Those who believe tearing down statues of Canada's first Prime Minister, or another other Prime Minister, is a good way to demonstrate they want to 'defund the police' (bizarre in and of itself) are engaging in 'presentism'. It means judging the past by the standards of present.

It's a form of cultural bias & it's not the way credible historical research is done. The American Historical Association, for example, condemns "the tendency to interpret the past in presentist terms ... presentism encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation."

"Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior." Also, where do you stop? Many famous Canadians believed in the racist science of eugenics -- for example women's rights campaigner Nellie McClung. Do we tear down her statue?

The vandals in Montreal who tore down the statue to Sir John A. Macdonald aren't misguided historians, they're just idiots.

Idiots who don't understand, in the famous warning of Jorge Santayana, that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

See:
The allure and the dangers of "presentism" https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-past-is-not-the-present-do-food-animals-have-rights-alberto-manguel-s-curious-mind-the-great-hunger-1.3497315/the-allure-and-the-dangers-of-presentism-1.3497463?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar