Juno News - An honest conversation about Canada’s residential school system

00:00:00.000 Are there things that Canadians believe about residential schools that just aren't true?

00:00:04.740 We would like to have an honest conversation about residential schools, Canadian history,

00:00:08.840 and the best path forward for First Nations people today.

00:00:12.120 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:18.520 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the show.

00:00:21.620 So we all know last year, Canadians were shocked and saddened by the news of the discovery

00:00:26.800 of unmarked graves found near residential schools.

00:00:30.380 Many Canadians accepted this news with grief, remorse, sadness, and sympathy over our history

00:00:36.240 and our past treatment of First Nations people.

00:00:38.840 Some Canadians, however, went even further, and they declared that because of these apparent

00:00:43.120 discoveries, Canada was guilty of some of the worst crimes imaginable.

00:00:47.140 They stated that Canada was irredeemably racist, that we're still racist today, that we're

00:00:51.500 equivalent to the Nazis, and that our country was built on colonialism, genocide, and therefore

00:00:56.980 the whole country was just completely beyond the pale, irredeemably racist.

00:01:02.740 But before we accept these facts, before we accept the very worst accusations leveled against

00:01:07.500 our country, it's important to learn the facts, to consider the context that these policies

00:01:13.000 were implemented in, and to examine our history with a fair and even-handed approach.

00:01:17.940 As journalists, we here at True North, we care primarily about the truth.

00:01:21.540 The truth, regardless of how politically incorrect or socially unfashionable it may be.

00:01:26.820 And because of that, we think it's important to look at our history, yes, with a critical

00:01:30.000 eye, but also with an eye for the truth.

00:01:33.040 So when it comes to the residential school system, we don't believe that it stands up

00:01:38.120 to today's standards.

00:01:39.160 It wouldn't be accepted today.

00:01:40.400 And that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

00:01:42.460 It was a failed policy.

00:01:44.080 It was a centrally planned, government-knows-best approach that broke up communities and harmed

00:01:48.260 families, all for the sake of lofty liberal goals.

00:01:51.680 By and large, the program didn't work.

00:01:53.080 It failed.

00:01:53.720 Today, many First Nations still live in poverty.

00:01:55.940 Many of them still have lower living standards and a shorter life expectancy than other Canadians.

00:02:00.520 They have worse health outcomes as well.

00:02:02.520 So in order to address some of these problems today, it's important that we do have that open

00:02:07.000 and honest conversation about our past.

00:02:09.240 I want to examine some of the myths perpetuated about residential schools, discuss some of

00:02:12.980 the ideas and some of the solutions that we can have going forward about how we can

00:02:16.660 move forward together as a country and how we can work to address some of these problems

00:02:20.260 with the discrepancies in living standards for First Nations Canadians.

00:02:23.920 So to do this today, I'm very pleased to be joined by Professor Tom Flanagan.

00:02:28.280 Tom is Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

00:02:32.200 In 2002, he served as campaign manager on Stephen Harper's Canadian Alliance Leadership

00:02:36.060 Campaign, and later as campaign manager on Harper's Conservative Party Leadership Campaign.

00:02:41.180 Tom is an award-winning author.

00:02:42.740 His expertise covers a broad range of issues, including Aboriginal rights, as well as Canadian

00:02:47.720 politics and Canadian history.

00:02:49.560 Now, Tom recently co-wrote a great op-ed here at True North with retired judge Brian Giesbeck

00:02:55.740 about some of the misleading claims around the residential school narrative.

00:02:59.600 So Tom, welcome to the Candace Malcolm Show.

00:03:01.320 Welcome to True North.

00:03:02.040 And thank you so much for joining us.

00:03:03.380 Oh, hi, Candace.

00:03:04.680 Great to be here.

00:03:06.240 Great.

00:03:06.820 Well, first, before we get into some of the myths about the residential schools, I want

00:03:10.820 to ask you your opinion and your reaction to that big sort of bombshell news story that

00:03:15.560 we had last year about the discovery, apparent discovery of unmarked graves at residential

00:03:19.840 schools.

