Rise in arson coincides with residential school murders claim

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Staggering Number of Churches Burned, More Than Thought

Blacklocks reports that since 2010, when the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) commissioners began making the claim in interviews and in interim reports that thousands of indigenous children had died at residential schools under suspicious circumstances, more than 400 Christian churches have burned in Canada.

Those allegations were false, and based on a conspiracy theory.

But, the church burnings increased significantly after the May 27, 2021 Kamloops announcement ramped up that claim to an actual accusation by the Tk’emlups Indian band that 215 children had died under sinister circumstances, and were buried by priests in secrecy on the school grounds — “with the forced help of children, as young as six”.

Where did that Tk’emlups story come from? Most importantly, why would anyone believe such obvious nonsense?

The conspiracy theory that launched the entire missing children claim was largely created out of whole cloth by a defrocked United Church minister, named Kevin Annett.

For reasons that defy rational explanation this unusual man made it his life’s work to take the alcoholic ramblings of a few Vancouver east side street residents, polish them up, and present them as fact to the world.

For example, he repeated the story that Queen Elizabeth had kidnapped ten children from the Kamloops school, and those children were never seen again. He also repeated stories about priests clubbing students to death and throwing them into graves dug by other students, dead boys hanging on meathooks in barns, and babies thrown into furnaces by priests and nuns. Respected investigative reporter Terry Glavin, exposed Annett as a crank, and debunked Annett’s wild stories in detail in a 2008 Tyee article. Annett’s stories are so obviously fake that it seems incredible that anyone believed them.

But they did. In fact some of the people who fell for these stories occupied important positions. One was Gary Merasty, a Member of Parliament. Merasty became so convinced that these claims, as presented in Kevin Annett’s most famous documentary, “Unrepentant” were true, that he was able to convince the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and other important politicians that the newly appointed TRC commissioners must look into Annett’s claims.

The newly appointed TRC commissioners unwisely accepted this new area of study, despite that fact that they had no mandate to do so. When the federal government refused their request for a mandate and funds to search for these phantom “missing children” they ignored the rebuff, and pursued the subject anyway.

It appears from their statements on the subject that they completely bought into the Annett conspiracy theory. Commissioner Murray Sinclair gave many interviews about these supposedly “missing children” and hinted frequently that dark forces were at play.

He even alleged — on absolutely no evidence — that so many deaths occurred at residential schools that the federal government conspired to keep the information from the Canadian public after 1920. Then he upped his death number — again with no evidence to support his claim — to over 6,000. All of this alarming rhetoric was heard across Canada, but particularly within increasingly outraged indigenous communities.

Following the Kamloops announcement he took this rhetoric up to alarming new heights — suggesting that “15-25,000, maybe more” deaths, some deliberate — took place at the schools.

For her part, Commissioner Marie Wilson actively promoted the myth that thousands of children came to the schools, and were never seen again. According to Wilson these children simply disappeared. (She did not explain why there was not even one complaint from a parent that their child had gone missing or discuss cause of death.)

The mainstream media, meanwhile, did not question any of these always improbable claims. Quite the contrary, they not only played along with these baseless claims, but actively encouraged them. It did not seem to occur to them that they were actively supporting a conspiracy theory.

So, it should really come as no surprise that on May 27, 2021 when Chief Casimir made her false claim — that the “remains of 215 former students of KIRS” had been found — there was absolutely no pushback or questioning of what should have seemed to Canadians like a bizarre claim. Instead, the media – including the once prestigious New York Times — actively amped up the rhetoric, and added their own claims about “mass graves found.”

Trudeau and his ministers — especially Marc Miller — made matters immeasurably worse by immediately ordering all federal flags to be flown at half mast, and promising enormous amounts of money to any other indigenous community that wanted to make a similar claim.

The truth is that the TRC’s missing children wild goose chase had thoroughly captivated journalists, and entire indigenous communities, to the extent that the baseless Tk’emlups claim seemed to make sense to them. Justin Trudeau and his ministers were in that gaggle of gullibles. Canada became the laughing stock of the world for dumbly accepting these wild claims.

All along, there have been a few brave souls who have tried to question a residential school narrative that was increasingly getting out of control.

Remember Senator Lynn Beyak? She was forced out of the senate essentially for telling the truth — namely that many children benefitted from their residential school educations, and that the TRC should have said so. She acknowledged that many children were hurt by their experiences there, but insisted that both the good and the bad should have been told. For that bit of common sense she was relentlessly attacked by a partisan media, expelled from the Conservative caucus, and forced into retirement.

Most recently, a retired professor emeritus, Rod Clifton, who spoke about his positive experiences working at a northern residential school, and explained why the claims that residential school students were murdered and secretly buried could not possibly be true, had his True North interview removed by a social media company on the grounds that it was “hate speech”.

Never mind that he was recounting his personal experience at the school. Never mind that his wife and son are indigenous. The professor dared to speak against an orthodoxy that tolerates no dissent.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media reporting about residential schools has become increasingly extreme. Fabulists, like Kevin Annett and other opportunists, have built careers for themselves writing exaggerated, or even completely made up stories about residential school “horrors” and “atrocities.” Instead of being accurately portrayed as the flawed attempts at indigenous education that they were, they are now presented as virtual charnel houses, where children were tortured and murdered.

As stated, all of this heated rhetoric went into overdrive on May 27, 2021, when Chief Rosanne Casimir falsely claimed that “the remains of 215 children” had been found on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS). In fact, no such remains had been found. The only “evidence” for her claim were stories the people in the community had told themselves, and radar blips (soil anomalies) that an inexperienced radar operator had misinterpreted as possible graves.

There was absolutely no reason why Casimir’s claim should have been taken seriously in 2021. 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.

But instead of refuting Casimir’s claim, or asking even the most basic questions, the Trudeau government and its CBC ally simply accepted the claim as true.

And since that time, both the Trudeau government and CBC have doubled down on their refusal to correct the misinformation that they have promoted.

In fact, the Senate is now considering ways to make people like Senator Lynn Beyak and Professor Clifton criminals. They want to criminalize any “residential school denier” who dares to doubt the truth of anything that a residential school “survivor” has alleged.

This would include, for example, anyone who dared to disagree with the two Tk’emlups people who claim that they were the “children as young as six” who in the 1960s were forced to dig graves for priests who had somehow killed their comrades, and were now burying them in secrecy.

Those two people are still alive. Have they been interviewed by the RCMP? We do not know.

Why are their identities not being revealed by Casimir and her associates? Again, we do not know. Why has CBC, or others not interviewed these two people about their sensational claim? Again, we are offered no explanation by CBC.

This would also mean that anyone disagreeing with any of the claims of “survivors” such as Billie Coombes, or any of Kevin Annett’s wild stories could face criminal prosecution.

And why did Chief Casimir claim that the “remains of 215 children” had been found, when that was clearly a false claim. Only soil anomalies, which are almost certainly from a 1924 sewage trench were found. Why did it take three years for the T’Kumlups band to confess that no human remains were found?.

Instead, we are left in limbo on the most sensational crime story in Canadian history. 215 — then thousands — of indigenous children were somehow killed and secretly buried at residential schools all across the country? (Former National Chief RoseAnne Archibald says “tens of thousands”, former TRC Commissioner Murray Sinclair says “15-25,000, maybe more.”) Rather than trying to investigate this story by vigorously questioning people making these sensational claims the RCMP sit on their hands in their offices, CBC steadfastly refuses to ask any questions. And our own government threatens to make criminals of any retired professors or others who dare to ask questions about it.

Meanwhile, the Tk’emlups band received (and apparently spent) $8,000,000 from the federal government for making a false claim.

The TRC accused Canadian priests, nuns, teachers and staff at residential schools of somehow being responsible for the disappearance of thousands of indigenous children who attended the schools. That is a shocking accusation. But it is even more shocking that the accusation was made with no real evidence to support it. Chief Rosannne Casimir went even further. She accused those people —who are no longer here to defend themselves — of murder and secret burial. Now, the federal government wants to stop Canadians from even talking about these sensational and baseless claims.

The next logical step for them is to stop Canadians from even knowing about it. That’s exactly what they are doing in every school in the country — misinforming every Canadian school child by telling them that the Kamloops claim is true.

And that is probably what Ottawa has in mind, with the new “digital safety officer” contemplated in Trudeau’s truly frightening Online Harms Act. Truth-telling senators and professors will be silenced. Then the truth will be what lies in unmarked graves.

The church burnings are only the outward manifestation of this larger evil. Canadians are being deliberately deceived by their own government, the indigenous leadership, and our own media. 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. The indigenous leadership has exploited an obviously false claim — pocketing a mountain of tax dollars, while our moribund mainstream media sits in silence.

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

We have a sitting government actively promoting a conspiracy theory, while threatening to criminalize anyone who tries to expose it. We have an RCMP that refuses to do its job, and conduct an investigation that would quickly tell Canadians that there are no secretly buried children at Kamloops. We have CBC and most of the mainstream media asking no questions about the biggest news story in Canadian history. And we have countless grifter writers and academics who are building their careers repeating ghost stories, and pretending that they are telling the truth.

And the Tk’emlups band gets $8,000,000 for lying, while a professor and senator get cancelled for telling the truth.

As Jon Kay notes in his recent Quillette essay, an officially sanctioned lie — and that is exactly what the Kamloops claim has become — cannot endure forever.

At some point Canada must come to its senses.

First published in the Western Standard here.

Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Toronto cancels history, again: The irony and injustice of renaming Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square

Published on November 20, 2024

Todayville

From the Aristotle Foundation

By Greg Piasetzki

In 2022, Torontonians renamed Ryerson University to Toronto Metropolitan University, “to address the legacy of Egerton Ryerson.”¹ Rather than remember him as the founder of Ontario’s system of “free” public schools and libraries, Ryerson was “cancelled” for his suggestions regarding the curriculum for the Indian residential schools that were then being proposed. However, the schools themselves were not built until some 30 years later, after Ryerson was dead. Further, modern complaints about the schools are generally misconceived and have little to do with the curriculum.²

In 2024, Toronto is at it again. This time, the historical figure targeted for cancellation is abolitionist Henry Dundas, as city officials seek to wipe his name from Yonge-Dundas Square. The square is a notable city landmark and one of Canada’s most popular tourist destinations. Filled with brightly lit electronic advertisement billboards, the square serves as an iconic social hub and venue for events connected to Toronto’s cultural festivals. The city’s former mayor, John Tory, summarized the case for renaming the famous square – based on a report from city hall – as follows:

An objective reading of the history, the significance of this street which crosses our city, the fact that Mr. Dundas had virtually no connection to Toronto and our strong commitment to equity, inclusion and reconciliation make this a unique and symbolically important change.³

The new name, “Sankofa Square,” is taken not from anything Torontonian, Ontarian, or even Canadian – but from the Akan people of West Africa.

Ironically, city officials not only appear ignorant of Henry Dundas’ many contributions to Canada, and to the abolition of slavery, but are also blissfully unaware that the Akan people of Africa were notorious slave traders responsible for capturing and selling one to two million of their fellow Africans into slavery.⁴

The man: Who was Henry Dundas?

Henry Dundas was a Scottish lawyer, politician, and one of British Prime Minister William Pitt’s most trusted and powerful ministers who served during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.

Critically, Dundas was also a staunch abolitionist, committed to ending slavery as an institution in the British Empire and elsewhere in the world.

As early as 1777, when he was in his thirties, Dundas publicly established his abolitionist position on slavery. When Joseph Knight, a slave from Jamaica, was taken to Scotland by his owner, he challenged his status as a slave under Scottish law. Dundas, then Lord Advocate (principal legal advisor to the government), took on Knight’s case in his private capacity as a lawyer. On the final appeal before Scotland’s highest court, Dundas argued passionately, and with some humour, against the inhumanity of slavery:

We may possibly see the master chastising his slave as he does his ox or his horse. Perhaps, too, he may shoot him when he turns old […]

[But] [h]uman nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.⁵

The court agreed and declared that no slave could remain a slave once they arrived on Scottish soil.⁶

A decade later, a religiously-inspired Christian abolition movement began in Britain (most famously personified by William Wilberforce) with the goal of ending the Atlantic slave trade. Dundas was a supporter of the movement, but urged that its members go further and challenge not just the Atlantic slave trade but seek the abolition of slavery itself – a much bigger challenge since at that time slavery was practiced on every inhabited continent.

