Judge slams Trudeau, media for false claims about deaths, ‘secret burials’ at residential schools

‘Canadians are being deliberately deceived’ by the Trudeau government, indigenous leaders, and the media about the ‘obviously false claim’ that residential schools were responsible for ‘deaths and secret burials’ of children, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht wrote.

A retired Canadian judge says people are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the Liberal federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of indigenous children.

“The Trudeau Liberals have actively pursued a policy that has both encouraged, and then kept alive a conspiracy theory — namely, that residential school priests, nuns and teachers were responsible for the deaths and secret burials of the children placed in their care,” wrote retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht in a recent opinion piece published in the Western Standard last week.

“The indigenous leadership has exploited an obviously false claim — pocketing a mountain of tax dollars, while our moribund mainstream media sits in silence.”

Giesbrecht was very vocal about criticizing the claims made by the legacy media and Trudeau government that the Catholic Church is complicit in the deaths of thousands of indigenous Canadians who attended government-mandated residential schools.

As a result of the claims, since the spring of 2021, 112 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.

Giesbrecht wrote that, in his view, the church burnings are only the “outward manifestation of this larger evil” targeting Canadian Christians.

“Canadians are being deliberately deceived by their own government, the indigenous leadership, and our own media,” he wrote.

He observed that the “false” claims made by the government and media have turned the truth “upside down.”

“Lewis Carroll wrote about an upside down world in Alice in Wonderland,” he wrote. “He would immediately understand what is happening in Canada today.”

The church burnings started in 2021 after the mainstream media and the federal government ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the now-closed residential schools.

Giesbrecht observed that the reality is that historical records “clearly show” that “the children who died of disease or accident while attending residential school were all given Christian burials, with their deaths properly recorded.”

“Most were buried by their families in their home communities. In short, there is no historical evidence that even one residential school student died under sinister circumstances, or was buried in secrecy,” he wrote.

LifeSiteNews earlier reported on how Giesbrecht blasted what he said is a “conspiracy theory” lie and “shocking” yet unproven “accusation” being pushed by Trudeau and legacy media that thousands of indigenous residential school kids died due to negligence by the Catholic priests and nuns.

The judge lamented the fact that hundreds of Christian (mostly Catholic) churches have been burned to the ground since the first TRC report came out in 2010.

LifeSiteNews reported last week that Leah Gazan, backbencher MP from the New Democratic Party, brought forth a new bill that seeks to criminalize the denial of the unproven claim that the residential school system once operating in Canada was a “genocide.”

In August, LifeSiteNews reported that Trudeau’s cabinet said it will expand a multimillion-dollar fund geared toward documenting claims that hundreds of young children died and were clandestinely buried at now-closed residential schools, some of them run by the Catholic Church.

Canadian indigenous residential schools, run by the Catholic Church and other Christian groups, were set up by the federal government and were open from the late 19th century until 1996.

While there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the unproved “mass graves” narrative has led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment since 2021.

Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Jamil Jivani has urged support from his political opponents for a bill that would give stiffer penalties to arsonists caught burning churches down, saying the recent rash of destruction is a “very serious issue” that is a direct “attack” on families as well as “religious freedom in Canada.”

Related Topics:#AnthonyMurdoch #LifeSiteNews ResidentialSchoolSecretBurialsClaim RetiredManitobaJudgeBrianGiesbrecht

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The great policy challenge for governments in Canada in 2026

Bruce Dowbiggin

The Rise Of The System Engineer: Has Canada Got A Prayer in 2026?

Published on January 2, 2026

Bruce Dowbiggin

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” C.S. Lewis

One of the aims of logical positivism has been Boomers’ quest to kill Western religion and the pursuit of faith in order to make room for the state. Symbols are banned. Churches are burned. Infidels are rewarded. Esoteric faith systems applauded. Yet, as 2026 dawns, it appears that, not only is traditional religion not dead, it might just be making a comeback with younger generations who’ve grown skeptical of their parents’ faux religion of self.

