The Senate Human Rights Committee voted to amend the Liberal government’s anti-hate Bill C-9, proposing to make Indian residential school denialism a criminal offence.
Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell, who introduced the amendment criminalizing the denial of the impact of residential schools, said the change is needed because of “growing anti-Indigenous racism, violence, and rhetoric surrounding the lasting harm of the Indian residential schools.”
Karetak-Lindell, who attended a residential school in the Northwest Territories, said while she and her siblings had received an education, they “lost a chance to grow up in our culture, in our language.”
As initially reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, the amended motion states that any Canadian who “by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system” would be guilty of an indictable offense and liable to a jail term of up to two years, or a summary conviction….