Juno News - December 06, 2023


This is a low point in the history of Parliament： political scientist


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Length

45 minutes

Words per Minute

154.44933

Word Count

7,104

Sentence Count

378

Hate Speech Sentences

8


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.480 Many Canadians believe utter falsehoods about Canada's recent history and specifically the
00:00:05.680 federal government's residential school program. Today, I speak to author and professor Dr. Tom
00:00:10.880 Flanagan about his new book, Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us and the Truth About Residential
00:00:16.160 Schools. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:30.160 Hi everybody, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. Don't forget to like this video,
00:00:33.600 subscribe to True North channel, leave us a five-star review if you enjoy the podcast,
00:00:36.800 and head over to our website www.tnc.news to sign up for our newsletter so you never miss a story.
00:00:43.520 So like I said in my intro, many Canadians believe utter falsehoods about our residential
00:00:47.840 school program. This is in part deliberate. After an absolute bombshell of an accusation leveled in 2021
00:00:54.560 that human remains have been discovered in unmarked graves near a residential school in
00:00:58.240 Kamloops, British Columbia, the legacy media took those accusations and weaved together one of the
00:01:03.360 most destructive fake news narratives in Canadian history. The legacy media invented facts to embellish
00:01:08.800 a story, like the idea that there were mass graves or that human remains had been excavated and
00:01:13.280 confirmed. They turned accusations into historical facts without any evidence, without any proof,
00:01:18.960 without even a published report. They told us the story had all been confirmed. They told Canadians
00:01:24.560 that these schools were death camps, akin to Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz. They told us
00:01:29.600 that nuns, priests and teachers working in these schools, presumably, were actually mass murderers.
00:01:35.680 Now the narrative went something like this. Most First Nation children attended these residential
00:01:41.200 schools. Attendance was not voluntary. It was compelled and it was enforced by the federal
00:01:45.760 government. Attendance at these residential schools has traumatized indigenous people, creating social
00:01:50.800 pathologies that descend across generations. Residential schools destroyed indigenous languages
00:01:56.160 and cultures. That there are thousands of children who simply went missing. They went away to residential
00:02:01.440 schools and were never heard from again. Many of these missing children were told were murdered by
00:02:06.480 school personnel after being subject to physical and sexual abuse, even outright torture. These missing
00:02:11.920 children were then buried in unmarked graves underneath and around schools and churches. And the
00:02:16.880 carnage is appropriately defined as genocide. Finally, we are told to believe by legacy media that many of the
00:02:24.480 human remains have already been located. They've been discovered by ground penetrating radar and that many more will be found as government-funded research continues.
00:02:32.480 So, as we all know, the narrative is false. Much of this information is simply not true. The legacy
00:02:39.520 media has done tremendous damage to our national unity, our self-perception of ourselves as Canadians, and the
00:02:45.760 stories we tell ourselves about our country. That is why it's incredibly important to talk about how the media got it wrong, to
00:02:52.640 correct the record as much as possible, and to try to reach as many Canadians as possible with the truth. That's why I'm pleased and
00:03:00.640 delighted that True North has teamed up with some of the top academics in the country to publish a
00:03:05.280 book doing just that. Joining me on the program today is Professor Tom Flanagan. Tom is a professor
00:03:11.360 emeritus at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy. Tom served as a campaign manager on Stephen
00:03:16.160 Harper's Canadian Alliance Leadership Campaign, and again on Harper's Conservative Party Leadership Campaign.
00:03:21.760 He is an award-winning author specializing in Canadian politics and Indigenous rights. And his latest book
