Manitoba school trustee faces calls to resign after comments on residential schools, reconciliation
Province will launch review of board after incident, education minister says
A school trustee in western Manitoba is facing calls to resign, and the province says it's launching a review, after a presentation in which he made comments decried as hateful, including questioning the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools.
Paul Coffey, a trustee with the Dauphin-based Mountain View School Division, gave a roughly half-hour-long presentation during a board meeting on Monday, ahead of an anti-racism training session Wednesday.
During the presentation, the trustee — who said he went to day school and has European and Indigenous ancestry, including Assiniboine and Chippewa roots — said the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was "causing division amongst people," and questioned the funding reconciliation and inclusion initiatives get from government.
"Residential schools — they were good," Coffey said.
"They're essential for reading and writing and arithmetic. Also enforcement of schools, school attendance.… This was realized by all, like even the people on the reserves," he said during his presentation, which was streamed online and viewed by CBC News.
"It was all nice until its well documented and openly expressed intention to use schools to assimilate, eradicate Indian languages, cultures and spiritual beliefs. So it started out as a good thing and now it turned out not very good."
He also later questioned the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which documented widespread abuse at residential schools Indigenous students were forced to attend.
"You have to start to wonder how authentic it is when there's absolutely no good stories in Canada about the residential schools?" Coffey said at Monday's meeting. "How is that possible? There's got to be one good story."
The trustee also said that most children who went to what were referred to as Indian day schools "dropped out" and that it wasn't a "a high priority to send kids to school."
Jarri Thompson, whose family is from Pine Creek First Nation, has two daughters in elementary school in the division. She said she found the presentation hard to listen to.
"I found just shocking for him to even allude to — about the residential schools — how there might have been some good to it until there wasn't. … As the daughter of a residential school survivor, trust me, it happened," she said.
"I am very active in my daughter's school right now and I see the progress that's being made," said Thompson.
"If we were to cut funding for that, for the education of what really happened in residential schools and what Indigenous culture is, then we're back to Square 1, where I was in school and I used to hide the fact that I was Indigenous."
CBC News has reached out to Coffey for comment.
During his presentation, the trustee also questioned legal fights calling for governments to honour treaties as well as land acknowledgments, and said he preferred the word "Indian" to describe Indigenous people, arguing that word honours their heritage.
The trustee also said reference to white privilege is a "racist comment" because groups shouldn't be labelled based on the colour of their skin, and argued acronyms such as BIPOC and LGBTQ are "degrading."
"My initial reaction was just of shock and confusion," said Cam Bennet, a retired teacher who used to work at the division. "It seemed like more like Festivus, the airing of the grievances type of thing," he said, in reference to the fictitious holiday from the TV show Seinfeld.
"There didn't really seem to be a point to it. … Not really behaviour that I would expect from a school board trustee."
Bennet is a member of the Parkland Human Rights Alliance, a group formed earlier this year to speak on behalf of marginalized groups in the Mountain View division.
On Tuesday, parents with the alliance sent a letter to Education Minister Nello Altomare, urging the province to investigate the incident and use "whatever tools that are available to remove trustee Coffey."
Province to launch probe
Altomare told CBC News Wednesday the province is aware of the situation and is launching a governance review to "ensure that particular board remains focused on what their job is."
He declined to say whether Coffey should resign.
"We have to ensure that schools are safe and welcoming places," the minister said. "We need to find out exactly what was going on, institute this governance review and we'll make decisions later."
The Mountain View board of trustees said in a public statement Wednesday Coffey was speaking as an individual, not on behalf of the board.
"We will continue to ensure that our students and staff are working in an environment where every student is valued, nurtured and enabled to realize their full potential," the statement said.
The mayor of Dauphin, the Northwest Métis Council and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs all issued statements condemning Coffey's presentation.
Manitoba Teachers' Society president Nathan Martindale said the union "utterly reject[s]" Coffey's comments and is disappointed in the "ignorance displayed by an elected official."
David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation, said the division should remove Coffey "effective immediately."
"He criticizes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its findings, saying it's not real, it's not factual. You're talking about judges, lawyers, experts … victims who gave presentation after presentation and research after research," he said.
"I was raised in day school. And I was whipped by the nuns.… I was beaten on the back of my calves because they got tired of me. They put me on my tiptoes in a circle on the chalkboard, because I spoke my language."
Chartrand said people with views like those expressed by Coffey shouldn't be in a position where they oversee schools, saying that gives "racism a clear platform."
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With files from Josh Crabb