Warren Mirko and Laurisa Dohm: If Canada wants to be more like Europe, it can look to Sweden

An actual robust debate about Indigenous rights and the state's jurisdiction, right out in public? Imagine that.

By: Warren Mirko and Laurisa Dohm

Something happened in Sweden recently that would be nearly unthinkable in Canada.

There was a substantive public discourse about the tension between Indigenous rights, the broader public interest, and the state’s jurisdiction, in prominent newspapers and on television.

Ebba Busch, Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, stood at a press conference in Luleå and argued that reindeer herding should no longer be classified as a riksintresse, a formal national interest designation that grants legal protection in land-use planning. She proposed that reindeer stocks should be cut and subsidies re-allocated to other cultural programs in order to ease tensions between competing land-use interests in northern Sweden. Her reasoning: reindeer herding affects very large areas of Sweden’s land mass but carries limited economic significance.

The response was immediate. Indigenous Sámi groups called it election propaganda. The chairman of Girjas Sámi village published a rebuttal arguing that Sámi rights to hunt and fish are grounded in ancient tradition, and that her party’s framing mischaracterizes those rights as economic interest rather than constitutionally recognized Indigenous rights. The Swedish public broadcaster’s own reporter called the debate “a hornet’s nest.”

And yet the debate actually took place. On the nightly news, no less.

Deputy Prime Minister Busch made a substantive argument about how she thinks the state should weigh competing interests in its northern regions, with her reasoning stated plainly, and Sámi leaders answered in kind. That is democratic governance.

Canada’s political class has spent decades avoiding exactly this kind of clarity and honest intellectual engagement. It has been sacrificed at the altar of conflict avoidance and by the acceptance of canned platitudes carefully crafted to say precisely nothing at all.

Sweden ranks fourth in the world on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, with a near perfect score of 9.4/10 for political culture. It also takes Indigenous rights seriously, having established an independent truth commission in 2020 to study historical abuses against the Sámi.

And yet Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld the government’s decision in June 2024 to grant an iron ore mining concession at Kallak in northern Lapland, despite contentious opposition and legal arguments that insufficient consultation had violated Sámi’s rights to free, prior, and informed consent. Now, its Deputy Prime Minister is arguing publicly that the state must regain clearer authority to make decisions across its entire territory, and that the interests of reindeer herding cannot be allowed to dominate and block decision making processes as they do today.

Canada, meanwhile, is moving in the opposite direction. Bill C-5, enabling fast-tracked approval of projects deemed in the national interest, became law in late June 2025 despite strong and growing opposition from Indigenous organizations. Justice Minister Sean Fraser articulated the government’s position that UNDRIP requires consultation but does not amount to “a blanket veto power” over projects — a statement which he was promptly forced to apologize for in less than 24 hours, following a “frustrated” private phone call from Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak.

Rather than engaging in an intellectually honest and substantive public discourse, the Canadian federal government accepted their browbeating and retreated to vague familiar language of partnership and reconciliation. They chose to leave the underlying question of who makes the final call to play out in the courts.

A 2025 Angus Reid survey found that one quarter of Canadians believe First Nations should hold a veto over projects on traditional territory, while one quarter believe projects in the national interest should proceed regardless of objections. The majority sits somewhere between those poles. That is not a public demanding paralysis. It is a public waiting for a framework, because its leaders have declined to offer one.

The Swedish debate has its critics, and some of those criticisms land. Critics argue that Sweden has historically championed Indigenous rights internationally while applying a weaker standard at home, and Busch’s specific proposals could face legitimate legal challenges. But one can dispute her policy conclusions while recognizing her argument: that the state must retain authority to govern after consultation concludes.

This same argument should be viewed by Canadians as a precondition of functioning democracy and as a necessity for creating regulatory certainty, rather than labeled as a threat to reconciliation.

Mark Carney won an election on the premise that Canada should govern more like a European social democracy. That aspiration requires more than clever industrial policy and robust state capacity. It requires elected officials being willing to make and defend difficult decisions in public — even live on the nightly news — without retreating the moment the argument gets uncomfortable.

Sweden is doing that. Canada is avoiding it.

Warren Mirko is the executive director of Public Land Use Society (PLUS) and has more than 15 years of experience in public relations and regulatory risk management across provincial and federal agencies.

Laurisa Dohm holds an M.Sc from Gothenburg University and previously lived and studied in Sweden for several years, now freelancing as a strategy and policy advisor.

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