00:03:21.480 Well, Candace, this is probably the worst case of fake news that I have ever seen in Canada.

00:03:26.520 To this point, now more than six months after the original announcement, not a single student

00:03:35.260 has been identified.

00:03:37.640 No grave has been identified as belonging to a student.

00:03:40.380 No body has been exhumed.

00:03:41.980 There is actually no evidence at all that these are the graves of students who died at residential

00:03:50.680 school.

00:03:51.100 You have to look at each case, you know, to understand the details.

00:03:54.580 But it started in Kamloops.

00:03:58.500 There was an assistant professor from Simon Fraser with her ground penetrating radar who

00:04:05.980 claimed that there might be 200 plus grave sites in an apple orchard.

00:04:13.820 But in fact, there was always a community Catholic graveyard in Kamloops.

00:04:22.400 It's about a mile away.

00:04:24.700 There's no record of a graveyard near the residential school.

00:04:31.080 And nothing has been produced from this apple orchard, which gives any positive evidence.

00:04:39.060 The other cases that were quickly reported, you know, in succession, there was a kind of a

00:04:42.800 series of reports, but they all turned out to also have been community graveyards next to a parish

00:04:50.060 church.

00:04:50.580 And while it's possible that some students from residential schools were buried there, they

00:04:56.040 weren't primarily for that purpose.

00:04:58.260 So there is actually nothing to this story about mass graves or unmarked graves.

00:05:04.960 Until we get some positive evidence, the story should be completely discounted.

00:05:10.500 So it's amazing that it was picked up by opinion leaders and political leaders in the way that

00:05:16.960 it was without any real evidence.

00:05:19.500 Of course, there's people are using, manipulating it, and you're using it for particular political

00:05:23.940 purposes.

00:05:24.420 But I just have to repeat, until we see some positive evidence, this is the worst case of

00:05:29.560 fake news in Canadian history.

00:05:31.040 Well, you know, I watched the case unfold.

00:05:35.880 I followed it very closely.

00:05:37.080 I was one of the reporters that was trying to dig into it.

00:05:39.720 And to me, it was wild because the initial news release that was released by that to Kemloops

00:05:44.200 band basically didn't have any evidence.

00:05:46.580 Like you said, it was very loose on facts.

00:05:48.880 Most of it was just quotes, like community quotes.

00:05:51.500 This is how we're reacting.

00:05:52.840 And it was so interesting, Tom, to see some of the quotes, you know, subjective feelings

00:05:57.060 about what had happened, sort of like rumors and oral history or whatever, being written

00:06:02.340 in as fact in news stories.

00:06:04.160 So there was one sort of famous example where they said, you know, children as young as three

00:06:08.820 are said to have been missing.

00:06:10.480 And then all of a sudden you see the report over in the CBC or in, you know, international

00:06:15.300 publications like the BBC saying, you know, remains of children as young as three were discovered.

00:06:19.960 It's like, well, that's not even what the news release said.

00:06:22.380 The news release was talking about the sort of, you know, the memory of people in the area.

00:06:27.060 And, of course, to your point, you know, one of the stories, one of the other reserves

00:06:30.820 that came forward with similar claims, you know, it turned out that the graveyard where

00:06:35.560 the graves were discovered, this was in Cranbrook, the lower Kootenai reserve, the, you know,

00:06:42.560 someone else came out and said, you know, this is a known graveyard.

00:06:44.820 It's not, they're not unmarked graves.

00:06:46.440 They're just graves that have fallen into disrepair.

00:06:48.120 I did a bit of research about that graveyard and it predated the residential school by a few

00:06:52.600 decades and it was actually affiliated with the local hospital.

00:06:55.080 So it had nothing to do with the residential school.

00:06:57.000 It had everything to do with this is where bodies were buried that perished at this local

00:07:01.920 hospital.

00:07:02.340 So I completely echo some of your sentiments there.

00:07:07.400 I want to ask you about some of the reaction because, you know, we saw a lot of sort of grief

00:07:12.320 and, you know, we saw churches being burnt and politicians turn a blind eye.

00:07:16.440 One of the things I was disappointed about with was the response from the Conservative Party.

