Without meaning to, I started a bit of a firestorm a couple of days ago over the residential schools issue. This has caused me to look much more seriously at this issue than I had before. While those who disagreed with me called attention to some remarks of mine that were perhaps not as well thought out as they could have been, I have had a chance to focus my thoughts on what for me is the most important objection to the Canadian government paying reparations to the victims of those crimes incurred as a result of that program.

I don’t question for a second that in the past, parts of Canada’s government have acted contrary to the best interests of many special interests - we can talk about Italians, Chinese, Aboriginals, Dukhobours, Metis, Japanese, Sikhs, the list goes on. Many of these groups, in recent years, have sought reparations for the wrongs done to them in the past. At those various times, there were people who were individually responsible for the actions of government. Sadly some of them were never held accountable for these actions in their lifetime. Others remain alive today. Let me say right now, those individuals responsible for any and all of these actions deserve to be tried and convicted of any laws that were broken.

But the fact is, no government is perfect - government is made up of humans, self-interested humans, who make mistakes, make oversights, and sometimes even make patently wrong decisions - sometimes with noble reason, sometimes with ignoble ones. I maintain a common concept in law in Canada, the United States, and perhaps even in much of the western world is the concept of limited liability. We all want to blame someone for our problems. Sometimes the problems we face today are because of injustices in the past. Sometimes those injustices occurred to our forefathers, but their continued effect continues to this day. However, at some point, a reasonable line has to be drawn between who we can hold legally responsible for our plight and who we cannot.

Let me tell you a story about a poor man in his 50’s. He is addicted to drugs on the Downtown East Side of Vancouver. He has never held a steady job, and he has committed crimes to support his drug habit. People ask him why he is where he is. He points back in time to when he first encountered drugs, how he had low self-esteem. He points back to his lack of focus in school and how the teacher would beat him and ridicule him in class, in an effort to get him to do better. He points back to a sick janitor he encountered who fondled him while he was showering after gym class.

Who is to blame for this? He could blame:

• The teachers who physically and emotionally abused him
• The janitor who fondled him
• The administration of the school for hiring the janitor and the teacher, and for holding to school rules that permitted “the strap”.
• The school board who administrates the schools in the area
• The government who administrates the school boards

No question, such abuse is bad. It damages people for life. Someone is to blame. Who? If we use the concept of limited liability as a guide, we should first hold responsible the perpetrators of the abuse. The teacher and the janitor should be charged with abuse. They get sentenced to some years in prison.

But he is still addicted to drugs on the Downtown East Side. Did he mention he has kids? Needless to say, he doesn’t see them much. He abused them because of the drugs and my self-esteem issues. These damages go beyond just himself.

We could hold the school administration accountable for their hiring of the teacher and the janitor. Perhaps he tried to tell them about his abuse, but they turned a blind eye, because they feared for their jobs if it should be found that they failed to screen out such criminals. Perhaps they feared being painted as endorsing the conduct of those employees, so they said nothing. If these can be proven, then those responsible for such neglect of duty should also be tried and convicted. Again, limited liability. They are provably responsible for tacitly condoning or perhaps an accessory to such abuse. Try and convict.

But he is still downtown, addicted to drugs.

How about that school? The admin are punished; the teacher, punished; the janitor, punished. Maybe it is the fault of the organization. Maybe the very structure of placing teachers “in authority” over students gave rise to the abuse. Maybe the whole school should be punished. How can a school be punished? As an organization, it has assets. It can be held responsible for a debt of cash. They could be forced to liquidate assets, change their structure to accomodate such a loss, or in an extreme case, forced to close their doors. Perhaps it is deserved, if the idea of “school” is inherently casual to the abuse that he suffered that led to the ruination of his life.

But this is where I draw the line. At this level, we have to begin to look at who else is being affected by this pursuit of “justice”. At this stage, we are causing punishment to other employees of that school, who had nothing to do with the hurt. We are causing punishment to their families from job loss. We are causing punishment on all the other students, who did not participate in his abuse, with the loss of their school. Education disrupted, perhaps delayed, with lifelong ramifications for people who had nothing really to do with my abuse.

