On September 30, CUPE Ontario marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and honours it as time of reflection, solemn recollection and the pursuit of honest confrontation of Canada’s settler-colonialist past.
The day was established in response to one of the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is set aside in honour the survivors of Canada’s residential schools and the harm that was inflicted on First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities as a consequence.
But reconciliation cannot be achieved without justice. We must do more than simply bear witness when Indigenous workers and communities remain excluded from equitable treatment and basic rights.
Instances of these inequities still abound.
The discovery of unmarked graves continues at former residential school sites. In 2025, over 140 potential burial sites were identified at the McIntosh Indian Residential School near Grassy Narrows in northwestern Ontario. Yet even as that discovery underscored the need to confront this painful history, the federal government refused to provide adequate funding to continue the work.
Across Ontario, systemic racism continues to affect Indigenous people in the workplace and in daily life. Members of Indigenous communities suffer from higher rates of discrimination and lower wages. They live with poorer housing and lower health outcomes. And they experience a persistent lack of representation, even in our own union. Many communities in northern Ontario continue to live under long-standing water advisories, in what remains a national scandal.
This environmental injustice extends into the increasing severity of our wildfire season, which has hit Indigenous lands hardest and displaced entire communities in northwestern Ontario.
These crises highlight just some of the ways that Indigenous peoples are consistently placed at the bottom of the list when it comes to resource allocation, emergency response, and dignified treatment.
In the spirit of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we must commit to profound change to redress these systemic wrongs.
With the support of nearly 310,000 CUPE members across the province, CUPE Ontario’s Indigenous Council is undertaking the work of challenging these inequities. Efforts to tackle anti-Indigenous racism is leading to tangible changes in the culture and hiring practices of our union. CUPE has also developed Walking the talk, a guide to reconciliation for CUPE locals, and CUPE Ontario’s Women in Leadership Development WILD) program is being modeled across CUPE to ensure that the voices of Indigenous leaders, among others in our union, are heard.
CUPE Ontario and the Indigenous Council also stand firmly in solidarity with the people of Grassy Narrows First Nation in their decades-long fight for justice for the mercury poisoning that contaminated their water and land. For sixty years, their community has suffered the devastating health consequences of industrial pollution, yet both provincial and federal governments have repeatedly failed to provide adequate compensation or halt the sources of contamination.
On Wednesday, September 23, Grassy Narrows youth and leaders concluded a 1,700-kilometer journey to Toronto for River Run 2026, the annual event in support of justice for the people of Grassy Narrows. CUPE Ontario leaders and members, along with representatives of the Indigenous Council, were proud to join them on their march to Queen’s Park and echo their demands for just compensation, an end to the pollution of their land and the restoration of their community.
On the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, let us recommit to justice for Indigenous peoples and accountability from our governments and ourselves. As trade unionists, we commit to using the power of our collective voice to demand concrete actions that advance genuine justice for all Indigenous peoples in Ontario and across Canada.