00:07:21.440 The Conservative Party at that point basically urged the government to fulfill the recommendations

00:07:27.880 of the Truth and Reconciliation Report.

00:07:30.640 The Truth and Reconciliation Report was a radically left-wing initiative and document that completely

00:07:35.820 butchered the facts and ignored the truth.

00:07:37.960 And here we had Conservatives calling for basically more, doubling down on these failed policies of

00:07:42.400 endless spending, more money to unaccountable leaders, doubling down on dependency of this

00:07:48.420 community.

00:07:49.620 Why is it that Conservatives don't really have an alternative position and don't have another

00:07:55.820 approach when it comes to, you know, addressing residential schools, addressing some of the

00:08:00.760 past discrepancies between treatment and helping move this community out of poverty today?

00:08:07.100 Yeah.

00:08:08.060 Well, you know, there's a tendency for a party in opposition to seize anything to attack

00:08:13.540 the government.

00:08:14.700 I mean, it's understandable.

00:08:15.640 They are the opposition.

00:08:16.700 It's their job to oppose.

00:08:18.640 But sometimes parties in opposition will pick up opinions that don't really fit with their

00:08:25.860 own philosophy, but it seems convenient in the short run to use them to try and beat up

00:08:30.180 the government.

00:08:31.000 I think that's what's happened here is the Conservatives in opposition kind of blindly grabbing

00:08:36.700 something without stopping to think about how it would fit into a larger Conservative program.

00:08:44.600 That's too bad.

00:08:45.820 Well, let's move on to talk about your op-ed that you wrote.

00:08:49.260 You wrote an excellent op-ed for True North, sort of discussing some of the myths associated

00:08:54.080 with residential schools.

00:08:55.080 One of the major myths that we saw repeated by both sides, I have many libertarian friends

00:09:01.520 and they say that this was their major issue with residential schools, was that children

00:09:05.720 were forcibly removed from their parents.

00:09:08.800 Your op-ed paints a different picture and says that this isn't true, that the program

00:09:13.540 was never compulsory.

00:09:14.620 So why don't you sort of explain what you wrote in your op-ed and try to address this myth?

00:09:21.300 Yeah, sure.

00:09:21.820 Yeah, a few facts would be useful.

00:09:24.440 We don't maintain that the program was never compulsory, but we point out that it was not

00:09:29.200 nearly as compulsive as is commonly portrayed today.

00:09:33.000 You know, it's become a narrative meme to say that 150,000 children were ripped from the

00:09:39.920 arms of their parents.

00:09:41.760 Well, first of all, at all times, there were more Indian students in day schools than in

00:09:51.800 residential schools.

00:09:52.760 The main option for educating the children of status Indians in this period of time was 1.00

00:09:59.460 the day school, which was set up on reserves.

00:10:02.880 Many of them were run by churches, not all, but many were.

00:10:05.360 But the children lived with their parents or whoever at home.

00:10:09.660 There's also a large number of Indian children who didn't go to school at all.

00:10:16.240 As late as the mid-40s, about 40% of Indian children were not enrolled in any school.

00:10:24.820 The residential school was mainly used, I mean, they were scattered around the country,

00:10:33.220 but they were most heavily used in remote areas of the west and north.

00:10:39.660 So the Prairie Provinces, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Northern Ontario.

00:10:45.200 There was only one residential school in the Maritimes, and there was a handful in Quebec.

00:10:52.980 So residential schools were never the main option.

00:10:56.400 That's an important point to grasp.

00:10:58.560 They were an important option, but they were not the main one.

00:11:00.740 Secondly, there was no real obligation to attend any kind of school for Indian children until 1920.

00:11:17.000 Attendance was put into the Indian Act earlier, but there wasn't any enforcement mechanism,

00:11:21.260 and it wasn't in practice.

00:11:22.700 It was not enforced.

00:11:23.620 And it wasn't enforced that vigorously subsequently.

00:11:26.980 As I said, in the mid-40s, there were still a large number of Indian children

00:11:31.700 who were not attending Indian residential schools.