How? In an age of victim status, traditional religion is suddenly a cuddly TikTok puppy. Hard to imagine that the force that spread imperialism and war across the globe for centuries being a victim. But yes. Only Christians and Jews are singled out for censure In Carney’s Canada The zeal to repeal God has backfired. Faith is off the canvas and punching back. (And we are NOT talking about the Woke pope.)

The purveyors of “old-time religion” will still find themselves facing a determined opponent well on the way to moral inversion. And a compliant population. As blogger Melanie in Saskatchewan points out, “Canadians were sold a calm, competent adult in the room. What they got was an unelected system engineer quietly converting moral claims into financial constraints. This is not leadership. It is non-consensual governance.

The freedoms that make dissent possible are being used to hollow out dissent. The protections meant to guard against abuse are being used to avoid scrutiny. And the law—stripped of its moral imagination—is asked to do what it cannot: resolve psychic conflict through paperwork.”

The sophistry of the superior class demands submission. C.S. Lewis warned of this inversion in God In The Dock. “To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

In Canada that compliant class has embraced Mark Carney as the great stabilizer. “Canadians keep asking the wrong question about Mark Carney,” says blogger Melanie in Saskatchewan. “They keep asking whether he is a good politician. That is like asking whether a locksmith is a good interior decorator.

Carney is not here to govern. He is here to re-engineer the operating system of the country while the Liberal Party provides the helpful stage props and applause track. And judging by how little scrutiny this government receives, the audience seems perfectly content to clap at whatever is placed in front of them, provided it comes with soothing words like “stability,” “resilience,” and “the experts agree”.

Adds Dr. Andrea Wagner, Canadians “hide behind procedure. Behind policy. Behind institutions. Behind NDAs. Behind committees, processes, protocols. Behind phrases like “we’re reviewing this internally” and “that’s beyond my authority.” They hide behind the pretense of empathy while quietly perpetuating injustice. They hide behind performative busy-ness: “I wish I had time,” “I’m swamped,” “I’ve been unwell.” There is enormous power in powerlessness—and Canadians wield it masterfully.”

The problem, says Melanie in Saskatchewan, is not that Mark Carney in full power is incompetent. The problem is that he is extremely competent at something Canadians never actually consented to. Technocrats redesign the machinery so that the outcome becomes inevitable. No messy debate. No inconvenient voters. No public reckoning. Just “the framework,” “the model,” “the standard,” and eventually the quiet conclusion that there is “no alternative.”

And this is precisely the world Mark Carney comes from. ”He did not rise through grassroots politics or party service. He rose through central banks, global finance institutions, and elite climate-finance bodies that speak fluent acronym and consider democracy an optional inconvenience. The man does not campaign. He architects.”

While the Conservative Party of Canada still polls evenly with the Liberals they are playing a different game, one they— with their traditional tactics— are not wired to win in a battle of systems with Carney. This cringeworthy “Keep It Up” endorsement of Carney by former CPC leader Erin O’Toole speaks to why they are further from power than ever.

The manufactured crisis over indigenous Rez school graves illustrates the method. “To call out intimidation or dehumanization is to risk being reframed as the aggressor. The person who names harm becomes the disturbance; the one who weaponizes grievance becomes the protected party. Justice no longer asks what happened, only who claims injury first. This is not accidental. It is the logical endpoint of a culture that has confused victimhood with virtue and pain with authority.

Suffering, once something to be alleviated, has become something to be curated. Identity now precedes evidence; accusation outruns inquiry. The system does not ask whether harm is real or proportional—only whether it can be procedurally contained. And containment, I am learning, is often preferred to truth.”

There are still some who believe there remains a way out of this. Here’s Paul Wells on Substack with a valid conclusion— which most sentient people reached by the end of Trudeau’s first term. “Canada has spent too long thinking of itself as a warehouse for the world instead of designing and building for itself. It’s time for a shared mindset of ambition quality and real investment in physical and human capital so Canadians become Canada’s designers and builders of livable cities rather than bystanders to our own future.”

