Criminal hate speech laws are increasingly a topic of discussion in the House of Commons. What should the government’s response be to hatred?
Right now, there are some laws against certain expressions of hatred. One example is section 319 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group. Section 319 also prohibits wilfully promoting antisemitism “by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust.” Legitimate defences include expressing a true statement, expressing a religious argument in good faith, making an argument to further the public interest, or trying to remove hateful speech.
MP Leah Gazan would like to add a new offence to that section of the Criminal Code with her private member’s bill C-254, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (promotion of hatred against Indigenous people). Similar to the prohibition on promoting antisemitism, Bill C-254 would prohibit promoting hatred against Indigenous people by “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada or by misrepresenting facts relating to it.”
Upon introducing the bill, MP Gazan stated, “Without truth, there can be no reconciliation, yet today, denialism is spreading: twisting facts, denying genocide and reigniting harm. It is not only hurtful; it is dangerous. It endangers survivors, our families and our nations, who continue the work of truth-telling.”
Canadians have different perspectives regarding residential schools. Some consider the residential school system to be a form of genocide, while others insist that is an inappropriate use of the term. Some scholars offer at least partial defences of the residential school system. Even some Indigenous people speak positively of their experience in the residential school system.
Even if police, prosecutors, and judges can reliably determine whether someone is “condoning, denying, downplaying, or justifying the Indian residential school system,” is criminalizing that person’s speech the most fair and effective way to counter it? Even if the government does have a legitimate role in regulating “hate speech” or certain forms of group libel, proposals like this stray too far into allowing the government to be the arbiter of truth.
Canadians should be permitted to disagree on topics like residential schools, even if they are objectively wrong. One of the purposes of free speech is to allow people to have lively debates, to challenge and correct each other, so that the truth may become clear. Of course, Canadians, and especially Christians, should seek to understand and present the truth on issues such as residential schools. But disputing facts or perspectives does not silence the truth and is not the same as promoting hatred.
Of course, the proposed legislation in this case would prohibit wilfully promoting hatred by making various comments about the residential school system. That is, it would not prohibit sharing an opinion or fact or misinformation, per se.
Canadian courts understand “hatred” in the context of the Criminal Code to mean an intense and extreme emotion that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation. However, the government’s proposed Combatting Hate Act threatens to lower that bar. As particular perspectives are condemned as hateful in public rhetoric, we are concerned about Parliament passing laws that will make it easier to prohibit those perspectives.
Proposals like Bill C-254 also show favouritism to specific groups or causes. Wilful promotion of hatred against Indigenous persons (or persons of any ethnicity, religion, etc.) is already prohibited in the Criminal Code. Why explicitly criminalize downplaying the experience of Indigenous people in residential schools but not the Japanese during WWII internment? Or why not prohibit denying or downplaying various crimes and persecutions against identifiable groups all over the world?
Finally, as ARPA has commented elsewhere, Christians should condemn hateful thoughts, words, and gestures. After all, I am “not to belittle, hate, insult, or kill my neighbor… and I am not to be party to this in others” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 105). Hatred is a real sin. But government and law enforcement cannot discern the degree of hatred in one’s heart and cannot regulate the heart.
Status: Passed 1st reading in the House of Commons
Description: Bill C-254 seeks to add a prohibition to the Criminal Code regarding the wilful promotion of hatred against Indigenous peoples by “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada or by misrepresenting facts relating to it.” This prohibition is similar to an already-existing prohibition on the wilful promotion of antisemitism.
Analysis: Canadians have different perspectives on issues including residential schools, and should be permitted to disagree and dialogue about such topics. Singling out particular groups or events in the Criminal Code risks censoring speech that is not hateful but is instead politically unpopular.
Action Items:
Today marks the second annual Truth and Reconciliation Day, a federal statutory holiday that aims to promote reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians. How might Christians react to this holiday? Do we count it as just another holiday – such as Victoria Day, Labour Day, or Family Day – where we mostly ignore the meaning of the day? Do we think that is a twisted version of what was originally good, such as secular bunny-and-egg Easter, Santa Christmas, or Cupid Valentine’s Day? Or do we remember the day like Canada Day, Thanksgiving, or Remembrance Day, respecting the holiday’s true purpose?
