Canada's secret exposed

Our ugly family secret is getting out.

Canada's shameful record on native rights -- especially our treatment of the Innu living in Labrador and Quebec -- is on global display. A British human rights organization has issued a scathing report, accusing the Canadian government of destroying the Innu way of life and driving the country's northernmost aboriginal people to suicide.

The suicide rate for Canada's Innu is the highest in the world. One out of every 562 Innu people take their own lives. That compares with one out of every 7,000 Canadians.

This problem is not new. For 50 years, the Innu have lived in abject poverty, each generation sinking deeper and deeper into hopelessness, substance abuse and suicide. A Royal Commission has called attention to their plight. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has repeatedly highlighted the treatment of Canada's indigenous people as our most serious human rights problem.

Ottawa professes to care but does little. Now the world knows.

-- The Toronto Star, Toronto, Canada