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The Canadian government announced the decision in a Tuesday news release. Bill C-47 amends the Food and Drugs Act to ban both the testing of cosmetic products on animals and the sale of products relying on animal testing data, according to the news release.

The news release noted animal testing for cosmetics was “rarely conducted in Canada.”

Canada will join the ranks of the European Union, Australia, the United Kingdom, and South Korea, which have all moved to ban cosmetic testing on animals, according to the release.

A total of 44 countries have passed laws banning cosmetic animal testing, according to the Humane Society International. Additionally, 10 states in the US have banned the practice: New York, Virginia, California, Louisiana, New Jersey, Maine, Hawaii, Nevada, Illinois, and Maryland.

“Protecting animals, now and in the future, is something that many Canadians have been calling for, and something we can all celebrate,” said Canadian Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos in the release. “We are proud to move forward with this measure and to assure Canadians that the products they buy are cruelty-free. We will keep working with experts and international partners to explore safe, cruelty-free alternatives so no more animals suffer and die due to cosmetic testing.”

The release added Health Canada is also working to identify “effective alternatives to animal testing” outside the cosmetic world.

The amendment banning cosmetic testing on animals is one of a package of amendments included in the measure. The text of the bill stipulates “No person shall sell a cosmetic unless the person can establish the safety of the cosmetic without relying on data derived from a test conducted on an animal that could cause pain, suffering or injury, whether physical or mental, to the animal” and that “No person shall conduct a test on an animal that could cause pain, suffering or injury, whether physical or mental, to the animal.”

The bill was first read in the House of Commons in April and received royal assent on June 22.

Cosmetic testing has historically included “toxicity tests” in which animals are focused to consume or inhale certain chemicals, or have the chemicals applied to their skin or eyes, according to the Humane Society International’s Animal-Free Safety Assessment Collaboration.

In addition to being unnecessarily cruel, animal tests are also less effective compared to newer forms of assessment like computer modeling or tests using human cells, said the Humane Society International.

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The Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service said the bodies were found about 5 pm (21:00 GMT) on Thursday in the marsh in Tsi Snaihne, Akwesasne.

At a news conference on Friday, deputy police chief Lee-Ann O’Brien said the dead belonged to two families — one of Romanian descent with Canadian passports, the other Indian. At least one child under the age of three was among the fatalities, she said.

An infant believed to be “associated with the Romanian family” was also missing, the authorities said.

“All are believed to have been attempting illegal entry into the US from Canada,” O’Brien added.

The deaths came one week after the United States and Canada announced the expansion of a border agreement granting them the authority to expel asylum seekers who cross the nations’ shared border at unofficial points of entry.

O’Brien said the bodies were found near a capsized boat belonging to a missing man from the Akwesasne Mohawk community, which stretches along both sides of the St Lawrence River, with land in Ontario and Quebec on the Canadian side, and in New York state.

Authorities were awaiting the results of post-mortem and toxicology tests to determine the cause of death.

Marco Mendicino, Canada’s minister of public safety, said the Canadian Coast Guard and the Quebec provincial police force were assisting Akwesasne police in their investigation.

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The repatriation, which represents the largest group of ISIL family members repatriated to Canada at once, was determined in two actions on Friday.

First, the foreign ministry said it had decided to repatriate six Canadian women and 13 infants who had been living in the locked camps.

Later, a federal court ruled that four men seeking repatriation as part of that group must also be sent back to Canada.

“I’ve spoken to the parents and they’re really, really happy,” said lawyer Barbara Jackman, who is representing one of the men.

In his ruling on Friday, federal judge Henry Brown directed Ottawa to request the repatriation of the men as soon as reasonably possible and provide them with passports or emergency travel documents.

It was not immediately clear when the 23 individuals would be repatriated, or if they would face any legal consequences for alleged associations with ISIL.

Lawyers representing the citizens have argued that Ottawa is obligated to repatriate the group under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

According to Human Rights Watch, since ISIL’s territorial defeat in 2019, more than 42,400 foreign adults and children with alleged ties to the group have been held in camps in Syria run mostly by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The rights group warned in a 2020 report on Canadians in the camps, “The innocent, such as the children who never chose to be born or live under ISIS, have no hope of leaving. Meanwhile, any detainees potentially implicated in ISIS crimes may never face justice.”

At the time, Human Rights Watch said the Canadians in the camps included eight men, 13 women, and 26 children.

In 2020, Ottawa allowed the return of a five-year-old orphan girl from Syria after her uncle initiated legal action against the Canadian government.

