Manitoba school trustee faces calls to resign after comments on residential schools, reconciliation

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-Ann 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."

WATCH | Mother calls on trustee to resign: