Aristotle Foundation
Criminalizing residential school ‘denialism’ would silence indigenous voices, too
By Mark Milke
The effort by MP Leah Gazan to criminalize residential school views she labels “denialist” is a mistake. Gazan’s Bill C-413, if passed, would criminalize any statement that might be interpreted as “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada through statements communicated other than in private conversation.”
Let’s start with examples of whose speech Gazan’s bill would criminalize, if repeated in the future: indigenous Canadians who have publicly “condoned,” or at least partly justified, residential schools.
In 1998, Rita Galloway, a teacher who grew up on the Pelican Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan and then-president of the First Nations Accountability Coalition, was interviewed about residential schools. She noted that she had “many friends and relatives who attended residential schools,” and argued, “Of course there were good and bad elements, but overall, their experiences were positive.”
In 2008, the late Richard Wagamese, an Ojibwe author and journalist, wrote in the Calgary Herald about the many abuses that took place at residential schools. He then straightforwardly argued that positive stories needed to be told, too, including his mother’s.
After praising her neat, clean home and cultured lawn on a reserve outside Kenora, Ont., Wagamese noted how his 75-year-old mother “credits the residential school experience with teaching her domestic skills.” Critically, “My mother has never spoken to me of abuse or any catastrophic experience at the school.”
Wagamese argued the then-forthcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) “needs to hear those kinds of stories, too,” and that telling “the good along with the bad” will “create a more balanced future for all of us.”
That’s not because such schools were perfect — or even optimal. As has been extensively documented, physical and sexual abuses occurred in some schools, and that is something that no one should downplay.
But it’s too easy to forget the limited choices that existed for 19th- and early 20th-century Canadians. As we do today, most people back then believed in the value of universal education. Many Canadians, indigenous and non-indigenous, lived in poverty, had rudimentary transportation links, limited job opportunities and thus limited possibilities for day schools in remote areas, such as reserves.
Imagine the outcry today if earlier generations of parishioners, parents (including Indigenous parents) and politicians mostly ignored remote reserves and failed to provide indigenous communities with educational opportunities. The same voices today who accept no nuance on residential schools would likely excoriate that choice to deny education to Indigenous children.
The choices in the 19th and 20th centuries were not between perfection and its opposite; they represent a trade-off between suboptimal choices. Understanding this requires nuance, which is in short supply these days.
As an example, consider the perspective of Manitoba school trustee Paul Coffey, a Metis man who made a presentation to the Mountain View School Division board meeting in Dauphin, Man., about racism in April and was pilloried for it. His remarks included comments about residential schools. Coffey tried to argue that residential schools had good and bad aspects, but he was roundly criticized for his views.
In a July interview, Coffey again offered nuance about the schools, noting what much of the media missed in their initial firestorm coverage: “I said they were nice. I then also said they weren’t. I said treaties were nice and then they weren’t. I said even TRC is a good idea, until it isn’t.”
Criminalizing these stories and opinions would mean that these three indigenous voices, and many others, could face fines or jail time. This is precisely why speech, unless urging violence, should never be criminalized.
Another reason not to criminalize speech is because it makes it even more difficult to correct bad ideas and lingering injustices. An open society requires open discourse. It’s the only way errors can only be corrected. That disappears if one becomes subject to fines and imprisonment for thinking out loud, including when one is ultimately proved to be in error.
Gazan’s bill is the latest attempt by Canadian politicians to suppress views and conclusions with which they disagree. That suppression is illiberal and unhelpful. Mandating a single point of view damages the accumulation of knowledge that’s necessary for progress, prevents a useful dissection of why abuses occurred in residential schools and will prevent the open discrediting of wrongheaded positions.
No one person will be right every time. Open, public debate is critical to exposing errors and advancing human progress.
Mark Milke is the president of the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.
Aristotle Foundation
B.C. government laid groundwork for turning private property into Aboriginal land
It claims to oppose the Cowichan decision that threatens private property, but it’s been working against property owners for years
A City of Richmond letter to property owners in the Cowichan Aboriginal title area recognized by the B.C. Supreme Court has brought the judgment’s potential impacts into stark reality.
“For those whose property is in the area outlined in black,” the letter explained, “the Court has declared Aboriginal title to your property which may compromise the status and validity of your ownership.”
