Juno News - January 19, 2022An honest conversation about Canada’s residential school system
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Summary
Are there things that Canadians believe about residential schools that just aren t true? We would like to have an honest conversation about residential school, Canadian history, and the best path forward for First Nations people today. In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Tom Flanagan, an award-winning author, to discuss some of the myths perpetuated about the residential school system.
Transcript
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Are there things that Canadians believe about residential schools that just aren't true?
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We would like to have an honest conversation about residential schools, Canadian history,
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and the best path forward for First Nations people today.
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I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the show.
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So we all know last year, Canadians were shocked and saddened by the news of the discovery
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of unmarked graves found near residential schools.
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Many Canadians accepted this news with grief, remorse, sadness, and sympathy over our history
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and our past treatment of First Nations people.
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Some Canadians, however, went even further, and they declared that because of these apparent
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discoveries, Canada was guilty of some of the worst crimes imaginable.
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They stated that Canada was irredeemably racist, that we're still racist today, that we're
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equivalent to the Nazis, and that our country was built on colonialism, genocide, and therefore
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the whole country was just completely beyond the pale, irredeemably racist.
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But before we accept these facts, before we accept the very worst accusations leveled against
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our country, it's important to learn the facts, to consider the context that these policies
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were implemented in, and to examine our history with a fair and even-handed approach.
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As journalists, we here at True North, we care primarily about the truth.
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The truth, regardless of how politically incorrect or socially unfashionable it may be.
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And because of that, we think it's important to look at our history, yes, with a critical
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So when it comes to the residential school system, we don't believe that it stands up
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It was a centrally planned, government-knows-best approach that broke up communities and harmed
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families, all for the sake of lofty liberal goals.
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Today, many First Nations still live in poverty.
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Many of them still have lower living standards and a shorter life expectancy than other Canadians.
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So in order to address some of these problems today, it's important that we do have that open
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I want to examine some of the myths perpetuated about residential schools, discuss some of
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the ideas and some of the solutions that we can have going forward about how we can
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move forward together as a country and how we can work to address some of these problems
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with the discrepancies in living standards for First Nations Canadians.
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So to do this today, I'm very pleased to be joined by Professor Tom Flanagan.
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Tom is Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.
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In 2002, he served as campaign manager on Stephen Harper's Canadian Alliance Leadership
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Campaign, and later as campaign manager on Harper's Conservative Party Leadership Campaign.
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His expertise covers a broad range of issues, including Aboriginal rights, as well as Canadian
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Now, Tom recently co-wrote a great op-ed here at True North with retired judge Brian Giesbeck
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about some of the misleading claims around the residential school narrative.
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Well, first, before we get into some of the myths about the residential schools, I want
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to ask you your opinion and your reaction to that big sort of bombshell news story that
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we had last year about the discovery, apparent discovery of unmarked graves at residential
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Well, Candace, this is probably the worst case of fake news that I have ever seen in Canada.
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To this point, now more than six months after the original announcement, not a single student
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No grave has been identified as belonging to a student.
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There is actually no evidence at all that these are the graves of students who died at residential
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You have to look at each case, you know, to understand the details.
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There was an assistant professor from Simon Fraser with her ground penetrating radar who
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claimed that there might be 200 plus grave sites in an apple orchard.
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But in fact, there was always a community Catholic graveyard in Kamloops.
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There's no record of a graveyard near the residential school.
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And nothing has been produced from this apple orchard, which gives any positive evidence.
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The other cases that were quickly reported, you know, in succession, there was a kind of a
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series of reports, but they all turned out to also have been community graveyards next to a parish
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And while it's possible that some students from residential schools were buried there, they
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So there is actually nothing to this story about mass graves or unmarked graves.
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Until we get some positive evidence, the story should be completely discounted.
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So it's amazing that it was picked up by opinion leaders and political leaders in the way that
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Of course, there's people are using, manipulating it, and you're using it for particular political
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But I just have to repeat, until we see some positive evidence, this is the worst case of
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I was one of the reporters that was trying to dig into it.
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And to me, it was wild because the initial news release that was released by that to Kemloops
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Most of it was just quotes, like community quotes.
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And it was so interesting, Tom, to see some of the quotes, you know, subjective feelings
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about what had happened, sort of like rumors and oral history or whatever, being written
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So there was one sort of famous example where they said, you know, children as young as three
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And then all of a sudden you see the report over in the CBC or in, you know, international
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publications like the BBC saying, you know, remains of children as young as three were discovered.
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It's like, well, that's not even what the news release said.
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The news release was talking about the sort of, you know, the memory of people in the area.
