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Countless words have been written in voluminous reports with hundreds of recommendations regarding the promise that Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people will be transformed. Often years in the making and costing millions of dollars, the reports are encyclopedic, in both the good and the dull sense.

Warmly welcomed by politicians, the full reports with their many volumes are rarely read by them or by anyone else, including journalists and experts offering sage commentary.

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The excuses are easy: The reports are too long. We are too busy to read more than the executive summaries. And how much easier it is to reduce it all to a simple debate over whether using the word genocide is appropriate to describe the murders and disappearances of so many Aboriginal women.

For every recommendation, promises are made to give due consideration. But after public attention has inevitably and quickly pivoted to the latest Instagram-able issues, it has been easy for politicians to decide the recommendations are too costly in dollar terms, political capital, or both.