From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The CBC has published yet another article implicitly promoting the unproven claim that former residential school sites contain the unmarked graves of Indigenous students, citing activist who want dissent from the official narrative criminalized.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is still pushing the unproven claim that unmarked graves have been discovered at former residential schools while implicitly calling for “residential school denialism” to be criminalized.   

In an October 31 article, the state-funded CBC highlighted former residential school attendees who called for punishments for “residential school denialism,” implying citizens should be punished for denying the existence of unmarked graves despite the fact that no bodies have been found.

“Residential school survivors are calling on Canada to criminalize residential school denialism, echoing one of the findings in a report about unmarked graves and burial sites associated with the institutions,” the government-funded outlet claimed. 

According to former students of the schools, those who oppose the mainstream narrative, by pointing out that no unmarked graves have been discovered or that some children benefitted from the schools, which some former students themselves have attested, should be silenced.    

Alarmingly, this suggestion to criminalize the denial of an unproven claim is supported by a New Democratic Party (NDP) MP who recently introduced a bill which would charge those who “promote hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada.” 

While the CBC report rigorously outlines the dangers of so-called “denialism,” it failed to mention the above discrepancies in the official narrative.

Residential schools, while run by both the Catholic Church and other Christian churches, were mandated and set-up by the federal government and ran from the late 19th century until the last school closed in 1996.        

While some children did tragically die at the once-mandatory boarding schools, evidence has revealed  that many of the children passed away as a result of unsanitary conditions due to underfunding by the federal government, not the Catholic Church.  

As a consequence, since 2021, when the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims  that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools, over 100 churches have been burned or vandalized across Canada in seeming retribution.

Instead of making clear that no bodies have been found, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and the mainstream media have seemed to sympathize with those destroying churches, as evidenced by a CBC report which appeared to justify the attacks, many of which took place on churches located on indigenous land.

In fact, in 2021, Trudeau waited weeks before acknowledging the church vandalism, and when he did speak, said it is “understandable” that churches have been burned while acknowledging it to be “unacceptable and wrong.”     

Similarly, in February, Liberal and NDP MPs quickly shut down a Conservative motion to condemn an attack against a Catholic church in Regina, Saskatchewan. The motion was shut down even though there was surveillance footage of a man, who was later arrested, starting the fire.   

Additionally, in October 2023, Liberal and NDP MPs voted to adjourn rather than consider a motion that would denounce the arson and vandalism against 83 Canadian churches, especially those within Indigenous communities.