OTTAWA — An NDP MP tabled a bill Thursday seeking to change the Criminal Code to criminalize downplaying, denying or condoning the harms of residential schools in Canada.
Leah Gazan, who represents Winnipeg Centre, presented her private member’s bill on Monday, less than a week before the country is set to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, meant to honour residential schools survivors and their families.
Private member’s bills rarely pass, however, several years earlier the Liberal government passed an 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 a speech on Thursday, Gazan says that if passed, her 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.”
“All parliamentarians must stand firm against all forms of damaging hate speech, including the denial of the tragedy of the residential schools in Canada,” she said on Thursday.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which was established to investigate the residential school system, heard from thousands of survivors who testified to experiencing physical, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse.
The government-funded church-run system saw more 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children removed from their homes and placed in these institutions. A majority belonged to the Catholic Church.
The commission’s final report released in 2015 also estimated more than 6,000 Indigenous children died at the institutions. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has a recorded list of the names of more than 4,000 who died.
“Survivors and their families deserve to heal from this intergenerational tragedy, be free from violent hate and we cannot allow their safety and well-being to be put further at-risk,” Gazan said in her speech on Thursday.
A request for comment from Minister of Justice Arif Virani’s office about whether the government supports Gazan’s efforts has not yet been returned.
Last fall, Gazan tabled a motion that called on members of Parliament to recognize the residential school system as a genocide, which received unanimous consent from Parliament.
-With files from The Canadian Press
National Post
Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.