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Is the Senate in Violation of the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and Hindering Reconciliation?

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1 month ago

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Nina Green

Since it is abundantly clear there are no missing Indian residential school children, the ‘missing records’ by which they can be found are also imaginary, and the Senate Committee has been on a pointless wild goose chase

In July 2024 the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples issued an Interim Report entitled ‘Missing Records, Missing Children’.

The problem with that title?  There are no missing Indian residential school children.

Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray told the Senate Committee on 21 March 2023 that there are no missing children, and in support of that one need only look to her own two interim reports, neither of which identifies a single Indian residential school child who went missing and whose parents didn’t know what happened to their child.  In two years as Special Interlocutor, Kimberly Murray has not been able to name a single child who verifiably went missing from an Indian residential school.

Similarly, after two years of hearings, the Senate Committee itself was unable to name a single verifiably-missing Indian residential school child in its report.

Nor in fact has anyone in Canada to date been able to name a single verifiably-missing Indian residential school child.

Since it is abundantly clear there are no missing Indian residential school children, the ‘missing records’ by which they can be found are also imaginary, and the Senate Committee has been on a pointless wild goose chase which has cost Canadian provinces a very considerable amount of money since many of the witnesses called by the Committee have been provincial government employees whose departments have been forced to expend staff time and financial resources fruitlessly searching for records of missing Indian residential school children who are not missing.

Moreover by calling provincial coroners, medical examiners, and vital statistics department officials as witnesses, the Senate Committee has given the distinct impression that it is conducting a criminal investigation, and by focussing on Indian residential schools, the Committee has also given the distinct impression it has reconstituted itself as a new Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and is therefore in violation of the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

What justification does the Senate Committee have for conducting this public inquiry into ‘Missing Records, Missing Children’, and threatening to compel the attendance of witnesses at its hearings?

The Committee cites the following Order of Reference passed by the full Senate as justification for its July 2024 report, and for the sweeping and far-reaching recommendations the report contains:

ORDER OF REFERENCE

Extract from the Journals of the Senate of Thursday, March 3, 2022:

The Honourable Senator Francis moved, seconded by the Honourable Senator Cordy:

That the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples be authorized to examine and report on the federal government’s constitutional, treaty, political and legal responsibilities to First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples and any other subject concerning Indigenous Peoples; . . . .

It is glaringly obvious that the Order of Reference did not authorize the Committee to examine and report on missing Indian residential school children and missing records.  The Senate is part of the federal government, the major party to the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement under which Canadian taxpayers paid out billions of dollars to have all matters related to Indian residential schools settled once and for all – not re-opened by the Senate Committee on a whim.  The Senate Committee has thus interpreted the Order of Reference as giving it an authority the full Senate did not explicitly mention, and in fact had no power to grant to the Committee.

During its proceedings over the past two years, the Senate Committee did not trouble itself to prove that there actually are missing Indian residential school children.  Instead, the Committee operated on the basis that there are missing children even when Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray told the Committee that ‘The children aren’t missing’.

Based on the false assumption that there are missing Indian residential children, the Committee proceeded to castigate those the Committee falsely claimed were ‘withholding’ records which would help to find them.

In doing so, the Committee ignored the fact that the only body which was ever actually entitled to records was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Under the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, $60 million dollars was allocated to fund a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and section 11 of the TRC’s Schedule N mandate stated that, subject to privacy interests:

Canada and the churches will provide all relevant documents in their possession or control to and for the use of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

It should be noted that under the TRC’s Schedule N mandate important limitations were put in place stipulating who was obligated to provide documents to the TRC, how long that obligation was to exist, and what was to be done in case of a dispute about the production of documents.  The TRC’s Schedule N mandate provided that:

(1) only the federal government and the churches  – i.e., not provincial governments or any other entity – were obliged to provide documents;

(2) the federal government and churches were only obliged to provide documents to the TRC during the TRC’s five-year mandate; and

(3) under section 2(l) of the TRC’s Schedule N mandate any ‘disputes over document production’ would be referred to an officially-designated body, the National Administration Committee (NAC) set up under section 4.11 of the 2006 Settlement Agreement.

The TRC concluded its work and issued a final report in 2015.  That marked the end of any obligation on the part of the federal government and the churches to provide documents to the TRC, which ceased to exist and had no successor.

The Senate Committee has thus invented a problem where none existed.

That being the case – there was no problem until the Senate Committee invented one – exactly what is the problem the Senate Committee invented?

Again, one must refer back to the 2006 Settlement Agreement and the TRC’s Schedule N mandate.  Section 2(a) of the Schedule N mandate states that, subject to privacy legislation, the TRC was:

authorized and required in the public interest to archive all such documents, materials, and transcripts or records of statements received, in a manner that will ensure their preservation and accessibility to the public.

