Where I live it is also a holiday. It is talked about, though, in the school. It's not an either-or. I can tell you that public ceremonies are huge. People come out in a relatively small city to pack the biggest available public space there is. Whether that would happen if there was not a statutory holiday, I don't know. I think it's an issue of availability for people.
I do want to say this, though. On the question of a national day for truth and reconciliation, we have contemplated it. One thing a statutory holiday would do, at least if it applied to the public sector, is that it would enable public servants to be available to pay attention to this. I say that for two reasons.
One is because the history of it all is very tied to issues of law and public policy, to those things that were put in place, advocated, and spearheaded by public servants. I think that is part of the learning in that profession that is valuable even today.
The other thing is the experience we had with our Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In some parts of the country where we held our national events, jurisdictions—sometimes governments, sometimes major corporations, and sometimes universities and academic centres—allowed their staff a so-called “day off”. It wasn't really. I would call it more of a professional development day. They had the day, but specifically to go and attend and learn what was going on at the event, so it was qualified.