Graydon Nicholas seeks action on Truth and Reconciliation report

New Brunswick's former lieutenant-governor says he hopes the prime minister and his cabinet will look at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report "in a major way" and respond.

Graydon Nicholas says he has seen governments walk away from many other "beautiful" national reports because the recommendations were seen as too costly.

Nicholas says it may take until next fall's throne speech before it's clear what action the federal government will take on the report's 94 recommendations, released on Tuesday in Ottawa.

He thinks the most important one deals with creating an independent national council to follow through with the recommendations.

"How, in fact, do we develop a plan so that, number one, this never happens. Secondly is: how do we restore dignity? Because that's what happened in the residential schools; the dignity was destroyed in the child. And then how do you recover that after generations and generations and generations of that devastating policy?

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"It's going to take a while. So you have to have people who are deeply committed, people who have the skills and the knowledge, people who have the compassion, people who have listening skills, people who have a desire, 'Let me see if there can be a better chapter into the future.'"

In the meantime, he says, the report calls on all governments and every Canadian citizen to do something to address past wrongs against aboriginal people.

"I think if we think reconciliation is only one avenue between the First Nations and the federal government, I think we're sadly mistaken in this country. It involves all of Canada."

Nicholas says the past wrongs were largely based on the idea that others knew what was best for First Nations people.

Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the commission, called for changes in policies and programs, as well as commemoration through education and memorials, to address the "cultural genocide" of residential schools on aboriginal communities.

​"Words are not enough," Sinclair said, noting that seven generations were denied their identity as they were separated from their language, culture, spiritual traditions and their collective history.

The report follows six years of hearings and testimony from more than 6,000 residential school survivors and their loved ones.