A Senate committee has voted to amend federal hate-crime legislation to make publicly condoning, denying or downplaying the Indian Residential School system a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison.Blacklock's Reporter says the Senate Human Rights Committee approved the amendment by a 7-1 vote Monday evening as part of its review of Bill C-9, legislation that previously focused on restricting the public display of Nazi symbols.Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut), who sponsored the amendment, said residential school survivors continue to face comments that minimize their experiences.“I went to residential school,” Karetak-Lindell told the committee. “I lived through it. I’ve had people say to me, ‘Well, you got educated. Isn’t that a good thing to come out of having gone to residential school?’ It only points to one section of our experience.”Karetak-Lindell said the impacts of the residential school system extended beyond formal education and included the loss of family connections, language and culture.“Every survivor experienced it in a different way,” she said. “We lost a lot of family time. We lost a chance to grow up in our culture, in our language. Yes, I did get education, but I also lost out on a parallel education that I would have gotten if I had been able to stay home.”Under the proposed amendment, the Criminal Code would state that anyone who, outside of a private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against indigenous peoples by “condoning, denying or downplaying” the residential school system could face prosecution by indictment or summary conviction.Karetak-Lindell argued that denialism goes beyond debates over historical interpretation..“Denialism is more than disagreements about historical interpretation,” she said. “It can involve denying, minimizing or justifying the documented abuses, deaths, forced assimilation and intergenerational harms experienced by indigenous people through the residential school system.”Senators voting in favour of the amendment were Dawn Arnold (New Brunswick), David Arnot (Saskatchewan), Wanda Thomas Bernard (Nova Scotia), Karetak-Lindell, Marilou McPhedran (Manitoba), Paulette Senior (Ontario) and David Wells (Newfoundland and Labrador).Sen. Patti LaBoucane-Benson (Alberta) voted against the measure, while Sens. Yonah Martin (British Columbia) and Kristopher Wells (Alberta) abstained.The amendment would require Bill C-9 to return to the House of Commons for ratification if adopted by the full Senate at third reading, potentially delaying the bill’s passage.As approved by the House of Commons on March 25, Bill C-9 would prohibit the public display of swastikas and Nazi SS symbols. The Senate committee also added a prohibition on displaying a noose, following a recommendation from Bernard.Bernard said the addition was prompted by the historical use of nooses as symbols of racial intimidation, including by the Ku Klux Klan.“Black Canadians remain the most targeted racial group,” she said.Committee members also rejected a proposal backed by the Conference of Catholic Bishops that would have exempted statements based on religious texts from hate-crime prosecution.The bishops argued such an exemption was necessary to protect freedom of religious expression and prevent the law from being used to restrict public statements rooted in religious beliefs.