During the 300 or more years the transatlantic slave trade existed, estimates are that 10 million to 12 million Africans were captured, enslaved, and sold by their fellow Africans. The purchasers were largely British, Portuguese, and French traders who acted as intermediaries in shipping slaves to the Americas for re-sale. The destination for 50 percent of the slaves was South America, 45 percent went to the West Indies, and about four percent went to what would become the United States.^7,8 Dundas understood that, unless slavery itself was ended – with its unrelenting violence, forced labour, and premature death – slavery as an institution would continue for generations, since legally the children of slaves were considered chattel (like livestock) and were thus also slaves like their parents.

The controversy: Did Dundas’ abolitionism go far enough?

Dundas is criticized today for amending a motion in Britain’s Parliament in 1792.⁹ His original motion called for the immediate end to the slave trade. But outright abolition was unrealistic at the time, and thus historians agree that Dundas’ original motion would surely have failed.¹⁰ Moreover, Britain’s competitors – especially the Portuguese and French – would have simply picked up where Britain left off. Realizing this, Dundas made a strategic pivot and called for a gradual end to the slave trade. His strategy worked, and his amended motion succeeded with a significant majority.¹¹

Change would take time. Only about one percent of the adult population had the right to vote,¹² and many had at least an indirect financial interest in West Indian plantations (as did numerous Members of Parliament), and trade with the plantations generated income for businesses in England and tariff revenue for the Crown. Surmounting such entrenched interests would not happen overnight.

And this is why Dundas’ successful motion was key: it shifted the tenor of the public discourse. For the first time, ending the slave trade was up for debate. The British empire at this time was nearing its peak as the largest empire in history, with enormous influence, and thus this step was significant in the eventual abolition of slavery worldwide.

The Toronto connection: Dundas the humanitarian

For his role in abolishing slavery, Dundas ought to be celebrated. The same is true of his major influence on the colonies that would become Canada and, in particular, on what would become the province of Ontario and the city of Toronto. Importantly, that influence was wielded in support of issues that, today, would be described as relating to equity, inclusion, and reconciliation—ironically, the exact criteria (“commitments”) justifying the city’s condemnation of him.

Appointing Simcoe, the empire’s first legislator to outlaw slavery

Dundas was a close friend of John Graves Simcoe (another staunch abolitionist), and he appointed Simcoe as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada in 1791. It was Simcoe who, two years later, would introduce the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada, the very first legislation in the entire British empire to limit slavery.¹⁴

The legislation passed, beginning the abolition of slavery in the province. Although the legislation did not free slaves already present, it freed the children of such slaves at age 25, and made Upper Canada a safe haven for slaves fleeing the United States.¹⁵ Like the precedent Dundas set in Scotland, no slave could remain a slave on Upper Canadian soil. Over the next seven decades, more than 40,000 black men and women would risk their lives to escape slavery and find freedom in Upper Canada.

When Dundas appointed Simcoe, he knew about Simcoe’s abolitionist sympathies—and almost certainly anticipated the legislation he would propose.¹⁶ And thus, Dundas made possible what became known as the Underground Railroad.

Honouring black soldiers

Dundas also ordered the governors of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to honour Britain’s promise of land grants to 4,000 former slaves who had fought for the British against the American Revolution, and to offer free passage – courtesy of the British navy – to any who preferred to return to Africa.¹⁷

Initiating official bilingualism

Upon the division of the then-province of Quebec into Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) and Lower Canada (present-day Quebec) in 1791, Dundas instructed the English governor of Lower Canada to allow French-speaking parliamentarians to pass laws in French.¹⁸ This was a serious point of disagreement in the newly formed legislative assembly, as the (powerful) English minority insisted all British subjects be governed in English. Dundas solved the impasse by ordering that legislation be passed in both languages, in what is the first example of official bilingualism in Canadian history. (For context, this occurred only months after England and France were, once again, at war; and thus this act was truly magnanimous.)¹⁹

Defending indigenous peoples

Finally, following American Independence, Yankee incursions into Canadian territory were a very real and constant threat. Dundas, as secretary of state for Home Affairs, instructed the Canadian governor Sir Guy Carleton to intervene against the Americans and protect the interests of the “Indian Nations”:

…securing to them the peaceable and quiet possession of the Lands which they have hitherto occupied as their hunting Grounds, and such others as may enable them to procure a comfortable subsistence for themselves and their families.²⁰

The irony: Replacing the abolitionist with slave traders

Given the evidence, Toronto city council’s treatment of Dundas is clearly not only ahistorical but shameful. Regrettably, so is their adoption of the replacement, the term “Sankofa” from the Akan language. Little needs to be said here, other than this: The Akan peoples of West Africa were notorious slave traders. During the transatlantic slave trade, the Akan captured, enslaved, and sold one to two million fellow Africans into slavery. In other words, the Akan were the source of 10 to 20 percent of all transatlantic slaves.