Truth and Reconciliation
Before delving into the day of remembrance itself and the nature of Indigenous truth and reconciliation, we should pause and acknowledge what ultimate truth and reconciliation are. Although Indigenous cultures and mainstream Canadian culture may understand these words in their own way, truth and reconciliation are Christian terms.
Jesus is the “way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). There are many true statements – that 1 + 1 = 2, that men and women are genetically different, that the earth orbits the sun – but Jesus is THE truth. The arc of history, the message of salvation, and the purpose of the world revolves around Him. After His ascension, this truth is revealed by the written Word of God and the Holy Spirit. As Christians today, as in every age, we are charged with bearing witness to this truth (Ephesians 4:25, 2 Timothy 2:15, 3 John 1:1-8).
Jesus is also the ultimate reconciler. He accomplished the most difficult reconciliation imaginable, that between a holy God and sinful men (Romans 5:10-11, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, Colossians 1:20-22). While there are passages in Scripture that encourage people to make non-salvific reconciliation among each other – for instance, Christ commands people to be reconciled with their brother before bringing an offering to the LORD (Matthew 5:24) – Christ has given His people the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18) that focuses on this reconciliation between God and man. “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Ultimate truth and reconciliation are found in Jesus Christ. We as Christians are first and foremost called to be ambassadors of this ultimate truth and reconciliation to the world around us. But since Christ is sovereign over all things and our faith impacts all of life, we are called to advance truth and reconciliation in earthly matters as well.
The Truth About Canada’s Past
The truth is that Canadian governments – both before and after Confederation – and Canadian churches have failed Indigenous communities. This failure takes many forms. Many failures between Canadian governments and Indigenous peoples could be cited and the magnitude of these failures can be debated, but three big failures stand out to us.
One of the greatest failures was the forcible removal of children from Indigenous homes to be educated in residential schools, a mass kidnapping coordinated and executed by the state and in which many of the established churches in Canada were complicit. Jonathan Van Maren explains this central grievance well in a blog on The Bridgehead:
“In much of the debate over the nuances of these re-emerging stories [of mass graves at former residential schools], I think an opportunity for appropriate empathy is sometimes lost. Yes, it is true that not all of the children were abused. Yes, it is true that healthcare standards during that time meant that diseases were far more deadly. Yes, some students remain ambivalent about their experiences to this day. But none of this changes the central fact of the matter: children were forcibly removed by the state from their families for the express purpose of destroying their family bonds and eradicating their language and culture.”
A second failure is policies that divide or discriminate against Indigenous people based on their ethnicity. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, “The Indian Act attempted to generalize a vast and varied population of people and assimilate them into non-Indigenous society.” It infringed on the sphere of First Nations governance, ignored the freedom of religion and expression by outlawing many religious and cultural practices, birthed the residential schools, restricted the mobility rights of Indigenous Canadians, set rules and regulations based on Indigenous ethnicity such as the inability of status “Indians” to vote, and established the reserve system. While the most egregious problems of the Indian Act have been corrected, the reserve system still exists. These reserves, the only example of racial or ethnic rules around land ownership in Canada, encourage many Indigenous Canadians to remain geographically separate from the rest of the population in remote areas with poor access to clean drinking water, internet/phone connectivity, education, health care, and employment opportunities. The current reserve system all but guarantees that many Indigenous Canadians will remain trapped in a cycle of poverty.
A third failure has to do with Canada’s treaties with First Nations, its lack of treaties, or confusion around how to interpret these treaties. A majority of Canada’s land is covered by treaties of some sort negotiated between the Crown and First Nations, though most of British Columbia, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador are not. The lack of treaties in these provinces lead to uncertainty about who holds the rights to the land. Differing conceptions about land ownership (Indigenous vs Western, private vs communal) and the exact wording of treaties also have created great confusion around land ownership. Several court cases, notably Calder et al. v. B.C. attorney general (1973), Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1997), and Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia (2014), and the negotiation of modern treaties such as the Nisga’a treaty (2000) have begun the work of disentangling these land claims, but this work has only just started in earnest.