Last October, Canada brought back two women and two children from the camps.

Among the men set to be repatriated following the most recent ruling is Jack Letts, a dual UK-Canadian citizen whose British citizenship was reportedly revoked in 2019.

Australia, Germany, France, Spain, the US, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have all repatriated citizens from Syria.

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When Pope Francis visits Canada next week, Ghislain Picard says he hopes the needs of residential school survivors will be the top priority for the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope is expected to apologize once more for the role members of the church played in abuses committed against Indigenous children at the forced-assimilation institutions, which operated across Canada for decades beginning in the late 1800s.

The discoveries of unmarked graves at several former residential school sites over the past year make the pope’s trip that much more critical, said Picard, the Quebec-Labrador regional chief at the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). “There are thousands of suspected [unmarked grave] sites,” he told Al Jazeera. “So I think the pope’s visit has taken on even more importance.”

In Quebec, a predominantly French-speaking and Catholic province that will be the second stop on the pope’s July 24-29 tour, the visit also presents an opportunity to increase awareness of the horrors of residential schools and dispel long-held myths, Picard said.

For decades, some have argued the residential school system in Quebec – which has its own distinct history of forced British rule and Catholic Church dominance over public life – was not “as bad” as in the rest of the country because the province had fewer residential schools, and they opened later than other institutions and generally operated for less time.

But that’s an argument Picard rejected as “unacceptable”, as the schools’ devastating effects still rippled across multiple generations of Indigenous families and communities – and continue to be felt today. “Even if it was one person, compared to maybe 1,000 people, the impact was felt and continues to be felt,” he said.

“This is really a dark chapter in Canadian history that must be known … It’s an education that’s worth supporting and I think the pope’s visit will certainly add to our efforts.”

Pope’s visit

Pope Francis’s tour of Canada will begin on July 24 in Edmonton, Alberta, where he plans to meet with residential school survivors before traveling to Quebec City, the provincial capital, for two days of events. He will end his trip in the northern territory of Nunavut on July 29.

The visit comes just months after the pope apologized to an Indigenous delegation that had traveled to Rome, asking for forgiveness for the “deplorable conduct” of members of the Catholic Church at residential schools.

More than 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the schools from the late 1800s until the 1990s. The institutions, which were set up and funded by the Canadian government and run by churches, were rife with abuse. Thousands of children are believed to have died.

A federal inquiry, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), concluded in 2015 that the residential school system amounted to “cultural genocide”. Among dozens of calls to action, the TRC had urged the pope to deliver an apology in Canada, where the harm were committed.

Views on the pope’s apology in Rome, and his upcoming visit to Canada, differ among residential school survivors and Indigenous community members, with some saying it is an important step and others rejecting it as too little, too late.

Michele Audette, senior adviser on reconciliation at Universite Laval in Quebec City, said peoples’ views on the pope’s visit are extremely personal and varied, but stressed that the apology was one of the TRC’s calls to action.

“The people who lived through the mistreatment and the trauma, and all those who are still alive today, some are still in survival mode while others have taken a path in which they are saying, ‘Come and look me in the eyes, and say what you have to say to me in my territory where these things happened,’” Audette told Al Jazeera.

“‘And send a message around the world, a symbolic gesture, a gesture in which your word will now need to be honored by many other religious communities, by your religious communities. How will they bring this apology to life, on a daily basis, from your visit here?’”

‘A Quebec history’

The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a class-action settlement approved in 2006 between the government, churches and residential school survivors, officially recognized 139 residential schools.

Of those, 12 were in Quebec. Many of the institutions opened in the 1950s and 1960s – later than those in other provinces and territories – as part of a push to colonize the mid-north part of Quebec that also involved relocating Indigenous communities and creating reserves. “The construction of schools … was also driven by pressure from local Catholic and Anglican church officials and, in some cases, in response to parental objections to the practice of sending their children to even more distant residential schools,” the TRC said.

But the model for residential schools goes back many years earlier – and is linked to Quebec City, one of the oldest settlements in North America. “The first boarding school for Aboriginal people in what is now Canada was established in the early seventeenth century near the French trading post at the future site of Quebec City,” the TRC found in its final report.

The TRC said that Roman Catholic school, which aimed to “civilize” and “Christianise” Indigenous boys, was a failure, however, as parents did not want to send their children and many who were enrolled ran away. The British conquest of the territory in the 1760s then forced the idea of residential schools to “lay dormant” until the early 1800s, when institutions began to open in other places.

