On Moral Authority

despite our most egregious errors we can, and must, defend what is morally right

As a Canadian, I’m acutely aware of our dismal history regarding the Indigenous people of this country.

The recent uncovering of mass graves of Native schoolchildren and the story of the residential schools generally — the last of which closed as recently as the 1990s — has shattered Canadians’ pride and forced a reconsideration of our place in the history of racist injustice.

Canada has a history of anti-Asian racism, evidenced by our appalling treatment of the Chinese workers whom we exploited during the building of our national railways, the tenuous east-west connection that helped create the very idea of this improbable country, and through the burden of head taxes, intended to stop Asian immigration.

Canada interred Japanese Canadians during the second world war. Slavery? “Abolished” in 1783, yet there are streets in Toronto named after prominent slaveholders.

How then can I answer people who call us hypocrites, who believe that our attempts to condemn other countries’ actions, or to stake our claim to be one of the final strongholds of a liberal world order, are hollowed out by our past history of oppression?