Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has trouble understanding the media hype generated by his statements deemed insensitive to children who ended up in residential schools for Indigenous people. “I have other things to talk about besides that! »He launches the day after his participation in the show Everybody talks about it, where he notably told of having eaten his batch of baked beans and oatmeal during his “difficult” life as a boarder.
Jean Chrétien prefers to relate some of the anecdotes of lawyer, minister, prime minister and former prime minister found in his latest book, My new stories (Les éditions La Presse), but he answered, with the ardor which characterizes him, to all the questions. “I have nothing to hide,” repeats the 87-year-old man, who has played the card of authenticity throughout his political career.
Hard to believe
Jean Chrétien repeats that he never heard of the abuse inflicted on young Native people forcibly sent to one or another of the country’s residential schools during the six and a half years he was head of the Department of Indian Affairs (1968-1974). .
However, NDP MP Charlie Angus said on Monday that he had already come across “a letter written by hand by a teacher in 1968 telling Jean Chrétien of the crimes committed against children” inside the Sainte boarding school. -Anne from Fort Albany, Northern Ontario.
More than half a century later, the former Liberal leader is categorical: the missive has never found its way into his hands. Moreover, among the “hundreds of letters” sent to a minister’s office, “there are probably many that you never see,” says Mr. Chrétien.
That a minister is not alerted by the administration of a worrying situation reported in a letter addressed to him, is this not a problem? “Listen, if every minister knew everything that goes on in a ministry, there would be a lot of work,” retorts the man with some forty years of political life behind the tie. “There are thousands of people working for you. So for sure he [le ministre] must know, but he can’t be aware of who opened the door at 9am in the morning. It’s not his job, ”he adds.
Elsewhere, Mr. Chrétien finds it hard to believe that the majority of Aboriginal children were forcibly sent to residential schools in order – according to former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin – to “bring out the Indian [d’eux]”And thus solve what was called the Indian problem”. Some children found themselves in a boarding school because “they wanted to go to school”, nuance Mr. Chrétien, noting moreover, not without pride, that thousands of young aboriginals graduated each year and no longer a dozen like this was the case when he joined the Department of Indian Affairs half a century ago. “I don’t want to rewrite history. It’s sad what happened. I regret it, but we have to think about the future, and the task that I thought was mine was to build a better future for Canada, ”he continues.
” There is no end “
Unlike his successors Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, Jean Chrétien never offered, according to his recollection, an apology on behalf of the Canadian government, neither to First Nations and Inuit nor to anyone else, during his 10 years in power. “There were all kinds of people asking for excuses: there were the Japanese, there were the Italians. They wanted to have excuses because we were not nice during the war ”, he recounts, while mentioning that the figure of the ex-dictator Benito Mussolini found his way into the interior frescoes of the house. he Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense church in Montreal.
Jean Chrétien does not break the sugar on the back of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who begs Pope Francis to in turn apologize to the Indigenous nations of Canada, but so far to no avail. “Let him do it, very well.” I didn’t do it because it wasn’t the way we operated. We were looking at the future. We weren’t debating what had happened in the past, ”he says.
In his “new stories”, Mr. Chrétien says he even dissuaded Queen Elizabeth II from acquiescing to the request of the former Prime Minister of New Zealand James Bolger to offer his apology in person, on behalf of the monarchy. British, for the treatment of indigenous Maori by the British colonial administration. “To lighten the mood a bit, I said to him, jokingly: ‘Your Majesty, if you start, I will have to bring you to Canada, and since we have several hundred indigenous communities, you will be on your knees. for at least two years, ”” he recounts in his book, which is expected in bookstores, in Canada’s two official languages, this week. ” [Q]When these kinds of excuses begin, there is no end. Talk to Justin Trudeau… ”
Jean Chrétien denies having been insensitive to the living conditions of the Aboriginals, which he describes as a “global problem”. As proof, he recalls having imposed, after his arrival at 24 Sussex Drive, budget cuts on all departments except that of Indian Affairs. “I cut off my wife’s office, I put aside the Prime Minister’s limousine, and I didn’t cut anything among the Indians because I knew the problem,” he explains, while specifying that his instructions were not unanimous within his team.