We all know from any talk from any group of people here in Canada that reconciliation is not going to happen overnight. It's going to take time and commitment, but it also is going to need support to create those spaces for people who ask, “What can I do?” When I talked to the 16- and 17-year-olds, that was a question that dumbfounded me. They asked us, “What can we do as our part for reconciliation?” I wasn't ready for that question, to be honest. They were 16-year-olds who are asking me. I'm sure those eight- and nine-year-olds are going to ask me the same type of question.
There are a lot of Canadians out there who don't know what they have to do as their part in reconciliation. If there are spaces that we create, like a national statutory holiday, people are not going to be so ignorant as to tell their kids that this day is just the taxpayer's burden. Again, those are the words and language that we have to get rid of.
We would have in our school systems what that statutory holiday is all about, what its intentions are, where it's supposed to go and how it's supposed to unite us. If we don't create those spaces, I don't think we'll have those real dialogues that need to happen for us to achieve some success.