00:11:34.160 There was some compulsion in the later decades, but a lot of it was a substitute for a child

00:11:45.260 welfare system.

00:11:46.420 Life was hard for the First Nations in these years.

00:11:49.300 Many were still supporting themselves by hunting and trapping and fishing, particularly in the

00:11:53.640 north.

00:11:55.060 Mortality rates were high.

00:11:56.380 There were a lot of orphans, and there were a lot of Indian children whose mother had died

00:12:00.820 and whose father had to go out on the trap line, and what was he going to do with the

00:12:05.220 children?

00:12:05.980 So the residential schools became, in their later years, let's say from the 30s and 40s

00:12:13.140 on, probably from the beginning to some degree, but more so as time went on, they became a way

00:12:19.920 of caring for Indian children that didn't have parents who could look after them.

00:12:27.280 So there may have been an element of compulsion there in the Indian agent finding these children

00:12:35.780 and bringing them to the school.

00:12:38.160 But there's a huge pile of applications for residential school by parents in the Department

00:12:45.420 of Indian Affairs saying, please let our children in.

00:12:49.560 In many cases, the schools were overbooked.

00:12:53.440 They couldn't let in everybody who wanted to come.

00:12:55.580 So I'm not saying there was never any compulsion.

00:12:59.420 There was in some cases, but it was not the dominant feature of the Native history that

00:13:06.300 it is now made out to be.

00:13:08.800 It is one fact among many, but it shouldn't be allowed to dominate our thinking.

00:13:14.800 I'll just add, say in passing, all children are compelled to go to school.

00:13:20.360 Today, provinces have opened up the option of homeschooling, where you have to satisfy

00:13:26.700 the authorities that you're doing the equivalent of a school education.

00:13:31.080 But compulsion has been a universal fact of life for parents in Canada, for their children,

00:13:37.920 for well over 100 years.

00:13:40.640 So the fact that Indian children were required to attend school is hardly surprising. 1.00

00:13:49.480 Well, it's so interesting.

00:13:50.860 I've heard from readers who talk about their own experience, people who say that, you know,

00:13:55.820 they grew up in a small town, Saskatchewan, where there was a residential school and a Catholic

00:14:00.300 school, a non-Indigenous Catholic school.

00:14:02.080 And the residential school was way nicer.

00:14:04.420 It had better resources.

00:14:05.720 It had, you know, better teachers and stuff.

00:14:08.100 And so you sort of hear anecdotally that life wasn't really that bad.

00:14:11.960 I know in your op-ed, you wrote about how one individual who became successful after attending

00:14:17.500 one of these residential schools said that his time there was nine of the best years of

00:14:22.760 my life.

00:14:23.560 So, Tom, help me understand, why is it that we have such a negative view of these residential

00:14:29.660 schools, that we see them as genocidal and forced assimilation and that people have this

00:14:34.360 really like, you know, I've heard Canadians equate them to like Nazi death camps, like

00:14:39.080 with a straight face, truly believing that.

00:14:41.740 How did we come to this point as a country where this is the narrative that we have about

00:14:45.080 a program that was, again, based on lofty liberal goals like universal education, lifting

00:14:49.860 people out of poverty, welcoming First Nations people into the broader Canadian community and

00:14:54.260 kind of uniting everybody.

00:14:55.860 And yet today it's really seen in such a negative light.

00:14:58.300 Yeah, well, you know, the historical record is mixed as it is for all human institutions.

00:15:05.760 If I could just draw a comparison for a second, if you look at the literature surrounding boarding

00:15:10.760 schools in England, which were used for the children of elite parents, many students love

00:15:18.080 their schools, others report, you know, horrifying reports of physical and sexual abuse in these

00:15:24.380 schools. So for residential schools in Canada, you'll find also a mixed set of reports. And

00:15:34.780 there are some like Thompson Highway, the writer that you mentioned, who was very happy there.

