Aaron Gunn and Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. Photo courtesy Aaron Gunn/Facebook.

Pierre Poilievre is facing an intense backlash for standing by Aaron Gunn, a controversial federal election candidate in the British Columbia riding of North Island–Powell River, who has defended residential schools.

Poilievre’s decision to support a candidate engaging in residential school denialism is disappointing but not surprising. There is a clear pattern of denialism and anti-Indigenous racism within the Conservative Party of Canada.

Now that the April 7 deadline to select another candidate has passed, Poilievre and the Conservatives have clearly chosen to side with Gunn. As a result, they face a self-inflicted political crisis that risks turning off even more voters and fuelling damaging misinformation about one of Canada’s most shameful legacies.

Gunn, a far-right social media influencer, has consistently promoted residential school denialism. For example, he uncritically celebrated John A. Macdonald, an architect of the residential school system; he falsely suggested that Indigenous leaders asked for the residential school system; he rejected the fact that residential schooling was genocide; and he pushed the “mass grave hoax” conspiracy theory.

He has since deleted many of his posts on X—odd for a candidate insisting he’s said nothing wrong—but his comments are textbook residential school denialism.

Residential school denialism, to be clear, is a strategy of twisting, misrepresenting, or minimizing facts about residential schooling for personal or political gain. The goal is to shake public confidence in truth and reconciliation and, in the process, protect the church, the state, and Canada’s settler capitalist status quo.

Many Indigenous leaders, including in

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