Towards Reconciliation
There is no doubt that Canadians have mistreated Indigenous communities throughout Canada’s history, and so reconciliation is incredibly difficult. For now, we’re going to leave aside questions about how reconciliation can take place and focus instead on who bears responsibility for this reconciliation. The answer to this question greatly depends on our theology, our anthropology, and our history. We’d like to stress that reasonable people and reasonable Christians can come to different conclusions on who bears responsibility for past actions and how reconciliation for sins in the past can be made in the present. Just because this is a difficult question, however, doesn’t mean that we can ignore it.
What is clear is that Scripture speaks both of individual guilt, responsibility, and reconciliation as well as communal guilt, responsibility, and reconciliation. Individuals are always responsible for their actions: God’s punishment upon Cain for the murder of his brother, upon Moses for striking a rock, and upon Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit, to mention but three examples, testify of this. Sometimes, family members bear responsibility for the sins of their father, for example when Achan’s entire household was stoned for his theft or when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram’s families were swallowed up with them for their rebellion against God’s appointed servants Moses and Aaron. Beyond that, entire communities bear the punishment for the sins of their leaders: we all share in the guilt of Adam’s first sin and the entire nation of Israel endured the plague for David’s census.
In the same way, the individuals throughout Canadian history who mistreated Indigenous Canadians bear personal guilt and responsibility that the rest of us do not share. However, to some degree, we do communally share the guilt of the sins of our fathers, leaders, and countrymen. Just because we personally did not participate in the residential school system or because our ancestors recently arrived in Canada doesn’t absolve us from all responsibility to bring reconciliation to Indigenous Canadians. Understanding our responsibilities here is incredibly difficult, but that doesn’t mean we can skirt the question. Rather than providing you will all the answers, we simply hope here to start a much-needed conversation.
Conclusion
Truth and reconciliation are Christian concepts. The first settlers to Canada, although they failed Canada’s Indigenous people in many ways, did prioritize efforts to bring ultimate truth and reconciliation to these peoples. Catholic and Protestant evangelists alike sought to bring the good news of the gospel to those who had never heard it before. Alan Hayes, a Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Toronto, reports that Indigenous Canadians are just as likely to identify as Christians as non-Indigenous Canadians, with about 67% identifying as Christian. Indeed, as reported by the 2011 National Household Survey from Statistics Canada, there are 14 Indigenous Christians for every practitioner of traditional aboriginal spirituality.
Today, we can and we should spend part of the day reflecting on how we can bring truth and reconciliation to our Indigenous neighbours, just as we are called to for our non-Indigenous neighbours. Many today would say that this type of Christian evangelism to Indigenous people is continuing the failures of the church in Canada, yet this is one thing that Christians do not have to apologize for. Truth and reconciliation ultimately needs to be spiritual, reflecting on the need for Jesus Christ, but it also can be temporal, reflecting on how our country can treat all of its citizens with justice and equity.
Over the summer, ARPA Canada will be re-posting an old blog or article each Thursday. We hope that you enjoy these blasts from the past as we re-live some of the major content, issues, and campaigns of ARPA’s past 15 years.
The following article, written by Mark Penninga, was originally published in the Reformed Perspective Magazine and reposted on ARPA’s website in 2014. Given that three leaders and one interim leader of the Conservative Party have come and gone since then, with a new leader set to be announced in just a few weeks, the thought that we’d share this article noting the successes and failures of the last time there was Conservative government in Ottawa. What might we expect from a future Conservative government?
In a June 2011 article for Reformed Perspective I detailed 10 realistic goals that could be accomplished for our nation under this Conservative government if our leaders have the courage to lead and if citizens give them the encouragement and accountability to do so. Now that we are about halfway through this government’s mandate, how are we faring on these issues?
1. Give Aboriginals the responsibility and hope that belongs to all Canadians
Grade: B+
Not long after ARPA published a policy report on this issue in 2012, we were very encouraged to see the federal government announce a number of bills and policies to increase accountability, equality, and opportunity for Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. In June 2013, the First Nations Financial Transparency Act became law. Aboriginal MP Rob Clarke has also introduced a private member’s bill C-428 entitled the Indian Act Amendment and Replacement Act. And the government has also taken steps towards allowing private property ownership on reserves and increasing parental responsibility in education.