00:03:28.240 is a project with Dr. C.P. Champion, as well as several other leading academics in the field,
00:03:32.720 including historian Conrad Black. It's called Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us, and The Truth
00:03:37.760 About the Residential Schools. And Dr. Tom Flanagan, welcome to the podcast.
00:03:42.080 Great to be here.
00:03:43.440 Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. So why don't you just tell us, first of all, what inspired you to
00:03:49.440 put this book together, to write this book, and tell us a little bit about the facts behind Canada's
00:03:54.160 residential schools? Well, it happened gradually after the big announcements from Kamloops in
00:04:01.920 May of 2021. And I, like many others, was kind of caught unprepared by that.
00:04:08.720 You know, I thought, gee, it sounds pretty bad. But as I started to learn more about it, it seemed
00:04:15.360 less and less plausible. I got linked up with a group of other Canadians,
00:04:20.480 just a loose association by email, but other people who were appalled by these announcements,
00:04:27.920 but didn't believe them. And these were mainly retired lawyers, judges, journalists, professors,
00:04:39.280 peoples who had made their living for their career out of
00:04:44.240 evidence and, you know, looking for evidence and reaching decisions on the basis of evidence.
00:04:51.920 And, you know, we all had more or less the same conclusion that the evidence wasn't there.
00:04:56.960 It was a ground penetrating radar, which doesn't identify graves. And there were no excavations.
00:05:04.400 And there were a lot of stories. But those stories lacked documentation.
00:05:10.000 So anyway, we started pushing back, we started writing critiques of the Kamloops announcement
00:05:20.240 and related announcements, because after Kamloops, there was a wave of other
00:05:24.960 announcements from other reserves about similar types of,
00:05:29.280 similar types of, shall we call them, pseudo findings. So we started critiquing these things.
00:05:34.800 And we immediately found that the legacy media or corporate media had, had no interest in,
00:05:41.120 in running, uh, what we were writing. And this is, um, you know, this is, for me,
00:05:48.400 it was strange because for the last 50 years, I've been publishing voluminously in the establishment
00:05:54.240 media, Globe and Mail, National Post, um, university presses, um, magazines, McLean's, you know,
00:06:01.920 you name it. And suddenly nobody, nobody wanted my stuff, um, or anybody else's stuff that was critical
00:06:11.040 of the Kamloops narrative. So we started publishing in, uh, let's call it alternative media, like True
00:06:18.560 North, um, the, uh, journal C2C, Dorchester Review, um, Quillette, others, some international ones,
00:06:31.200 like UnHerd. Uh, they were interested in running what, what we were writing. And, uh, so we gradually
00:06:38.000 produced what I thought was a pretty, uh, impressive body of work debunking the, uh, and I'll call it
00:06:45.520 the Kamloops announcements, but there's actually much more than that, uh, debunking this narrative
00:06:50.800 about unmarked graves and missing children. And it's all false. Uh, none, none of it's true. Um,
00:06:57.440 um, so we thought, well, let's, uh, let's, uh, let's try and bring together the, the most important
00:07:03.520 pieces and publish it as, as a book. Um, a book has, uh, perhaps greater staying power than articles on
00:07:13.040 alternative media, which are here today and gone tomorrow. Um, but books can get into libraries and
00:07:19.360 students can find them and, um, um, over time, you know. So True North was, uh, um, what's the right
00:07:28.080 word I'm looking for? Courageous enough to step in. Um, and no, and it does take a bit of courage.
00:07:34.800 It's no accident that most of the people in our research group are retired. We are, uh, to some
00:07:41.600 extent, uh, protected by, uh, our status of retirement. Uh, you know, Janis Joplin saying
00:07:50.000 freedoms at just another thing, another word for nothing left to lose. Um, some of our contributors,
00:07:57.440 uh, are so worried about their careers that they are writing under pseudonyms. They don't want their
00:08:04.080 true, their true names known. And so there's a couple in this book who are, uh, in that status of,
00:08:09.440 uh, you know, I, I don't know who they are, uh, but they feel they have to protect themselves.
