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Indigenous

The Quiet Remaking of Canada

Published

6 months ago

12 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

B.C. residents sat up and took notice of this shocking change when the Eby government announced that it planned to embark on a plan of “co-governance” with its indigenous population – a plan that would have given 5% of B.C.’s population a veto over every aspect of public land useage in the province.

Most Canadians are unaware that a campaign to remake Canada is underway. The conception of that most Canadians have of their country – that it is, one nation, in which citizens of different ethnic, religious and racial groups are all treated equally, under one set of laws – is being fundamentally transformed. B.C. residents sat up and took notice of this shocking change when the Eby government announced that it planned to embark on a plan of “co-governance” with its indigenous population – a plan that would have given 5% of B.C.’s population a veto over every aspect of public land useage in the province.

An emphatic “No” from an overwhelming majority of citizens put an end to this scheme – at least temporarily.

But the Eby government continues to move forward with its plan to transform the province into a multitude of semi-autonomous indigenous nations to accommodate that 5% of the indigenous B.C. population. It is proceeding with a plan that recognizes the Haida nation’s aboriginal title to the entire area of the traditional Haida territory. It would basically make Haida Gwaii into what would in essence be a semi-independent nation, ruled by Haida tribal law.

Many of us are familiar with that exceptionally beautiful part of Canada, where the Haida have lived for thousands of years. Misty Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, is a magical place. Until now, it has been a part of Canada. How would this Haida agreement change that?

Non-Haida residents of Haida Gwaii are probably asking themselves that question. Although they are being told that their fee simple ownership and other rights will not be affected by the Haida agreement, is that true? If one must be Haida by DNA to fully participate in decisions, how can it be argued that non Haida residents have rights equal to a Haida?

For example, the Supreme Court ruled in the Vuntut Gwitchin case that, based on the allegedly greater need of maintaining so-called Indigenous cultural “difference”, individual Indigenous Canadians can now be deprived by their band governments of their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on their home reserves and self-governing territories. Simply put, the law of the collective- namely tribal law- will apply.

So, tribal law takes precedence over Canadian law. And will a non-Haida resident be deprived of rights that he would enjoy anywhere else in Canada? For that matter, will an indigenous, but non-Haida, resident have equal rights to a Haida, if he can’t vote in Haida elections? Will this plan dilute, or even eliminate, fee simple ownership for some.

Or this: Does a provincial government even have the power to make such an agreement in the first place? After all Section 91(24) of our Constitution Act gives the federal government responsibility for status Indians.

These are but a few of the many questions that has B.C. residents asking many questions. In fact, the proposed Haida agreement will likely be front and centre in the upcoming provincial election, and could usher in decades of litigation and uncertainty.

But the Eby government has made it clear that the Haida agreement will be the template for others that will follow. Considering the fact that there are at least 200 separate indigenous communities in B.C. this would be a very ambitious undertaking – especially in light of the fact that most of those 200 or so communities are tiny, and almost all are dependent on taxpayers for their continued existence.

Eby is responding to the Supreme Court’s astounding decision that aboriginal title existed, unless it had been surrendered by treaty. The court relied on the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to come to this decision. This was after what was the longest trial in the history of B.C. wherein the trial judge in that case, Chief Justice Allan McEachern, had written a masterful decision finding that aboriginal title did not exist as claimed by the indigenous parties to the action. The Supreme Court went on in subsequent  cases to transform Canadian indigenous law and expand section 35 in a manner that emphasized the need for “reconciliation”, the primacy of the collective over the rights of the individual for indigenous people, and the need for indigenous “nation to nation” separateness, instead of assimilation. All of this was done by judicial fiat, with absolutely no input from the Canadian public. Senior Ontario lawyer, Peter Best, describes this radical transformation of Canada in his epic work, “There Is No Difference”.

The unfortunate decision by both the federal government and the B.C. government to adopt UNDRIP, (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples) and B.C.’s provincial version, DRIPA, (Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) further muddied the waters.

What British Columbia will look like in 10 years is anyone’s guess, if the hundreds of indigenous communities in B.C. are successful in obtaining agreements similar to what the Haida negotiate. It also seems very likely that indigenous communities in other parts of Canada will see what the B.C. communities achieved, and want the same additional autonomy and land rights for themselves. In the treaty areas of Canada, namely mainly the prairies and parts of the north, the treaties, in theory, settle the issue. But, if the B.C. Indians succeed in obtaining superior entitlements, the treaty Indians will almost certainly agitate for “modern treaties” that include what the Haida received.

