The phrase 10 awful Canadian might sound like an exaggeration, but the country’s past is dotted with policies that trampled basic freedoms. Below we dive into ten unsettling chapters that show Canada’s less‑than‑shining moments when it came to human rights.
10 Eugenics
Eugenics, once hailed as a scientific miracle for “improving” the human gene pool, found a chilling playground in Alberta during the early 20th century. In 1928 the province enacted the Sexual Sterilization Act, establishing a board that could force people about to leave mental institutions to undergo sterilisation as a condition of release. A 1937 amendment even allowed the state to sterilise “mental defectives” without their consent.
The board’s ruthless tenure stretched until 1972, during which it recommended sterilisation in 99 % of the 4,795 cases it reviewed – a staggering majority of women and Indigenous peoples. It was only after Premier Peter Lougheed’s government finally repealed the act that the board was disbanded. Politician David King famously declared the legislation a violation of fundamental rights, condemning the presumption that the state could decide who could reproduce.
Victim Leilani Muir sued Alberta in 1995, securing a $1 million payout. Her case sparked a wave of lawsuits, prompting public outrage when the province tried to cap claims at $150,000. The cap was scrapped within a day, and the government ultimately settled for an $80 million lump sum to compensate the survivors.
9 Slavery In Canada
While the United States often dominates discussions of North‑American bondage, Canada also participated in the slave trade, especially in New France (now Quebec). From 1671 to 1833 roughly 4,000 individuals—two‑thirds Indigenous and the rest African—were forced into servitude, purchased from overseas traders, exchanged between French and British colonists, or even captured and sold by rival Indigenous groups.
Most of these enslaved people were teenagers between 14 and 18, conscripted to serve the elite. Compared with American plantations, Canadian slaves sometimes endured marginally better conditions, yet they still suffered the loss of family, culture, and freedom. The Canadian economy’s reliance on the fur trade and a modest agricultural sector, rather than cotton, kept the slave market smaller than its southern neighbour, but the practice nonetheless left a scar on the nation’s conscience.
Because slaves were costly—an unskilled enslaved person could cost up to four times the average annual income—their numbers never swelled to the massive scale seen in the United States. Still, the existence of slavery in Canada is a reminder that the country’s history is not free from exploitation.
8 Concentration Camps During World War I
War‑time hysteria knows no borders, and Canada’s leaders fell prey to it during the First World War. Thousands of so‑called “enemy aliens”—largely Eastern Europeans such as Ukrainians, Poles, Italians, Russians, Turks, Jews, Austrians, and Romanians—were rounded up and shipped to remote internment camps across the country. Roughly 8,000 people endured the harsh reality of forced confinement.
Interned individuals had their possessions confiscated and were dispatched to the farthest corners of Canada to perform grueling labour—building railways, clearing forests, and mining. They were even forced to construct the very camps that housed them. Starvation, inadequate shelter, and endless monotony sparked riots, suicide attempts, and desperate escape plans.
Ironically, many Ukrainians remained loyal, enlisting under false identities to fight for Canada. Those discovered faced expulsion back to the camps. Even after the armistice, hundreds remained incarcerated as lingering suspicion persisted. To this day, the Canadian government has made scant effort to formally apologise or provide redress for this dark episode.
7 The Chinese Head Tax
Between 1881 and 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway leaned heavily on around 15,000 Chinese labourers to complete its trans‑continental line. The work was perilous, and many never saw the railway’s completion. After the tracks were laid, the government introduced a punitive “head tax” aimed solely at Chinese immigrants.
The levy began at $50 CAD in 1885, doubled to $100 in 1900, and skyrocketed to $500 in 1903—equivalent to two years’ wages in China. This discriminatory tax singled out one ethnic group, prompting many Chinese families to become permanently separated. By 1923 the government banned Chinese immigration outright; the ban lingered until its repeal in 1947, finally granting Chinese Canadians the same rights as other newcomers.
The tax’s legacy still haunts the community. Men already in Canada could not afford to bring over wives or children, leaving countless families fractured. Some never reunited, and many who stayed behind in China perished without support. Even today, many Chinese Canadians refer to Canada Day, July 1, 1923—the day the exclusion law was enacted—as “Humiliation Day.”
6 Residential Schools
From the late 1800s well into the 20th century, the Canadian government forced roughly 150,000 Indigenous children away from their families and placed them in residential schools. These institutions aimed to erase Indigenous cultures, imposing English language instruction, Christianity, and Western customs.
