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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post\u2019s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Article content<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the third time in two years, a member of the NDP has introduced a private members\u2019 bill <\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, the House of Commons completed its first reading of Bill C-254<\/a>, a private members\u2019 bill introduced by the NDP\u2019s Leah Gazan that would criminalize \u201cresidential school denialism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the bill\u2019s text states, any Canadian found to be \u201ccondoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system\u201d could be punished with up to two years in jail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article content<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n B<\/p>\n\n\n\n A judge would also be able to order the forfeiture of \u201canything by means of or in relation to\u201d the speech offence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince the discovery of unmarked graves (we have seen) an increase in denialism about what occurred in the residential schools. This is horrific,\u201d said Gazan in a Friday statement on Parliament Hill<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article content<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the second time Gazan, the MP for Winnipeg Centre, has put forward a bill to jail who she\u2019s called \u201cresidential school denialists.\u201d She introduced an identical bill<\/a> in the 44th Parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Article content<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill C-254 also comes just 16 months after a private member\u2019s bill<\/a> by the NDP\u2019s Charlie Angus that proposed to jail Canadians for speaking well of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fossil Fuel Advertising Act, which died on the order paper with the dissolution of Parliament in March, would have prescribed strict punishments for any Canadian caught in the act of \u201cpromoting\u201d a \u201cfossil fuel, a fossil fuel-related brand element or the production of a fossil fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article content<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a normal citizen had been caught perpetrating such a promotion, the punishment could be as severe as a $500,000 fine. If done as a representative of an oil company, it would have prescribed a two-year jail term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gazan\u2019s reintroduced bill comes just as an upstart B.C. political party, OneBC, is campaigning hard against the notion that the summer of 2021 had yielded a wave of previously undiscovered graves at the sites of former Indian residential schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo graves in Kamloops. No genocide. No wrongs left to reconcile. No land, cash, or power grabs. No looking back,\u201d read a social media post by OneBC leader Dallas Brodie responding to Bill C-254.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cunmarked graves\u201d phenomenon began in May 2021 when Tk\u2019eml\u00faps te Secw\u00e9pemc First Nation in B.C. garnered international headlines by announcing that a ground-penetrating radar survey had found<\/a> \u201cthe remains of 215 children\u201d at the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A<\/p>\n\n\n\n The statement would prompt then prime minister Justin Trudeau to lower the flags on federal buildings to half-mast for an unprecedented five months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, none of the 215 have been confirmed as graves, and Tk\u2019eml\u00faps te Secw\u00e9pemc is now referring<\/a> to the 215 as \u201canomalies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n In August, a poll by the Angus Reid Institute<\/a> found that Canadians still generally believed that Indian residential schools constituted a form of \u201ccultural genocide\u201d against Canadian Indigenous people (68 per cent agree vs. 23 per cent disagree).<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, that same poll found that both Indigenous and non-Indigenous respondents were doubtful that the 215 anomalies were actually children\u2019s graves<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n A majority of Canadians (Indigenous respondents 56 per cent, all respondents 63 per cent) said Canada should \u201conly accept the claim if further information is publicly available to verify through excavation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article content<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article content<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2021, Gazan twice referred to the 215<\/a> as lying in a \u201cmass grave\u201d \u2014 a claim that went beyond Tk\u2019eml\u00faps te Secw\u00e9pemc\u2019s initial statements, which had said simply that the 215 were unmarked burials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Gazan changed this to \u201cunmarked graves\u201d<\/a> in a June 1, 2021 House of Commons statement, and has not mentioned the alleged Kamloops Indian Residential School burials in her Parliamentary statements ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Private members\u2019 bills very seldom become law, and Bill C-254 does include multiple caveats under which a charge of \u201cdenialism\u201d can be dismissed. Defences of Indian residential schools are allowed if it\u2019s an \u201copinion based on a belief in a religious text\u201d or if the accused is able to establish that \u201cthe statements communicated were true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The bill also specifies that Canadians are allowed to say whatever they want in \u201cprivate conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Long before Tk\u2019eml\u00faps te Secw\u00e9pemc ever commissioned a ground-penetrating radar survey at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, the seven-year-long Truth and Reconciliation Commission inquiry concluded that Canada\u2019s system of Indian residential schools had featured outsized rates of student mortality, particularly in the pre-First World War era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article content<\/p>\n\n\n\n As per the Commission\u2019s 2015 final report<\/a>, an estimated 3,200 children had died while attending Indian residential schools, predominantly from outbreaks of tuberculosis. Many of those were buried in on-site graveyards that were subsequently abandoned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FIRST READING: Another NDP bill threatens to jail Canadians for speech Two years in jail for any Canadian caught ‘condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying’ Indian residential schools First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post\u2019s own … Continue reading T<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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