As encouraging as these changes are, they are small steps in light of the enormity of the problem. And given that the issue crosses into provincial responsibility, much more can also be done in having the provinces and federal government work towards a common vision.
2. Reform the Canadian Human Rights Commission
Grade: C-
In light of all the opposition from all sides of the political spectrum to problematic sections of the Canadian Human Rights Act, it is striking that it took a private member’s bill (Brian Storseth’s C-304) to finally abolish Section 13 in the summer of 2013.
This was a huge victory, but the current government can’t take much credit for it, apart from not actively opposing it. Much more can be done to reform or even abolish the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
by André Schutten
Members of Parliament voted overwhelmingly (269 to 10) in favour of a motion calling on Canada’s Roman Catholic bishops to request the pope visit Canada to apologize for the Church’s role in the residential schools.
The residential school system was deeply flawed and perpetrated much evil against vulnerable children. It separated indigenous children from their parents without the families’ consent, violating the family unit with the force of law. The Roman Catholic Church and other denominations were willing cooperators with the government in running this school system.
Nevertheless, this call for the pope to apologize troubles me.
This is not to say that there isn’t a place for groups and civil governments to apologize for their participation or inaction in past wrongs. An example of this is in 2001 when some Christian groups got together and apologized to the Jewish survivors of the MS St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish people that Canada turned away in 1939. This resulted in 254 of them perishing in the Holocaust. Prime Minister Trudeau very recently brought up that same ship and apologized in question period for Canada’s actions, with an official apology pending. These types of apologies mean a lot to the Jewish community and can be applauded. There is value of owning up to and apologizing for wrong actions of the past. I’m glad Mr. Trudeau is doing so for the survivors of the Holocaust who were passengers on the St. Louis, and I’m glad the previous pope did so to survivors of Canada’s residential schools.
Nevertheless, this House of Commons pope motion still troubles me. It betrays a failure to understand the root problem of the residential schools and suggests our legislators have much yet to learn.
Three problems with the pope vote
Father Raymond De Souza spelled out several problems with this motion in a recent editorial. To summarize his three points:
- A previous pope has already apologized for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the residential schools and that apology was accepted by the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations at the time, Phil Fontaine, a former residential school student himself. Fontaine called that apology the historic “final piece” of the confession of sin by the various churches and told CBC News that the papal apology should “close the book” on church apologies.
- It is not the business of the Parliament of Canada to tell the Catholic bishops of Canada what they should or should not do in their relations with the pope.
- The timing of the motion is curious in light of the summer jobs attestation “kerfuffle”. To demand an apology from a Christian leader after deliberately discriminating against that same church by refusing to release publicly available funds to support even a small fraction of the good work they do every summer for vulnerable people, including many First Nations, seems ill-timed at best.
Two more problems with the pope vote
To De Souza’s three points, I’d add two more:
- The motion calls only the Roman Catholic Church to apologize (again). Yet a quarter of the residential schools were run by Anglicans. Why not call on the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican Church, to apologize (despite the Anglican Church of Canada having apologized once already in 1993)? Or why not call out Jordan Cantwell, Moderator of the United Church of Canada, which together with the Presbyterian Church ran another quarter of the schools? The United Church apologized twice, but its last apology was in 1998. Is it time for a third? Could it be that the Parliamentary motion skipped these denominations because they are famously socially progressive, whereas the Roman Catholic Church is much more socially conservative?
- The Roman Catholic Church (or the United Church or Anglican Church) could not have done anything with the residential schools without the force of the state behind it. While these Christian institutions provided the education, it was state actors who compelled or abducted Indigenous children from their families and kept them at residential schools. The motion demanding a papal apology ignores this. CBC’s coverage of the motion and the history behind it also ignores this important point.
This final point merits deeper exploration.