Life inside was brutal. Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse were rampant; children were punished for speaking their native tongues and often starved as part of so‑called “nutritional experiments.” Most attended school ten months a year and many never saw their families again, emerging as strangers in their own homes.
The last residential school finally closed in 1996. In 2007 the government issued a formal apology and launched a $1.9 billion compensation fund. By 2013, $1.6 billion had been paid to over 105,000 survivors, yet the intergenerational trauma endures.
5 The Genocide Of The Aboriginal Peoples
Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister and a figure celebrated on the $10 bill, also orchestrated a campaign of forced starvation against Indigenous peoples. His administration deliberately withheld food supplies until First Nations communities moved onto government‑designated reserves, then stored the rations in warehouses to rot, ensuring the people starved.
Macdonald’s legacy is a paradox: while he expanded voting rights for some Indigenous peoples, he simultaneously pursued policies that caused widespread famine and death. To many Canadians he remains a nation‑builder; to countless Indigenous families he is a symbol of oppression. Recent pressure from First Nations leaders has even drawn United Nations attention to these historic atrocities.
4 Detainment Of The Japanese During World War II
During the Second World War, Prime Minister Mackenzie King invoked the War Measures Act and ordered the internment of roughly 22,000 Japanese‑Canadians—most of them men—into “protective” camps that were little more than prison camps. These facilities, mainly in British Columbia’s interior, lacked electricity, running water, and adequate sanitation.
Inmates were forced into hard labour on sugar beet farms, road construction, and railway projects under near‑starvation conditions. Families were torn apart; men were separated from women and children, and the camps became sites of humiliation and hardship.
When the war ended, the government gave internees an impossible choice: relocate outside British Columbia or leave Canada entirely. About 4,000 chose exile, and none were permitted to return to the province until 1949. In 1998, the government formally apologized and offered $21,000 to each survivor, plus $12 million each for a community fund and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation—still viewed by many as insufficient.
3 Inuit Relocation
In the 1950s the federal government forced three Inuit communities—totaling 87 people—from their homes in northern Quebec to the far‑north Arctic settlements of Resolute and Grise Fiord, a staggering 1,200 km away. The promise was a two‑year trial period after which they could return, but the government reneged, leaving them stranded in a harsher climate with limited supplies.
Officially the move was justified as a solution to poor hunting conditions; critics suspect the real motive was to cement Canadian sovereignty over the high Arctic. Despite the extreme cold—temperatures up to 20 °C lower than their original homes—the relocated Inuit eventually forged thriving communities, now home to 229 and 141 residents respectively.
The government finally apologised in 1996, providing a $10 million settlement to aid reconstruction and healing. Two monuments now stand in each village, commemorating the ordeal endured by the Inuit and their descendants.
2 Language Laws In Quebec
Quebec’s linguistic battles have raged for decades. After centuries of English‑dominant rule, the province introduced Bill 63 in 1969, mandating that all schoolchildren and newcomers learn French. Bill 22 (1974) declared French the official language of Quebec, while Bill 101 (1977) extended that status to government and courts, forcing even inter‑provincial migrants into French‑only schools.
Anglophone groups fought back, achieving limited victories that eventually led to a bilingual compromise: English could be taught as a second language, and businesses could advertise in both languages provided French text was twice as large and placed prominently on building exteriors.
The controversy resurfaced in 1995 with a near‑split referendum on Quebec’s secession. In 2013 the Parti Québécois proposed Bill 14, which would have broadened Bill 101’s reach and stripped bilingual status from any city with less than a 50 % Anglophone population. The bill’s unpopularity ousted the party in 2014, but the language debate remains alive.
1 Women’s Suffrage In Quebec
While Canadian women secured the federal vote in 1919, Quebec lagged behind, refusing to extend the franchise until 1944. The fight was spearheaded by Therese Casgrain, who introduced thirteen suffrage bills between 1922 and 1939—each rejected amid opposition from men, the Catholic Church, and even some women.
It wasn’t until Liberal Premier Adélard Godbout took office that a new bill appeared in 1940. After a protracted, messy political battle, the legislation finally passed in 1944, allowing Quebec women to cast ballots for the first time. Yet it would be another seventeen years before a woman—Casgrain herself—sat in the Senate, appointed in 1970.
Therese Casgrain’s perseverance paved the way for future generations, reminding us that even in a nation famed for progress, the road to equality can be painstakingly slow.