savings, and too bad, but we’ll have to put a hold on things like cohesive policy...
When Russia attacked Ukraine, nearby countries were in shock. Some didn’t even react, although Russian sympathy may also be at play. But Norway took notice because they share 200 kilometres of border with Russia. It’s an unprotected border that looked remarkably similar to the Canada-USA border: you wouldn’t know it’s the border unless somebody told you. But no longer. The...
As I write this on Halloween, things are darn scary. Wars, the rise of bots pushing conspiracies, the American you-know-what, the rhetoric about a potential federal election here: things are scary all over. Just count the number of times you put on a face of disbelief while reading or watching the news. Is it more than five times a day...
The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., is a stand-out in museum content and museology—the science and art of education through exhibit. The building is breathtaking, the content is state-of-the-art storytelling, the exhibits on African American culture are inspiring. The history of slavery and racism in the United States is told through exhibits with candour—factual...
Here’s a bold idea: let’s set out the basic knowledge and capacity to run in federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal elections. Candidates should have knowledge about and belief in government, and they should understand that governance is essential for democracy. They should have the capacity to hold respectful conversations, and have some proven conflict resolution skills. They should have an...
Six Indigenous individuals died by police in a two-week span in this country. In the time between when this column was written and when it makes it to press, I hope nobody else is killed, but I do almost expect it. I hope no other family suffers the take-my-breath-away fear that the police might be called for a mental wellness...
The newest term of the day is “sanewashing”—when media does backflips to try to logically re-interpret into policy what former U.S. president Donald Trump says when all he really did was bafflegab. Picture The Muppets and the “Mahna Mahna” song—now you’ll never get that song out of your head today! The character with the orange hair is about 20 seconds...
In the weeks leading up to the National Day of Reconciliation on Sept. 30, Crown-Indigenous Relations unilaterally cut the funding available to communities to search for unmarked graves at residential schools. More than 100 communities are currently collecting evidence at sites with unmarked graves. This is not cheap work. It requires the experts and kinds of processes that you would...
Is the weather changing for liberalism? It may be sunny outside, but it’s dark and stormy in the minds of small-l liberals and democratic champions. This is category-four angst trying to predict the hurricane of the far right. In many parts of the world, the far right is actually fascism.
What could have been for reconciliation, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Manitoba all have something in common. Vancouver and Winnipeg, too. They’re actively embedding reconciliation, and changing systems wholesale to ensure Indigenous Peoples thrive. Determined leaders in other jurisdictions are leaving this town—both municipally and federally—in the dust.
Dawson Creek is 700 kilometres north of Vancouver on the border of Alberta. It’s Mile Zero on the Alaska Highway to, well, Alaska. When Japan bombed Hawai’i—the unceded territory of the Indigenous Hawai’ians and a major military lynchpin of the United States—the lack of road access to Alaska from the rest of the United States became a major issue for...
It’s been a long time since First Nations, Inuit, and Métis came together. Before the colonizers broke us apart by demanding that we could only be one of those labels, I’m quite sure First Nations and Inuit across the Atlantic and the Northwest Territories were pretty close. Cousins, even.
Workplaces often expect professionalism of their employees, but rarely define what it is. When teams dig into the meaning, they find that “professionalism” means something different to almost everybody. It’s a term and expectation that is based in culture, both one’s own culture and the subculture of the organization. The fastest way to internal conflict is to avoid having this...
This is your regular six-month public service announcement that the RCMP lacks accountability. The Yellowknife Women’s Society in the Northwest Territories released its report on the RCMP’s treatment of homeless Indigenous women on April 11, titled Over-policed & under-protected: Recommendations to improve the relationship between unhoused Indigenous women and the RCMP in Yellowknife.
The Danger Cats is a so-called comedy group whose shows have been cancelled across the country. As media have reported, the group makes fun of the Pickton murders in British Columbia through T-shirt sales. Convicted of murdering six women and accused of killing many more, Robert Pickton committed a slow-rolling tragedy of epic proportions. Many of his victims were Indigenous...
The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is on March 21. This year also marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which itself was the world’s response to human evils of the Holocaust. On this day in 1960, South Africa police opened fire against citizens demonstrating against apartheid laws and killed 69 people. We...
Land acknowledgments are an expected protocol to start meetings and even in email signatures. But what are they accomplishing? One can imagine the email from the feds to First Nations police chiefs, refusing to fund them equitably to any other police force, on that boilerplate signature with a hypocritical land acknowledgement. What a colonial slam. When a corporation starts a...
On the north end of the province of Manitoba on the mighty Churchill River sits Churchill, a small town that doesn’t quite fit in the province that reconciliation almost forgot. Named after some duke who was never there, the land is the traditional territory of Dené and Cree, and Inuit seemed to pass through from time to time as well...
On an overcast day a few weeks ago, a young Indigenous man stood up in the Ottawa Courthouse to hear his judgement. Let’s call him Mitig. Far from his First Nations community in northern Ontario, there was no family to support him. It’s a long story, but the short version is family is difficult to maintain through crisis, and Indigenous...
The year 2023 will go down as the year reconciliation mainstreamed into Canadian consciousness. Remember the good old days when reconciliation was stealth, and we could talk about it without enraging the colonialists and white supremacists? Those were the days. Now reconciliation has the potential to spark some serious resistance. Yes, we’re going mainstream now.
Politics is going to take us all down. In its current form of cut-throat competitiveness and ruthless party controls, superficiality and the soundbite, it is fundamentally unable to meet the challenges of simultaneous crises. This colonial model of politics is no longer serving us, and perhaps has never served us well. What would it take to decolonize politics so that...
After COVID, we are all working to build back, or something like it. We need to talk about the losses and lessons a bit more, and then we can move on. Except health care. Canada’s health-care system is still in a state of crisis. Why’s that? Canada hasn’t funded the health-care system enough to maintain a stable system for things...
On Oct. 14, Australia voted on a referendum to include a Voice for First Nations to their Parliament and changing their constitution. Australia voted against the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples. Australia and Canada share much in common in terms of the state and Indigenous relations: numerous Indigenous nations, a similar era of stolen children, little inclusion in political decision-making until...