While Premier David Eby has been quick to disavow the decision, the reality is his government helped set the stage for it in multiple ways. Worse, it quietly supported a similar outcome in a related case, even after the concerning implications of the Cowichan judgment were well-known.
The problematic nature of the Cowichan decision has been well-established. It marks the first time a court has declared Aboriginal title over private property in B.C., and declares certain fee simple land titles (i.e., private property) in the area “defective and invalid.”
Understandably, the letter raised alarm bells not only for directly-affected property owners, but also for British Columbians generally, who recognize that the court’s findings in Richmond may well be replicated in other areas of the province in the future.
As constitutional law professor Dwight Newman pointed out in August, if past fee simple grants in areas of Aboriginal title claims are inherently invalid, “then the judgment has a much broader implication that any privately owned lands in B.C. may be subject to being overridden by Aboriginal title.”
In response to media questions about the City of Richmond’s letter, Eby re-stated his previous commitment to appeal the decision, saying, “I want the court to look in the eyes … of the people who will be directly affected by this decision, and understand the impact on certainty for business, for prosperity and for our negotiations with Indigenous people.”
While the words were the right ones, his government helped lay the groundwork for this decision in at least three ways.
First, the province set the policy precedent for the recognition of Aboriginal title over private property with its controversial Haida agreement in 2024. The legislation implementing the agreement was specifically referenced by the plaintiffs in the Cowichan case, and the judge agreed that it illustrated how Aboriginal title and fee simple can “coexist.”
Eby called the Haida agreement a “template” for other areas of B.C., despite the fact that it raised a number of democratic red flags, as well as legal concerns about private property rights and the constraints it places on the ability of future governments to act in the public interest.
While the agreement contains assurances that private property will be honoured by the Haida Nation, private property interests and the implementation of Aboriginal title are ultimately at odds. As Aboriginal law experts Thomas Isaac and Mackenzie Hayden explained in 2024, “The rights in land which flow from both a fee simple interest and Aboriginal title interest … include exclusive rights to use, occupy and manage lands. The two interests are fundamentally irreconcilable over the same piece of land.”
Second, the provincial and federal lawyers involved in the Cowichan proceedings were constrained by the government in terms of the arguments they were allowed to make to protect private property. In August, legal expert Robin Junger wrote, “One of the most important issues in this case was whether Aboriginal title was ‘extinguished’ when the private ownership was created over the lands by the government in the 1800s.”
The Cowichan judgment expressly notes that B.C. and Canada did not argue extinguishment. In B.C.’s case, this was due to civil litigation directives issued by Eby when he was attorney general.
Finally, provincial legislation implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) also played a role in supporting the judge’s conclusions, a point Newman wrote about in August. “They’re used in support of (even if not as the main argument for) the idea that Aboriginal title could yet take priority over current private property rights,”
In addition to setting the stage for the Cowichan decision, and despite their stated concerns with that judgment, the B.C. government has actively sought judicial recognition of Aboriginal title over private property elsewhere.
The overlaying of Aboriginal title over private property with the Haida agreement was already problematic enough prior to the Cowichan decision. However, even after the serious implications of the Cowichan decision were clear, the provincial and federal governments quietly went before the B.C. Supreme Court in support of a consent order that would judicially recognize the Aboriginal title over the entirety of Haida Gwaii.
The successful application had the effect of constitutionally entrenching Aboriginal title for the Haida Nation, including over private property, with the explicitly stated goal of making it near-impossible for future democratically elected governments to amend the agreement.
The reality is, the B.C. government claims to oppose the Cowichan decision even as it laid the groundwork for it, and it has actively pursued similar outcomes on Haida Gwaii. Repeated claims of seeking certainty and protecting private property have been belied by this government’s actions again and again.
Caroline Elliott, PhD, is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy and sits on the board of B.C.’s Public Land Use Society.
The Vancouver Park Board hasn’t caved to the anti-J.K. Rowling activists, but their campaign shows a need for common sense
This November, Harry Potter is coming to Vancouver’s Stanley Park. And some people aren’t happy.
The park will host Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience, an immersive exhibit that’s been staged around the world, prompting outrage from the gay and trans community. Why? Because J.K. Rowling, the creative genius behind the Harry Potter franchise, has been deemed a heretic — a “transphobe” — for her publicly stated view that men are men and women are women.
