Canada voted Monday to elect its new prime minister and House of Commons. The Liberal party lost the majority it had enjoyed the past four years but managed to maintain a minority advantage over the Conservatives, meaning Justin Trudeau will remain prime minister for another four years.

One question he should be asking himself, amid the sigh of relief and the wrangling over coalitions in parliament, is why, after turning out in such high numbers in the last election, many people of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities sat this vote out.

The run-up to the 2015 election and the past four years under the leadership of Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party saw a spike in visibility for First Nations issues in Canadian politics. But as Trudeau’s first administration wound down and Indigenous voters began to revisit the promises Trudeau and the Liberals made both on the 2015 campaign trail and over his last four years in office, many began coming to a disappointing but ultimately unsurprising conclusion: the Canadian government, even when wrested away from the Conservatives, still does not care enough about its Indigenous citizens.

Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaq lawyer, professor, and politician, plainly addressed this understanding in a recent column for Macleans: “Regardless of who First Nations vote for in any federal election, their voice makes no actual difference. The Canadian state has had the same ‘Indian policy’ for decades, and each party pushes forward with the assimilation of First Nations, albeit with varying degrees of politeness.”

Canadian government and culture, when compared to the U.S., is strides ahead: the nation’s largest media outlet, the CBC, has a thriving Indigenous affairs unit; its government actively acknowledges and is working to address the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis (MMIW); some of the best work to come out of Canada’s film industry in the past two decades has been distinctly, unapologetically Indigenous in both subject and production.