Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes a historic official apology to Canada's First Nations in regard to abuses at a Canadian Indian residential school.
In Canada, the Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. Attendance was mandatory from 1894 to 1947. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own native culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture.:42 Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally.:23 By the 1930s about 30 percent of Indigenous children were believed to be attending residential schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000.The system had its origins in laws enacted before Confederation, but it was primarily active from the passage of the Indian Act in 1876, under Prime Minister Alexander MacKenzie. Under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, the government adopted the residential industrial school system of the United States, a partnership between the government and various church organizations. An amendment to the Indian Act in 1894, under Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell, made attendance at day schools, industrial schools, or residential schools compulsory for First Nations children. Due to the remote nature of many communities, school locations meant that for some families, residential schools were the only way to comply. The schools were intentionally located at substantial distances from Indigenous communities to minimize contact between families and their children. Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed argued for schools at greater distances to reduce family visits, which he thought counteracted efforts to assimilate Indigenous children. Parental visits were further restricted by the use of a pass system designed to confine Indigenous peoples to reserves. The last federally-funded residential school, Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet, closed in 1997. Schools operated in every province and territory with the exception of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
The residential school system harmed Indigenous children significantly by removing them from their families, depriving them of their ancestral languages, and exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse. Students were also subjected to forced enfranchisement as "assimilated" citizens that removed their legal identity as Indians. Disconnected from their families and culture and forced to speak English or French, students who attended the residential school system often graduated being unable to fit into their communities but remaining subject to racist attitudes in mainstream Canadian society. The system ultimately proved successful in disrupting the transmission of Indigenous practices and beliefs across generations. The legacy of the system has been linked to an increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress, alcoholism, substance abuse, suicide, and intergenerational trauma which persist within Indigenous communities today.While religious communities issued their first apologies for their respective roles in the residential school system in the late 1980s and early 1990s, on June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered the first public apology on behalf of the Government of Canada and the leaders of the other federal parties in the House of Commons. Nine days prior, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to uncover the truth about the schools. The commission gathered about 7,000 statements from residential school survivors through public and private meetings at various local, regional and national events across Canada. Seven national events held between 2008 and 2013 commemorated the experience of former students of residential schools. In 2015, the TRC concluded with the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and the publication of a multi-volume report detailing the testimonies of survivors and historical documents from the time. The TRC report concluded that the school system amounted to cultural genocide. In 2021, thousands of unmarked graves were discovered on the grounds of former residential schools, and are continuing to be searched.
The prime minister of Canada (French: premier ministre du Canada) is the first minister of the Crown. The prime minister is the head of government for Canada, chairs and selects the membership of the Cabinet, and advises the Crown on the exercise of executive power and much of the royal prerogative. As prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the elected House of Commons, they typically sit as a member of Parliament (MP) and lead the largest party or a coalition in the House of Commons.
Justin Trudeau is the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada. He took office on November 4, 2015, following the 2015 federal election where his Liberal Party won a majority of seats and was invited to form the 29th Canadian Ministry. Trudeau was subsequently re-elected following the 2019 and 2021 elections with a minority of seats.
Not outlined in any constitutional document, the office exists only per long-established convention (originating in Canada's former colonial power, the United Kingdom) that stipulates the monarch's representative, the governor general, must select as prime minister the person most likely to command the confidence of the elected House of Commons; this individual is typically the leader of the political party that holds the largest number of seats in that chamber. Canadian prime ministers are appointed to the Privy Council and styled as the Right Honourable (French: Le très honorable), a privilege maintained for life.
The prime minister is supported by the Prime Minister's Office and heads the Privy Council Office. The prime minister also effectively appoints individuals to the Senate of Canada and to the Supreme Court of Canada and other federal courts, along with choosing the leaders and boards, as required under law, of various Crown corporations. Under the Constitution Act, 1867, government power is vested in the monarch (who is the head of state), but in practice the role of the monarch—or their representative, the governor general (or the administrator)—is largely ceremonial and only exercised on the advice of a Cabinet minister. The prime minister also provides advice to the monarch of Canada for the selection of the governor general.