Even as Canada comes to terms with the fact that not everything we’ve been told about residential schools is true, some people want to criminalize asking questions about it. On Monday, the Senate’s human rights committee voted for an amendment making it a criminal offence to engage in what they called “residential school denialism.”
Canada should take residential schools seriously. That means taking both truth and reconciliation seriously. But the Senate’s work on criminalizing “residential school denialism” raises a difficult question: when a country faces a painful historical issue, should the criminal law become the instrument used to manage public discussion?
This is not an abstract issue for me. My grandmother attended St. Mary’s Indian Residential School. Many Indigenous people have horrible stories to tell about their experiences at that school and ones across Canada. I know some of them personally. I have heard their experiences. No amount of civil discourse will erase their lived experience or convince me that their pain is not real.
MONTREAL — An international panel of human rights experts has accused Canada of committing genocide against its Indigenous population after a week of hearings in Montreal.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal was mandated to look at missing and disappeared children and unmarked graves at Canada’s residential school sites, as well as the forced sterilization of Indigenous women, through the lens of international law.
The panel of seven judges said Canada historically adopted a series of policies that they deemed were crimes against humanity with genocidal intent, including the residential schools, which were in operation for over 150 years. The last residential school closed in 1996.
The federal government has ordered a financial audit into transactions and activities at a landmark Indigenous languages office after receiving anonymous complaints.
Canadian Heritage didn’t elaborate on the allegations against the Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages, an arm’s-length office set up five years ago after it was recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“Canadian Heritage has made the commissioner of Indigenous languages aware that we have received anonymous allegations and has contracted an independent third-party firm to conduct a special examination under the Indigenous Languages Act,” the department said in an email.
Two things can be true, at the same time. Five years after the startling announcement that there were hundreds of possible unmarked graves near a residential school in Kamloops, B.C., there has been no public confirmation of the discovery of any human remains. That is reality, one reality.
Another is this: 3,200 Indigenous children, at least, died at residential schools, according to the 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Residential school students died at a rate far higher than children in the rest of Canada – a negligence so deep-rooted that it came “within unpleasant nearness” of manslaughter, according to a government official in the early 1900s.
Canada’s newspaper of record says Oops.
Holy shit. @globeandmail editorial board:
“The fact of the crimes committed against Indigenous children at residential schools over many decades does not automatically validate claims that hundreds of students were dumped into unmarked graves in Kamloops and other residential… https://t.co/ctwF8Z0InA
— Harrison Lowman (@harrisonlowman) May 30, 2026
Within the tangle of Indigenous rights holding down the Canadian economy is Section 35 of the 1982 Constitution — the Indigenous rights guarantee. It’s the country’s very own Gordian Knot, and that’s why it was such a good sign that Premier Danielle Smith is willing to split it.
“If there’s an appetite among the other premiers to talk about defining that ever further through some kind of constitutional amendment, I’m open to having that conversation,” Smith told reporters at a Friday news conference. She added that the conversation could start as early as this week.
OTTAWA — A majority of the House of Commons voted against a non-binding motion on Monday that called on the federal government to protect private property from First Nations land claims — a political issue the Crown-Indigenous Relations minister has said is rife with partisan rhetoric.
The motion stems from a 2025 B.C. Supreme Court ruling that confirmed the Cowichan Tribes hold Aboriginal title over about 300 hectares of land in Richmond, B.C.
The ruling led to questions about how Aboriginal title and private property rights can coexist.
Another “Conservatives seized”
Remember when the chief of police said “leave your car keys by the front door..”
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u/Quietlyrightt in
canadian
Back on May 11, the Alberta Independence movement had well over 300K signatures on their petition to trigger a referendum for independence when they submitted it to Elections Alberta for verification.
The agreement between the federal government and Premier Danielle Smith’s government in Alberta—a series of undertakings including the construction of an oil export pipeline to the North Pacific Coast—is a great step forward, though it is lumbered with some excessive green baggage. The more recent decision of an Alberta court that the province cannot respond to a petition from hundreds of thousands of its citizens fulfilling existing legal conditions to hold a referendum on the issue of independence, is a timely demonstration of the congestive breakdown of Canadian federalism.
One unhappy First Nation makes headlines.
Canadians broadly support reconciliation with First Nations. As Prime Minister Mark Carney often reminds us, we accept the constitutional duty to consult on large-scale nation-building projects — oil and gas pipelines, new mines, and port expansions. But a troubling pattern is spreading: a single First Nation’s objection to more mundane local decisions — usually framed around inadequate consultation or cumulative environmental impacts — now lands in small-town newspaper headlines and can delay or kill modest community projects.
If the goal of Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard was to fuel the separatist fire, she’s doing an exquisite job.
On Wednesday, Leonard quashed a petition that separatists in the province had organized to trigger an independence referendum in the fall. Why? Because the chief electoral officer who allowed the petition to go forth in the first place didn’t adequately consult the Indigenous peoples of the province.
On Wednesday, in its Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation v Alberta decision, the Alberta Court of King’s Bench quashed the province’s secession referendum process. In particular, the judge quashed the chief electoral officer’s decision to allow signatures to be gathered to call for a referendum. Whatever your view on Alberta secession, the decision warrants attention for the readiness of the judge to prohibit a democratic process based on Indigenous rights claims.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said her government would appeal a court ruling on Wednesday that struck down the approval of an independence petition that could have forced a separation vote in the province.
In two decisions posted on Wednesday, Justice Sheila Leonard ruled that Alberta’s chief electoral officer Gordon McClure wrongfully approved the petition given an earlier ruling that found the separation question would violate First Nations’ treaty rights. She also found that the Crown had failed in its duty to consult with applicants Piikani Nation, Siksika Nation, Blood Tribe and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
BC Parks plans to close Joffre Lakes Park to the public for a week this summer and for 23 days this fall to allow local First Nations the opportunity to “connect with the land.”
Similar closures have been carried out over the past few years, cutting off public access to the hiking trails and lake areas at the southwestern B.C. park 35 kilometres east of Pemberton.
‘Colonial thinking’: Inuit criticize backlash to Gov. Gen. Mary Simon’s brand of bilingualism
Crystal Martin says it was “emotional” when she and her daughter watched Mary Simon be sworn in as Governor General in 2021.
“For me, it was this moment of she can see herself in that role if she wanted to,” Martin, an Inuk advocate, said. “[Simon] being in this role has really opened up a lot of imagination for Indigenous youth and children across Canada.”