00:08:15.680 So, uh, a bit of courage is required on the part of the publisher too. Uh, and so we're grateful to
00:08:21.760 True North for, for taking this on. Uh, so that's the backstory anyway, to where we are now.
00:08:29.840 So I, I just want to dig in on a few places there, Dr. Flanagan, because one of the things,
00:08:35.360 I mean, you, you're, you're very credible, established voice on this topic and you, like
00:08:39.600 you said, you've been writing in the legacy media for years and years and years. Why,
00:08:43.280 why is it that the legacy media were unwilling to hear a contrarian voice? Like we're told that the
00:08:47.520 media is interested in unique stories. They're interested in hearing the other side, uh, of the
00:08:51.760 story. You know, when I looked at that press release, when it got released, uh, I, I read it
00:08:55.840 20 times to try to figure out like, what am I missing here? I don't see any evidence. I see a report
00:08:59.680 that's forthcoming that they don't even have a date that they're releasing it. I see something about
00:09:03.200 ground penetrating radar, which everything I Google about, it doesn't really seem to be
00:09:06.720 a very scientific, reliable method. You know, it seemed to, there's a lot of red flags on the day
00:09:12.240 that the story came out for me as a journalist. Why, why is it that other editors, journalists,
00:09:17.280 legacy media in Canada, did they not have the curiosity? Were they afraid? Like why, why is it that
00:09:21.600 no one wanted to tell this other side of the story? Well, I, I think it's a kind of a, of a moral panic.
00:09:28.640 Um, I would call it Canada's George Floyd moment after remember the timing that the,
00:09:33.760 the George Floyd hysteria in the United States had taken place that spring. And, um, Canadians are
00:09:41.360 always looking for, uh, something to prove that they're just as bad as the Americans are.
00:09:47.920 Um, and I think this was our George Floyd moment. Suddenly we had this, uh, alleged evidence of, uh,
00:09:55.040 children being murdered and secretly buried. And it was, it was irresistible for, um, uh,
00:10:03.120 identity waving politicians of the progressive left, like the prime minister, you know, for example.
00:10:09.440 Um, and so there was a sudden, uh, a sudden tipping point, like up, up till then, the establishment
00:10:17.200 media had been drifting, uh, more and more to, uh, uh, uh, call it a left progressive position, but they,
00:10:27.600 they hadn't been totally shutting out other voices. Uh, and then, but then suddenly things changed
00:10:35.120 around Kamloops. And so, uh, you know, to me, it's a moral panic. That's only
00:10:40.560 a phrase I can find to, uh, to describe it when a bunch of people act together without very good
00:10:47.920 reasons, but, uh, ideas have caught on and people aren't asking critical questions about them. And
00:10:53.680 anybody who raises questions is attacked as a denialist. Um, so there was this tipping point,
00:11:00.640 uh, that took place then. Um, very strange, you know, nobody predicted this, but it, uh,
00:11:07.760 uh, it happened and it was extraordinary. I mean, uh, some of the things that happened after Kamloops,
00:11:13.520 the prime minister declaring that the Canadian flags should be flown at half mast, uh, which
00:11:20.160 continued for six months until, uh, uh, Veterans Day in November. Um, the story was declared to be the
00:11:28.800 story of the year. Uh, a photograph was declared to be, uh, and it wasn't even a photograph of a real
00:11:35.360 person. It was a photograph. What was it? A photograph of a shirt was declared to be the
00:11:41.360 photograph of the year. I mean, this is, these are extraordinary events. Um,
00:11:46.880 and, and that's the kind of resistance that we were up against. Uh, and I can remember in the early
00:11:54.240 days of my research, friend, friends, uh, acquaintances, relatives would ask me what I was doing,
00:12:01.760 uh, trying to explain it, you know, and, uh, people would get very upset. People screaming at me, uh,
00:12:11.600 how wrong I was, you know, and these, in some cases were people that I'd known for a long time.
00:12:16.160 Um, now that's not quite as true now. I think there's been, you know, our research has perhaps
00:12:22.560 had some impact gradually, and, uh, people are a little more open-minded, excuse me, about it now,
00:12:28.960 but initially, you know, there was just, uh, this river, uh, washing over you. Um, so we kind of huddled
