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Fraser Institute

No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools

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From the Fraser Institute

” substantial pushback gradually developed among a group of retired judges, lawyers, professors, journalists and others who have had careers in researching and evaluating evidence. It’s no accident that most are retired, because that gives them some protection against attempts to silence them as “deniers.” “

The following is a summary of the 2023 book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools) by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan.

On May 27, 2021, Rosanne Casimir, Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc (Kamloops Indian Band), announced that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) had located the remains of 215 “missing children” in an apple orchard on the site of a former residential school.

Politicians and media seized on the announcement, and stories of “mass unmarked graves” and “burials of missing children” ricocheted around Canada and indeed much of the world. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set the tone of the public response by ordering Canadian flags to be flown at half-mast on all federal buildings to honour the “215 children whose lives were taken at the Kamloops residential school,” thus elevating the possible burials to the status of victims of foul play and making Canada sound like a charnel house of murdered children.

According to Canadian newspaper editors, the discovery of the so-called unmarked graves was the “news story of the year.” And the World Press Photo of the Year award went to a “haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada.”

These events created a narrative about the genocidal nature of residential schools, which were established in the 19th and 20th centuries by churches and the government to educate Indigenous children and assimilate them into Canadian society. That narrative went unchallenged at first. Yet substantial pushback gradually developed among a group of retired judges, lawyers, professors, journalists and others who have had careers in researching and evaluating evidence. It’s no accident that most are retired, because that gives them some protection against attempts to silence them as “deniers.” In the words of Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” I published a book, which has been an Amazon Canada bestseller, proving Canadians’ desire for accurate information on this topic.

The book is a collection of some of the best pushback essays published in response to the Kamloops mythology. They analyze and critique the false narrative of unmarked graves, missing children, forced attendance and genocidal conditions at residential schools. The book’s title, Grave Error, summarizes the authors’ view of the Kamloops narrative. It is wrong, and not just wrong, but egregiously wrong. It deserves our sardonic title. And our book shows in detail just why and where the narrative is wrong.

Several of these authors, as well as others who have helped research and edit these publications, had for many years been writing for major metropolitan dailies, national magazines, academic journals, university presses and commercial publishers. However, they quickly learned that the corporate, legacy or mainstream media—in addition to religious leaders and politicians—have little desire to stand up to the narrative flow of a moral panic. They thus wrote about residential schools mainly in specialized journals such as The Dorchester Review, online daily media such as True North and the Western Standard, and online journals such as Unherd and History Reclaimed whose raison d’être is to challenge conventional wisdom.

For example, the first essay—“In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found,” by Montreal historian Jacques Rouillard—has done more than any other single publication to punch holes in the false narrative of unmarked graves and missing children. Other essays punch more holes. Academic provocateur Frances Widdowson shows how the legend of murdered children and unmarked graves was spread by defrocked United Church minister Kevin Annett before it popped up at Kamloops. Retired professor Hymie Rubenstein and collaborators examine the “evidence” of unmarked graves, such as the results of the GPR, and find there’s nothing—repeat, nothing—there. Journalist Jonathan Kay explains how the media got the story completely wrong, generating the worst fake news in Canadian history. Retired professor Ian Gentles examines health conditions in the schools and shows that children were better off there than at home on reserves. My contribution criticizes the prolific but weak body of research purporting to show that attendance at residential schools created a historical trauma that’s responsible for the social pathologies in Indigenous communities. Retired professor Rodney Clifton recounts from personal experience how benign conditions could be in residential schools. And other essays explore other fallacies.

Our book demonstrates that all the major elements of the Kamloops narrative are either false or highly exaggerated. No unmarked graves have been discovered at Kamloops or elsewhere—not one. As of August 2023, there had been 20 announcements of soil “anomalies” discovered by GPR near residential schools across Canada; but most have not even been excavated, so what, if anything, lies beneath the surface remains unknown. Where excavations have taken place, no burials related to residential schools have been found.

In other words, there are no “missing children.” The fate of some children may have been forgotten with the passage of generations—forgotten by their own families, that is. But “forgotten” is not the same as “missing.” The myth of missing students arose from a failure of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s researchers to cross-reference the vast number of historical documents about residential schools and the children who attended them. The documentation exists, but the commissioners did not avail themselves of it.

Media stories about Indian residential schools are almost always accompanied by the frightening claim that 150,000 students were “forced to attend” these schools, but that claim is misleading at best. Children were not legally required to attend residential school unless no reserve day school was available; and even then, the law was only sporadically enforced. For students who did attend residential schools, an application form signed by a parent or other guardian was required. The simple truth is that many Indian parents saw residential schools as the best option available for their children.

Prior to 1990, residential schools enjoyed largely favourable media coverage, with many positive testimonials from former students. Indeed, alumni of residential schools comprised most of the emerging First Nations elite. But then Manitoba regional Chief Phil Fontaine appeared on a popular CBC television show hosted by Barbara Frum and claimed he had suffered sexual abuse at a residential school. He did not give details nor specify whether the alleged abusers were missionary priests, lay staff members or other students. Nonetheless, things went south quickly after Fontaine’s appearance, as claims of abuse multiplied and lawyers started to bring them to court.