Rowling’s journey into so-called heresy began almost six years ago when she dared to publicly support Maya Forstater, a British tax expert who lost her job for asserting on social media that transgender women remain men.
“Dress however you please,” Rowling posted on Twitter in 2019. “Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.”
It seemed to me and many others a rather benign tweet. But it was enough to generate global outrage from the trans community and its supporters. Rowling’s books have been boycotted and burned, with even the actors who portrayed Harry Potter characters on screen — most notably Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint — turning against the author who made them famous.
And yet Rowling has stuck to her guns, defending women and their right to enjoy spaces free of biological males in shelters, prisons, sports and so on. And she has stood against the “gender-affirming care” model that transitions children; in an X post last December, she said, “There are no trans kids. No child is ‘born in the wrong body.’”
It is — or should be — fair game to debate Rowling’s views. But in the hyper-polarized world of transgenderism, debate isn’t permitted. Only cancellation will suffice. Hence the angry response to the Vancouver Park Board’s greenlighting of the “Forest Experience” exhibit.
Vancouver city councillors Lucy Maloney and Sean Orr have called for the park board to reverse its decision.
“The trans and two-spirit community have made their voices heard already about how upset they are that this is happening,” Maloney said. “J.K. Rowling’s actions against the trans community are so egregious that I think we need to look at changing our minds on this.”
Orr concurred. “This is a reputational risk for the park board right now,” he said. “If there’s a way we can get out of this, we should consider this.
Thus far, thankfully, most park board commissioners have stood their ground. The exhibit is scheduled to go ahead as planned.
It’s worth emphasizing that since Rowling began her public defence of biological reality, much has changed. In 2024, the final report of the United Kingdom’s Cass Review exposed the shocking lack of evidence for the “gender-affirming” model of care; this led to a ban on puberty blockers in that country. Multiple European jurisdictions have done the same, enacting safeguards around transitioning youth. Major sports organizations have begun formally excluding biological males from female competitions. And in April 2025, the British Supreme Court decreed that “woman” and “sex” refer to biological sex assigned at birth, not gender identity.
Suffice it to say that Rowling has been vindicated.
Yet, as shown by a report published last year by the Aristotle Foundation (which I co-authored), Canada is increasingly an outlier in doubling down on transgender ideology. The Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Pediatric Society and the Canadian Psychological Association continue to endorse the “gender-affirming” model of care. Even Canada’s Gordon Guyatt, hailed as one of the “fathers” of evidence-based medicine, has been cowed into distancing himself from his own research, which laid bare the scant amount of evidence supporting “gender-affirming” care.
It’s hard to know what it will take to set Canada back on a path of common sense and scientific rationality. Some Potter-style magic, perhaps. Or failing that, a return to good old-fashioned tolerance for open discussion and an honest exchange of views.
Dr. J. Edward Les is a pediatrician in Calgary and a senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy. Photo: WikiCommons
ATA Collect $72 Million in Dues But Couldn’t Pay Striking Teachers a Dime
Bondi and Patel deliver explosive “Clinton Corruption Files” to Congress
A picture is worth a thousand spreadsheets
Lack of adequate health care pushing Canadians toward assisted suicide
It should not take a crisis for Canada to develop the resources that make people and communities thrive.
Calgary mayor should retain ‘blanket rezoning’ for sake of Calgarian families
AI Faces Energy Problem With Only One Solution, Oil and Gas
-
Alberta2 days agoAlberta on right path to better health care
-
Crime1 day ago‘Modern-Day Escobar’: U.S. Says Former Canadian Olympian Ran Cocaine Pipeline with Cartel Protection and a Corrupt Toronto Lawyer
-
Business21 hours agoCanada is failing dismally at our climate goals. We’re also ruining our economy.
-
Daily Caller2 days agoDemocrats Explicitly Tell Spy Agencies, Military To Disobey Trump
-
Alberta1 day agoAlberta Emergency Alert test – Wednesday at 1:55 PM
-
Daily Caller2 days agoALAN DERSHOWITZ: Can Trump Legally Send Troops Into Our Cities? The Answer Is ‘Wishy-Washy’
-
Health12 hours agoCDC’s Autism Reversal: Inside the Collapse of a 25‑Year Public Health Narrative
-
Alberta2 days agoCarney government’s anti-oil sentiment no longer in doubt