Warning: this story contains outdated language and discusses physical and sexual abuse at residential schools.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney distanced himself Saturday from comments his late father made 60 years ago as an educator that were dismissive of some Indigenous people, and his subsequent defence of residential schools in the later years of his life.
“I love my father, but I don’t share those views, to be absolutely clear,” Carney said at a campaign event in Oakville, Ont.
He was responding to a CBC Indigenous story that explored comments made by his father, Catholic educator Robert J. Carney, who died in 2009.
During a 1965 CBC Radio interview, the elder Carney spoke of a program at an Indian day school in Fort Smith, N.W.T., where he was principal, for “culturally retarded children.”
He defined such a child as one “from a Native background who, for various reasons, has not been in regular attendance in school,” or a student with a non-English-speaking background who is …