To fulfil this part of its mandate, in 2013 the TRC entered into a trust deed with the University of Manitoba by which the University undertook to preserve the TRC records and make them available to the general public.  That has not been done.  The University of Manitoba has not made the records generated by the TRC itself in the course of its work and the records turned over to it by the federal government and the churches prior to 2015 available to the general public on its National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) Archives website.  In particular, the University of Manitoba has not made available on its NCTR website the Sisters’ chronicles and Oblate codices which recorded daily life in the schools.  Instead, the University has allowed its staff at the NCTR (which is not a legal entity and is not a successor to the TRC, but merely a building on the University of Manitoba campus staffed by University of Manitoba employees) to turn its millions of digitized records into a publicly-funded Indigenous genealogical service, as Head Archivist Raymond Frogner has explained on several occasions, and as Tanya Talaga documents in her new book, The Knowing.

Thus, if the Senate Committee had wanted to investigate an actual problem, it could have investigated why the University of Manitoba has not complied with its legal obligations under the 2013 trust deed and has not made the TRC records available to the general public as mandated by the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and the TRC’s Schedule N mandate, particularly the Sisters’ chronicles and Oblate codices which recorded daily life in the schools.

Instead of investigating that very real problem, the Senate Committee pursued a problem of its own invention by falsely claiming that records were being withheld from the ‘NCTR’ by Catholic church and provincial entities.  This appears to be deliberate obfuscation because the Senate Committee must surely know that the NCTR is not a legal entity, and thus cannot legally receive documents.  The actual recipient of documents sent to the ‘NCTR’ is the University of Manitoba, a fact which is never mentioned in the Senate report.  Moreover the Senate report provided no evidence that any documents were actually being withheld, which of course it could not have done even had it tried since there is no legal obligation on the part of any entity to provide the University of Manitoba and the University’s NCTR staff with documents or records.

Ignoring the fact that it had invented a non-existent problem, the Senate Committee forged ahead, holding hearings and threatening to compel the attendance of witnesses.  It is noteworthy that in so doing the Committee engaged in conduct which the TRC itself was forbidden to engage in under its Schedule N mandate, which states that ‘Pursuant to the Court-approved final settlement agreement and the class action judgments’, the TRC:

(b) shall not hold formal hearings, nor act as a public inquiry, nor conduct a formal legal process;

(c) shall not possess subpoena powers, and do not have powers to compel attendance or participation in any of its activities or events.  Participation in all Commission events and activities is entirely voluntary;

Here is what Senator Scott Tannas had to say about holding hearings and hauling up witnesses in public on 21 March 2023 in an exchange with the University of Manitoba’s employee, Stephanie Scott:

Senator Tannas: Thank you for being here today. Ms. Scott, you mentioned that there are still organizations and people with data that has not been turned over to you. We all want to do things to help. Part of helping is listening and talking, but sometimes part of help that we can provide is to actually do something. Here in the Senate, we do have the ability to hold oversight hearings. We can compel people to come and testify before us. What would you think if you gave us the names and the contacts for organizations that aren’t providing data, and we’ll haul them up here in public and we’ll ask them why?

Ms. Scott: I would love for you to do that. We have been waiting a long time, and I think it’s absolutely crucial. When Tk’emlúps happened and the children began to speak from beyond, that’s when the world and the landscape changed for us. We used to have to do a lot of reaching out across the country, developing partnerships, still trying to acquire different records. We have worked closely — I think it’s time — the time is now, the time could be today that you call upon those people, and I would be more than willing to share that information with you. We have done a public media campaign. There are no secrets. Everything has been public and we all know what’s happened, many of us here at this table. If you are willing to do that, I respectfully would ask you to help.

Senator Tannas: I certainly would advocate for that. If you want to send the clerk, for future discussions, the name of let’s say the three most flagrant and obvious resistors, we could start maybe there and talk about it as a group. All senators would have to agree that’s a kind of meeting that we were going to have. To me, there is a time for action. As Senator Arnot mentioned, we’re not going to get anywhere until we get all the data. We won’t get to the full and complete truth, which is what all Canadians should want. It’s the only way we’re going to move forward. Thank you, that’s the only question I had.

‘Flagrant and obvious resistors’?  It is unconscionable that Stephanie Scott, an employee of the University of Manitoba, would agree to provide (and did provide) the Senate Committee with a list of ‘flagrant and obvious resistors’ when she has to be aware that there is no legal obligation on the part of any entity to provide a single document to the University of Manitoba or its NCTR staff.

But even more importantly, it is unconscionable that the University of Manitoba and its NCTR employees continue to pretend that there are missing children, and continue to pretend that the University needs millions of records to identify these non-existent missing children.

