(Version française disponible ici.)

On May 28, 2026, France adopted a bill officially repealing the Code Noir, the 1685 law that had regulated enslavement in the French colonies. The vote came just days after the 25th anniversary of the Taubira Law, adopted in 2001, which made France the first country in the world to recognize the transatlantic slave trade and enslavement as crimes against humanity.

A few weeks earlier, Canada had chosen a different course. On March 25, 2026, Canada abstained from a historic vote at the United Nations General Assembly on a resolution introduced by Ghana and the African Union that described the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity.”

Canada’s abstention cannot be reduced to a mere diplomatic detail. It reveals a persistent discomfort with Canada’s own history of enslavement and colonialism and he present-day consequences of that history for policies on memory, recognition, and public health. It disrupts the development of identity and sense of belonging among people of African descent living on this territory.

A past Canada still struggles to acknowledge

Canadian history is still too often presented through the myth of a country that served solely as a refuge for people fleeing enslavement in the United States through the Underground Railroad. This history is real, but it is incomplete.

Canada also practiced enslavement for more than two centuries. African and Indigenous people were enslaved in New France and later under British rule. In Quebec, the story of Marie Joseph Angélique – accused of setting fire to Montreal after learning that she was at risk of being sold – remains one of the best-known examples of this........

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