And the citizens of eastern Canada, who believe that their indigenous claims have been permanently settled long ago, are probably in for a rude shock. In “A New Look at Canadian Indian Policy” the late Gordon Gibson quotes a former senior bureaucrat in Indian Affairs who insisted on remaining anonymous. That source says bluntly that all of Canada will be at play if Canada does indeed become the “patchwork of tiny Bantustans” that journalist and visionary Jon Kay predicted in 2001, if we keep going down this “nation to nation” path.

In fact, it is quite possible that every one of the 600 or so indigenous communities in Canada will end up with at least as much “separateness” as the Haida obtained. Canada will be fundamentally transformed into a crazy quilt of mainly dependent reserves governed by tribal law. Surely the Fathers of Confederation didn’t work so hard to end up with such a backward, fractured Canada?

As we see this fundamental transformation taking place in B.C., and then heading eastward, I suspect that Canadians who do not want such a future for their country  will start to ask themselves how we arrived at this point. How can a nation be fundamentally transformed with no input from the citizens? Don’t the Canadian people have to be consulted, as we watch our country being transformed by judicial fiat and tribal law? Doesn’t a constitutional process have to be invoked, as happened in the failed Meech Lake or Charlottetown Accords?

Most Canadians believe that history has not been kind to indigenous people, and that indigenous have legitimate claims that need to be addressed. But most Canadians also believe that Canada is one country, in which everyone should be equal.

Canadians also firmly believe that Canada should not be divided into racial enclaves, where different sets of laws are applied to different racial or ethnic groups. In fact, most Canadians would probably support the sub-title of the late Gordon Gibson book cited above: “Respect the Collective – Support the Individual”. Canadians want to see indigenous people succeed, and they support indigenous people in their fierce determination to hold on to their indigenous identity and culture. But they want indigenous people to succeed as Canadians – not in a Canada that has been carved up into racial ghettos, like slices of a cheap pizza.

The Haida agreement is the first highly visible slice – a symbol of a semi-independent “nation” within Canada, that will be governed by rights of the collective tribal law – as opposed to the rights of the individual. That takes us back thousands of years. Before the Haida agreement inspires hundreds of other such racial mini-states within Canada, should Canadians not have a say in what our country is becoming?

Or will we continue to let unelected judges, and faceless bureaucrats, determine our fate?

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

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

False Claims, Real Consequences: The ICC Referrals That Damaged Canada’s Reputation

Published on December 16, 2024

By

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Nina Green

The University of Manitoba has not provided the name of a single Indian residential school student who went missing and whose parents did not know at the time what had happened to their child. Not one.

Why has Canada twice been referred to the International Criminal Court on the basis of false claims about Indian residential schools?

The answer is simple.

The ultimate cause is the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial which falsely claims that it is a list of students who died on the premises of Indian residential schools and students who went missing from Indian residential schools. The University of Manitoba site tells users to:

Click on a region below to see a list of residential schools. Each residential school page contains a list of students who died or went missing at that school.

Those claims by the University of Manitoba are not true.

Firstly, the majority of the 4139 students currently on the University of Manitoba’s Student Memorial Register did not die on the premises of an Indian residential school. Most died elsewhere, as established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report entitled Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, which is in Table 4. Location of residential school deaths, 1867–2000 on page 21 states that only 423 named students died on the premises of an Indian residential school over the course of 133 years, an average of 3 students a year.

Thus, the majority of students did not die on the premises of Indian residential schools. They died elsewhere – in public hospitals or of illness or accidents on their home reserves, accidents which included house fires, drownings, gunshot wounds, vehicle accidents, falling trees, being hit by trains, and other accidental deaths, as established in hundreds of provincial death certificates.

Secondly, none of the students on the University of Manitoba’s lists went missing from an Indian residential school. To date, the University of Manitoba has not provided the name of a single Indian residential school student who went missing and whose parents did not know at the time what had happened to their child. Not one. And far from being ‘missing’, in fact hundreds of provincial death certificates establish that the students were buried on their home reserves by their families and communities.

Based on the University of Manitoba’s misleading lists, the media and the federal government uncritically accepted the false claim by the Kamloops Band on 27 May 2021 that the Band had discovered ‘the remains of 215 children’. After three years, the Band downgraded that false claim on 18 May 2024 to the claim that it had merely discovered ‘215 anomalies’, which could be anything, and are almost certainly the remains of the 2000 linear feet of trenches of a septic field installed in 1924 to dispose of the school’s sewage.

