OTTAWA – Responding to the news from the U.S. that police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all charges for the murder of George Floyd, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes this event has acted as a wake-up call for Canadians about the systemic racism in this country and hopes that someone will finally do something about it.
“As one of the people who only found out last year that racialized Canadians and racialized people around the world suffer from systemic discrimination, I think it’s terrible, and there’s an awful lot of work to do to fix our broken society,” Trudeau said in an interview shortly after the verdict was read. “I wish whoever is responsible for undertaking that challenge the best of luck.”
Trudeau, who oversaw a 32% increase in spending on the RCMP during his first five years as prime minister, believes that the racism endemic in Canada’s institutions can be overcome, and even took a knee at an anti-racism demonstration last June in the hopes that his symbolic action would inspire someone in a position of power to make concrete changes to those racist institutions.
“The micro-aggressions, the overt racism, the challenges within our institutions and within our daily lives that exist need to be addressed,” Trudeau said. “I don’t know who will address it. Perhaps the Queen?”
While his election promises of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples have yet to materialize six years into his time as Canada’s leader, Trudeau nevertheless remains optimistic that someone will, at some point in the future, make sure all First Nations communities have clean, safe drinking water and will stop the Canadian government from treating Indigenous people and their concerns as nothing more than irritating obstacles to the global resource extraction industry.
“There is huge momentum right now to transform societies so that they are fairer and more inclusive for everyone,” Trudeau’s remarks concluded. “I can’t express how much I look forward to watching other people do the difficult work required to make that happen.”
Trudeau is hopeful that whoever takes on Canada’s institutional racism problem also looks into the sexual violence in Canada’s military because he’s recently heard that’s out of control.