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And, of course, to your point, you know, one of the stories, one of the other reserves
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that came forward with similar claims, you know, it turned out that the graveyard where
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the graves were discovered, this was in Cranbrook, the lower Kootenai reserve, the, you know,
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someone else came out and said, you know, this is a known graveyard.
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They're just graves that have fallen into disrepair.
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I did a bit of research about that graveyard and it predated the residential school by a few
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decades and it was actually affiliated with the local hospital.
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So it had nothing to do with the residential school.
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It had everything to do with this is where bodies were buried that perished at this local
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So I completely echo some of your sentiments there.
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I want to ask you about some of the reaction because, you know, we saw a lot of sort of grief
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and, you know, we saw churches being burnt and politicians turn a blind eye.
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One of the things I was disappointed about with was the response from the Conservative Party.
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The Conservative Party at that point basically urged the government to fulfill the recommendations
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The Truth and Reconciliation Report was a radically left-wing initiative and document that completely
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And here we had Conservatives calling for basically more, doubling down on these failed policies of
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endless spending, more money to unaccountable leaders, doubling down on dependency of this
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Why is it that Conservatives don't really have an alternative position and don't have another
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approach when it comes to, you know, addressing residential schools, addressing some of the
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past discrepancies between treatment and helping move this community out of poverty today?
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Well, you know, there's a tendency for a party in opposition to seize anything to attack
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But sometimes parties in opposition will pick up opinions that don't really fit with their
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own philosophy, but it seems convenient in the short run to use them to try and beat up
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I think that's what's happened here is the Conservatives in opposition kind of blindly grabbing
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something without stopping to think about how it would fit into a larger Conservative program.
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Well, let's move on to talk about your op-ed that you wrote.
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You wrote an excellent op-ed for True North, sort of discussing some of the myths associated
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One of the major myths that we saw repeated by both sides, I have many libertarian friends
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and they say that this was their major issue with residential schools, was that children
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Your op-ed paints a different picture and says that this isn't true, that the program
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So why don't you sort of explain what you wrote in your op-ed and try to address this myth?
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We don't maintain that the program was never compulsory, but we point out that it was not
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nearly as compulsive as is commonly portrayed today.
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You know, it's become a narrative meme to say that 150,000 children were ripped from the
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Well, first of all, at all times, there were more Indian students in day schools than in
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The main option for educating the children of status Indians in this period of time was
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Many of them were run by churches, not all, but many were.
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But the children lived with their parents or whoever at home.
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There's also a large number of Indian children who didn't go to school at all.
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As late as the mid-40s, about 40% of Indian children were not enrolled in any school.
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The residential school was mainly used, I mean, they were scattered around the country,
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but they were most heavily used in remote areas of the west and north.
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So the Prairie Provinces, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Northern Ontario.
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There was only one residential school in the Maritimes, and there was a handful in Quebec.
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So residential schools were never the main option.
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They were an important option, but they were not the main one.
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Secondly, there was no real obligation to attend any kind of school for Indian children until 1920.
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Attendance was put into the Indian Act earlier, but there wasn't any enforcement mechanism,
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And it wasn't enforced that vigorously subsequently.
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As I said, in the mid-40s, there were still a large number of Indian children
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who were not attending Indian residential schools.
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There was some compulsion in the later decades, but a lot of it was a substitute for a child
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Life was hard for the First Nations in these years.
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Many were still supporting themselves by hunting and trapping and fishing, particularly in the
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There were a lot of orphans, and there were a lot of Indian children whose mother had died
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and whose father had to go out on the trap line, and what was he going to do with the
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So the residential schools became, in their later years, let's say from the 30s and 40s
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on, probably from the beginning to some degree, but more so as time went on, they became a way
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of caring for Indian children that didn't have parents who could look after them.
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So there may have been an element of compulsion there in the Indian agent finding these children
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But there's a huge pile of applications for residential school by parents in the Department
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of Indian Affairs saying, please let our children in.
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They couldn't let in everybody who wanted to come.
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So I'm not saying there was never any compulsion.
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There was in some cases, but it was not the dominant feature of the Native history that
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It is one fact among many, but it shouldn't be allowed to dominate our thinking.
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I'll just add, say in passing, all children are compelled to go to school.
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Today, provinces have opened up the option of homeschooling, where you have to satisfy
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the authorities that you're doing the equivalent of a school education.
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But compulsion has been a universal fact of life for parents in Canada, for their children,
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So the fact that Indian children were required to attend school is hardly surprising.
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I've heard from readers who talk about their own experience, people who say that, you know,
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they grew up in a small town, Saskatchewan, where there was a residential school and a Catholic
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And so you sort of hear anecdotally that life wasn't really that bad.
