The Vatican comes here to apologize to Métis, Inuit and First Nations peoples. His passage would cost up to 18 million, including one million for Quebec alone. Roads are blocked. We sell tickets. We can watch the Pope on a screen on the Plains of Abraham. (Personally, I would prefer Bruce Springsteen, but hey, let’s move on.) It’s expensive to clear your conscience.
What could have been done with those millions? Indigenous communities still do not have running water. Inuit homes are overcrowded. Life expectancy in these communities is still lower than the Canadian average. Poverty reigns, with the violence that comes with it. The contempt for their culture, the fruit of colonization, made the First Peoples excluded, many of whom live in misery. And there, we come to apologize, at the expense of the taxpayers, for having attacked them?
The fact of welcoming the head of an obsolete institution which continues to exclude women from its ranks, with – height of the ridiculous – Mr. Denis Coderre as “ambassador” of the event (I had to say it!) , is truly revolting.
To see in video