Attorney General Lametti says Ottawa is open to banning denial from residential schools

Federal Justice Minister David Lametti says he is open to the recommendations in a new report proposing civil and criminal sanctions against Canadians engaged in residential school denial.

Lametti was comment on his interim report appointeeKimberly Murray, a member of Quebec’s Kahnesatake Mohawk Nation, who was tasked in June 2022 with identifying measures, including legal ones, to address what the government says are unmarked graves and burial grounds of children at former Indian residential schools.

“Sacred Responsibility: Searching for the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials” was released June 16 in Saskatchewan, during the Cowessess First Nation’s Marieval Survivors Gathering, according to a press release.

Murray’s interim report said the federal government should “urgently consider” using legal tools to deal with “deniers”, which should include both civil and criminal penalties. “Many international experts point out that denial is the last step in genocide,” the report said.

Lametti joined the event via video conference and said he is open to any suggestions to address alleged denial from residential schools. He said that includes “a legal solution and banning it”, stating that Canada can consider how other countries have criminalized Holocaust denial.

“Today’s report will provide crucial guidance as we continue to recognize the truth of what happened and strive to write a different story for the future of our country,” Lametti said in the press release.

‘Deniers’

Murray was the executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada from 2010 to 2015 and served as Assistant Deputy Attorney General for Ontario Indigenous Justice from 2015 to 2021.

Her report claims that “deniers” have questioned announcements of possible unmarked graves of Indigenous children who attended church or state schools in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Her report said: “This violence is prolific and occurs through email, phone, social media, opinion pieces and sometimes through face-to-face confrontation.”

According to Murray, after the Tk’emlups at Secwepemc Nation in B.C. announced that preliminary findings from a radar survey of the ground uncovered what may have been 215 unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in May 2021, “deniers” wanted evidence.

“Some came in the middle of the night with spades; they wanted to ‘see with their own eyes’ whether children are buried there. Deniers also attacked the community on social media.”

Murray wrote that “a core group of Canadians continue to defend the Indian Residential Schools System”. She said that “others try to deny and minimize the destructive impact of residential schools and suggests that some children have benefited from the education provided by school staff.

Murray, in her role as an independent special interlocutor, traveled the country hearing the concerns of First Nations communities.

So far, no excavations have been carried out to recover any remains at any of the sites alleged to contain unmarked burials of Indigenous children.

“Canadians cannot be proud of a country that allows children’s funerals to be violently violated, shovels to dig into the bones of ancestors and that hides from the truth,” the report said.

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“They have the evidence. Funeral photos. The documents proving that children died. It’s on their shoulders,” Murray said on June 16 in Saskatchewan when she presented her interim report. “The government of Canada and the churches must step forward,” she said.

The report sets out Murray’s views on her position. “I want to emphasize this point: my role is to give the children a voice. It should not be neutral or objective—it is to be a fierce and fearless advocate to ensure that the bodies and spirits of the missing children are treated with the care, respect and dignity they deserve,” she writes in the report.

“International human rights and humanitarian law are clear: upholding human rights principles does not require me to be morally indifferent to the plight of children who are victims of genocide, mass human rights violations and injustice,” she said.

In June 2021Cowesses First Nation in Saskatchewan announced that preliminary findings from the use of ground penetrating radar had suggested there were 751 unmarked graves in a community cemetery near a former Indian residential school, CBC reported. At the time, Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme said, “This is not a mass grave. These are unmarked graves.”

According to Delorme, the tombs may have had markers at some point in history, but these may have been removed by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s. He also acknowledged that the graves may not contain children, and it is not known whether they are related to a nearby residential school that was there from 1899 to 1997.

While the First Nations chief said some of the remains may belong to people who attended the church or lived in nearby towns, Delorme also said the community would treat the site “like a crime scene.”

‘Hate speech’

According to Murray’s report, MP Leah Gazan said in February 2023 that “denying genocide is a form of hate speech. That kind of speech is violent and re-traumatizes those who went to residential school.

Gazan “proposes to enact legislation that would make Indian residential school denial a hate crime,” the report notes, agreeing with the proposal. “There is an urgent need to consider legal mechanisms to address denial, including the implementation of both civil and criminal sanctions,” it states.

The report quotes Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller as saying: “Residential school denial attempts to cover up the horrors that took place in these institutions. It attempts to deny Survivors and their families the truth, and distorts Canadians’ understanding of our shared history.” According to the report, Miller said he is interested in reviewing the proposed legislation.

The report also suggests that only Canadians who are not First Nations people deny the issue. “Denial is a uniquely non-Indigenous problem,” the report says.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.