The residential school system wreaked havoc on Indigenous families and the effects are clearly still being felt and will be felt for a very long time. This raises a question I’ve long asked myself: why do the historic wrongs committed against certain people groups seem to have longer and deeper repercussions than others? I have a hypothesis that requires a PhD thesis to do it justice. Here’s the background, hypothesis, and the application:
Four historic atrocities
Consider four historic atrocities committed against four distinct people groups, in chronological order: the African slave trade, the residential schools, the Jewish Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide. All four are horrors of history that we need to learn from and never repeat. Of the four, only one group seems to have overcome the injustice in a resilient way, that being the Jewish people. The ignorant would presume that has something to do either with race or conspiracies.
Interfering with families in the past
Though I think it’s more complicated than any one factor, my hypothesis is that state interference with the natural family unit has devastating inter-generational effects. In the African slave trade, residential schools, and the Cambodian genocide, children were forcibly separated from their parents and raised by other slaves, by state bureaucrats or their proxies. The bond of family was destroyed or undermined in significant ways by the state (in the case of slavery, the state sanctioned the actions of slave owners). And this forcible separation of children from their mom and their dad leads to generational tragedy, where children don’t know their mom and dad, don’t have a role model for what it means to grow into a mom or dad, a husband or wife, don’t have the first social safety net (the family) and so they remain lost and broken.
Strangely, the Jewish Holocaust, though the most intensive and violent of these human rights tragedies, did not result in the same generational devastation. Why not? My hypothesis is that the Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jewish people as a whole but often did not separate mothers and fathers from children until they got to the murderous concentration camps and gas chambers. Most Jews hid together as families and, if hidden successfully, survived as families. Where families were caught and sent to extermination camps, the thousands of survivors – Holocaust orphans and widows or widowers – worked intensively to rebuild families immediately after the war ended. And while there was tragic and devastating post-trauma effects, nevertheless, some three or four generations after the Holocaust, Jewish families are socially and economically stable, certainly more so (generally speaking) than individuals and families in First Nations, African-American, and Cambodian families.
If my hypothesis has any merit, this has huge implications for the government. State law and policy needs to respect the pre-political social unit of the family and interfere with it only in extreme cases of criminal abuse or neglect.
Interfering with families today
Provincial and federal legislators in Canada: take note! You have been meddling in the sphere of family for too long. The social experimentation of modern families with bizarre new definitions of what constitutes a family must stop. The intentional interference in parental decisions on the moral and behavioural shaping of their children must stop. The refusal to encourage traditional family units must end. The willingness to intentionally deprive a child of knowing who their biological mom and dad are must stop. Interference with discipline decisions of parents must stop.
I am in no way suggesting that Ontario’s Bill 89 or the Senate Bill 206 are comparable in their effects to the slave trade or residential schools. What I am saying is that the radical pieces of legislation I just listed meddle in the family. And that meddling signals to me that Parliamentarians have not learned the fundamental lesson of what was wrong with residential schools. I hope they smarten up soon.
Derek Ross appeared before the Supreme Court as an intervener in the case on behalf of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Christian Legal Fellowship, and he says even though the Ktunaxa claim was ultimately rejected, there were some positives in the decision. He says the ruling affirmed that freedom of religion has both private and public dimensions; that Canadians are free not just to “hold” beliefs, but that they’re also free to “act on them and disseminate them.” He says the ruling also made it clear that freedom of religion is something that is practiced “in community with others.” Ross says that part of the ruling is important because “there was some suggestion in the courts below that religion is understood as primarily private and belonging to the individual”, but he says the ruling has “made it clear that it has public and communal dimensions as well.”
If you’re interested, Mr. Ross has written a detailed analysis of the court decision; you can find that analysis here.
The Band claimed the government hadn’t properly considered the “Freedom of Religion” clause in the Charter of Rights, because approving the development would interfere with their relationship with the grizzly bear spirit which occupies the land in question. They argued that if the ski resort were to go ahead, they would no longer be able to engage in a number of spiritual practices that were important to them. A number of religious organizations, including Christian Legal Fellowship, intervened in the case in support of the band’s claims. The Court’s ruling, issued last Thursday, reads in part: “”that the (Ktunaxa Band’s) claim does not engage the right to freedom of conscience and religion under Section 2 a) of the Charter.” That Section, the ruling continues, “protects the freedom of individuals and groups to hold and manifest religious beliefs. (But) the Ktunaxa’s claim does not fall within the scope of Section 2 a) because neither the Ktunaxa’s freedom to hold their beliefs nor their freedom to manifest those beliefs is infringed by the… decision to approve the project.”
