Senate defeats amendment to criminalize school denialism

A proposal to criminalize residential school denialism in Canada was defeated in the Senate on Wednesday, halting a last-minute amendment to federal hate crime legislation. The amendment would have made it an offence to publicly condone, deny, or downplay the Indian residential school system.

The Senate voted 41 to 32 to strike down the proposed change to Bill C-9, known as the Combatting Hate Act. The amendment had been introduced earlier in the week by Nunavut Senator Nancy Karetak-Lindell, a residential school survivor. It sought to add a clause stating 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 and a potential jail sentence of up to two years.

Senator Karetak-Lindell argued the measure was necessary to protect survivors and advance reconciliation, stating that meaningful reconciliation cannot occur if the foundational truths of the residential school system are publicly denied. The residential school system, which operated for more than a century, forcibly removed over 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children from...