But if this is justified, then why not the next level? Why is not the school board liable? If they are liable, now we enter into a whole new realm of punishment. Now, if the school board is held liable for a value of money to “make reparations” for my abuse, that cash is not paid by anyone directly responsible. It is paid for by every single resident of that school board’s jurisdiction, in the form of school taxes, or the part of property taxes that pays for school. Now, every homeowner in that district is paying the reparations, though there is no concievable way you could hold them in any way responsible for my abuse.

But some would take this yet further. The school board is but an arm of government. The government has supervisory responsibility over all school boards, by virtue of the Ministry of Education. If they are in charge, then they too are responsible for the actions of those they have charge of. Now, any monetary reparations are being borne by every single person who pays taxes in that country. Each taxpayer has no choice about paying their “share” of those taxes that are going to the reparations. Even if those taxpayers don’t even live in the same province, they are paying. They are paying “reparations” for a “wrong” that they as individuals, have zero responsibility for.

Yet, I have been told in recent days, that for me to say this is “racist”. That I am a bigot for not accepting my fair share of blame for the pain caused by people I don’t even know, for wrongs I never even knew were being committed. Comparisons are drawn to the recent decision to hold the Catholic diocese in California responsible for the abuse conducted by priests in that area. Was the whole diocese responsible? It bumps into that line of responsibility. If the reparations wind up causing the loss of funding for other programs offered by the diocese, say to unwed mothers, orphans, etc, then some people there are being punished for something not even remotely their fault. Is that fair? Is the nunnery on the hill outside of San Luis Obispo (fictional, but I am sure there are some out there) deserving of losing the money to buy cloth to create tapestries that they sell to support themselves deserving of punishment because a small number of priests abused some people at the other end of the State? It begins to be a hard decision, doesn’t it?

Now, this connects directly to the hotly debated subject of residential schools in Canada. If we agree with holding the Catholic Church’s diocese in California being held responsible for abuse as a body of parts, some of which had zilch to do with the actual abuse, endorsement of abuse, or even failing to act to curb the abuse (because some of those connected to the diocese simply had no contact or awareness of those parts in any way shape or form) then here in Canada, where the residential schools program was administrated by the Catholic Church, we should be able to hold them as a body responsible. This would affect probably the same number of unrelated ministries and people as the California decision does (given the numbers of Hispanic Catholics in California, and the comparable populations of the Golden State to Canada).

But the argument started from holding the government responsible for reparations. Based on what I have said above, given the numbers of people who the Government of Canada receives its funding from, who had absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the people in the residential schools program, nor did they have any awareness of the abuse (so cannot be considered culpable by doing nothing to stop it), it is patently wrong to hold the Canadian government responsible for paying reparations for the program. It makes an entire nation responsible for the reprehensible actions of only a few. It imputes responsibility for crimes (admittedly horrible crimes) on the innocent, and not just one innocent, but millions. Tens of millions.

When private indviduals are held responsible for their actions, they pay. When corporations are held responsible for their actions, limited liability applies, to focus in on the individuals who were responsible within the corporation. To hold a government responsible (especially a democracy, but any government ultimately requires taxes from its citizens, which would be a criminal offence not to pay) is to hold, to a degree, every single citizen liable for the crime. While this is not without precedent, it is a lot easier to demonstrate that, say, a much larger percentage of Germans were either actively involved in the Holocaust or chose not to object to it (and impute responsibility for it upon themselves by doing nothing to stop it) than there were Canadians directly involved in the residential school program or were aware of its abuses and did nothing. But without getting into a debate of “what percentage of a population mst be culpable before it is reasonable to require all to pay reparations”, I believe the underlying question is that of the justice of making one innocent person pay reparations for something they had no responsibility for.

Do I have a problem with an organization or foundation forming to collect donations to support the victims of abuse in residential schools? Heck no! I would invite any and all Canadians to donate to such a worthy cause! I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that a lot of people have suffered a lot, and may need extra help to overcome their situations. I would even donate to such a cause myself, out of sympathy and care for my fellow man. But such a donation would be voluntary, and would not involve any imputation of responsiblity upon myself for the plight of those victims. That is the difference I see.