NDP MP Introduces Bill to Criminalize Residential School ‘Denialism’

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.”
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.
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. None of the sites have been excavated and no bodies have been found to date.