Senate Committee Votes to Criminalize Residential School ‘Denialism’ Under Bill C-9

The Senate Human Rights Committee has voted to amend the Liberal government’s anti-hate Bill C-9, proposing to make Indian residential school denialism a criminal offence.

Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell, who introduced the amendment criminalizing the denial of the impact of residential schools, said the change is needed because of “growing anti-Indigenous racism, violence, and rhetoric surrounding the lasting harm of the Indian residential schools.”

Karetak-Lindell, who attended a residential school in the Northwest Territories, said while she and her siblings had received an education, they “lost a chance to grow up in our culture, in our language.”

As initially reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, the amended motion states that any Canadian who “by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system” would be guilty of an indictable offence and liable to a jail term of up to two years, or a summary conviction.

The lone senator who voted against the amendment, Sen. Patti LaBoucane-Benson, said she opposed it because there needs to be additional consultation with indigenous leaders, and that the senators could be “not going for the full force of what should happen with residential school denialism.”

The senators on the committee voted by 7–1 to amend the Liberal government’s controversial anti-hate bill.

The proposed legislation would create new criminal offences associated with intimidation and obstructing access to places of worship, as well as a new offence for intentionally promoting hatred through the public display of certain symbols, such as Nazi symbols.

The bill was previously amended in the House of Commons to remove the religious defence to hate speech in the Criminal Code, which currently protects individuals from charges of wilfully promoting hatred when expressing religious beliefs in good faith.

The Senate changes to Bill C-9 must pass in the wider Senate before returning to the House of Commons for final approval.

In 2024, NDP MP Leah Gazan introduced a private member’s bill to outlaw the denying, justifying, or downplaying of harms caused by residential schools. Her bill did not become law.

The issue has received additional attention in the aftermath of the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announcing in 2021 that ground-penetrating radar technology had identified a burial site of 215 children at the Kamloops residential school in B.C. The First Nation has received more than $12.1 million from the federal government for field work and research related to the issue. There have so far been no excavations done at the site and no bodies have been uncovered.

The Kamloops announcement led to dozens of churches being burned down, 90 arson attacks on places of worship in 2021, and 74 attacks in 2022, compared to 43 from 2015 to 2020.