Trudeau and Poilievre are indistinguishable when it comes to their positions on Canada’s Indian Residential Schools
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It has been well over three since “the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light – the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School” in British Columbia. “To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” stated Kamloops Band Chief Rosanne Casimir.
No such “stark truth” was confirmed on May 27, 2021. None has been revealed since: no remains of known and named missing children have been found in an unmarked or unknown grave anywhere in Canada.
Still, the violent fallout of the discovery of soil disturbances of undetermined origin has been punished by the relentless burning of Christian churches across Canada.
According to Olivia Torrone of the Catholic Civil Rights League, who runs the Church Attacks Database, there have been at least 40 Catholic church arsons since the wave began in June 2021.
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Non-Catholic churches are burning as well; in total, nearly 120 churches in Canada have been vandalized, set ablaze, or burned to the ground, with a married couple living above one of them dying as a result. Yet, as of January 2024, only 12 people had been charged with these crimes – and just one person had been convicted.
With the Trudeau government seemingly at death’s door, critics of the existing Indigenous policies reinforcing this church burning may be hoping a new Conservative regime will take a far different approach to Indigenous issues.
This is wishful thinking.
What is the difference between Tweedledum Justin Trudeau and Tweedledee Pierre Poilievre regarding Canada’s Indian Residential Schools?
Nothing of any importance.
More knowledgeable or truthful leaders may never have whipped their parties to unanimously support NDP member Leah Gazan’s Oct. 26, 2022, parliamentary motion calling on the federal government to recognize Canada’s residential schools as genocidal institutions, a claim based on no evidence and no debate.
Three weeks after the first churches were destroyed in the summer of 2021, Trudeau said that the burning and destruction of churches is “unacceptable and wrong” but quickly subverted this condemnation by claiming these acts were “understandable.”
When asked if these church burnings constituted hate crimes, Trudeau lamely replied, “That is simply not right; it is a shame,” thereby denying their hateful nature.
Ninety-six Christian churches in Canada had been vandalized, burned down, or desecrated since the Kamloops Band announcement when Poilievre responded to a reporter’s question at a Jan. 22, 2024, press conference in Vancouver about the relation between supposedly unmarked graves and these church burnings with a Trudeau-esque response.
“There is no justification for burning down a church. Period. Regardless of the other information or justifications that people claim to use, there is never a justification to burn down a church,” replied Poilievre.
Even in this condemnation of the burning of Christian churches, Poilievre showed himself to be a Justin Trudeau ventriloquist puppet when it came to Indigenous issues.
“We should provide the resources to allow for full investigation into the potential remains at residential schools; Canadians deserve to know the truth. And conservatives will always stand in favour of historical accuracy” but immediately qualified these assertions by claiming, “None of this changes the fact that the residential schools were an appalling abuse of power by the state and by the church at the time,” he concluded.
If Poilievre did a little reading, he would find that beginning in the 1870s, the federal government and Prairie tribes wanted to include schooling provisions in their treaties because they both hoped Canadian schooling would help Indigenous children learn the skills necessary to transition to a world dominated by European knowledge and technology.
This led to the development of educational policies after 1880 that relied heavily on boarding schools when reserve-based Indian Day Schools were not practical because of their small size and remote location.
The historical record clearly shows that thousands of children benefited from boarding school attendance despite their underfunding, high dropout rates, alien rules, and sometimes harsh discipline systems.
Stating that the Indian Residential Schools represented “an appalling abuse of power by the state and by the church at the time” in no way accurately reflects their origin, purpose, operation, or legacy.
Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology, University of Manitoba and a senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is co-author of Positive Stories About Indian Residential Schools Must Also Be Heard.
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