“The case,” the ruling says, “is not concerned with either the freedom to hold a religious belief or to manifest that belief. The claim is rather that Section 2 a) of the Charter protects the presence of Grizzly Bear Spirit in (the land in question.)” “This,” the ruling said, “is a novel claim and invites this Court to extend Section 2 a) beyond the scope recognized in our law. The state’s duty under Section 2 a) is not to protect the object of beliefs, such as Grizzly Bear Spirit. Rather, the state’s duty is to protect everyone’s freedom to hold such beliefs and to manifest them in worship and practice or by teaching and dissemination.”
At its core, the ruling means the BC government did not act “unreasonably” in approving the ski resort. The project still has to clear several environmental and other regulatory hurdles before construction can start.
by Colin Postma
Despite all the talk of reconciliation with Canada’s aboriginal population over the years, all is still not well in the minds of many Canadians.
Canada recently celebrated its 150th Birthday. Canadian flags, parades, and fireworks were the staple in every Canadian city, town, and village. In my home town of Ottawa, thousands waited in line for hours in heavy rain just to be a part of the events on Parliament Hill.
But many Canadians felt differently. One of my Facebook friends posted a picture of himself wearing a shirt with the Canadian flag upside down, symbolizing that Canada’s history of colonization, human rights abuses, and ongoing imperialism are not worthy of celebrating, and implying that Canadians really ought to be ashamed of themselves. Some people at protest events across the country carried “Canada 150 Years of Colonization” signs, or “Canada, Our Home ON Native Land” or “Canada, 150 Years of Indigenous Genocide”.
Why is there this ongoing tension around Indigenous or Aboriginal policy and how do we work toward reconciliation?
Reconciliation by Confession?
I recently attended a Ravi Zacharias International Ministries conference in Winnipeg. Dr. Anna Robbins of Acadia University spoke on ‘Getting our House Right.’ Dr. Robbins began by acknowledging that the conference was taking place on historically Indigenous lands under Canada’s “Treaty 1”. She called on everyone of white European background to seriously consider their part in the abuses that occurred.
Robbins concluded by speaking on what she called a ‘new way forward’ through truth and reconciliation. Dr. Robbins explained how she had wrestled with her responsibility towards Indigenous peoples. First, she told herself that residential schools didn’t exist in her home of Halifax, Nova Scotia and thus she had no responsibility. When she discovered that residential schools had existed in Nova Scotia, she tried to shift responsibility by telling herself that these evils were done in the name of the Roman Catholic Church and she wasn’t Catholic. After hearing of abuses by Baptist churches, she finally admitted that she was personally responsible for atrocities committed in the name of Canada and of God. Robbins called on Canadian Christians to “own responsibility for violations of human rights in Canada.”
Robbins then went on to defend her understanding of collective responsibility from the Bible. She argued that God held the sins of David against the whole nation of Israel. She raised other examples of the people of Israel being held responsible for the sins of their fathers, their leaders, and their fellow Israelites. The defeat of Israel at the siege of Ai in the book of Judges was direct punishment after Achan had stolen plunder from the city of Jericho.
Conversing with other attendees after Dr. Robbins’ speech, it was clear there was some confusion. At what level should this call to apology be taken? Are all white people responsible, or just Catholics, or just clergy, or only Canadian citizens, or only those whose bloodlines descend from the United Kingdom or France, or some combination of these? Are my grandparents implicated, even though they immigrated from the Netherlands in the 1960s? What about more recent immigrants? You can see the fundamental problem with this mindset. Where does collective guilt begin and end in a multi-cultural society?
Dr. Robbins’ approach is popular today – asking forgiveness, self-shaming, apologizing for the actions of our forefathers and confessing one’s responsibility as white Canadians. While I have no doubt about her sincerity and desire for real improvement in the situation of the Indigenous people, I fear Dr. Robbins’ approach will only perpetuate the problems that exist.
