Canada's Completely Irrelevant New Democratic Party

"[Any Canadian found to be] condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system [could be punished with up to two years in jail]."

Proposed private member's Bill C-254

 

"Since the discovery of unmarked graves we have seen] an increase in denialism about what occurred in the residential schools."

"This is horrific."

Leah Gazan, New Democratic Party (NDP)

 

"No graves in Kamloops." 

 No genocide. No wrongs left to reconcile."

No land, cash, or power grabs."

"No looking back."

OneBC Leader Dallas Brodie

Assumption Hay Lakes Residential School

 

A huge controversy in Canada that was picked up by media across the world was the claim that Indigenous children attending residential schools in Canada suffered dreadful abuse, both mental and physical when the schools, supported by government and operated by church groups, were meant to imbue the children with an education appropriate to a Western democracy. Aboriginal children in Canada were known in the 19th and into the 20th centuries not to have adequate opportunities to learn the basics of language, history, mathematics and science. The residential school system was devised to prepare these children for life in a society unlike their own in many ways, for the ultimate purpose of integration into the larger non-Indigenous community.  

 

The children were housed in these school systems, overlooked by the religious communities that ran them, and the staff represented those religious communities. Most often the families whose children attended the schools considered it an advantageous opportunity for their children. As students, the children were taught the basics of the education system along with hygiene, and a familiarity with the larger Canadian society. Some of the children felt homesick and missed their own culture, the practise of which, along with their native languages were strictly forbidden them. The best that can be said is that many children, thanks to the schools went on to higher education to become members of many professions. The worst, that some children felt alienated and suffered punishment abuse.

 

CoqualeetzaChilliwack Home Residential School

 

In May of 20-21 the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia announced a survey conducted by ground-penetrating radar had discovered "the remains of 215 children" at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The chief of the band later admitted there was no actual proof of children having been buried, but that this was assumed when the radar discovered 'anomalies' that could have been anything; underground rocks, tree roots, time-buried artefacts. Funding was eventually given to support efforts to dig up the area in an attempt to discover the 'mass-grave burials', but nothing was ever done to validate the original claim, regardless.

 

A claim that was taken at face value, leading the government of the day led by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to order Canadian flags at half-mast for half a year's time, and grave pronouncements of regret and sorrow, leading to promises of 'reconciliation'. Academics, unions, legacy media, the general public -- all gave credence to the claim that was never justified by actual findings. Now, a member of Parliament with the federal NDP has tabled a bill for the second time, to make it a criminal offence for anyone who belittles the claims that have never been proven.

 

The NDP is a spent force, a shadow of its former influence as members become increasingly 'progressively' radicalized. In the last election they managed to win seven seats out of a 343-seat Parliament, losing their recognized party status for inadequate representative numbers in the House of Commons. An earlier private member's bill by another longtime member of the NDP had proposed that Canadians who speak positively of fossil fuels should receive jail sentences. That bill, the Fossil Fuel Advertising Act, lapsed with the dissolution of Parliament. Anyone 'caught' promoting fossil fuels could be fined up to $500,000, while the penalty for a representative of an oil company would also face a two-year jail sentence.

St.Anthony Sacred Heart Residential School

 

Four years have passed, and not one of the supposed 215 graves has been confirmed. Yet Canadians have retained the belief that Indian residential schools represented a type of 'cultural genocide' against the Indigenous people of Canada, even though both Indigenous people themselves, along with non-Indigenous respondents to a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute, doubted the 215 anomalies represent actual graves of children. Again, a majority of respondents felt that Canada should "only accept the claim if further information is publicly available to verify through excavation". 

 

Which hasn't stopped the NDP's Leah Gazan from referring to the ostensible dead-and-buried Indigenous children as having been placed in a 'mass grave', and later 'unmarked graves'. The Residential Schools were in operation for over a century-and-a-half. In that period, some 3,200 children were estimated to have died, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission inquiry. Most of them occurring before the era of the First World War; just after the turn of the 20th century. A time when many childhood diseases were in circulation, threatening the lives of children everywhere; outbreaks of tuberculosis, pneumonia, smallpox and polio among them.

 

Crowfoot St.Joseph's Residential School