When the Carney Liberals lecture Canadians on history it is with a smugness and self-righteousness that is as loathsome as it is tiresome.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s Emancipation Day \u2014 created by the Liberals in 2021 \u2014 proved such an occasion for pontificating and sermonizing by our prime minister and senior ministers.<\/p>\n
In a\u00a0statement<\/a> over the weekend, Prime Minister Mark Carney was at pains to point out that “slavery existed here” and that while the 1834 Slavery Abolition Act marked a turning point, “freedom was not granted in a single day.”<\/p>\n He went on: “Today, we honour those whose courage helped make our country freer, fairer, and stronger.”<\/p>\n But the vital\u00a0component\u00a0missing from the prime minister’s statement\u00a0was context.<\/p>\n The\u00a01834 act that abolished slavery across the British Empire\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0the first turning point\u00a0in Canada aimed at giving Black people their freedom.<\/p>\n More than 40 years earlier, John Graves Simcoe, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, passed<\/a> the 1793 Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude, the first anti-slavery legislation in the British Empire. While the law did not ban slavery, it prohibited the importation of enslaved people into Upper Canada.<\/p>\n It added that no person is “to be subjected to the condition of a Slave, or to a bounden involuntary service for life, into any part of the Province.”<\/p>\n The act\u00a0also\u00a0paved the way for the “Underground Railroad.” A University of Toronto\u00a0article<\/a> on the subject estimates that 30,000 to 40,000 African Americans fled to Canada and freedom between 1793 and 1865.<\/p>\n This\u00a0is in contrast to\u00a0the\u00a0estimated<\/a> 4,000\u00a0to\u00a08,000 African and Indigenous people who were enslaved during 200 years of Canadian\u00a0history.<\/p>\n So\u00a0if the prime minister wants to honour those who made this country freer,\u00a0fairer\u00a0and stronger, he\u00a0should\u00a0start by\u00a0celebrating\u00a0Simcoe’s\u00a0abolitionist legacy.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in a Saturday tweet<\/a>, Foreign Minister Anita Anand said that on Emancipation Day, “I join Canadians in reflecting on the dark legacy of slavery.”<\/p>\n That same day, Identity and Culture and Minister Marc Miller said in a statement<\/a>,\u00a0“On this Emancipation Day, I invite Canadians to deepen their understanding of the history of slavery in Canada and the long-term effects of anti-Black racism.”<\/p>\n How sweet and humble of Anand and Miller to invite us to\u00a0deepen our understanding and\u00a0to pause in reflection. The implication here, of course, is that these two Liberal ministers have already done that\u00a0emotional\u00a0legwork and\u00a0it’s\u00a0only the proletariat who need educating.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Carney and his ministers\u00a0are merely reflections\u00a0of\u00a0these times when our penance must be on full display, our sackcloth and ashes\u00a0be\u00a0in full view\u00a0and,\u00a0like good Pharisees, we must stand proudly\u00a0on street corners\u00a0in order to\u00a0show our\u00a0sincerity.<\/p>\n There’s nothing wrong with condemning slavery; that it is evil goes without saying. But there is everything wrong in insinuating that the “peculiar institution” so prevalent in America \u2014 it is\u00a0estimated<\/a> that there were more than 10 million slaves in more than 200 years of American history \u2014 was in any way comparable to Canada.<\/p>\n But that is the effect of the Liberal announcements when they leave out that slavery was not widespread in Canada, that we led the way in abolishing the practice and that we were a refuge for tens of thousands of slaves.<\/p>\n If we are to “reflect on the dark legacy of slavery,” then we should also consider the fierce abolitionists who fought to end it.<\/p>\n