The Shadow Minister for Crown-Indigenous Relations says party leader Erin O’Toole said the wrong thing about residential schools in a controversial talk with young Conservatives at Ryerson University.
Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo MP Cathy McLeod calls O’Toole’s claim residential schools were about providing education before it went off the rails and became a ‘horrible program’ but she says he recognizes his mistake.
“It’s certainly consistent with Erin and the Erin that I know that he brings incredible compassion and he’s certainly reached out in ways since he was elected leader regularly reaching out to build relationships,” McLeod said on the NL Noon Report.
O’Toole has walked back his comments in a statement, where he says his comments to Ryerson students were intended to try and ‘provide education’ to them.
“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.
“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.”
When asked if calling students who have expressed concern about the legacy of Egerton Ryerson ‘dumb radical lefties’ was really in the spirit of relationship building – McLeod said ‘no party has a good history’ when it comes to residential schools.
“Conservatives and Liberals alike in terms of the residential school – both were in government – both made bad decisions over the years,” she added.
McLeod says the conversation O’Toole was having in the video was about so-called ‘cancel culture’ – and calls in recent years to remove monuments to John A. MacDonald and Egerton Ryerson from campus.
She says its important not to whitewash negative aspects of Canadian history by removing them.
Meanwhile, the Federal NDP is accusing Erin O’Toole of ‘revisionist race-baiting’ and the party is not willing to let him off the hook that easily.
Speaking to NL News, Charlie Angus – the NDP Critic for Indigenous and Northern Affairs – says Erin O’Toole is a smart man who couldn’t possibly be ignorant about the history of residential schools.
“Erin’s reasoning on this so-called cancel culture thing…I think he was playing to some you know – trying to radicalize young university students by using the residential schools to get them stoked and get them cranked up,” he said. “And we can’t use something as horrific as this to get young people in universities fighting with each other.”
Angus says he thinks the Conservative leader backtracked on his comments because he wasn’t expecting anyone other than the young conservatives at Ryerson University were going to hear what he said.
“For him to go to – to talk to Ryerson students – a university that has grappled with this, a university that has worked to build understanding and start throwing around terms like radical lefties and cancel culture is a sign of a guy who will say anything, do anything to stoke his base,” he said.
Angus adds that instead of building a big tent Conservative party, O’Toole has let it become the home of the anti-vaxers and people who make racist comments about top non-white health officials like Dr. Theresa Tam.
