Denialism

Canada's Unproven Mass-Grave Scandal
Progressives want to outlaw 'denialism,' but no actual remains have been found.

Progressives want the state to monitor truth in the public square, and some would give government the power to punish dissent from approved narratives. Last month Hillary Clinton proposed criminalizing speech she labels as "propaganda."

Any first-year law student can tell you why that won't fly under the U.S. Constitution. But in Canada protections for those who question conventional wisdom aren't nearly so secure—even if the truth is on their side.
Last month, Leah Gazan, a New Democratic Party member of Parliament from Winnipeg, introduced a bill to criminalize "wilfully promoting hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada through statements communicated other than in private conversation."

The bill refers to government-sponsored Catholic and Anglican boarding schools that served indigenous children from the 1830s to the 1990s. Progressives argue the residential schools engaged in genocide against the Indian community.
*** If the bill becomes law, Canadians who disagree could be hauled into court. New legislation drafted by the Trudeau government to outlaw hate speech might also be used to criminalize contrary views.

Canadians once considered residential schools a noble idea, a way to educate Indian children whose families lived in remote areas. But in the 1990s allegations of abuse emerged.

As part of a 2007 settlement of a class-action lawsuit, the government agreed to establish a truth and reconciliation commission using government data and first-person recollections. Truth was its first casualty.

In a 2010 speech to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Commissioner Murray Sinclair declared that "for roughly seven generations nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school. They were taken from their families, tribes, and communities, and forced to live in those institutions of assimilation."
That was untrue.

During the time of the residential schools, only Indian children of "status" (i.e., belonging to "First Nation" groups) were required to go to school. According to Nina Green, who researched the history for a heavily documented essay in the Dorchester Review, in most years 30% to 35% or fewer Indian children with status attended the boarding schools.

This was partly because demand outstripped supply in many years.
The other two-thirds either attended day schools or didn't go to school. Retired University of Calgary professor Tom Flanagan, who published a best-selling book of essays by historians and researchers on the controversy, maintains that most children attended residential schools with parental consent.

In his speech at the U.N., Mr. Sinclair tied residential schools to "unacceptably poor education results" and "runaway rates of suicide, family violence, substance abuse, high rates of incarceration, street gang influence, child welfare apprehensions, homelessness, poverty, and family breakdowns."
But as Ms. Green points out, residential schools achieved better results than day schools, which had high rates of absenteeism.

Given that only a minority of Indian children went to residential schools, the system can't explain the broad social breakdown of Indian communities.

The commission's 2015 final report found the residential schools responsible for "cultural genocide." But that wasn't enough for the crowd seeking to rewrite Canadian history.

In May 2021 a researcher, using "ground penetrating radar," claimed to have discovered a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children at the site of a Kamloops, British Columbia, residential school that closed in 1969. The news shocked the country.

The following week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered flags flown at half-mast. In June of the same year Canadians learned the radar had been used to identify the presence of 751 unmarked graves at a residential school that had served the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan.

Mr. Trudeau was photographed at the site, kneeling with his head lowered. He was holding a teddy bear. Since then allegations of mass graves on former residential school sites have multiplied.

The only way to learn if the allegations are true is to excavate.
Yet only a few excavations on lands alleged to contain unmarked graves have been performed and no remains have been found.

Kamloops and the Cowessess First Nation sites remain untouched.
Meantime, wild stories of maltreated children gone missing at residential schools—supposedly an attempt to eliminate the Indian people—have done their damage. Fires and vandalism at 85 Canadian Catholic churches followed these unproven charges.

Separating fact from fiction on this issue requires open and honest debate. Legislative attempts to close down speech by labeling contrary points of view "denialism" won't lead to reconciliation and won't restore the well-being of Canada's indigenous communities.