In the middle part of that century, Quebec Catholic priests, nuns and other missionaries were sent to the Canadian prairies and western regions to advance colonisation there, explained Catherine Larochelle, a history professor at Universite de Montreal who specialises in colonialism.

Even before the federal government got involved in residential schools, missionaries from Quebec – a province where historically, and until this day, most people identify as Catholics – set up schools in which to evangelise Indigenous children out west, Larochelle told Al Jazeera. Though they were largely “unsuccessful”, these early institutions served as the basis upon which Ottawa later built its nationwide residential school system, she said.

“There were a lot of French-Canadian [religious] women … they were the ones who made the residential schools work,” said Larochelle. At the same time, “Quebec’s Catholic population financed the start of the residential schools through donations to Catholic charities,” she said, adding that through the turn of the 20th century, the general population was aware and supportive of the effort.

All this, Larochelle has written, means that “the history of Canadian genocide is a Quebec history” – though it remains largely unknown in the province.

“There is obviously a history in Quebec of domination by the English over the French-Canadian population,” said Larochelle, but digging into other histories “in which French Canadians were not necessarily the dominated ones can only help us make peace with the past.”

Systemic racism

A spokesman for Quebec’s Indigenous affairs minister told Al Jazeera that the province remains committed to supporting Indigenous people in getting the assistance they need during their search for answers and healing over residential schools.

Mathieu Durocher pointed to the Quebec and Canadian governments’ appointment in June 2021 of a special liaison officer to help Indigenous communities access various resources as one example. Quebec last month also unveiled a $141-million-Canadian-dollar ($108m), five-year plan to support First Nations and Inuit, including through the preservation of Indigenous languages and culture.

“The history of residential schools is a dark period. Quebec, Canada and the entire world were shocked by the discoveries that began in Kamloops with the 215 unmarked graves … We cannot exclude that it could also happen in Quebec. We must put everything in place to support communities and survivors with their wishes,” Durocher said in an email.

But the government of right-wing Quebec Premier Francois Legault has been widely criticised for refusing to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism in the province, despite multiple reports detailing how anti-Indigenous biases permeate state institutions, including in healthcare.

The discovery of unmarked graves at former residential school sites across Canada over the past year has prompted 
protests and calls for accountability [File: Blair Gable/Reuters]

“We recognise firstly that there is racism in Quebec, and we must fight against it,” said Durocher. “Beyond the debate on the semantics around the term ‘systemic racism’, a term that does not enjoy a consensus in Quebec, we must put in place concrete actions to fight racism in all its forms. That is exactly what we are doing.”

Yet calls for the government to acknowledge and work to end systemic racism have grown louder in recent years, particularly when an Indigenous woman named Joyce Echaquan died at a Quebec hospital in 2020 after staff hurled racist insults at her. Her family later said that systemic racism killed the Atikamekw mother of seven.

“The colonial roots didn’t pass over or go around Quebec to get from Ontario to New Brunswick; Unfortunately, they cross here, too,” said Audette, who is from the Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-Utenam. She added that “very deep biases” persist, but that she takes strength from the people who are taking action to change things.

“It’s clear that the government’s positions don’t help our efforts to fight against racism, don’t help our efforts in terms of education,” said the AFN’s Picard, who also criticised the fact that Quebec has refused to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“But we’re not going to give up. We’ll continue to at least try to influence the Quebec population, especially on the eve of the official call of the provincial election.”

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“That he does listen to our elders and our survivors. And, you know, some of the intergenerational trauma that has impacted so many of us, to hear those stories and those truths as well. And to come to a meaningful apology.”

On Wednesday, the Vatican said Pope Francis would travel to Canada at a yet to be the determined date “in the context of the long-standing pastoral process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.”

The announcement comes amid a national reckoning over the legacy of Canada’s residential schools, institutions designed by the federal government and operated by religious groups including the Catholic church to assimilate Indigenous children.

Many of those children suffered serious physical and sexual abuse, and since the revelation of the graves at the Tk’emlúps school, a total of 1,300 suspected graves have been discovered nationwide.

A papal apology for the church’s role in residential schools is among the 94 calls to action laid out in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report in 2015 as a road map to reconciliation.

Casimir has been vocal in her call for an apology and said she was shocked the Pope had yet to commit to one on his planned trip to Canada. The First Nation has invited Pope Francis to visit their community when he arrives in Canada.

