NDP MP Introduces Bill to Criminalize Residential School ‘Denialism’

New Democrat MP Leah Gazan speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, on Dec. 14, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

New Democrat MP Leah Gazan has introduced a private member’s bill to make “denying, justifying or downplaying the harm caused by” Canada’s former residential schools illegal.

“Survivors and their families deserve to heal from the intergenerational tragedy and be free from violent hate, and we cannot allow their safety and well-being to be put further at risk,” Gazan said when introducing Bill C-413 in the House of Commons on Sept. 26.

If passed, the bill would add to the Criminal Code the offence of “wilfully promoting hatred against indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, justifying or downplaying the harm caused by the residential school system in Canada.”

Under the proposed legislation, any person who communicates such statements other than in private conversation would be guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for up to two years.

The bill says a the person would not be convicted of an offence if they could establish the statements communicated were true, they attempted to establish them based on a religious text, or if the statements were relevant to a subject of public interest and “on reasonable grounds they believed them to be true.”

Private member’s bills do not often pass. The MP’s previous bill, which would have established a guaranteed basic income scheme in Canada, was defeated on Sept. 25.

Gazan put forth a motion in the House of Commons in 2023 to recognize the residential school system as an act of genocide under Article II of the United Nations Convention on Genocide.

A 2023 Senate committee report recommended that Ottawa take “every action necessary” to combat residential school denialism, including both civil and criminal sanctions. Then-Justice Minister David Lametti subsequently said he was open to all suggestions to deal with denialism, such as “a legal solution and outlawing it” similar to how other countries criminalize Holocaust denial.

The Liberal government added an amendment to the Criminal Code in the 2022 budget implementation bill to prohibit public statements that promote anti-Semitism “by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust.”

An estimated 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Metis children attended Canada’s residential school system.

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a public apology on behalf of the Canadian government in 2008 to all former students of residential schools, and offered a national settlement. On May 10, 2006, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was approved by courts across the country, making it the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history—to pay out $1.9 billion as compensation to former residential students.

The residential school system was given new attention in 2021 after the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation report that said remains of 215 children were found using ground-penetrating radar around a former Kamloops Indian Residential School in B.C. That figure was later revised to 200.

More such reports arose about other former sites of residential schools across Canada. Of the sites that have been excavated, no bodies have been found.

In October 2021, the last of 34 excavations were completed on the grounds of Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton after ground-penetrating radar detected “anomalies” under the soil. No human remains were found.

In the summer of 2023, excavations were also carried out in the basement of a Catholic church on the site of the former Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba following the detection of 14 anomalies, but no evidence of human remains was discovered.

The B.C. government announced on June 3 of this year that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Williams Lake First Nation and the RCMP to potentially excavate the site of the former St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School.

There have been no excavations at the Kamloops site to date.

Editor’s note: This article was updated on Sept. 30 to add details about excavations at former residential schools done so far.