Canada should take residential schools seriously. That means taking both truth and reconciliation seriously. But the Senate’s work on criminalizing “residential school denialism” raises a difficult question: when a country faces a painful historical issue, should the criminal law become the instrument used to manage public discussion?
This is not an abstract issue for me. My grandmother attended St. Mary’s Indian Residential School. Many Indigenous people have horrible stories to tell about their experiences at that school and ones across Canada. I know some of them personally. I have heard their experiences. No amount of civil discourse will erase their lived experience or convince me that their pain is not real.