She and a delegation of Indigenous leaders are scheduled to travel to the Vatican in December to meet with the Pope, where she said they will raise the apology issue.

“It would be about acknowledging those truths and having a clear understanding of what those truths are by hearing them,” she said of the lasting traumas residential school survivors and their children continue to grapple with.

“He’s made apologies throughout the world, but not in Canada yet. And so I think it would be something that would be a meaningful step moving in that direction.”

But an apology, Casimir said, is only a starting point.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and other Indigenous nations that suffered under the residential school system still don’t have complete access to documents and records they need to provide survivors and their families with closure.

There is also a long road ahead at the local level with Canadian dioceses, she said.

“There’s more work that’s going to be taken … on those relationships and building them because many of our people are still practicing Catholicism,” she said.

“For many, this has really impacted individuals’ faiths as well.”

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Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said Ottawa would target transferable securities and money market instruments, debt financing, insurance and reinsurance, petroleum products and potassium chloride products. Washington and London announced similar measures.

Canada acted on the first anniversary of a presidential election that opponents said was rigged in favor of Lukashenko.

“Since then, the grave injustices carried out by the Belarusian government against its own people have not stopped… these measures will apply further pressure on Belarus’s leadership,” Garneau said.

Canada has to date sanctioned 72 Belarusian officials and five entities.

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When a staff member called Richard Morrison into a change room at the residential school he was attending in the 1960s, he dutifully walked in. But when he entered the room, a bag was placed on his head and his clothes were removed.

He then became one of more than 38,000 victims of sexual and serious physical abuse that took place at federal residential schools, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report.

“All I remember was just a pain. Pain was just strong,” he told the commission. “It was really hurtful and I remember that day after that I was a very, very angry kid.”

Despite thousands of other stories like Morrison’s that have emerged over the years, fewer than 50 convictions have ever been brought down against the perpetrators of abuse at these institutions.

But that might soon change. Advocates have been putting renewed pressure on the government and law enforcement to investigate and prosecute the crimes alleged to have taken place at residential schools. Still, experts are warning that any pathway to prosecution is a long and winding one — though that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

“I think it’s really important that there be a full investigation of any criminal activity, and that persons or institutions that were responsible for wrongdoing are held accountable,” said Cindy Blackstock, who is the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.

“It’s a good start to start in that one residential school. And now the work needs to be done to look at all of them.”

Charging the perpetrators

On Tuesday, the Manitoba RCMP revealed they’ve been investigating allegations of sexual abuse at the former Fort Alexander Residential School on Sagkeeng First Nation for the past decade. Information-gathering about historical allegations began in February 2010, police said, and involved investigators reviewing archival records both in Manitoba and Ottawa.

This kind of pursuit of criminal charges is one avenue residential school survivors can explore, a lawyer told Global News — but it isn’t up to the survivors to initiate it.

“The police will decide whether or not to proceed with charges,” said Steven Pink, legal counsel for the Native Women’s Association of Canada.

On top of that, cases involving allegations of sexual assault and abuse can be difficult to win.

“All sexual assault cases, they’re challenging because it really comes down to, unfortunately … the credibility of the victim,” Pink said.

And as time goes on, victims “remember less, and it’s more difficult.”

Another issue, according to Pink, is that because many of these abuses took place decades ago, the perpetrators themselves might have already died.

Still, Pink said the RCMP’s investigation into the allegations of sexual abuse at the former Fort Alexander Residential School could be a catalyst for law enforcement to take similar action at other residential schools.

“I think it’s the start. I really do,” Pink said.

“I think we’re going to see a lot more of these investigations come forward and criminal charges laid.”

What are the feds doing?

In the years since the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was first implemented in 2007, the TRC has unearthed troubling and disturbing details of the depths of abuse, racism and long-lasting consequences of the residential school systems.

Now Canada “has to step up” to address these harms, Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said Wednesday.

“We have said that we will in many ways: financial, mental health supports, supporting investigations and seeking the truth, which as we know is so important and a precursor to reconciliation,” Miller said.

“We do need to, in my sense, exhaust our remedies as the federal government.”

Still, Miller noted that in many ways, this quest for justice isn’t one for the federal government to lead.

The government also can’t tell the RCMP whom the police force should criminally charge — meaning the government’s hands are tied when it comes to pushing for the prosecutions of any predators from the residential school system.

Even though the government can’t push for individual criminal prosecutions, it does have some responsibilities when it comes to tracking down alleged perpetrators.