00:15:41.200 There are others who have some very dark things to say about residential schools. And I think any

00:15:47.380 honest approach would would try and draw the balance. But what has happened is that people with strong

00:15:55.400 ideological convictions of what today is often called wokeism, have taken the bad reports and woven them

00:16:03.580 into their narrative while completely discounting the numerous good reports. So that you get a kind of a

00:16:13.420 mythology about residential schools that they were hell holes and like concentration camps and children

00:16:19.360 are being murdered. And, you know, there's no end of stories like this, whereas the reality

00:16:25.500 is much more mixed. They were a pragmatic response to the objective difficulties of trying to educate

00:16:34.580 a widely distributed population, where the density was enough day schools were set up. But in some parts

00:16:45.580 of Canada, I mean, Canada is a big country. Transportation is difficult, particularly 100 years ago before modern

00:16:52.460 cars and planes and so on. And if children were going to be in school, in some cases, it had to be a

00:16:59.060 residential school. So it was a pragmatic solution. It had its drawbacks. And we've moved on and we have

00:17:05.960 different solutions now. I'm not even going to say they're better solutions. They're better adapted

00:17:11.400 to the realities of our age. But there's this problem of presentism, of looking at the past as if it were

00:17:20.320 the present. You have to take the past on its own terms. I haven't yet heard anybody say what would have

00:17:26.820 been a practical alternative to residential schools? Would you say no school at all?

00:17:33.580 If we hadn't set up any schools, Canada would be condemned today for leaving this population 1.00

00:17:39.720 in ignorance. Day schools were tried and were useful in the majority of cases, but in some cases,

00:17:48.500 the practicalities just weren't there. Public schools, well, many Indians did attend public school,

00:17:56.320 but there were a lot of reports about encountering hostility from the white students and being

00:18:03.860 beaten up by white students. You know, this was a fact of life at the time. Wouldn't happen today in 0.61

00:18:10.780 the same way, but it did happen then. So what was the better alternative to residential schools,

00:18:18.860 given the conditions of the time? Now, maybe Canada should have shut them down sooner. It was realized

00:18:26.760 by about 1950 that they would have to go, and Canada started phasing them out, and they were mostly gone

00:18:33.500 by the 60s and completely gone by 1996. You know, again, maybe it should have happened faster. A lot of

00:18:41.440 things should have happened when we look at the past and from the vantage point of the present.

00:18:47.640 No, it's certainly true. Well, I want to sort of move on to the issue today because it seems like

00:18:54.720 there's still a lot of problems in this community, and we as a country haven't really come up with a

00:18:59.080 lot of good solutions as to how to help address some of these. I know Harper, you know, he did make

00:19:05.120 some strides in trying to make reserves and bans more accountable by making the spending more transparent

00:19:11.200 so that people who live on the reserves could see where the money was going. Of course, Trudeau,

00:19:15.380 one of his first moves in office was to scrap the Accountability Act and allow First Nations to continue 1.00

00:19:20.960 to spend without any record of what they're spending the money on. But I'm wondering if you can help me

00:19:27.200 sort of try to understand or come up with some ideas and solutions as to what can be done today,

00:19:32.260 because the reality, Tom, is that there's still a lot of poverty in First Nations community.

00:19:37.000 There are negative, much worse health outcomes. We were doing some research on this topic, and the

00:19:43.020 life expectancy for First Nations men is nine years less than non-First Nations men, and for women,

00:19:49.800 it's 10 years less. So we have some real, real issues and disparities here, and I'm wondering if you

00:19:56.400 have some ideas and solutions as to how we can move past this. Yeah. Okay. Before I get into that,

00:20:02.840 let me just make one clarification on something you said on the Financial Accountability Act.

00:20:08.860 The liberals didn't repeal the act. They announced that they would stop enforcing it.