To avoid clogging the justice system with lawsuits, the Liberal government of Paul Martin negotiated a settlement in 2005, which was accepted shortly afterwards by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. Ultimately about $5 billion in compensation was paid to about 80,000 claimants, and in 2008 Prime Minister Harper publicly apologized for the existence of residential schools.

Harper might have thought that the payments and his apology would be the end of the story, but instead it became the beginning of a new chapter. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that he appointed took off in its own direction after the initial set of commissioners resigned and were replaced on short notice. The TRC held emotional public hearings around the country where “survivors” told their stories without fact-checking or cross-examination. The TRC concluded in 2015 that the residential schools amounted to “cultural genocide.”

Cultural genocide is a metaphor, an emotive term for assimilation or integration of an ethnic minority into an encompassing society. The next step, in turned out, was to start speaking with increasing boldness of a literal physical genocide involving real deaths. The claims about missing children, unmarked burials and “mass graves” reinforced a genocide scenario.

Perhaps sensing the weakness of their evidence-free position, purveyors of the genocide narrative are beginning to double down, demanding that criticism of their ideology be made illegal. For example, in 2022, Winnipeg NDP MP Leah Gazan, introduced a resolution declaring residential schools to be genocidal—the House of Commons gave unanimous consent.

So, there we are—a narrative about genocide in residential schools firmly established in the public domain while unbelievers are called heretics (“denialists”) and threatened with criminal prosecution. But don’t believe the hype, no matter how often the propositions are repeated. As the little boy said in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale, “The Emperor has no clothes.”

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2025 Federal Election

Fixing Canada’s immigration system should be next government’s top priority

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From the Fraser Institute

By John Ibbitson

Whichever party forms government after the April 28 election must put Canada’s broken immigration system at the top of the to-do list.

This country has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates. Were it not for immigration, our population would soon start to decline, just as it’s declining in dozens of other low-fertility countries around the world.

To avoid the social and economic tensions of an aging and declining population, the federal government should re-establish an immigration system that combines a high intake with strictly enforced regulations. Once Canadians see that program in place and working, public support for immigration should return.

Canada’s total fertility rate (the number of children, on average, a woman will have in her lifetime) has been declining, with the odd blip here and there, since the 1960s. In 1972, it fell below the replacement rate of 2.1.

According to Statistics Canada, the country’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.26 in 2023. That puts us in the company of other lowest-low fertility countries such as Italy (1.21), Japan (1.26) and South Korea (0.82).

Those three countries are all losing population. But Canada’s population continues to grow, with immigrants replacing the babies who aren’t born. The problem is that, in the years that followed the COVID-19 lockdowns, the population grew too much.

The Liberal government was unhappy that the pandemic had forced Canada to restrict immigration and concerned about post-pandemic labour shortages. To compensate, Ottawa set a target of 500,000 new permanent residents for 2025, double the already-high intake of about 250,000 a year that had served as a benchmark for the Conservative government of Stephen Harper and the Liberal governments of Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien.

Ottawa also loosened restrictions on temporary foreign worker permits and the admission of foreign students to colleges and universities. Both populations quickly exploded.

Employers preferred hiring workers from overseas rather than paying higher wages for native-born workers. Community colleges swelled their ranks with international students who were also issued work permits. Private colleges—Immigration Minister Marc Miller called them “puppy mills”—sprang up that offered no real education at all.

At the same time, the number of asylum claimants in Canada skyrocketed due to troubles overseas and relaxed entry procedures, reaching a total of 457,285 in 2024.

On January 1 of this year, Statistics Canada estimated that there were more than three million temporary residents in the country, pushing Canada’s population up above 41.5 million.

Their presence worsened housing shortages, suppressed wages and increased unemployment among younger workers. The public became alarmed at the huge influx of foreign residents.

For the first time in a quarter century, according to an Environics poll, a majority of Canadians believed there were too many immigrants coming into Canada.

Some may argue that the solution to Canada’s demographic challenges lie in adopting family-friendly policies that encourage couples to have children. But while governments improve parental supports and filter policies through a family-friendly lens—for example, houses with backyards are more family-friendly than high-rise towers—no government has been able to reverse declining fertility back up to the replacement rate of 2.1.

The steps to repairing Canada’s immigration mess lie in returning to first principles.

According to Statistics Canada, there were about 300,000 international students at postsecondary institutions when the Liberals came to power in 2015. Let’s return to those levels.

The temporary foreign worker program should be toughened up. The government recently implemented stricter Labour Market Impact Assessments, but even stricter rules may be needed to ensure that foreign workers are only brought in when local labour markets cannot meet employer needs, while paying workers a living wage.

New legislation should ensure that only asylum claimants who can demonstrate they are at risk of persecution or other harm in their home country are given refuge in Canada, and that the process for assessing claims is fair, swift and final. If necessary, the government should consider employing the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to protect such legislation from court challenges.

Finally, the government should admit fewer permanent residents under the family reunification stream and more from the economic stream. And the total admitted should be kept to around 1 per cent of the total population. That would still permit an extremely robust intake of about 450,000 new Canadians each year.

