The best way to truth and reconciliation is to embrace the ideal of equal rights for all, special privileges for none. It’s time to repeal the Indian Act, end race-based access to public land (like at Joffre Lakes Park), stop imposing hypocritical virtue-signalling land acknowledgements on Canadians at public meetings, and refrain from signing race-based land deals like the Musqueam Agreement.Canadians who claim to care about truth should insist that Aboriginals in Kamloops spend the $12 million, provided to them by taxpayers, to excavate the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Only an excavation will prove — or disprove — the unfounded claim (made in May 2021) that the bodies of 215 murdered children are buried in a “mass grave.” This provocative claim was based on ground-penetrating radar that registers and responds to rocks, tree stumps, irrigation pipes, and any other solid object. There is no evidence that adults or children are buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Further, if human remains are found, this would not prove that anyone was murdered. The deliberate refusal by the Kamloops Indian Band to use the taxpayer-provided $12 million to excavate shows a complete lack of interest in the truth.Parliament should remove racism from the Criminal Code and end the current practice of race-based sentencing that sees criminals receiving a milder punishment because of their Aboriginal ancestry and ethnicity.Section [718.2(e)] of Canada’s Criminal Code requires judges to consider punishments other than jail, “with particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders.” In R. v. Gladue (1999), the Supreme Court decreed that “the serious problem of overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in prisons” should be solved by judges imposing fewer and shorter jail sentences on Aboriginal offenders. This decree was based on the Court’s belief that the circumstances of Aboriginal people are unique. The Court admitted openly that “the jail term for an Aboriginal offender may in some circumstances be less than the term imposed on a non-Aboriginal offender for the same offence.”A recent example of this racism can be seen in the Ontario Court of Justice ruling in R v. Wilson.In February 2022, Darris Wilson was operating his Dodge Ram pickup truck at close to twice the posted speed limit. He veered into oncoming traffic and struck the vehicle containing Naomi Beverly and her 12-year-old daughter Sierra Beverly. Sierra died in the collision. Her mom, Naomi, suffered severe brain injuries and now requires 24-hour supervision and attendant care because of her serious impairments. Darris Wilson had likely consumed alcohol prior to the collision, but this could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court. Victim impact statements expressed unimaginable loss, grief, and anger..The Crown asked for a four-year jail term. Defence counsel asked for two years of house arrest.As a status Indian under the Indian Act, and as an Aboriginal under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, Darris Wilson was entitled to a Gladue report, on which the judge relied when imposing sentence. Darris Wilson’s Gladue report claimed that his lethal dangerous driving resulted from his alcohol abuse and unhealthy relationships, which in turn were caused by his “major disconnection” from his Aboriginal culture while growing up. The sentencing judge asserted that Mr. Wilson’s culture “was taken from him and his family in a systematic fashion by the Government of Canada.”However, Aboriginal Canadians are not unique when it comes to losing their cultures and languages. Millions of immigrants have experienced a “major disconnection” from their culture when arriving in Canada from Asia, Europe, and Africa. All were forced to adjust to Canada’s climate, culture, and economy. They had to learn English or French. Numerous ethnic groups in Canada have suffered grave injustices, like the internment of Ukrainian Canadians in labour camps during the First World War, the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, and Chinese immigrants being paid a fraction of what Europeans were paid when building Canada’s railways. These are just three examples of the many grim stories that have caused intergenerational trauma.Further, many Canadians (of all races) abuse alcohol and have unhealthy relationships. Poverty, alcoholism, abusive relationships, and family dysfunction have afflicted (and still afflict) every ethnic group in Canada, including Aboriginals. These depressing realities do not justify Canada having different laws for different ethnic groups.Thanks to a race-based clause in the Criminal Code along with a Gladue report, Darris Wilson received the lighter sentence of house arrest, not jail time, because he is Aboriginal.Race-based distinctions are embedded in Canada’s Constitution Act, 1867, which lists “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians” as a topic of concern for government, alongside “the Regulation of Trade and Commerce,” “the Postal Service,” and “Municipal Institutions in the Province.” Today, the federal government still has jurisdiction over “Indians,” as though Aboriginals are like “the Census and Statistics,” the “Criminal Law,” and “Militia, Military and Naval Service, and Defence.”.Before our Parliament passed the Indian Act in 1876, the pre-Confederation Gradual Civilization Act facilitated granting farmland to individual Aboriginals, to promote private land ownership. The preamble to the Gradual Civilization Act described its purpose as “the gradual removal of all legal distinctions between [the Indian Tribes] and Her Majesty's other Canadian Subjects, and to facilitate the acquisition of property and of the rights accompanying it, by such Individual Members of the said Tribes ...”The French and British sought to address the severe technology gap between nomadic hunter-gatherer societies and economies based on agriculture and industry. When the French and British came to North America, the Aboriginals didn’t have a written language. Their tools were made of animal bones. Their clothes and shelter were made of animal skins. They had not invented the wheel. With the exception of some permanent settlements in Ontario and BC, most Aboriginals were nomads, moving from place to place in search of game and other food. Compared to genocide, which throughout human history the victorious often inflicted on the vanquished, the alternative of integration and assimilation was compassionate and humane.Historians will continue to research, discuss, and debate how nineteenth-century Canadian leaders could have done a better job of addressing the extreme technology gap that existed between Aboriginals and Europeans at that time.However, today there is no significant technology gap between Aboriginal Canadians and Canadians whose ancestry is Asian, European, or African. Canadians live in houses that are heated by gas or electricity and that have indoor plumbing. We drive cars, use the internet, and probably spend too much time staring at our phones. With few exceptions, all Canadian children have ready access to elementary schools and high schools. The circumstances of Aboriginal people in 2026 are no longer unique.In Canada in 2026, there is simply no need for race-based laws, ethnic-based policies, or ancestry-based rules, which stand in the way of reconciliation. Aboriginal and treaty rights can be — and should be — recognized and affirmed without race-based laws and policies that cause division and resentment amongst Canadians.John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca).