Conclusion

The Toronto city council narrative surrounding the renaming of Yonge-Dundas Square flies in the face of historical fact. Dundas was demonstrably ahead of his time as a humanitarian. And as a politician, he was not only principled and morally courageous but effective. Dundas was one of the key figures in abolishing the slave trade, opening up the Underground Railroad, and protecting minorities of various backgrounds—black, French, and indigenous. If the city really wants to promote the act of “reflecting on and reclaiming teachings from the past,”²¹ as it claims, it might do well to start with the truth about Henry Dundas’ legacy. There may be times to rename a place or landmark, but this is not one of them.

Endnotes

Please see references in PDF

About the author

Greg Piasetzki is a Toronto-based intellectual property lawyer, a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, and a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario.

About the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy

Who we are

The Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy is a new education and public policy think tank that aims to renew a civil, common-sense approach to public discourse and public policy in Canada.

Censorship Industrial Complex

Another Mass Grave?

Published on November 18, 2024

Todayville

No. One outrageous lie was quickly discounted, yet another lives on, to the detriment of everybody involved.

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

The Kamloops claim didn’t come out of the blue. The TRC’s well-publicized “missing children” wild goose chase thoroughly indoctrinated indigenous communities. It convinced foolish people, like Casimir, Leah Gazan and Kimberley Murray, that thousands of “missing children” had been secretly buried all across Canada.

“My brother Rufus saw them take all those children and stand them up next to a big ditch, and then the soldiers shot them all and they all fell into that ditch. Some of the kids were still alive and they just poured the dirt in on top of them. Buried them alive.”

This mass murder happened in 1943 — not in Nazi-held Europe, but in Brantford, Ontario.

So, there you have it — the personal story of a residential school “survivor” describing the day the Canadian Army lined up 43 Indian children in front of a residential school at Brantford, Ontario, shot them and dumped their bodies into a mass grave. The May 27, 2021 announcement that the remains of 215 former students of the Kamloops residential school wasn’t the first time that a claim about sinister residential school deaths and clandestine burials had been made.

This Brantford story is obviously untrue. Any reasonably well-informed person with a lick of sense would know that at a glance.

But that didn’t stop the claim from making the social media rounds for years. According to the fact-check tens of thousands of people have read this bogus claim over the years, and many appear to have believed it completely. In fact, despite the fact checks proving that the claim was entirely false it continues to circulate today.

Both the Kamloops and Brantford claims came basically from the same place — the strange mind of a defrocked United Church Minister, Kevin Annett. It was Annett who created the bogus Brantford claim. In a strange twist, the picture at the top of the page — said to be from Brantford — is actually a photo of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, as it looked in the 1920s.

And it was Annett who inspired the TRC’s misguided “missing children/unmarked graves” wild goose chase that, in turn, inspired Chief Rosanne Casimir to make the Kamloops claim. Both claims were equally and obviously false: The Kamloops claim was that the “remains of 215 children were found.” In fact, only radar blips (anomalies) were detected- blips that turned out. to most likely be from previous excavations, and not graves. Casimir and Annett both knew that they were making false claims.

Annett’s bogus claims come from his imaginative reworking of stories of “survivors” that he publicized in his blogs, books, interviews and movies.

His most famous movie is Unrepentant. This movie has been viewed by tens of thousands of Canadians, particularly in indigenous communities, such as the Tk’emlups community at Kamloops.

It has won awards, and been praised by eminent people, such as Noam Chomsky. Despite being every bit as false as the claim that the Canadian army shot 43 indigenous children, it actually convinced Member of Parliament, Gary Merasty, that it was accurate history. It is nothing short of amazing that this highly suggestible MP was then able to convince the equally gullible, and newly appointed TRC commissioners that there were many thousands of such “missing children”, as Annett alleged.

