From the 1800s until the 1980s, the federal government placed many Aboriginal children in residential schools to educate and assimilate them into mainstream Canadian culture. The schools were poorly funded and inflicted hardship on the students; some were physically abused. Aboriginal languages and cultural practices were mostly prohibited. In 2008, Ottawa formally apologized to the former students.That's right: as far as the Cons are concerned, new Canadians should think that the most notable problem with residential schools was their level of funding - so that if the general goal of eradicating First Nations culture had received more resources, it would have been far less objectionable. And indeed, the concept of assimilation is listed only in direct conjunction with a desire to "educate" students - framing it in an outright positive light.
Now, one might argue that a citizenship manual should be relatively neutral in its description of historical events rather than getting into value judgments. But one can't claim that's the Cons' goal, as the same manual which looks to minimize the horror of residential schools as a matter of insufficient funding isn't anywhere near as shy about using terms like "regrettably" and avoiding any possible positive associations when it comes to wartime internment camps. (There, as an added signal of the Cons' priorities, they manage to phrase the coerced confinement of Japanese Canadians as mere "relocation" while providing a value judgment about the "forcible sale of their property".)
As a result, the only available conclusion is that while the Cons want new Canadians to recognize which past actions we most regret as a country, they don't see residential schools as meeting that standard. Which should offer plenty of reason to doubt both Harper's sincerity in the apology which the Cons are so eager to highlight, and his party's view of how First Nations and other cultures should be treated today.
(Edit: fixed wording.)
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