00:20:14.140 So there's no longer financial penalties for First Nations who don't comply. But a large majority of

00:20:19.840 First Nations are complying. Something like 80 percent are still filing their annual financial reports,

00:20:26.000 and that's good news. It would be great if it would be 100 percent, but the fact that it's roughly 80 percent,

00:20:32.680 maybe more the last time I looked, is that's good news. Okay. Now, what can be done? Well,

00:20:40.220 first of all, we have to get rid of the idea that there is some single government solution to this

00:20:46.600 so-called problem. We have a set of facts. And, you know, the facts are that people who are ethnically 0.84

00:20:56.460 different, less human capital for a modern society and living in remote places have a much lower

00:21:05.360 standard of living. I mean, that's a fact that has no single immediate solution. What is happening

00:21:12.200 is that many First Nations are making progress for themselves by playing a role in the modern market

00:21:21.020 economy. And a lot of my research over the last 10 years has been directed towards chronicling that

00:21:26.220 and trying to figure out how they are making progress. And there are now a number of First Nations

00:21:34.340 who's where the living standard is quite comparable to the Canadian norm. And they've done it on their

00:21:39.680 own by, well, there's no, again, there's no single way that they have done it, but the broad picture is

00:21:45.860 through playing a role in Canada's market economy. It could be through casinos in a few cases,

00:21:55.120 recreational industries, hotels, restaurants, fishing lodges, participation in the resource economy is

00:22:05.580 a big one. What can government do to help this along? Well, the single biggest thing that government

00:22:13.200 could do is to stop impeding the development of resource industries. The large number of the poorest

00:22:21.140 First Nations live in parts of the northern parts of the provinces where not much is happening except

00:22:32.380 resource development. These aren't going to be manufacturing centers or high-tech centers or

00:22:38.020 whatever. These are places where you find oil and gas and hard rock minerals and forestry, in some case,

00:22:44.920 fish. And that's how these people are going to be able to progress and make a good living for

00:22:51.100 themselves. And right now, the government seems to be doing all it can to impede

00:22:57.060 development up there. So blocking, for example, of the Northern Gateway Pipeline, there were dozens

00:23:04.120 of First Nations that would have benefited from the Northern Gateway Pipeline. What about the

00:23:10.060 Ring of Fire mining development in Ontario? Again, many First Nations would benefit from that.

00:23:16.900 Will it ever go ahead? Well, I hope so, but it's certainly not fast. So that's the single biggest

00:23:26.680 thing that governments could do to improve the standard of living for the poorest First Nations

00:23:32.460 is to improve transportation and communication in the northern parts of Canada so that resource

00:23:39.620 development can proceed. But unfortunately, the government of Canada and to some extent other

00:23:44.780 provincial governments are doing exactly the opposite.

00:23:49.860 That's so true. The opposition to some of these natural resource developments, often in the name

00:23:57.520 of First Nations groups, even though those First Nations groups themselves are for the pipelines,

00:24:01.600 is really remarkable. And thank you for the clarification about the Transparency Act there. I was mistaken.

00:24:07.200 I thought Trudeau scrapped it. But I'm glad to hear that I was wrong on that and that it's still on the books and that there are

00:24:12.620 still, you know, 80% compliance rates. That's pretty good. Well, I do have a final question. Recently,

00:24:19.060 Jean Chrétien did an interview where, interestingly, he almost seemed to defend his 1969 white paper proposal.

00:24:26.760 And I know it was really controversial at the time and they ended up walking away from it. But he said that

00:24:31.800 there was still, I don't know his exact quote, Tom, but he said something along the lines how there's still

00:24:36.880 some merit to the idea of basically just, you know, ripping up the treaties and moving away from this

00:24:42.480 whole reserve ban system that we have in Canada. And I was wondering if you could, if you could comment

00:24:48.080 on that. And, you know, do you agree with the 69 white paper? Do you think there's merit there? Do you

00:24:53.220 think that it could still be something that could be proposed today?

00:24:56.000 Do I think it would fly today? No, it didn't fly in 1969. And it certainly wouldn't fly today.

00:25:04.380 Is it a good idea? Well, in an abstract sense, maybe, but it's, it's not politically viable.

00:25:12.940 And I think that's been demonstrated. I have a lot of conservative friends who still are thinking in

00:25:18.440 these terms, and they talk about abolishing the Indian Act and repealing all the treaties and

00:25:23.800 everybody's going to be equal. And so, you know, but that's, that's not the world that we live in.