“Under the Indian and Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, Canada is required to research, locate and contact individuals named as perpetrators of abuse in the Independent Assessment Process (IAP),” said Leslie Michelson, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.

These individuals aren’t tracked down with the aim of charging them for their alleged crimes, though. Rather, the goal was to get them to testify at hearings to decide compensation for survivors.

And despite there being fewer than 50 convictions for this abuse, Canada has received 5,450 requests to find abusers — meaning thousands of alleged perpetrators are still walking free.

Criminal charges for government?

It isn’t only the individual perpetrators who can be charged for their role in the abuses that took place at residential schools in Canada: the government of Canada and the Catholic Church can both be criminally charged, too.

“I want to ensure that people understand not only individuals should be held accountable, but the institutions should also be looked at for any criminal culpability, including the government of Canada and the churches,” Blackstock said.

But if survivors decide they’re interested in exploring this avenue, they’re treading into some murky legal territory.

“Most offences start with ‘every one’ or ‘every person’ who does something, a criminal offence, and the definition of ‘every one’ and ‘every person’ in the Criminal Code includes Her Majesty and ‘an organization’ and of course, a church would fit as an organization,” Pink explained.

While the language exists in the Criminal Code to take the unusual step of charging the crown and the churches, there’s also the issue of crown immunity — which, in many cases, protects the government from such legal action.

If this hurdle is overcome and these institutions make it before the courts, the government and the Church could be charged with not providing the necessities of life for children, criminal negligence, or even causing harm to children, according to Pink.

“So there’s there’s a host of provisions in the Criminal Code to deal with this,” Pink said.

“But there’s a lot of hurdles as well to get there.”

One such hurdle is punishment, which may have to come in the form of restitution, according to Pink. But “the Criminal Code is really not set up for restitution,” he added.

Still, despite the difficulty involved with prosecuting potential perpetrators, Blackstock says tackling the complicated processes at play with this quest for justice is Canada’s responsibility.

“It could be quite onerous, but it’s the duty we owe to each of those children that died in those graves and to their families. It is only onerous because this injustice continued for over 100 years in Canada,” she said.

“The government does a lot of onerous and complicated things.”

Crimes against humanity?

Another tool in Canada’s toolkit is the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act — and this is one legal option where the federal government’s hands aren’t entirely tied.

If the police want to lay charges under that act, they require the consent of the attorney general. And the attorney general will make that decision, whether or not to proceed with a charge under that act,” Pink said.

If Justice Minister David Lametti gives the police the go-ahead, they could pursue charges against those responsible for the acts survivors say took place at residential schools.

Still, Lametti told Global News in a statement that law enforcement remains responsible for choosing what police investigate — despite the fact that he’d have to rubber-stamp the charges.

“To reiterate, the police are responsible for investigating allegations and interviewing witnesses. The War Crimes Unit of the Department of Justice assists them by analyzing investigation results and providing legal advice,” he said.

“The consent of the Deputy Attorney General of Canada is required to commence proceedings for offences under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. These matters are prosecuted by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.”

Understanding the scope of the investigation at the Kamloops Residential 
School site 

Should the police decide to explore this route, they’d be diving headfirst into uncharted waters.

“There’s no precedent in Canada, really, to follow with respect to Indigenous people and crimes against humanity,” Pink said.

On top of that, the act didn’t come into force until 2002 — which raises questions about whether it can be applied retroactively, according to Pink.

Still, it’s an option worth exploring, according to Blackstock.

“I would call for an investigation under crimes against humanity,” she said.

“I want to ensure that people understand not only individuals should be held accountable, but the institutions should also be looked at for any criminal culpability, including the government of Canada and the churches.”

Many roads to justice

Survivors, law enforcement and government have many potential avenues for achieving justice at their disposal. But at the end of the day, experts said it’s up to communities to determine what road they’d like to take.

“There’s different things different survivors may want. Some may want, obviously, reparation. Some may want criminal convictions against those who committed the crimes. So there’s different things like that that are in play,” Pink said.

“I guess the survivor would have to tell you what they would want in this process.”

But regardless of what path to justice survivors would like to see, Blackstock said it’s essential one be taken.

“Canadian people deserve the truth so that they’re able to really prevent it from happening again. And the survivors and their families and the children who didn’t make it absolutely deserve this justice,” she said.

“These are human beings, they’re little children, and that they died, likely in very compromising situations, perhaps due to criminal behavior. And the minimum they deserve is a criminal investigation and a stopping of the wrongdoing for this generation of kids.”

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