National
Despite claims of 215 ‘unmarked graves,’ no bodies have been found at Canadian residential school
From LifeSiteNews
Over 100 churches have been burned or vandalized since the Trudeau government and mainstream media promulgated, without any physical evidence, the narrative that mass ‘unmarked graves’ had been discovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Canada’s Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has confirmed it has spent millions searching for “unmarked graves” at a now-closed residential school once run by the Catholic Church, despite the fact that no human remains have been found.
In total, some $7.9 million was earmarked for a search of unmarked Indian Residential School graves in Kamloops, British Columbia. According to the spokeswoman for the Crown-Indigenous Relations, Carolane Gratton, the community got the money “for field work, records searches and to secure the Residential School grounds.”
“Details of initiatives taken by Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation are best directed to the community,” noted Gratton.
To date, the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has not given a financial accounting under the Access To Information Act as to where the money went. According to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation, it “continues to grieve children that are in our care and are focused on the scientific work that needs to be done,” but made no mention of the $7.9 million.
In 2021 and 2022, 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.
The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation was more or less the reason there was a large international outcry in 2021, when it claimed it had found 215 “unmarked graves” of kids at the Kamloops Residential School. The claims of remains, however, were not backed by physical evidence, but were rather disturbances in the soil picked up by ground-penetrating radar.
The money given to the First Nation was done so to find the “heartbreaking truth” of the residential school system, according to a 2022 Indian Residential School Sites: Unmarked Burials department briefing note.
“Our thoughts are with survivors, their families and communities as the heartbreaking truth about Residential Schools’ unmarked burials continues to be unveiled,” read the note.
“Funding is available to support communities, survivors and their families on their healing journey through researching, locating and memorializing those children who died while attending Indian Residential Schools.”
Canadian indigenous 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 there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the past wrongs led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment, which boiled over in the summer of 2021 after the discovery of the 215 so-called “unmarked” graves in Kamloops.
While some children did die at the once-mandatory boarding schools, evidence has revealed that many of the children tragically passed away as a result of unsanitary conditions due to the federal government, not the Catholic Church, failing to properly fund the system.
No human remains have been found
Soon after the Kamloops announcement in 2021, other regions claimed the presence of “unmarked graves,” which prompted Canada’s House of Commons under Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with the help of all other parties including the Conservatives, to declare the residential school program a “genocide” despite the lack of evidence.
The reality is that to date, no human remains have been found at the Kamloops site or other sites.
In fact, in August 2023, the Pine Creek Residential School, located in Pine Creek, Manitoba, underwent a four-week excavation and yielded no remains.
The excavation was led by a First Nation’s tribe called Minegoziibe Ashinabe, and came after a total of 14 abnormalities were found at the former school by ground-penetrating radar.
There have been other excavations conducted at residential schools that have likewise turned up no human remains.
Since the spring of 2021, over 100 churches, mostly Catholic, have been burned or vandalized across Canada. The attacks on the churches came shortly after the “unmarked graves” narrative began.
Despite the church burnings, the federal government under Trudeau has done nothing substantial to bring those responsible to justice or to stem the root cause of the burnings.
“I think Canadians have seen with horror those unmarked graves across the country and realize that what happened decades ago isn’t part of our history, it is an irrefutable part of our present,” Trudeau had earlier remarked to reporters.
The unmarked graves controversy also spurred a Senate committee in 2023 to claim that anyone who questions the graves is engaged in “Residential School denialism.”
“Denialism serves to distract people from the horrific consequences of Residential Schools and the realities of missing children, burials and unmarked graves,” said a Senate Indigenous peoples committee report titled Honouring The Children Who Never Came Home.
The Senate committee report said that the Canadian government should “take every action necessary to combat the rise of Residential School denialism.”
Jordan Peterson tells Pope Francis to ‘take note’
Responding to reports about the Trudeau government spending nearly $8 million without finding a single body, renowned anti-woke Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson took a shot at Pope Francis.
“Pope Francis take note @Pontifex,” wrote Peterson on X (formerly Twitter) last Thursday.
Pope Francis take note @Pontifex https://t.co/YAyKDtMa4A
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) May 9, 2024
Peterson’s remarks likely came in light of the fact that Francis visited Canada in the summer of 2022 for the purpose of apologizing for churchmen’s role in the operation of the residential school program.
During his July 2022 trip, Francis visited First Nations in Alberta and Quebec. While in Quebec, he seemed to join in on a pagan “smudging” ritual before giving a lengthy speech where he conveyed “deep shame and sorrow” for the role played by Catholic Church members in government-funded residential school abuses.
While Francis seemed to go along with the mainstream narrative regarding residential schools, others have spoken out.
Last year, retired Bishop of Calgary, Frederick Henry, blasted the blatant “lie” that thousands of missing indigenous children who attended residential schools run by the Catholic Church were somehow “clandestinely” murdered by “Catholic priests and nuns.”
The founder of the National Post, Conrad Black, also made similar statements as Henry in an opinion piece for his former paper, calling the entire narrative a “fraud.”
armed forces
Top Brass Is On The Run Ahead Of Trump’s Return
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Morgan Murphy
With less than a month to go before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the top brass are already running for cover. This week the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, pledged to cut approximately a dozen general officers from the U.S. Army.
It is a start.
But given the Army is authorized 219 general officers, cutting just 12 is using a scalpel when a machete is in order. At present, the ratio of officers to enlisted personnel stands at an all-time high. During World War II, we had one general for every 6,000 troops. Today, we have one for every 1,600.
