MLA Linda Larson.
Provincial NDP Leader John Horgan is calling on Boundary Similkameen MLA Linda Larson to apologize for “insensitive and offensive comments” about the history of residential schools in B.C.
Larson, however, accuses the NDP of trying to “play petty partisan politics.”
Larson’s comment came in the form of a question during a hearing of the standing committee on health last Thursday, which Larson was chairing.
When a witness, Richard Jock, chief operating officer of the First Nations Health authority, raised the legacy of residential schools and their impact on First Nations health, Larson posed her question.
“How long do you think before the legacy of those residential schools finally burns itself out of the First Nations people?” she asked.
Horgan, who was not present during the committee meeting, responded: “A question like that reveals remarkable insensitivity on the part of an elected representative toward the tragic experiences suffered by First Nations people in B.C. residential schools.”
He called on Premier Christy Clark to immediately ask Larson to apologize.
Contacted by the Oliver Chronicle, Larson responded: “At that committee meeting we were talking to the health authority about how we can help people. I’m surprised and disappointed that Mr. Horgan would try and use my comments for partisan purposes.”
In response to Larson’s question, Jock, of the First Nations Health Authority, responded that as long as people feel uncomfortable with the system and “feel that institutions are not friendly to them, then I think the legacy will not find its way out of the system.”
“What institutions now are not friendly?” Larson continued. “I mean, the residential schools were horrific. There’s no doubt about that. I have many friends, and some have died too young as a result of the connection through their parents. I’m talking generationally. How many generations is it going to take before the words ‘residential school’ no longer play a part in how people feel?”
Jock responded that as long as people feel they are being discriminated against when they attend a hospital or other institution, “we’ll not see the end of that.”
Scott Fraser, the NDP critic for aboriginal relations and reconciliation, took issue with the line of questioning.
“It is wrong to hope that the tragedies of history are forgotten a couple of generations down the line, and try to pretend that they never happened,” Fraser said.
Future generations should know what happened at residential schools, and the repercussions, “so that they don’t make the same tragic mistakes,” he continued. “That is an important part of reconciliation.”
Residential school survivor Bernice Falkus responded angrily to Larson’s comments on Facebook.
“I went to a residential school and this will never burn out of my mind,” she said. “Just the other night I had a nightmare, a real bad one, about the residential school. Why don’t you read about what happened to us, all of us?”
A transcript of the meeting where Larson’s remarks occurred can be found here: http://bit.ly/29KmUs6.
(With files from Lyonel Doherty)
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan. (Richard McGuire file photo)
