British Columbia's Opposition attorney general critic is questioning the “apparent mistreatment” of a lawyer after he asked for the rewording of Law Society training material about residential schools.
Dallas Brodie of the B.C. Conservatives says on social media that she'll reach out to Attorney General Niki Sharma and the Law Society of British Columbia in the coming days about the situation facing lawyer James Heller.
Brodie's posts on Saturday shared a link to an article about Heller, who unsuccessfully pushed last year for the society's training material to say there were "potentially" burial sites at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., instead of using more definitive language.
Heller is now suing the society over what he calls "false and defamatory" imputations of racism that he says the society republished, while Brodie says in her posts that there are “zero” confirmed child burial sites at the school.
B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad said Monday that he asked Brodie to take the post down over concern that her views could be "misinterpreted" to refer to "the whole issue" of residential schools, as opposed to there not being any bodies "exhumed or found" at the Kamloops site.
Rustad said he attended Truth and Reconciliation hearings when they came to Vancouver and knows that thousands of children did not return home from the schools, and those who died were not sent home for burial.
"They buried them on sites and ... just about every residential school in the country has a cemetery, has children who passed at a residential school who have been buried there, so that's just the facts with it, and so that's the concern, that's the issue."
Brodie's post on X hadn't been removed by late Monday morning.
The Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation said in 2021 that ground-penetrating radar provided “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” at the school site but last year said the radar found “confirmation of 215 anomalies.”
Brodie and the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation have not responded to requests for comment, while Heller declined to speak on the record.
The Law Society of B.C. said it couldn't provide comment on the case because the matter was before the courts.
In her social-media post, Brodie says she was "compelled to act" as the attorney general critic.
"The number of confirmed child burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site is zero," her post says. "Can we trust our legal system if lawyers are no longer free to insist upon the facts?"
Sharma said on Monday that "thousands of children were sent to residential schools to eradicate their First Nations culture, and many of those children never returned home."
“It’s a shame that the Conservatives are focused on dividing people, rather than on bringing them together so we can build a stronger future here in B.C.," Sharma said in a statement.
Provincial Indigenous Relations Minister Christine Boyle said on social media that Brodie's comments were "abhorrent behaviour" and there is "no place in B.C. for residential school denialism."
Brodie had previously drawn criticism for comments made when she was running as a candidate in Vancouver-Quilchena in last fall's B.C. election.
She said that when "people say they want to be First Nations," that comes with the responsibility to take care of people in the Downtown Eastside.
Canada's special interlocutor on unmarked graves and missing children said in a report last year that despite the "well-documented reality" of residential-school deaths, some Canadians have made a concerted effort to attack the truths of survivors, Indigenous families and communities.
The report by Kimberly Murray says the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc made an announcement "confirming that up to 215 potential unmarked burials" took place at the Kamloops school site, resulting in global attention for the issue.
More than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools in Canada, the last of which closed in 1996.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2025.
Chuck Chiang and Marcy Nicholson, The Canadian Press
