B.C. Conservative MLA backs lawyer in residential school row with Law Society

The B.C. Opposition critic for the Attorney General Ministry is questioning the “apparent mistreatment” of a lawyer who 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, instead of using more definitive language.

Heller is 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 in 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.”

Brodie’s post on X hadn’t been removed by late Monday morning.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc 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 Secwépemc Nation have not responded to requests for comment, while Heller declined to speak on the record.

The Law Society of B.C. said it wouldn’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?”