00:12:38.640 down in our research group, and we shared results, published where we could, and tried to gradually
00:12:44.880 build up the case, which we are now presenting in this book. Well, very glad you did, and I remember
00:12:50.560 those early days as well. Uh, I, I, it took, took some convincing of even my editors here at True North
00:12:54.960 to put out a piece just ever so slightly, uh, pushing back against the narrative, Tom. I think
00:13:00.000 Canadians feel a great deal of compassion and a sense of sort of sorrow about the state of First
00:13:06.000 Nations people in our country. We can see that they, that they aren't as well off as other Canadians,
00:13:10.480 and I think that the idea that everything could be blamed on residential schools, and if it wasn't
00:13:15.520 for this one program, uh, you know, things would be fine and everyone would be equal, and so I think,
00:13:20.720 I think a lot of Canadians just felt a sense of guilt and sorrow, and so it was, it was easy for
00:13:25.760 them to sort of believe this narrative even though the facts never held up. So why don't you tell us
00:13:30.240 a little bit about Canada's residential schools? Maybe you can, uh, touch on some of the, you know,
00:13:35.360 uh, perceptions that aren't quite true that people have, like the idea that these schools were compulsory,
00:13:40.400 that, that, uh, students were, were, uh, you know, taken from their homes and forcibly put into these
00:13:46.160 schools, um, maybe talk about the, the, the origin of the school, the rationale and the intended goals
00:13:50.880 of this program. Yeah, I will. Before that, I just want to say that, uh, uh, True North was not alone
00:13:57.280 in feeling this hesitation. I don't want to name names, but, uh, I can think of at least three other
00:14:02.960 editors of, um, alternative media that I would regard as personal friends who initially were, uh,
00:14:11.520 reluctant to publish anything critical of the Kamloops narrative. Now, eventually,
00:14:15.840 they all got on board. That's, you know, that reluctance is over, but that was the attitude
00:14:20.560 initially that the people were afraid. Um, I mean, either they thought maybe we, they thought we
00:14:27.040 were wrong or they were just afraid to stick their neck out, but it was difficult even in alternative
00:14:32.640 media initially to get the story out. Okay, uh, residential school schools. Well, residential schools
00:14:39.040 have been round in Canada since the earliest, uh, uh, uh, French exploration in the 17th century.
00:14:46.320 The, uh, uh, Jesuit missionaries established residential schools in what is now the province
00:14:52.480 of Quebec. And, uh, schools were established later in Ontario by Protestant missionaries in the 18th
00:14:58.400 century, uh, and in the early 19th century. The government had nothing to do with it. They were,
00:15:03.440 uh, uh, uh, these were purely missionary activities. Uh, students attended on a voluntary basis. Um,
00:15:15.600 there were quite a few of these schools by the late 19th century, um, still operating without
00:15:21.680 government assistance. The turning point came in the 1880s, uh, and the reason was the, uh, the settling of
00:15:31.520 the West, uh, signing of treaties, the disappearance of the Buffalo, uh, settling down of Indians on
00:15:39.360 reserves where they were supposed to become farmers. Um, so a lot of things changed all of a sudden.
00:15:47.680 The, um, the main form of education, uh, for Indians up till then, although there were some
00:15:56.720 residential schools, but the main form of education were day schools, uh, which are also operated by
00:16:02.560 Protestant and Catholic missionaries. Uh, the problem with day schools was found that attendance was,
00:16:08.880 uh, sporadic. They weren't as effective as one. And so officials started looking for something more
00:16:16.080 effective. And they, uh, this was the, um, right, right at the moment when the United States was setting
00:16:21.920 up a system of government supported residential schools. So after a study of the American example,
00:16:29.200 Canadian officials recommended to the government that the government start to subsidize, uh,
00:16:35.360 initially it was only a handful of, uh, what they called industrial schools. They're kind of like high
00:16:41.040 schools, but they would teach, uh, trades, you know, carpentry or blacksmithing, things like that.
