EXPRESS INFORMER > News & Politics > Erin O'Toole walks back claim that residential schools were designed to 'provide education'
Erin O'Toole walks back claim that residential schools were designed to 'provide education'
Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole is walking back comments he made to Ryerson University students claiming the residential school system was designed to "provide education" to Indigenous children before it went off the rails and became a "horrible program."
"The very existence of residential schools is a terrible stain on Canada's history that has had sweeping impacts on generations of Indigenous Canadians," O'Toole said in a statement released today.
"I speak about the harm caused by residential schools regularly. In my comments to Ryerson students, I said that the residential school system was intended to try and 'provide education.' It was not. The system was intended to remove children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures."
O'Toole has been under pressure to retract his statement about residential schools ever since Press Progress — a publication of the Broadbent Institute — and Global News first reported the contents of a zoom call O'Toole held with Ryerson University's Campus Conservative club earlier this month.
In that call, O'Toole addressed what he described as the "woke" campaign to rename Ryerson University because of the role the school's namesake played in creating the residential school system.
<a href="https://t.co/l3wBHpNXeU">pic.twitter.com/l3wBHpNXeU</a>
&mdash;@erinotoole
O'Toole said former prime minister Pierre Trudeau opened more residential schools than Egerton Ryerson did, but no one is trying to take Trudeau's name off Montreal's airport.
"When Egerton Ryerson was called in by Hector Langevin and people, it was meant to try and provide education," he told the Ryerson students in the call. "It became a horrible program that really harmed people, and we have to learn from that and I wear orange. But we're not helping anyone by misrepresenting the past."
Born in 1803, Egerton Ryerson was an educator and Methodist minister who is credited with founding the public education system in Ontario. He also played a key role in the creation of the residential school system, prompting some to pressure the university to change its name.
Press Progress reported that the video was first posted to the Ryerson Conservative Facebook page on Nov. 5. The video was still being hosted on the page as of this morning under the title "most popular."
'Race-baiting'
Earlier today, NDP MP Charlie Angus accused O'Toole of engaging in "disgraceful revisionist race-baiting to win Conservative votes."
"We know that there is a pattern among deniers to re-write the facts that were found in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission," Angus said. "These institutions were not set up to provide education. They were set up to destroy the Indian family. That meets one of the tests of genocide."
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde took to Twitter to call O'Toole's comments "reprehensible."
"It is disappointing that Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole sought to use the residential school tragedy, which has devastated generations of First Nations families, to score meaningless political points," he wrote. "No political party can claim the high road on that tragic piece of Canadian history."
Bellegarde said that he was looking forward to sitting down with O'Toole next year to help him better understand how tragic the residential schools system was, and how it was made worse by "decades of political mismanagement and indifference."
My thoughts on Conservative Leader <a href="https://twitter.com/erinotoole?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@erinotoole</a>'s reprehensible comments about Residential Schools: <a href="https://t.co/mLj0B6DW3x">pic.twitter.com/mLj0B6DW3x</a>
&mdash;@perrybellegarde
Read more at CBC.ca
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