On Nov. 18, Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada announced the composition of her new 14-member executive committee, with roles ranging from security and housing to green economic development. While Ferrada’s committee included a plethora of portfolios, it omitted a committee member explicitly responsible for reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples—a role that had been active for almost eight years under the Valérie Plante administration.
Ferrada has insisted that reconciliation remains a top priority for her administration, stating that the responsibilities of the role would instead be handled by Associate Councillor of Cultural Services, Diversity and Inclusion (SDIS), Josué Corvil. However, Corvil’s title contains no explicit reference to reconciliation.
In conflating reconciliation efforts with ‘cultural diversity and inclusion,’ Ferrada’s government has failed to re-enshrine the importance of acknowledging, atoning for, and taking action to provide redress for Canada’s history of colonial violence and dispossession. Instead, this homogenization collapses nation-to-nation responsibility into a vague diversity mandate. The Ferrada administration must reinstate the role and pursue reconciliation in its genuine form: A distinct political relationship rooted in Indigenous sovereignty that addresses the city’s presence on the unceded land of the Kanien’kehá:ka, Anishinaabeg, Abenaki and Huron/Wendat peoples.
Plante first introduced the reconciliation role in 2018 following citywide criticism for her executive committee’s lack of racial diversity. When announcing the creation of the role, Plante framed it as critical to strengthening dialogue with Indigenous nations and improving the efficacy of the city’s reconciliation efforts. Yet, the changes Plante’s cabinet implemented through this role remained superficial, neglecting deep-rooted issues that affect Indigenous people at disproportionate rates, such as police harassment, anti-Indigenous racism, and homelessness. Municipal action repeatedly stalled at symbolism—resulting in statements, consultations, and commemorations without durable policy, funding or enforcement.
The Ferrada government had an opportunity to correct the egregious shortcomings of prior administrations, but by abolishing the reconciliation role, her government has abandoned its obligations—not only to move beyond the lacklustre efforts of her predecessors, but to commit to reconciliation at all. Many of the issues central to the objectives of reconciliation—land claims and stewardship, consent over development, policing, and criminalization—do not fall under the ‘diversity’ umbrella of responsibilities, making her restructuring of the committee nonsensical and highly problematic.
Indigenous children are over 17 times more likely to be removed from their families and placed in the child welfare system than non-Indigenous children. These high rates of parent-child separation are a direct continuation of the Residential School system, which perpetuated a multi-generational cycle of family disruption. Clearly, combating colonial structures, which are deeply embedded in every aspect of governance, policing, healthcare, and child welfare, requires more than standardized Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) measures. Any policy that governs enforcement, service access, or institutional oversight should require not just consultation, but active inclusion and decision-making power. Yet, with the removal of this role, the cabinet has done more than sideline reconciliation—it has eliminated Indigenous representation altogether, effectively shutting Indigenous voices out of executive decision-making.
The city’s decision to bury reconciliation inside Corvil’s role under SDIS runs parallel to McGill’s own chronic failure to prioritize genuine reconciliation measures. The university has repeatedly claimed its commitment to the 94 calls to action identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and its own 52 Calls to Action, yet it has repeatedly failed to deliver anything more than mere symbolic commitments to institutional change. Empty land acknowledgements cannot conceal the fact that the university continues construction of the New Vic Project and aggressive legal injunction against the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers) despite mounting evidence of potential human remains on the site.
If reconciliation is truly a priority, both Montreal and McGill need to act as such—structurally, not rhetorically. Reconciliation cannot be managed as a sub-file of ‘inclusion.’ It is a political process that demands redistribution of power, consent, and sustained action.
