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Or sign-in if you have an account.Chief, Rosanne Casimir, of Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc poses at the site of a makeshift memorial at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, Canada, September 2, 2021. - (Photo by Cole Burston / AFP) Photo by COLE BURSTON /AFP via Getty ImagesThe Senate human rights committee’s vote this week to criminalize the phantasm of “residential schools denialism” by way of a last-minute amendment to a Liberal party hate speech bill that was already hopelessly compromised can probably be best understood as an absurdly unserious pantomime. Or, if you like, you can think of what happened at that committee on Monday night as a nearly effortless fusion of the denialism canard with the Liberals’ persistent efforts to intrude by legislation on constitutionally-protected free speech rights.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. 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Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorEither way, you have to navigate through a weird hall of mirrors before you notice that what’s at least partly going on here is just the latest effort to bully Canadians to just shut up and accept their status as the citizens of a racist, genocidal settler state, and uninvited guests in their own country.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThe first and most telling giveaway about “residential schools denialism” is that its content is always occluded by subjective, cartoonishly dogmatic edicts governing how the legacy of residential schools is to be taught, memorialized and comprehended in law, policy and the news media. At its core is the proposition that “denialists” actually exist, and they wear a disguise of rational skepticism only to hide their sinister and deliberate determination to undermine “reconciliation” with Indigenous peoples. It’s a conspiracy theory.The justification for criminalizing “residential schools denialism” is that it is a necessary defence of the wounded survivors of Canada’s Indian residential school system against “violence” and “hatred.” But that was never the point of it. The point was always to shield the Trudeau-era Liberals and a rogues’ gallery of postmodern academics, bureaucrats, journalists, quasi non-governmental organizations and comfortably-sinecured First Nations leaders from any proper scrutiny and accountability for the roles they played in the national mass hysteria they incited five years ago.The bedlam began when Justin Trudeau lowered the flags on Parliament Hill and all federal buildings across the country following a false report that a mass grave of 215 children was discovered in an old apple orchard at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in B.C. That report was followed by several more false accounts of discoveries of children buried at residential school sites across Canada.Statues were toppled, Canada Day was cancelled and dozens of Catholic churches were vandalized, desecrated and burned to the ground. By the time the flags were raised again after Remembrance Day, 2021, the RCMP had reported a 260 per cent spike in anti-Catholic hate crimes across the country.By Remembrance Day, reports of children having been murdered and secretly buried, hanged, electrocuted, and burned alive in incinerators had become routine, and you didn’t hear this sort of thing only at “From Turtle Island to Palestine” rallies. Several wildly implausible horror stories of that kind show up in the final reports filed two years ago by Kimberly Murray, the Liberals’ Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites. To publicly question such stories was to risk being publicly vilified as the equivalent of a Holocaust denier.Unsatisfied with skeptics being merely “cancelled,” Murray recommended that residential schools denialism be criminalized by adding it specifically to the Holocaust denial provisions in the Criminal Code, by way of the Online Harms Act, Bill C-63.Among Bill C-63’s critics was David Thomas, former chair of the federal Human Rights Tribunal, who said the proposed law would be so onerous that even though it would have been unlikely to withstand Charter challenges, hardly anyone would risk incurring its wrath. Even news media organizations would likely avoid the risk, Thomas said. In this way, prosecutors would “win their wars without firing a bullet.”Bill C-63 has been abandoned, at least temporarily. It was dropped when Trudeau resigned and prorogued Parliament in January 2025. But NDP MP Leah Gazan already had her own ideas about how to prosecute “residential schools denialism.” Gazan’s 2024 bill hasn’t made it past first reading, but Monday night’s Senate committee proposal replicates its contents, except for one key difference.Gazan’s Bill C-413 contained provisions that nobody could be convicted of residential schools denialism if the offending statements were true and made in good faith. You can understand that as evidence of a sensible failsafe, or as evidence of yet another onerous law you’d be foolish to risk violating, another case of prosecutors being given an opportunity to “win their wars without firing a bullet.”The Senate committee members on Monday voted 7-1 to amend Bill C-9, yet another hate crimes law that has been widely opposed by civil libertarians, church groups and labour organizations, with the following: “Everyone who by communicating statements other than in private conversation wilfully promotes hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying or downplaying the Indian Residential School system is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.”Senator Nancy Karetak-Lindell had this to say about what denialism means. “It can involve denying, minimizing or justifying the documented abuses, deaths, forced assimilation and intergenerational harms experienced by Indigenous people through the Residential School system.”Perhaps it can. But it is simply impossible to avoid breaking the proposed law by “downplaying” or “minimizing” the harms of residential schools if you merely insist that it’s borderline insanity to equate Canada’s residential schools legacy with the Holocaust. Several of the advocates of the C-9 amendment have explicitly drawn that comparison, including Tk’emlups chief Rosanne Casimir, who explained the time it’s taking to provide evidence of the burials allegedly discovered in 2015 this way: “Holocaust investigations have continued for more than 75 years.” The Senate’s proposed amendment would shunt “residential schools denialism” in the same section of the Criminal Code that deals with Holocaust denial.Long before the Senate committee began its hearings, Bill C-9 was already the subject of intense controversy, hotly opposed by Canada’s Black churches, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Anglicans, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Labour Congress. More than 40 civil society organizations have raised alarms about Bill C-9.The faith organizations oppose it because it was amended in the House last December to remove the religious-expression exemption that the Criminal Code has provided for decades. The CLC opposes it because of fears that it impinges upon workers’ rights to strike and protest. The CCLA is against it because it could be used to criminalize protest, and because the Liberals seem to want to just rush it through without proper assessment: “This should alarm every Canadian who cares about democratic practice and free expression.”Much of the phenomenon that has come to be called “residential schools denialism” consists merely of objections to the recirculation of lurid anti-Catholic tropes about nuns killing infants in convents and burning babies in ovens that go back to the 19th century in the United States. By equating residential schools with the death camps of the Shoah, advocates of criminalizing residential schools denialism trivialize the Holocaust, a classic sign of antisemitism.It’s quite the feat Canada’s politicians have accomplished here, all in one fell swoop. The spike in anti-Catholic hate crimes in this country occurred immediately after May 27, 2021. The horrific spike in antisemitism in Canada occurred only after the Hamas pogroms in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023.The thing about antisemitism, it is often said, is that first they come for the Saturday people, and then they come for the Sunday people. In Canada, it happened the other way around.National Post Get the latest from Terry Glavin straight to your inbox Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.