Indigenous leaders say they had only short time to talk to Trudeau and premiers

Indigenous leaders who were given a brief opportunity to lay their issues before Canada's First Ministers say they are frustrated with the small amount of time devoted to their concerns and they expect more discussion and real progress in the months ahead.

Representatives of the First Nations, the Inuit and the Métis met for a little more than an hour on Tuesday morning with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers of provinces before the First Ministers held their own private meeting to discuss the economy.

While the leaders of the Indigenous organizations emerged to say they were pleased to have had appeared before the federal and provincial leaders, they said the reconciliation they have been promised is too slow in coming.

And one chief accused Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard of refusing, in the closed-door meeting, to move on Indigenous issues until the federal government agrees to open the constitution to formally recognize the distinct nature of his province.

"We got the Quebec Premier, he says 'listen, we're not going to do anything until the Constitution opens up,'" Isadore Day, the Ontario Regional Chief for the Assembly of First Nations who was part of the AFN's delegation, told reporters. "If we've got one region saying 'we're not going to move on self-government or Indigenous rights until the constitution opens up,' it's simply that First Nations are being held hostage."

Mr. Couillard did not emerge from the meeting at the lunch hour to explain what he had said.

But Mr. Day said the time for "aspirational" statements between Canadian governments and Indigenous people to end.

"We should be talking about substantive, hard-core deadlines," he said. When Mr. Trudeau appears before the chiefs of the AFN at their annual assembly in December, said Mr. Day, he must come with something concrete on how to move forward on repairing the relationship between Canada and its First peoples "because this First Ministers' meeting is nothing but just words and we were shuffled out of the room again …"

Perry Bellegarde, the AFN's National Chief, said there was little time in the meeting with the First Ministers to make significant progress in the lives of Indigenous people. He asked the Prime Minister and the premiers to have a future meeting where First Nations, Inuit and Métis issues are the only ones on the agenda, a request he said was met with "a nodding of heads."

Natan Obed, the president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami which advocates on behalf of Canada's roughly 50,000 Inuit, said any conversation with the Prime Minister and the premiers is an opportunity to educate the country's leaders about the income inequality, poor health outcomes, and a lack of infrastructure in the North.