EDITORIAL – MP’s bill could set back the quest for truth and reconciliation

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

WHAT A SHAME it is that, with National Day for Truth and Reconciliation coming up on Monday, an NDP Member of Parliament has introduced a bill that would actually set back the quest for truth and reconciliation.

Leah Gazan, the MP for Winnipeg Centre, introduced a private member’s bill Thursday that would make aspects of the reconciliation debate a criminal act.

“If the government is serious about reconciliation, then they need to protect survivors and their families from hate,” she said.

The problem is with the definition of hate, and even of denialism. Under Canadian law, hate speech is to express opinions that “wilfully or intentionally promote hate against an identifiable group.”

It’s already illegal to do so. Hate speech, then, has already been addressed.

But bill C-413 proposed by Gazan would expand the definition of hate speech to include “condoning, denying, downplay or justifying” the Indian residential school system in Canada “or by misrepresenting facts relating to it.”

All of that is considered, under the bill, to be “promotion of hatred against Indigenous peoples.”

This has a lot of disturbing implications. Does it mean that Canadians are no longer to be allowed to challenge claims made about residential schools on pain of imprisonment?

For example, does challenging the oft-stated claim that almost all indigenous children were forcibly removed from their parents and put into residential schools constitute “hate”? It’s a claim that has been debunked through research into documents, but such research doesn’t fit with the “fact” that is widely accepted without question.

Is it promoting hatred against indigenous people to say that, while many wrongs were committed against them at the schools, a lot of good, caring teachers worked there too?

Is it hate speech to point out that no cases of homicide at the Kamloops Indian Resident School have been authenticated and to insist that suspicions of such atrocities need to be investigated by police?

And is it hate to question, without the empirical evidence that would be provided through excavation, the existence of more than 200 unmarked graves at the Kamloops school? And to point out that the original ground-penetrating radar report that led to recriminations on a national scale has never been released, and therefore never been made available for public scrutiny?

Will the very words in this editorial be made a criminal offence and subject to a prison sentence?

These questions need to be asked, and the answers found, the “facts” challenged, in the quest for truth, without threat of being thrown in jail for it. Reconciliation means respectful discussion and exchange of ideas, and an unvarnished search for the truth, not steadfast insistence that only one view is the right one and not open to question.

Many were harmed by the residential school system, and those harms must be addressed, but there’s still much to learn. Fact is, the residential school issue is full of nuances, and those nuances need further examination. That doesn’t constitute denial or hate speech, and there’s nothing to fear from it.

In Kamloops, City council and Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc have set an example of how to co-operatively and respectfully work together on reconciliation. Respect, not threats. Private member’s bills are seldom passed in Parliament; let’s hope MP Gazan’s bill is no exception.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.