Canada’s historical crimes and systemic injustices (non‑exhaustive)

This section lists major state actions and policies widely recognized as grave injustices or human rights violations. It focuses on concrete, well‑documented examples across eras and communities.

Targeting Indigenous peoples

• Residential Schools system (c. 1883–1996): compulsory removal of Indigenous children to church‑ and state‑run schools; widespread abuse, deaths, and cultural suppression.
• Sixties Scoop (1960s–1980s): mass apprehension of Indigenous children into non‑Indigenous foster and adoptive homes, severing family and cultural ties.
• Indian Act regime (since 1876): segregation on reserves; pass system restricting movement (1885–1940s); bans on ceremonies (e.g., potlatch, Sun Dance, 1884–1951); disenfranchisement and suppression of Indigenous governance; criminalization of fundraising for land claims (1927–1951).
• High Arctic relocations (1953–1955): forced movement of Inuit families to Resolute and Grise Fiord under promises of support that often failed to materialize.
• Indian hospitals and TB evacuations (c. 1930s–1970s): segregated facilities and mass medical evacuations of Inuit and First Nations; families often not informed of deaths or burial sites.
• Coerced and forced sterilizations (20th century to recent): disproportionate impact on Indigenous women under provincial eugenics laws and later coercive medical practices.
• Métis scrip and dispossession (late 19th–early 20th century): land‑for‑script regime marked by fraud and speculation that stripped Métis of their lands.
• Newfoundland and Labrador residential schools (1890s–1980): similar abuses in schools outside the 2007 federal settlement, prompting a separate apology and redress later.
• Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people (ongoing): systemic failures in protection, investigation, and justice, documented by a national inquiry.

Wartime internments and surveillance

• Ukrainian and other Eastern European internments (1914–1920): thousands designated “enemy aliens” under the War Measures Act; forced labour in camps across Canada.
• Japanese Canadian dispossession and internment (1942–1949): 22,000 people uprooted from the Pacific coast; property seized and sold; restrictions lingering after war’s end.
• Italian and German Canadian internments (1940s): hundreds of Italian Canadians and others detained; broader communities subjected to registration, surveillance, and stigma.

Racist immigration and expulsions

• Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion (1885–1947): punitive entry tax escalating to a near‑total ban under the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act.
• Continuous Journey regulation and Komagata Maru (1908; 1914): regulation engineered to bar South Asian migrants; 376 passengers on the Komagata Maru denied entry and forced to depart.
• Turning away the MS St. Louis (1939): refusal to admit over 900 Jewish refugees, many of whom later perished in the Holocaust.

Other systemic harms

• Eugenics laws (Alberta 1928–1972; British Columbia 1933–1973): state‑sanctioned sterilization programs targeting institutionalized and marginalized people.
• Africville expropriation (1960s): demolition of a historic Black community in Halifax under “urban renewal,” with residents displaced and undercompensated.
• Duplessis Orphans (1940s–1950s): thousands of children in Quebec misclassified as “mentally ill,” subjected to abuse and institutionalization.

Further reading

1. National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation — reports and findings
2. UBC Indigenous Foundations — The Indian Act
3. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Indian Hospitals in Canada
4. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Japanese Canadian internment
5. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Internment in Canada (WWI and WWII)
6. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Chinese Head Tax
7. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Chinese Immigration Act, 1923
8. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Sexual sterilization in Canada
9. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Métis Scrip
10. National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls — Final Report