Restoring public confidence in Canada’s immigration system will take much longer than it took to undermine that confidence. But there can be no higher priority for the federal government. The country’s demographic future is at stake.

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Business

Tariff-driven increase of U.S. manufacturing investment would face dearth of workers

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From the Fraser Institute

By Jock Finlayson

Since 2015, the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually risen modestly. However, as a share of total U.S. employment, manufacturing has dropped from 30 per cent in the 1970s to around 8 per cent in 2024.

Donald Trump has long been convinced that the United States must revitalize its manufacturing sector, having—unwisely, in his view—allowed other countries to sell all manner of foreign-produced manufactured goods in the giant American market. As president, he’s moved quickly to shift the U.S. away from its previous embrace of liberal trade and open markets as cornerstones of its approach to international economic policy —wielding tariffs as his key policy instrument. Since taking office barely two months ago, President Trump has implemented a series of tariff hikes aimed at China and foreign producers of steel and aluminum—important categories of traded manufactured goods—and threatened to impose steep tariffs on most U.S. imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. In addition, he’s pledged to levy separate tariffs on imports of automobiles, semi-conductors, lumber, and pharmaceuticals, among other manufactured goods.

In the third week of March, the White House issued a flurry of news releases touting the administration’s commitment to “position the U.S. as a global superpower in manufacturing” and listing substantial new investments planned by multinational enterprises involved in manufacturing. Some of these appear to contemplate relocating manufacturing production in other jurisdictions to the U.S., while others promise new “greenfield” investments in a variety of manufacturing industries.

President Trump’s intense focus on manufacturing is shared by a large slice of America’s political class, spanning both of the main political parties. Yet American manufacturing has hardly withered away in the last few decades. The value of U.S. manufacturing “output” has continued to climb, reaching almost $3 trillion last year (equal to 10 per cent of total GDP). The U.S. still accounts for 15 per cent of global manufacturing production, measured in value-added terms. In fact, among the 10 largest manufacturing countries, it ranks second in manufacturing value-added on a per-capita basis. True, China has become the world’s biggest manufacturing country, representing about 30 per cent of global output. And the heavy reliance of Western economies on China in some segments of manufacturing does give rise to legitimate national security concerns. But the bulk of international trade in manufactured products does not involve goods or technologies that are particularly critical to national security, even if President Trump claims otherwise. Moreover, in the case of the U.S., a majority of two-way trade in manufacturing still takes place with other advanced Western economies (and Mexico).

In the U.S. political arena, much of the debate over manufacturing centres on jobs. And there’s no doubt that employment in the sector has fallen markedly over time, particularly from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s (see table below). Since 2015, the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually risen modestly. However, as a share of total U.S. employment, manufacturing has dropped from 30 per cent in the 1970s to around 8 per cent in 2024.

U.S. Manufacturing Employment, Select Years (000)*
1990 17,395
2005 14,189
2010 14,444
2015 12,333
2022 12,889
2024 12,760
*December for each year shown. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Economists who have studied the trend conclude that the main factors behind the decline of manufacturing employment include continuous automation, significant gains in productivity across much of the sector, and shifts in aggregate demand and consumption away from goods and toward services. Trade policy has also played a part, notably China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and the subsequent dramatic expansion of its role in global manufacturing supply chains.

Contrary to what President Trump suggests, manufacturing’s shrinking place in the overall economy is not a uniquely American phenomenon. As Harvard economist Robert Lawrence recently observed “the employment share of manufacturing is declining in mature economies regardless of their overall industrial policy approaches. The trend is apparent both in economies that have adopted free-market policies… and in those with interventionist policies… All of the evidence points to deep and powerful forces that drive the long-term decline in manufacturing’s share of jobs and GDP as countries become richer.”

This brings us back to the president’s seeming determination to rapidly ramp up manufacturing investment and production as a core element of his “America First” program. An important issue overlooked by the administration is where to find the workers to staff a resurgent U.S. manufacturing sector. For while manufacturing has become a notably “capital-intensive” part of the U.S. economy, workers are still needed. And today, it’s hard to see where they will be found. This is especially true given the Trump administration’s well-advertised skepticism about the benefits of immigration.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current unemployment rate across America’s manufacturing industries collectively stands at a record low 2.9 per cent, well below the economy-wide rate of 4.5 per cent. In a recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers, almost 70 per cent of American manufacturers cited the inability to attract and retain qualified employees as the number one barrier to business growth. A cursory look at the leading industry trade journals confirms that skill and talent shortages remain persistent in many parts of U.S. manufacturing—and that shortages are destined to get worse amid the expected significant jump in manufacturing investment being sought by the Trump administration.

As often seems to be the case with Trump’s stated policy objectives, the math surrounding his manufacturing agenda doesn’t add up. Manufacturing in America is in far better shape than the president acknowledges. And a tariff-driven avalanche of manufacturing investment—should one occur—will soon find the sector reeling from an unprecedented human resource crisis.

Jock Finlayson

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institut
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