The defamatory non-stop claim that Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, committed genocide against indigenous people, including Indian Residential School children, is the most scurrilous slur hurled against him by his critics. Accordingly, it is necessary to examine this claim using the gold standard for doing so: the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The Convention lists five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,” any one of which constitutes genocide.