The TRC commissioners then launched their “missing children/unmarked graves” campaign despite having no mandate from the federal government to do so. (Independent researcher, Nina Green, describes this in detail here.)

You see, the Kamloops claim didn’t come out of the blue. The TRC’s well-publicized “missing children” wild goose chase thoroughly indoctrinated indigenous communities. It convinced foolish people, like Casimir, Leah Gazan and Kimberley Murray, that thousands of “missing children” had been secretly buried all across Canada.

Indigenous people became hooked on these stories.

Annett’s most famous book is his 393 page opus, “Hidden No Longer.” That book introduced the idea that the deaths of these thousands of “missing children” (his estimates range from 50,000 to 250,000, depending on the telling) constituted genocide. It is absolutely shocking that our MPs actually voted to condemn Canada of genocide based essentially on Kevin Annett’s bogus claims.

Based on those same bogus claims Annett was hired by the Brantford Mohawk community in 2011 to dig up the graves that he claimed existed in the apple orchard area of their residential school. According to Annett, these were the graves of indigenous students who had been secretly killed and buried in the apple orchard at the school, with the forced help of fellow students.

Sound familiar? It should. That was essentially the same grisly tale repeated by Chief Rosanne Casimir years later in Kamloops. (See above.)

Except that the wiser folks within the Brantford Mohawk community twigged on to Annett’s tricks. And when Annett was found on the streets of Toronto, waving around chicken bones, and pretending that they were the bones of children he had unearthed at Brantford, the Mohawk elders came together and publicly denounced Annett as a fraud at a community meeting. They then banished him from their community.

Unfortunately, Casimir became a useful idiot for Annett — just as the gullible TRC commissioners did — and no such leadership has yet come forward from the wiser elements within the Kamloops indigenous community. Those folks are silent, while the more vocal contingent are still sticking to their story that the soil anomalies are the “remains of 215 children,” and not what they almost certainly are — 1924 septic excavations.

So, the questions should be asked: Is the claim that the Canadian army shot 43 indigenous children, and dumped them in a mass grave, any more or less believable than the claim that priests killed and secretly buried 215 children at Kamloops, (or any of the copycat claims that followed it?)

What is it about that Mohawk claim that gives it appeal to only the most gullible among us, while the equally improbable Kamloops claim is still taken seriously by so many people?

On the surface, both claims are outrageous, and have no real evidence to support them. Quite the contrary, every Canadian history book ever written is cogent evidence that both stories are false. But the Mohawk claim was dismissed as the nonsense it obviously was, while the Kamloops claim lives on.

At least part of the answer to those questions appears to be in the response of the government in power, and the media to the claims. If the Brantford claim had been met by a prime minister who immediately ordered that flags be lowered, and offered hundreds of millions of dollars to any other indigenous communities who wanted to make similar claim, no doubt that Brantford claim would have been taken seriously.

Or, if the Brantford claim had been made in a time when a highly ideological CBC would ask no questions, and blindly promote the claim, the results might have been entirely different. As it is, the Brantford claim died a merciful death, while the equally specious Kamloops genocide claim still languishes like a stinking albatross around the neck of every Canadian.

Although the international community is increasingly broadcasting the obvious fact that the Kamloops claim is bogus Canada’s media remains asleep. That is not likely to change until leadership changes in Ottawa, and at the CBC. Pierre Pollievre, when questioned on this topic, stated clearly that he stands for historical truth, accuracy, and a full investigation into all questions pertaining to claims about residential school deaths. Hopefully, that means that excavation and a full inquiry will follow.

But Tk’emlups indigenous elders better wake up, like the Mohawk elders did. You are not doing your communities a favour by letting politicians and journalists treat you like children, by pretending to believe your bizarre claims. These false claims are already doing great damage.

Fortunately, there are many thoughtful indigenous people who do not blindly accept the claims about murderous priests and secret burials.

Here is one such wise indigenous person. He is a priest, and he is willing to do what our federal government and our CBC failed to do from the beginning namely to intelligently discuss the issue.

Thoughtful people like this need to be involved in a full investigation that will clear the air about the Kamloops claim, and get Canada back on track.

Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.