E/CN.4/2004/18/Add.2 page 23 introduced by the Treaty Commissioner, a judge driven by great educational and social zeal, who takes due account of the rights of aboriginals and of their sensitivities. The Office of the Treaty Commissioner (OTC) was initially created by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) in 1989 with a mandate to review treaty land entitlement arising from treaties with aboriginal peoples and to carry out educational projects. In 1997, the OTC’s mandate was updated and extended to health matters, children’s welfare, housing, justice, hunting, fishing, gathering and land use, in addition to treaty obligations and its educational goals. The Commissioner’s mandate is implemented through an original approach, which reaches beyond mere application of the law and seeks to achieve understanding between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples by teaching the public about the significance of treaties. A teaching kit on treaties has been produced for the use of the province’s teachers. No similar initiative, however, has ever been tried or even thought of in British Columbia or in Quebec. Another noteworthy example is the interesting action taken by the police in the Province of Ontario to combat racial profiling, a model which might well have been copied by other provinces. C. The lack of intellectual strategy 78. The lack of any intellectual strategy is a serious handicap in Canada’s undoubted efforts to combat racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia.17 79. This silence or lack of visibility regarding Canada’s cultural diversity shows what little emphasis is placed on the cultural factor in the fight against racism and discrimination. The ideological mainstay in the build-up of racism and discriminatory practice throughout North America, from slavery to colonization, was the cultural contempt in which the dominated communities, whether native or African, were held. It is due to this long-term build-up that racism has come to imbue the culture, mentalities, behaviours and even the deepest subconscious layers of the peoples of the region. Any attempt to eradicate the racist culture and mentality therefore requires, apart from the force of law, mobilizing intellectual tools to dismantle its deep-rooted causes, mechanisms, processes, expressions and language. The law forbids, condemns, redresses and remedies but does not necessarily bring about a change of heart. 80. The cultural depth of racism also colours the deepest layers of the emotions and sensitivities of discriminatory experience. Like most countries, Canada does not appear to have grasped the magnitude of this submerged part of the racist iceberg. And yet it is only by taking account of this intangible dimension of racism, through an appropriate intellectual and ethical strategy, that it will be possible in the longer term, with the help of legal strategy, to ensure the eradication of racism and discrimination. There is now an urgent need for this strategy in view of the resurgence of racist acts and behaviours, which resurface like natural reflexes in countries which are otherwise well equipped with sound and exhaustive political and legal strategies for combating their long-term racist experience. The main areas which this intellectual and ethical strategy must tackle include the building of identity, the writing of history, education programmes, value systems, images and perception. The interviews with the representatives of the communities show that, despite all the efforts made to turn Canada into an egalitarian State respectful of its ethnic and cultural diversity, the intellectual after-effects of the legacy of racial discrimination left behind by European colonization still persist through the denial of those communities’ cultural specificity.