Right now, the United States has 1.3 million active-duty service members according to the Defense Manpower Data Center. Of those, 885 are flag officers (fun fact: you get your own flag when you make general or admiral, hence the term “flag officer” and “flagship”). In the reserve world, the ratio is even worse. There are 925 general and flag officers and a total reserve force of just 760,499 personnel. That is a flag for every 674 enlisted troops.
The hallways at the Pentagon are filled with a constellation of stars and the legions of staffers who support them. I’ve worked in both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Starting around 2011, the Joint Staff began to surge in scope and power. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not in the chain of command and simply serves as an advisor to the president, there are a staggering 4,409 people working for the Joint Staff, including 1,400 civilians with an average salary of $196,800 (yes, you read that correctly). The Joint Staff budget for 2025 is estimated by the Department of Defense’s comptroller to be $1.3 billion.
In contrast, the Secretary of Defense — the civilian in charge of running our nation’s military — has a staff of 2,646 civilians and uniformed personnel. The disparity between the two staffs threatens the longstanding American principle of civilian control of the military.
Just look at what happens when civilians in the White House or the Senate dare question the ranks of America’s general class. “Politicizing the military!” critics cry, as if the Commander-in-Chief has no right to question the judgement of generals who botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan, bought into the woke ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or oversaw over-budget and behind-schedule weapons systems. Introducing accountability to the general class is not politicizing our nation’s military — it is called leadership.
What most Americans don’t understand is that our top brass is already very political. On any given day in our nation’s Capitol, a casual visitor is likely to run into multiple generals and admirals visiting our elected representatives and their staff. Ostensibly, these “briefs” are about various strategic threats and weapons systems — but everyone on the Hill knows our military leaders are also jockeying for their next assignment or promotion. It’s classic politics
The country witnessed this firsthand with now-retired Gen. Mark Milley. Most Americans were put off by what they saw. Milley brazenly played the Washington spin game, bragging in a Senate Armed Services hearing that he had interviewed with Bob Woodward and a host of other Washington, D.C. reporters.
Woodward later admitted in an interview with CNN that he was flabbergasted by Milley, recalling the chairman hadn’t just said “[Trump] is a problem or we can’t trust him,” but took it to the point of saying, “he is a danger to the country. He is the most dangerous person I know.” Woodward said that Milley’s attitude felt like an assignment editor ordering him, “Do something about this.”
Think on that a moment — an active-duty four star general spoke on the record, disparaging the Commander-in-Chief. Not only did it show rank insubordination and a breach of Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 88, but Milley’s actions represented a grave threat against the Constitution and civilian oversight of the military.
How will it play out now that Trump has returned? Old political hands know that what goes around comes around. Milley’s ham-handed political meddling may very well pave the way for a massive reorganization of flag officers similar to Gen. George C. Marshall’s “plucking board” of 1940. Marshall forced 500 colonels into retirement saying, “You give a good leader very little and he will succeed; you give mediocrity a great deal and they will fail.”
Marshall’s efforts to reorient the War Department to a meritocracy proved prescient when the United States entered World War II less than two years later.
Perhaps it’s time for another plucking board to remind the military brass that it is their civilian bosses who sit at the top of the U.S. chain of command.
Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.
Business
For the record—former finance minister did not keep Canada’s ‘fiscal powder dry’
From the Fraser Institute
By Ben Eisen
In case you haven’t heard, Chrystia Freeland resigned from cabinet on Monday. Reportedly, the straw that broke the camel’s back was Prime Minister Trudeau’s plan to send all Canadians earning up to $150,000 a onetime $250 tax “rebate.” In her resignation letter, Freeland seemingly took aim at this ill-advised waste of money by noting “costly political gimmicks.” She could not have been more right, as my colleagues and I have written here, here and elsewhere.
Indeed, Freeland was right to excoriate the government for a onetime rebate cheque that would do nothing to help Canada’s long-term economic growth prospects, but her reasoning was curious given her record in office. She wrote that such gimmicks were unwise because Canada must keep its “fiscal powder dry” given the possibility of trade disputes with the United States.
Again, to a large extent Freeland’s logic is sound. Emergencies come up from time to time, and governments should be particularly frugal with public dollars during non-emergency periods so money is available when hard times come.
For example, the federal government’s generally restrained approach to spending during the 1990s and 2000s was an important reason Canada went into the pandemic with its books in better shape than most other countries. This is an example of how keeping “fiscal powder dry” can help a government be ready when emergencies strike.
However, much of the sentiment in Freeland’s resignation letter does not match her record as finance minister.
Of course, during the pandemic and its immediate aftermath, it’s understandable that the federal government ran large deficits. However, several years have now past and the Trudeau government has run large continuous deficits. This year, the government forecasts a $48.3 billion deficit, which is larger than the $40 billion target the government had previously set.
A finance minister committed to keeping Canada’s fiscal powder dry would have pushed for balanced budgets so Ottawa could start shrinking the massive debt burden accumulated during COVID. Instead, deficits persisted and debt has continued to climb. As a result, federal debt may spike beyond levels reached during the pandemic if another emergency strikes.
Minister Freeland’s reported decision to oppose the planned $250 onetime tax rebates is commendable. But we should be cautious not to rewrite history. Despite Freeland’s stated desire to keep Canada’s “fiscal powder dry,” this was not the story of her tenure as finance minister. Instead, the story is one of continuous deficits and growing debt, which have hurt Canada’s capacity to withstand the next fiscal emergency whenever it does arrive.
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For the record—former finance minister did not keep Canada’s ‘fiscal powder dry’