Today is Canada’s “National Day for Truth and Reconciliation,” a statutory holiday in many parts of the country.
A growing cohort of informed Canadians will see this day as one of countless federal government virtue signaling-cum-propaganda efforts meant to obscure, deny, or hide the truth about our country’s interaction with its indigenous people, notably, the role played in this interaction by the Indian Residential Schools a noble albeit flawed and occasionally harmful effort to help Canada’s first settlers adapt to the challenges of a rapidly modernizing country, an effort the historical record shows indigenous people and their leaders strongly embraced.
Today is also four short days after a reprehensible motion by Leah Gazan, the NDP Member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre, presented in a private member’s bill, criminalizing residential school “denialism” — defined as “downplaying, denying or condoning the harms of residential schools in Canada.”
Her bill rides on the back of a Liberal government amendment to its 2022 budget implementation bill that added a criminal provision against making public statements that promote antisemitism “by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust.”
In short, Gazan sees Canada’s generally benevolent treatment of children attending the indigenous boarding schools where not a single verified murder of students took place as equivalent to the Nazi murder of six million Jews before and during the Second World War.
As of last November, the federal Justice Department said it was not aware of any charges or prosecutions having been laid under that offence. British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, and Alberta all said they had no charges or cases on record, so the constitutionality of the law has not been tested.
Gazan confirmed in an interview last Thursday she drew inspiration from the existing provision — which has yet to see any charges or prosecutions — saying she wants to see the “genocide” of residential schools given the same status.
Gazan is of mixed descent. Her mother was a Chinese and Lakota woman and her father was a Jewish Holocaust survivor. She said the history of genocide on one side of her family “is never up for debate.”
Her words say she also wants no debate on the charge of an indigneous genocide that never occurred.
“That is not true for Indigenous People of Canada,” she said on Thursday.
“I cannot think of anything more violent to survivors and their family members and community to constantly have their history with genocide up for debate. If this country is serious about reconciling it has to come to terms with some of our history and take the actions necessary to protect those that are most impacted by it.”
If passed, Gazan’s private member’s bill would make it an offence to willfully promote hatred against indigenous people “by condoning, denying, justifying or downplaying the harm caused by the residential school system in Canada.”
In her speech to the House of Commons after tabling it, she said, “All parliamentarians must stand firm against all forms of damaging hate speech, including the denial of the tragedy of the residential schools in Canada.”
If they were all still alive, most of the 150,000 children voluntarily sent to the residential schools from loving homes undamaged by orphanhood or systemic child abuse or neglect would vigorously challenge her assertions.
Though the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which was established to investigate the residential school system, heard from thousands of former students who testified to experiencing physical, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse, as well as malnutrition, it failed to interrogate these claims or determine whether they arrived at the schools already badly damaged by their troubled home experience on impoverished Indian reserves.
Last fall, Gazan also tabled a motion that called on Members of Parliament to recognize the residential school system as a genocide, which received unanimous consent from Parliament.
On Thursday, she told the National Post that she respects free speech but that “all rights have limitations.”
“There’s a difference between freedom of speech and hate speech,” Gazan said, adding the abuses perpetrated on Indigenous children are irrefutable.
What she refuses to acknowledge is that only a handful of these reported abuses have been proven in a court of law or that they are overwhelmed by stories of a happy and rewarding school life, as carefully revealed here, here, here, here, and here.
Chantalle Aubertin, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Arif Virani said, “We must not ignore the lasting impact these schools had on Indigenous peoples — an intergenerational trauma that continues to be deeply felt today. The denial of the atrocities that occurred remains painful for survivors, their families, and communities.”
Whatever “intergeneration trauma that continues to be felt today” is a product of the incomplete integration into the larger Canadian society of indigenous people despite following 500 years of contact with Western civilization. In particular, the Indian Residential Schools failed to do so because no more than one-third of indigenous children attended for an average of 4.5 years. Nearly all but orphans returned home on weekends if their homes were nearby or for long Christmas and summer holidays where they continued to internalize and practice their traditional ways of life.
Conservative MP Jamie Schmale said in a statement last Thursday that his party would “closely examine” the bill.
“The residential school system is a dark chapter of our nation’s history. In 2008, the Canadian government under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered an apology finally acknowledging the horrors of the residential school system,” Schmale said.
The true horror is that one-third of indigenous children attended no school at all during the period the residential schools were operating under government control and funding, 1883-1996.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse posted on X that she supports the bill.
“Each political party should be in support of this bill,” she added.
Despite a lack of evidence, attempts to criminalize “residential school denialism” continue.
Private member bills are rarely approved. Hopefully, this groundless bill will fail to pass as well.