But it’s hard to square that with the gap Carney’s already has. “The tragedy is that the Liberal Party is perfectly happy to hand (Carney) the country and then scold the public for noticing. If Canadians want a future where choices are still made by voters instead of algorithms and advisory panels, they are going to have to stop applauding this performance and start asking the one question that truly terrifies technocrats and their obedient political enablers.”

This system monolith taking over life is why the abrasive, defiant Donald Trump emerged. Vast segments of America employ him to defy the EU scolds with their censorship regimes. His defiance is categorical— which is why it frightens Canadians. The man from Mitch & Murray delivered a few truths to them and they soiled themselves. Paradise will never be the same!. Bad Trump! But an almost-octogenarian has little runway left himself. Who can continue the resistance to the Carney system engineers?

In the past organized religion was a refuge from the maelstrom of the secular storm. There was comfort in the message. Thus, the Liberals’ current need to destroy faith. So the epidemic of churches burned is ignored. The intrusive demonstrations of militant Islam are tolerated. (Carney says Muslim virtues are Canadian virtues.) History is re-written. Heroes debunked.

If Soviet Russia is any indication, the traditional faiths can survive and act as a bulwark against the technocrats— if they find their Pope John Paul II.. The Catholic and Orthodox faiths furnished a way out from behind the Iron Curtain. As organizations not co-opted by the state in the West religions can provide a moral backbone to expose and defeat the secular globalists.

Whether you are a believer or not they provide a pushback to restore the moral clarity C.S. described. It’s not too late as 2026 dawns. But if nothing is done in the West — if Canada accepts EU censorship and global ID— then writing this column in 2027 could well be defined as a criminal act.

“That which you most need will be found where you least want to look.” Carl Jung

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

Business

The great policy challenge for governments in Canada in 2026

Published on January 1, 2026

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Ben Eisen and Jake Fuss

According to a recent study, living standards in Canada have declined over the past five years. And the country’s economic growth has been “ugly.” Crucially, all 10 provinces are experiencing this economic stagnation—there are no exceptions to Canada’s “ugly” growth record. In 2026, reversing this trend should be the top priority for the Carney government and provincial governments across the country.

Indeed, demographic and economic data across the country tell a remarkably similar story over the past five years. While there has been some overall economic growth in almost every province, in many cases provincial populations, fuelled by record-high levels of immigration, have grown almost as quickly. Although the total amount of economic production and income has increased from coast to coast, there are more people to divide that income between. Therefore, after we account for inflation and population growth, the data show Canadians are not better off than they were before.

Let’s dive into the numbers (adjusted for inflation) for each province. In British Columbia, the economy has grown by 13.7 per cent over the past five years but the population has grown by 11.0 per cent, which means the vast majority of the increase in the size of the economy is likely due to population growth—not improvements in productivity or living standards. In fact, per-person GDP, a key indicator of living standards, averaged only 0.5 per cent per year over the last five years, which is a miserable result by historic standards.

A similar story holds in other provinces. Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Saskatchewan all experienced some economic growth over the past five years but their populations grew at almost exactly the same rate. As a result, living standards have barely budged. In the remaining provinces (Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta), population growth has outstripped economic growth, which means that even though the economy grew, living standards actually declined.

This coast-to-coast stagnation of living standards is unique in Canadian history. Historically, there’s usually variation in economic performance across the country—when one region struggles, better performance elsewhere helps drive national economic growth. For example, in the early 2010s while the Ontario and Quebec economies recovered slowly from the 2008/09 recession, Alberta and other resource-rich provinces experienced much stronger growth. Over the past five years, however, there has not been a “good news” story anywhere in the country when it comes to per-person economic growth and living standards.

In reality, Canada’s recent record-high levels of immigration and population growth have helped mask the country’s economic weakness. With more people to buy and sell goods and services, the overall economy is growing but living standards have barely budged. To craft policies to help raise living standards for Canadian families, policymakers in Ottawa and every provincial capital should remove regulatory barriers, reduce taxes and responsibly manage government finances. This is the great policy challenge for governments across the country in 2026 and beyond.