Does the Senate Committee’s report further reconciliation? Obviously not.  The report misleads Canadians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, in a way which is harmful to both by pretending that thousands of Indian residential school children are missing who are not missing, and that the provinces and the Catholic Church are withholding records that would help find them.

The Senate Committee should immediately withdraw its July 2024 interim report.

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

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Another Mass Grave?

Published on November 18, 2024

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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.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Hungarian Revolution of 1956: A Valiant Effort to Overthrow Communist Rule

Published on November 17, 2024

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Civilians wave Hungary’s national flag from a captured Soviet tank in Budapest’s main square during the anti-communist uprising of October 1956. AP Photo

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Gerry Bowler

For a time, Moscow seemed willing to accept change in Hungary, but when Nagy announced that his country would leave the Warsaw Pact and become neutral in the Cold War, that was a bridge too far for Khrushchev.

After World War II ended in the summer of 1945, the Soviet Red Army found itself to be in possession of Eastern Europe. In the next few years, the USSR extinguished the young democracies in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, while imposing Stalinist governments on autocracies such as Bulgaria and Hungary. With Marxist regimes taking over in eastern Germany, and Albania and Yugoslavia as well, Winston Churchill spoke truly when he said that “from Stettin the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

In many of these countries, there was considerable resentment over the Russian occupation. In the Baltic republics, Romania, Croatia, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine, doomed anti-Soviet guerilla movements with names like the “Forest Brothers,” the “Cursed Soldiers,” or “Crusaders,” fought underground wars that\ lasted for years. In June 1953 in East Berlin, workers rose up in protests against their communist masters, sparking a short-lived rebellion that spread to hundreds of towns before being crushed by Russian tanks. The most serious of these insurrections was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. By 1956, there were stirrings of discontent in the Hungarian People’s Republic. Under the state control of industry, forced agricultural collectivization, and the shipping of produce to the Soviet Union, the economy was in bad shape. The supply of consumer goods was low and standards of living were dropping. Secret police surveillance of the population was harsh, while many Hungarians resented the suppression of religion and the mandatory instruction of the Russian language in schools. As news leaked out about Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in the so-called “Secret Speech,” hopes grew that reform of the communist system was possible.

Marxist intellectuals began to form study circles to discuss a new path for Hungarian socialism, but their cautious proposals were suddenly overtaken by demands for change by young people. On Oct. 22, 1956, students at the Technical University of Budapest drew up a list of demands for change  known as the “Sixteen Points.” They included free elections, a withdrawal of Soviet troops, free speech, and an improvement in economic conditions.

On the afternoon of the next day, these points were read out to a crowd of 20,000 who had gathered at the statue of a leader of the Hungarian rebellion of 1848. By 6 p.m., when the students marched on the Parliament Building, the crowd had grown to around 200,000 people. This alarmed the government, and later that evening Communist Party leader Erno Gero took to the radio to condemn the Sixteen Points. In reaction, mobs tore down an enormous statue of Stalin.

People surround the decapitated head of a huge statue of Josef Stalin in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Daniel Sego (second L), who cut off the head, is spitting on the statue. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

On the night of Oct. 23, crowds gathered outside the state broadcaster, Radio Budapest, to demand that the Sixteen Points be sent out over the air. The secret police fired on the protesters, killing a number of them. This enraged the demonstrators who set fire to police cars and seized arms from military depots. Army units ordered to support the secret police rebelled and joined the protest. The government floundered; on the one hand, they called Soviet tanks into Budapest; on the other hand, they appointed Imre Nagy, seen as a popular reformer, as prime minister.

As barricades were being erected by protesters and shots were being exchanged with secret police units, Nagy was negotiating with the Soviets who agreed that they would withdraw their tanks from the capital. Over the next few days, the rebellion spread; factories were seized, Communist Party newspapers and headquarters were attacked, and known communists and secret police agents were murdered. The new prime minister released political prisoners and promised the establishment of democracy, with freedom of speech and religion.

For a time, Moscow seemed willing to accept change in Hungary, but when Nagy announced that his country would leave the Warsaw Pact and become neutral in the Cold War, that was a bridge too far for Khrushchev. Fearing the collapse of the entire Soviet bloc, he made plans for an invasion of Hungary. By Nov. 3, the Red Army had surrounded Budapest, and the next day heavy fighting erupted as armoured columns entered the city. Some units of the Hungarian army fought back, joined by thousands of civilians, but the end was predictable. After a week of battles, with over 20,000 dead and wounded, resistance crumbled. A new Soviet-approved government under János Kádár purged the army and Communist Party, arrested thousands, and executed rebel leaders including Nagy.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled, many of them settling in Canada and the United States. World condemnation of the USSR was strong; critics of the Soviets included many communists in the West who resigned their party membership. Not until the collapse of the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe in 1989 did Hungarians get another taste of freedom.

Published in the Epoch Times.

Gerry Bowler, historian, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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