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I know in your op-ed, you wrote about how one individual who became successful after attending
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one of these residential schools said that his time there was nine of the best years of
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So, Tom, help me understand, why is it that we have such a negative view of these residential
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schools, that we see them as genocidal and forced assimilation and that people have this
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really like, you know, I've heard Canadians equate them to like Nazi death camps, like
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How did we come to this point as a country where this is the narrative that we have about
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a program that was, again, based on lofty liberal goals like universal education, lifting
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people out of poverty, welcoming First Nations people into the broader Canadian community and
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And yet today it's really seen in such a negative light.
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Yeah, well, you know, the historical record is mixed as it is for all human institutions.
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If I could just draw a comparison for a second, if you look at the literature surrounding boarding
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schools in England, which were used for the children of elite parents, many students love
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their schools, others report, you know, horrifying reports of physical and sexual abuse in these
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schools. So for residential schools in Canada, you'll find also a mixed set of reports. And
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there are some like Thompson Highway, the writer that you mentioned, who was very happy there.
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There are others who have some very dark things to say about residential schools. And I think any
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honest approach would would try and draw the balance. But what has happened is that people with strong
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ideological convictions of what today is often called wokeism, have taken the bad reports and woven them
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into their narrative while completely discounting the numerous good reports. So that you get a kind of a
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mythology about residential schools that they were hell holes and like concentration camps and children
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are being murdered. And, you know, there's no end of stories like this, whereas the reality
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is much more mixed. They were a pragmatic response to the objective difficulties of trying to educate
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a widely distributed population, where the density was enough day schools were set up. But in some parts
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of Canada, I mean, Canada is a big country. Transportation is difficult, particularly 100 years ago before modern
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cars and planes and so on. And if children were going to be in school, in some cases, it had to be a
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residential school. So it was a pragmatic solution. It had its drawbacks. And we've moved on and we have
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different solutions now. I'm not even going to say they're better solutions. They're better adapted
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to the realities of our age. But there's this problem of presentism, of looking at the past as if it were
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the present. You have to take the past on its own terms. I haven't yet heard anybody say what would have
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been a practical alternative to residential schools? Would you say no school at all?
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If we hadn't set up any schools, Canada would be condemned today for leaving this population
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in ignorance. Day schools were tried and were useful in the majority of cases, but in some cases,
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the practicalities just weren't there. Public schools, well, many Indians did attend public school,
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but there were a lot of reports about encountering hostility from the white students and being
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beaten up by white students. You know, this was a fact of life at the time. Wouldn't happen today in
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the same way, but it did happen then. So what was the better alternative to residential schools,
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given the conditions of the time? Now, maybe Canada should have shut them down sooner. It was realized
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by about 1950 that they would have to go, and Canada started phasing them out, and they were mostly gone
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by the 60s and completely gone by 1996. You know, again, maybe it should have happened faster. A lot of
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things should have happened when we look at the past and from the vantage point of the present.
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No, it's certainly true. Well, I want to sort of move on to the issue today because it seems like
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there's still a lot of problems in this community, and we as a country haven't really come up with a
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lot of good solutions as to how to help address some of these. I know Harper, you know, he did make
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some strides in trying to make reserves and bans more accountable by making the spending more transparent
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so that people who live on the reserves could see where the money was going. Of course, Trudeau,
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one of his first moves in office was to scrap the Accountability Act and allow First Nations to continue
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to spend without any record of what they're spending the money on. But I'm wondering if you can help me
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sort of try to understand or come up with some ideas and solutions as to what can be done today,
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because the reality, Tom, is that there's still a lot of poverty in First Nations community.
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There are negative, much worse health outcomes. We were doing some research on this topic, and the
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life expectancy for First Nations men is nine years less than non-First Nations men, and for women,
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it's 10 years less. So we have some real, real issues and disparities here, and I'm wondering if you
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have some ideas and solutions as to how we can move past this. Yeah. Okay. Before I get into that,
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let me just make one clarification on something you said on the Financial Accountability Act.
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The liberals didn't repeal the act. They announced that they would stop enforcing it.