The first referral to the International Criminal Court by a group of 22 lawyers

Only a few days after the Kamloops Band made its false claim, on 3 June 2021 a group of 22 lawyers sent a 14-page complaint to the ICC requesting the Prosecutor to initiate an investigation of a ‘mass grave’ of Indian residential school students which had been discovered at Kamloops. The claim by the 22 lawyers that a ‘mass grave’ had been discovered at Kamloops was, of course, false.

The International Criminal Court quickly declined jurisdiction in November 2021, and on 13 September 2022 Dr Chile Eboe-Osuji, former President and Judge of the International Criminal Court, informed Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray and those present at her National Gathering in Edmonton of the reasons for doing so. As reported by Chief Derek Nepinak, Dr Eboe-Osuji stated unequivocally that:

There is no pathway to the International Criminal Court for the situation of the historical Indian residential school system in Canada.

Dr Eboe-Osuji’s presentation has never been made available on the Special Interlocutor’s website, and requests to both Kimberly Murray and Dr Eboe-Osuji for a copy of his presentation have gone unanswered.

The second referral to the International Criminal Court by Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray

Undeterred by the ICC’s refusal to accept jurisdiction and the reasons offered by Dr Eboe-Osuji in his presentation to her 13 September 2022 National Gathering, Kimberly Murray pursued the issue based on the University of Manitoba’s lists falsely claiming that all the students on its lists died on the premises of specific Indian residential schools or went missing from those schools.

On 29 October 2024, Kimberly Murray delivered her final report to Minister of Justice Arif Virani. However, as she told the Senate Standing Committee on Indigenous Peoples on 27 November 2024, Kimberly Murray also sent her report to the International Criminal Court, requesting Canada’s prosecution by the Court.

How the ICC will react to Kimberly Murray’s referral of Canada for prosecution is as yet unknown.

Damage to Canada’s international reputation

Canada’s reputation has been irreparably damaged by these two referrals to the International Criminal Court based on the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial which falsely claims that it is a list of students who died on the premises of specific residential schools or went missing from those specific schools.

It cannot be reiterated often enough:

(1) that most students whose names are on the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial did not die on the premises of a residential school;

(2) that most students on the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial died in public hospitals or of illness and accidents on their home reserves;

(3) that the University of Manitoba has never provided the name of a single student who ever went missing from an Indian residential school whose parents didn’t know what happened to their child; and

(4) that the majority of students whose names are on the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial were buried by their families and communities on their home reserves. Over time, their families and communities have forgotten them, and through neglect of the grave markers, no longer know where in their reserve cemeteries they are buried.

The University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial has misled Canadians and has resulted in two referrals of Canada for prosecution by the International Criminal Court based on false claims about ‘mass graves’ and ‘missing’ and ‘disappeared’ Indian residential school students.

The federal government and the Catholic Church must demand that the University of Manitoba take down its false and misleading National Student Memorial.

Nina Green is an independent researcher who lives in British Columbia.

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Indigenous

Trudeau cabinet adviser says residential school grave skepticism is ‘hate’ speech

Published on December 12, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves Kimberly Murray believes there are mass graves despite unfounded claims of secret burials and deaths of Indigenous children.

An adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet said that even though there is skepticism toward unfounded claims of “deaths and secret burials” of Indigenous children at residential schools, deliberate deceptions of the graves should be considered “hate” speech.

The comments were made by independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves Kimberly Murray at a recent Senate Indigenous Peoples committee meeting. She said it is “one thing to say you don’t believe there are burials,” and it is “your opinion and you can have freedom of speech to say that.”

However, Murray then said that when a person says “there are no burials, that First Nations people or the Indians are lying because they want you to go burn down churches or they want to take away your cottages,” this is “inciting hate against Indigenous people.”

“That’s the type of speech we need to stop,” she added.

The reality is that Canada’s Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations confirmed it spent millions searching for “unmarked graves” at a now-closed residential school, but the search has turned up no human remains.

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

Murray, who said she thinks there are mass graves at residential schools, claimed that those fully denying graves exist are somehow inciting “hate speech” that she said is “not protected by the Charter and it is getting worse in the country.”

“We need to ensure survivors and communities are safe. We need to send a clear message to Canadians that it is not OK to incite this kind of hate,” she said.

“When the children died, government and church officials did not return the children home for burial …They were buried in cemeteries at the institutions, often in unmarked and mass graves which were sometimes dug by the other children.”

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

Giesbrecht was vocal about criticizing the claims made by the legacy media and the 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.

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.”

Despite the attacks on Canadian churches, Leah Gazan, a backbencher MP from the New Democratic Party, brought forth a bill earlier this year that seeks to criminalize the denial of the unproven claim that the residential school system once operating in Canada was a “genocide.”

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 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.”

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