Reconciling Reconciliation: Differing Conceptions of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

This paper considers the concept of reconciliation as it is utilized in two fora: the Supreme Court of Canada (the Court) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the legacy of the “Indian residential schools” (TRC). The concept’s development in the Court’s jurisprudence, as compared to the scholarly literature of transitional justice, warrants careful consideration. The Court has used the term in decisions seeking to balance assertions of Indigenous sovereignty in the context of Canadian colonialism. However, this concept of reconciliation is quite different from that which has entered Canadian discourse from the TRC. The author suggests that the vision of reconciliation enunciated by the TRC as a mutual process to be engaged in by Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples alike would be a more just conception to adopt