In apologizing for the sins of others, we hold no actual responsibility and we feel no guilt. Such apologies will not right wrongs or undo harm. Might it be so easy to apologize because in doing so we can feel a smug sense of self-satisfaction at our own humility, without anything further being required?
Direct or Indirect Responsibility?
Much evil has been done in Canadian history against ethnic minorities. The continuing treatment of the Indigenous peoples as second-class citizens, the Indian Residential Schools, the abuse of those of Jewish and Japanese descent in World War II, and the expulsion of the Acadians by the British are a few examples. Apologies have been made by the Canadian government to ask forgiveness for these wrongs.
In operating residential schools, churches were carrying out government policy. It makes sense for specific churches and for the government, as institutions, to issue apologies for wrongdoing. People who were directly involved in abuses should of course also apologize. It even makes sense for those citizens not directly involved but who did not do what they ought to have done to prevent abuses to apologize. There is such a thing as collective responsibility. We have a responsibility to see to it that our churches and our government act rightly. What is doubtful, however, is that individuals bear responsibility for the sins of others based solely on shared race, ethnicity, or religion. There is a difference between the responsibility that our governments or even churches have as institutions and the individual responsibility that I have as a fellow Canadian, or even as a white person, for the residential schools.
Direct responsibility is clearly identifiable when there is a direct and formal relationship. Those individuals and institutions who caused or allowed these crimes to occur are personally, individually, and institutionally responsible. Apologies and restitution can be made, and may be expected. But what about less formal and indirect relationships? That of friends, colleagues, fellow citizens, or even fellow human beings?
Upon discovery of the Nazi death camps American soldiers forced German citizens to take part in digging up the corpses and identifying the victims. These citizens were not directly responsible for the actions of their government, nor did they necessarily cause the atrocities to occur. Still, they were responsible for turning a blind eye and ignoring the plight of their fellow human beings.
Less talk, more action
Jesus called us to love our neighbour as ourselves. The parable of the Good Samaritan makes this abundantly clear in a practical way. I am thus responsible, not out of some form of collective guilt, but rather out of love to do for my fellow human beings made in the image of God as Christ has called me to. It gives us pause to think, are we really doing all we are called to do, and are we really being the hands and feet of Christ as we ought?
If all we are willing to do is apologize for our forefathers and do nothing else to solve the problems that we see, how are we any better than those we condemn so theatrically? Are you willing to actively step into the lives of Canada’s Indigenous people and offer them your hands, your time, and your money? If not, then apologies for the historical deeds of other people who share your nationality, ethnicity, or faith are nothing more than a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.
The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing an historic Aboriginal religious freedom claim today.
The Ktunaxa First Nation challenged the British Columbia government’s decision to permit the construction of a ski resort, claiming that it would violate their religious freedom by desecrating a mountain that is sacred to them and interfering with their spiritual practices.
The British Columbia Court of Appeal rejected the Ktunaxa’s claim, saying that religious freedom does not protect religious exercise or belief to the extent it requires third parties to “act or refrain from acting and behave in a manner consistent with a belief that they do not share.”
The Court of Appeal decision raised some concerns, because it characterized religion as essentially a private and individual matter. But religion, and religious freedom, has an in escapably public dimension and a communal dimension. Religious freedom protects more than just individual religious expression, it also protects religious communities.
And a legitimate religious freedom claim may have implications for the rights or interests of others who do not share the beliefs in question. Religious freedom does allow religious bodies and communities to self-govern according to their beliefs and to expect others who wish to join or participate in their activities (whether sharing the body’s religious faith or not) to comply, without being penalized.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Christian Legal Fellowship jointly intervened in this case. They address the points mentioned above. Read more about the case and their intervention here.
The Fraser Institute has published a research paper titled “Myths and Realities of First Nations Education” and as can be seen by the graphic to the left, there is a visible distinction between First Nations and public schools, and not for the right reasons.
The report looks at the per student cost of educating children in public schools compared with reserve schools and the standards required (or not) by both systems.
The authors state that “simply increasing government funding for education does not result in a better education system or increased graduation rates.” You can read the short report on the Fraser Institute’s website here.