00:25:30.520 For better or worse, I don't know which it is, but it's a fact that our First Nations have come to be

00:25:37.740 considered as kind of separate entities within Canada. Talking about them as nations is a, you know,

00:25:46.300 kind of an exaggeration, but they are definitely separate entities. And they're going to have to find

00:25:51.940 their way to prosper, given that. So that's why I've been devoting myself for the last 10 years to

00:26:00.240 trying to figure out how First Nations can prosper. And I don't spend any time on utopian dreams about 0.89

00:26:10.800 repealing the Indian Act and unwinding the treaties and all of that. You know, history is what it is.

00:26:16.660 And we are where we are. And we have to try and make the best of it, is my view. So, as I say, many of my

00:26:29.760 friends still pursue what I think is this utopian libertarian vision of everybody being the same and equal

00:26:39.660 rights for all and none of these legislative differences and so forth. But, you know, that maybe

00:26:47.860 there was a moment in 1969 when that could have worked, but, you know, it didn't. Politically, there was

00:26:52.460 just too much opposition to it. And it has to be enacted by politicians and they have to take account

00:26:57.480 of, you know, political realities. So, you know, so we are where we are and we, we have to make the best

00:27:05.620 of it. And I think there are things that will help First Nations to find their way.

00:27:15.360 And partly it's, there are some positive things that government can do, but a lot of it is government

00:27:21.320 getting out of the way, you know, not with extreme measures like, you know, repealing the Indian Act,

00:27:26.720 but the Indian Act has been amended repeatedly. You know, it's not the same thing as it was in

00:27:32.060 1876. You know, people say, well, the legislation's been on the books since 1876. It's, it's obsolete.

00:27:41.400 Well, you know, it's not the same legislation. It's like the criminal code. It's been amended over

00:27:46.040 and over and over. And there's been supplementary legislation that's created new vehicles for First

00:27:52.080 Nations to use for prosperity. The, you know, self-government agreements, the Land Management

00:28:02.780 Act. There's a long list of things that are now possible. So that's what I think, you know, is

00:28:11.180 incremental improvements in legislation have taken place, more are possible. But that's the way to go,

00:28:19.160 not dreaming of, you know, some kind of big bang, in which we get rid of all the debris of the past

00:28:27.220 and start over, you know, that kind of thinking doesn't, that doesn't get you anywhere, in my

00:28:33.780 opinion. So I see a lot of signs for optimism in the progress that First Nations have made for

00:28:40.340 themselves. Pessimistic about a lot of current political trends, which I think are doing a lot

00:28:46.320 more harm than good. If I can just mention one, I hope, I hope you're covering the recent

00:28:54.500 announcement about the $40 billion settlement of child welfare. You know, this is an unprecedented

00:29:02.600 amount of money. And everybody knew this was coming, that there would be a settlement as a

00:29:10.180 result of the victory in court of the one side. But the amount has suddenly been ratcheted up from

00:29:17.320 somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe four or five or $6 billion compensation, which is a lot

00:29:23.640 already, up to $20 billion cash payouts, with no explanation of why. The only explanation I can see

00:29:30.980 is that Murray Sinclair was invited to the table. And suddenly, you get multiplication by a factor of three

00:29:38.840 or four of the cost of this thing. So anyway, there are lots of causes for pessimism as well. But I

00:29:44.860 guess that's kind of typical of human life.

00:29:48.880 Well, Tom, I really appreciate the very nuanced, thoughtful discussion that we've had today. I

00:29:53.500 really enjoyed it. And I just want to thank you for coming on and also for contributing to True

00:29:58.160 North. I heard from a lot of people saying that it was great to see you writing on our site. And I

00:30:02.500 hope you'll continue to do that in the future as well.

00:30:04.500 Well, I'm part of a group of people, a loose network of people that are digging into these

00:30:11.820 issues. So we are planning to produce more fact-based columns like that, which try and

00:30:19.720 set the record straight. So maybe not immediately, but maybe in the future, we will have more for you.

00:30:27.320 Excellent. Well, we look forward to that. Tom Flanagan, thank you so much for joining the show.

00:30:30.820 Okay, Candice. My pleasure.

00:30:33.360 All right. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - January 19, 2022

An honest conversation about Canada’s residential school system

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