Hon. Mary Coyle: Honourable senators, as we gather here today in Canada’s upper chamber, on the lands of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people — on the eve of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation — I rise to add my voice in support of Senator McCallum’s Motion No. 10 and to encourage us to vote in favour of this important motion today.

To remind us, the motion reads:

That the Senate of Canada:

(a)acknowledge that racism, in all its forms, was a cornerstone upon which the residential school system was created;

(b)acknowledge that racism, discrimination and abuse were rampant within the residential school system;

(c)acknowledge that the residential school system, created for the malevolent purpose of assimilation, has had profound and continuing negative impacts on Indigenous lives, cultures and languages; and

(d)apologize unreservedly for Canada’s role in the establishment of the residential school system, as well as its resulting adverse impacts, the effects of which are still seen and felt by countless Indigenous peoples and communities today.

Senator McCallum’s motion is asking us — my fellow senators — to admit, to acknowledge and to apologize.

Colleagues, the evidence is clear. In this very chamber, we have all heard Senator McCallum recount her own excruciatingly painful experiences of residential school. Colleagues, in her speech introducing this motion almost a year ago, Senator McCallum quoted James Minton, who said:

We must be acutely aware that the crimes of residential school systems cannot be reduced to the injuries [experienced] by surviving individuals—for residential schools systems were not aimed at individuals, but rather at peoples . . . .

Colleagues, in 1879 — just 12 years after our chamber was established — Nicholas Flood Davin was sent by the Canadian government to investigate Indian education in the U.S.

Soon after, his report recommended boarding schools as a way to reduce “the influence of the wigwam” and as the best option for Indians “to be merged and lost” within the nation.

In their article “Genocidal carcerality and Indian residential schools in Canada,” Andrew Woolford and James Gacek state about Davin’s report:

Soon after his report, several government-sponsored boarding schools opened.

From this time, until the last Canadian residential school closed in 1996, 150,000 children passed through these schools, often spending ten months a year from as young as four or five years of age to as old as eighteen or nineteen. While in residence, they faced an assimilative education that taught them to despise their Indigenous identities . . . . The schools were administered by Christian denominations, namely Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian. They were spaces of horrifying physical and sexual violence, where children spent half of their days in lessons and the other half working to offset the costs of their education . . . . Conditions at the schools were defined by poor nutrition, insufficient clothing, inadequate medical care, as well as crowding and poor ventilation. Thus, the schools were often deadly environments. The [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] of Canada —

— led by our former colleague the Honourable Murray Sinclair —

— estimates that at minimum 6000 children perished while attending residential schools. Many others left the schools with a feeling of detachment and loss, unable to fit into the white world into which they were supposed to be assimilated, but also unable to return to their home communities since they no longer felt connected to their cultures. Entire generations of Indigenous children went without the experience of familial socialisation, cultural education, and a strong sense of community attachment. The reverberations of this experience continue today, with high levels of physical and sexual violence, substance abuse, health and mental health challenges, and other indicators of marginalisation present within many Indigenous communities and connected to cycles of violence that began in the residential schools.

Our colleague Senator Brian Francis reminded us in his speech sponsoring Bill C-5 — which helped create the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action No. 80 — that the actions of creating and operating the residential schools were:

. . . based on racist assumptions about the intellectual and cultural inferiority of Indigenous people and their ways of knowing and being.

The efforts of the residential schools to assimilate, convert and civilize Indigenous children through brutal means had the intention of “killing the Indian in the child.”

Colleagues, while preparing myself to participate in our special Arctic Committee’s visit to that region in 2018, I spoke with people who were working in the school system in Nunavik in northern Quebec.

I will never forget what one of the senior educators told me about the ongoing impact of the residential school system there. She said that the residential schools were no longer needed to kill the Indian in the child; in fact, their devastatingly harmful legacy is now causing the children to kill themselves in such large and tragic numbers.

Colleagues, in Statistics Canada’s 2019 report on suicide rates among Indigenous peoples in Canada, the suicide rate among First Nations people was three times higher than that of non‑Indigenous people.

The suicide rate among Métis people was twice as high as that of non-Indigenous people. And the suicide rate among Inuit people is nine times higher than that of non-Indigenous people in our country.

Colleagues, I could read you the many achingly painful personal testimonies of residential school survivors recorded through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I could cite many articles on the intergenerational trauma experienced by the descendants of residential school survivors. I could cite the sorry numbers on Indigenous language loss. I could talk about the ongoing racist treatment and mistreatment of Indigenous Canadians in our health care system.

But I believe the evidence before us is so overpoweringly clear that racism is the basis on which the residential school system was established and operated — and that the manifestations of its horrific impacts on Indigenous people and their communities further fuels that very racism today, as well as exacerbates and perpetuates the harms and human rights abuses they experience.

Honourable colleagues, now let’s turn back to the motion before us, asking us to admit to, to acknowledge and to apologize for this tragic and unjust racist reality of residential schools and their harms.

Colleagues, our very chamber would have been complicit in approving these laws, policies and programs — and complicit in not protecting the children, the families and the communities who were harmed. The residential school system was a cruel and, sadly, effective instrument of genocide.

As one very small step toward reconciliation on this day — the eve of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation — honourable colleagues, let’s admit and acknowledge the truth about residential schools, as articulated in this motion. And let’s respectfully apologize as representatives of our respective provinces and territories, and collectively as the Senate of Canada.

Colleagues, let’s take this step toward rebuilding trust and toward healing our important relationships with Indigenous peoples and communities across Canada.

Thank you, Senator McCallum, for your initiative and for providing all of us with the opportunity to do the right thing.

Wela’lioq, thank you.