Free Republic

Canada is pulling funds from groups still searching for alleged bodies buried at Indigenous residential schools funded by Catholics and other Christians. An organization and a committee of experts formed to search for the elusive remains have both lost funding in the past month, following four years of searches that have found zero remains. The Survivors’ Secretariat and the committee both say they have lost funding this year, the CBC reported. One of the committee’s founding members, Crystal Gail Fraser, told the outlet in mid-February that the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials would have...

Long before Stephen Harper’s Conservative government launched the multi-billion-dollar Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement that established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2007, it was already commonplace to refer to the legacy of those schools as a “dark chapter in Canadian history.” There was much that was dark about the schools. Many of the church-run, federally-administered institutions, whatever the good intentions of the religious orders that ran them, were dark and forbidding places that incubated disease, cultural dislocation, abuse and despair, for much of their history. Roughly 150,000 children are believed to have attended the schools, which the federal government...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been criticised for leaving on vacation during Canada's first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The new federal holiday honours thousands of indigenous children who were forcefully assimilated in Canada's state-backed residential school system. Mr Trudeau's daily schedule had indicated he would spend the day in private meetings in the capital Ottawa. Instead he was spotted with family on the beach in Tofino, British Columbia. Mr Trudeau's office later amended his itinerary and, in a statement to CBC News, a spokesperson admitted: "Yes, the PM is spending time in Tofino with family for a few...

The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario is pushing to remove the name of Canada’s first prime minister from a handful of schools across the province in an effort to create a "safer" learning environment.