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So there's no longer financial penalties for First Nations who don't comply. But a large majority of
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First Nations are complying. Something like 80 percent are still filing their annual financial reports,
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and that's good news. It would be great if it would be 100 percent, but the fact that it's roughly 80 percent,
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maybe more the last time I looked, is that's good news. Okay. Now, what can be done? Well,
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first of all, we have to get rid of the idea that there is some single government solution to this
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so-called problem. We have a set of facts. And, you know, the facts are that people who are ethnically
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different, less human capital for a modern society and living in remote places have a much lower
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standard of living. I mean, that's a fact that has no single immediate solution. What is happening
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is that many First Nations are making progress for themselves by playing a role in the modern market
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economy. And a lot of my research over the last 10 years has been directed towards chronicling that
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and trying to figure out how they are making progress. And there are now a number of First Nations
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who's where the living standard is quite comparable to the Canadian norm. And they've done it on their
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own by, well, there's no, again, there's no single way that they have done it, but the broad picture is
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through playing a role in Canada's market economy. It could be through casinos in a few cases,
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recreational industries, hotels, restaurants, fishing lodges, participation in the resource economy is
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a big one. What can government do to help this along? Well, the single biggest thing that government
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could do is to stop impeding the development of resource industries. The large number of the poorest
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First Nations live in parts of the northern parts of the provinces where not much is happening except
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resource development. These aren't going to be manufacturing centers or high-tech centers or
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whatever. These are places where you find oil and gas and hard rock minerals and forestry, in some case,
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fish. And that's how these people are going to be able to progress and make a good living for
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themselves. And right now, the government seems to be doing all it can to impede
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development up there. So blocking, for example, of the Northern Gateway Pipeline, there were dozens
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of First Nations that would have benefited from the Northern Gateway Pipeline. What about the
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Ring of Fire mining development in Ontario? Again, many First Nations would benefit from that.
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Will it ever go ahead? Well, I hope so, but it's certainly not fast. So that's the single biggest
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thing that governments could do to improve the standard of living for the poorest First Nations
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is to improve transportation and communication in the northern parts of Canada so that resource
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development can proceed. But unfortunately, the government of Canada and to some extent other
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provincial governments are doing exactly the opposite.
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That's so true. The opposition to some of these natural resource developments, often in the name
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of First Nations groups, even though those First Nations groups themselves are for the pipelines,
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is really remarkable. And thank you for the clarification about the Transparency Act there. I was mistaken.
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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
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still, you know, 80% compliance rates. That's pretty good. Well, I do have a final question. Recently,
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Jean Chrétien did an interview where, interestingly, he almost seemed to defend his 1969 white paper proposal.
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And I know it was really controversial at the time and they ended up walking away from it. But he said that
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there was still, I don't know his exact quote, Tom, but he said something along the lines how there's still
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some merit to the idea of basically just, you know, ripping up the treaties and moving away from this
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whole reserve ban system that we have in Canada. And I was wondering if you could, if you could comment
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on that. And, you know, do you agree with the 69 white paper? Do you think there's merit there? Do you
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think that it could still be something that could be proposed today?
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Do I think it would fly today? No, it didn't fly in 1969. And it certainly wouldn't fly today.
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Is it a good idea? Well, in an abstract sense, maybe, but it's, it's not politically viable.
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And I think that's been demonstrated. I have a lot of conservative friends who still are thinking in
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these terms, and they talk about abolishing the Indian Act and repealing all the treaties and
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everybody's going to be equal. And so, you know, but that's, that's not the world that we live in.
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For better or worse, I don't know which it is, but it's a fact that our First Nations have come to be
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considered as kind of separate entities within Canada. Talking about them as nations is a, you know,
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kind of an exaggeration, but they are definitely separate entities. And they're going to have to find
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their way to prosper, given that. So that's why I've been devoting myself for the last 10 years to
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trying to figure out how First Nations can prosper. And I don't spend any time on utopian dreams about
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repealing the Indian Act and unwinding the treaties and all of that. You know, history is what it is.
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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
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friends still pursue what I think is this utopian libertarian vision of everybody being the same and equal
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rights for all and none of these legislative differences and so forth. But, you know, that maybe
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there was a moment in 1969 when that could have worked, but, you know, it didn't. Politically, there was
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just too much opposition to it. And it has to be enacted by politicians and they have to take account
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of, you know, political realities. So, you know, so we are where we are and we, we have to make the best
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of it. And I think there are things that will help First Nations to find their way.
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And partly it's, there are some positive things that government can do, but a lot of it is government
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getting out of the way, you know, not with extreme measures like, you know, repealing the Indian Act,
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but the Indian Act has been amended repeatedly. You know, it's not the same thing as it was in
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1876. You know, people say, well, the legislation's been on the books since 1876. It's, it's obsolete.
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Well, you know, it's not the same legislation. It's like the criminal code. It's been amended over
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and over and over. And there's been supplementary legislation that's created new vehicles for First
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Nations to use for prosperity. The, you know, self-government agreements, the Land Management
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Act. There's a long list of things that are now possible. So that's what I think, you know, is
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incremental improvements in legislation have taken place, more are possible. But that's the way to go,
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not dreaming of, you know, some kind of big bang, in which we get rid of all the debris of the past
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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
00:29:48.880
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.
00:30:33.360
All right. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.