A rock with the message 'Every Child Matters' painted on it at a memorial outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, B.C.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The federal government is not revealing whether it will act on calls to pass a law that would criminalize denying that Indigenous children suffered abuses in Canada’s residential school system.
The issue has bubbled in the background of Canadian politics for several years and gained prominence after several First Nations announced they had located potential unmarked graves at former school sites.
Proponents say a law is needed to protect survivors and send a signal that such conduct is unacceptable. Critics, meanwhile, say hate speech can be prosecuted under existing laws, restrictions on free-speech rights should be approached cautiously and that criminalizing residential school denialism specifically could backfire by drawing attention to people who promote false information about the institutions.
The latest call for legal action came on Dec. 2, at a meeting of the Assembly of First Nations, which advocates on behalf of more than 600 Indigenous communities. The chiefs who had gathered at the meeting in Ottawa voted in favour of calling on the federal government to recognize denial of the abuses as a distinct form of hate crime.
The AFN motion calls on the government to amend Bill C-9, the government’s latest proposed hate-speech legislation, or failing that, to introduce a stand-alone bill to “criminalize the public condoning, denial, justification, or minimization of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system and the unmarked graves of Indigenous children, recognizing such denialism as equated to a hate crime against Indigenous Peoples.”
The motion also wants the AFN to work with its advisory councils to ensure the legislation provides clear legal definitions and withstands constitutional challenges.
Asked whether Ottawa would heed the AFN resolution, Justice Department spokesperson Kwame Bonsu did not answer directly. He said in a statement the government recognizes the strong interest in potential criminal measures.
“The Government of Canada remains committed to advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada and exploring all options to combat residential school denialism,” he said.
Alec Wilson, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty, said in a statement that the government allocated $5-million in its 2024 budget toward addressing the issue. He added that the government supports Indigenous peoples’ work to locate, document and memorialize undocumented burial sites and graves at former residential schools.
Canada’s residential school system operated from 1831 to 1996. It forcibly removed Indigenous children from their homes and communities to attend institutions where they were often abused and neglected. Students were cut off from their traditions and prevented from speaking their home languages, in what is now recognized as a program of mass cultural erasure.
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In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that 4,100 children had died while attending the schools. Commission chair Murray Sinclair, who died in 2024, had said the actual number could be closer to 20,000.
Sean Carleton, an associate professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba, said he has noticed an uptick in residential school denialism.
“I don’t know how much it’s growing so much as it’s getting louder,” he said, noting that it’s often the same group of people whose views are being amplified.
Pimicikamak Cree Nation Chief David Monias, who proposed the resolution adopted by the AFN in December, said he would like to see people punished if they knowingly and intentionally spread false information that casts doubt on the existence of the schools, the deaths of children there, or the existence of unmarked graves that investigations have verified.
“Denialism is not just merely a disagreement,” Mr. Monias said in an interview before the motion was adopted. “It really inflicts a real harm to our people,” including by retraumatizing survivors and fuelling racism.
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Ottawa has passed similar laws before. The push for criminalization has in part been modelled on the government’s 2022 criminalization of Holocaust denialism.
Richard Moon, a professor emeritus at the University of Windsor who researches freedom of expression, said Holocaust denialism nearly always involves antisemitic tropes that characterize Jewish people as duplicitous, which is part of what makes it hate speech. He said residential school denialism, while hurtful to people affected by it, tends to be more about trying to lessen the blameworthiness of Canadian society.
NDP MP Leah Gazan tabled last year a private member’s bill, Bill C-254, that would criminalize “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada” outside of private conversation. It is currently at first reading in the House of Commons.
Queen’s University associate professor Kimberly Murray, who was appointed by the federal government as Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools and worked on Ms. Gazan’s bill, also called for criminalization in her October, 2024, final report.
“We need to send a message that this is not acceptable in Canadian society for people to purposely re-victimize survivors of mass human rights breaches,” Prof. Murray said in an interview, adding public education is also important.
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But critics of criminalization say that Canada needs to be careful before adding residential school denialism to the Criminal Code.
Canadian Civil Liberties Association executive director Howard Sapers says people can already be prosecuted for some forms of residential school denialism under existing hate-speech laws.
“Denying or minimizing the harm of residential schools is despicable, and so that is not the question,” he said. “The question is whether or not speech that questions or denies those harms rises to the level of being criminal.”
He said there is a need for “absolute caution” before Canada criminalizes otherwise protected speech.
Alberta Senator Paula Simons said she is concerned about the growing spread of denialism, but that criminalizing it would create martyrs and give them a platform.
“I’ve raised a child and two dogs, and sometimes people behave badly on purpose because they want you to pay attention to them,” she said, adding that a better approach would be public education.