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This is the problem the prime minister faces — arguably more than even the average Canadian PM would. This prime minister has spoken often of his desire for a better relationship with Indigenous communities and people. He’s spoken a lot about reconciliation. He’s had some major flops on that front, too, of course, from his flippant “Thank you for your donation” dismissal of a protest over poor environmental conditions on a First Nations reserve (for which he apologized) to the obvious damage inflicted by the prolonged and public battle between the Prime Minister’s Office and former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould, an Indigenous woman. Still, if only as a matter of political branding, the PM has tried to sell himself as the federal leader most committed to reconciliation.

So what do you do when a report your government commissioned and spent almost $100 million on concludes that the government you’re running is genocidal?

I’m not sure there’s an easy answer to that question, but we can certainly recap what the prime minister actually did. First he avoided it entirely, speaking in more general terms about Canada needing to do more for the “safety, security and dignity” of Indigenous women and girls. That’s obviously true and fair, but it didn’t help the PM much; every headline that day was some variation of “TRUDEAU WON’T SAY GENOCIDE.” The next day, having decided that just ignoring the word wasn’t going to work, he used it. “We accept (the report’s) findings including that what happened amounts to genocide,” he said. It was a carefully chosen admission — what “happened,” not what’s “happening” — but there it was. Trudeau had admitted it was genocide.