New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh is calling for a continued national commitment to healing and closure over the legacy of Indian Residential Schools, urging full support for first nations that choose to investigate unmarked graves.
Speaking via videoconference with the Assembly of First Nations on Wednesday, Singh emphasized the emotional weight many Canadians felt upon learning about potential burial sites and the need for action to follow that awareness.
“There was a moment when the first graves were found where there was so much horror, so much shame that Canadians felt,” Singh said. “Maybe not enough Canadians knew about the harms of Residential Schools, but it really drew attention to something that had been ignored.”
Singh said that every first nation wanting to search former school sites must be provided with the tools and funding to do so.
“We need to support any indigenous community that wants to search gravesites, that wants to spend in further investigation. We have to support it,” he said. “For real closure and healing, resources like ground radar and other investigative processes must be available.”
Blacklock's Reporter says the federal government in 2022 allocated $238.8 million to the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund to help locate burial sites.
The fund, originally scheduled to expire in 2025, was expanded last year, though no physical remains have been recovered so far.
The fund followed the 2021 announcement by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in Kamloops, B.C., which reported identifying 215 potential children’s graves through ground-penetrating radar.
That estimate has since been revised to roughly 200 potential burials. Despite $12.1 million in federal spending on excavation, DNA testing, and forensic work, no remains have yet been uncovered.
Singh did not mention a New Democrat bill introduced last fall to criminalize Residential School “denialism.”
Bill C-413, tabled in the House of Commons on September 26, would amend the Criminal Code to ban any public statements that deny, downplay, justify, or misrepresent the Residential School system. The bill proposes a penalty of up to two years in prison.
New Democrat MP Leah Gazan, who introduced the bill, said at the time, “At a time of increasing Residential School denialism including from some parliamentarians, survivors, their families and communities need protection and a platform to share our history.”
The bill lapsed in the last Parliament.