Canada eagerly embraces a genocide double standard
My article below criticizes Canada’s double standard in refusing to label the treatment of Uyghurs in China as genocide while simultaneously labelling the residential school system as a genocidal exercise. I argue that the residential school system, while harmful to some students, did not meet the internationally recognized criteria for genocide. I also highlight the discrepancy in former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s stance on the two issues, noting his reluctance to label China’s actions as genocide while supporting the genocide label for Canada’s residential schools.
Canada eagerly embraces a genocide double standard
Hymie Rubenstein
Western Standard Guest Columnist
November 17, 2025
Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, in a May 6, 2024 briefing note, Canada’s federal cabinet likened Chinese concentration camps to Canada’s Indian Residential School system. Diplomats privately told Chinese Communist Party officials “not to repeat Canada’s past mistakes,” said the document.
These recently revealed facts, uncovered by Blacklock’s Reporter, quote the briefing note titled Assistance To China as saying, “Canada continues to urge China not to repeat Canada’s past mistakes and to recognize the harm that its current policies are inflicting on ethnic and religious minorities in China.” The note was written for the Minister of International Development.
As far back as 2020, the Commons subcommittee on foreign affairs documented crimes against China’s Uyghur Muslim minority, including slave labour, forced abortion, organ harvesting, and mass detention in concentration camps in Xinjiang Province.
“Witnesses that appeared before the subcommittee were adamant that the atrocities committed by the Government of China amount to genocide as well as crimes against humanity,” wrote MPs. “Considering this evidence, the subcommittee notes the Government of Canada is not only responsible for punishing the crime of genocide, but for preventing one from occurring.”
The Assistance To China briefing note also confirmed atrocities. “Credible reports from the United Nations bodies, from international human rights organizations and victims indicate Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been targeted for repression.”
The briefing note even went as far as claiming an equivalence between the treatment of Uyghurs and Canadian policies under the Indian Act. “State run forced labour programs continue to target ethnic Uyghurs, relocating them to factories across China, breaking up families and destroying communities,” it said.
“Uyghur children in Xinjiang continue to be forcibly placed in residential schools where the curriculum prioritizes the Mandarin language and fails to encourage Uyghur language, culture and religion,” said the note. “Canada is still dealing with the intergenerational harm caused by past policies that separated Indigenous children from their parents and placed them in Residential Schools.”