00:16:47.920 Uh, like everything else that government does, it grew from a small start in the 1880s. Uh, the government
00:16:56.000 started to subsidize more and more, um, residential schools in the belief that they were a more effective
00:17:03.200 form of education. Uh, attendance was voluntary. Um, there was no obligation until 1920 for any Indians
00:17:13.040 to attend school. Um, unlike the rest of Canadians, they had, their parents weren't obliged to send them
00:17:20.080 to school. 1920 attendance was made compulsory, but not necessarily attendance as at a residential school.
00:17:28.080 Uh, uh, attendance at residential school was obligatory only if there was no day school, uh, close by.
00:17:37.200 Uh, even then the law wasn't enforced very, uh, consistently. There were, there was a large number
00:17:44.800 of Indians who didn't go to any school at all. Uh, the largest number who went to school went to day
00:17:50.480 schools. So they continued to live at home, uh, to go to school during the day, much like other Canadian,
00:17:56.720 uh, students. Uh, then you had the residential schools, which were boarding schools,
00:18:03.520 and there was a sizable number of students who, uh, attended, uh, residential schools, uh, during the day
00:18:09.920 only. These were, residential schools were mostly, uh, located on reserves. So that meant that there were
00:18:15.920 other, you know, Indian children living around them. And so some of those would attend, um, on a, on a daily
00:18:22.880 basis. They were co-known as day scholars. Um, so that's the background and the system continues.
00:18:33.360 For a long time. At its height, about a third of, maybe 40% of, um, Indian students were attending
00:18:43.280 residential schools. Of, of those who attended any school, 35, 40% perhaps, were attending residential
00:18:52.000 schools. Uh, that number tended to decline. As we get into the modern times, uh, government wanted to
00:19:00.640 shift away from residential schools to, uh, having Indian children mixed with others in, um, uh, public
00:19:08.560 schools. Um, there was quite a bit of resistance to that. Uh, a lot of Indian parents felt that their
00:19:17.520 children would be discriminated against in public schools. Yeah, I think with good reason.
00:19:22.480 Uh, they were afraid for the safety of their children. They'd be afraid they'd be beaten up
00:19:27.440 in, uh, in public schools. Um, but anyway, as we get into the 1950s, the numbers of residential schools
00:19:37.280 start to decline and you get more and more Indian children going to, um, um, public or Catholic schools
00:19:45.200 off, mostly off reserve. Which is sort of where we are now, except that we've established government-supported,
00:19:55.680 uh, uh, schools on reserve. Uh, now we've gone back to the reserve. Uh, you might say we've gone back to day schools
00:20:05.600 on reserve. There's some still attending, uh, public schools in town. That's an important minority, but probably
00:20:12.400 the majority now are attending, um, day schools, um, on, on reserve. So we've kind of come full circle,
00:20:21.680 uh, uh, back to the 1880s where officials were not satisfied with the results they were getting.
00:20:28.320 And I have to say, it's a, not really a national scandal. The results of, of, uh, children going to
00:20:34.400 day schools on reserve today. I mean, the results are very poor. Um, but for political reasons, uh,
00:20:41.200 under the heading of self-government, this has been deemed to be the only, the only possible approach.
00:20:47.440 It's, it's, it's, it's so unfortunate. I mean, I think you can objectively say that the, that the
00:20:53.120 program failed because, you know, half the country believes that these schools were, were actually
00:20:57.440 death camps. And, you know, the people who are skeptical of that claim, uh, would still be
00:21:02.000 critical of the system because clearly it didn't work in its intended goal, which I believe was to
00:21:05.920 raise the standards and, and to help, uh, integrate First Nations children into the modern economy.
00:21:12.000 Um, can, can we talk about the abuse that happened at residential schools? I, I mean,
00:21:15.680 some of the claims are, are pretty fantastical. Like the idea that 6,000 children were killed,
00:21:20.880 uh, 4,000 of whom we have the names and records of. So that, uh, that, that means that there's,
00:21:25.440 the claim is that there's 2,000, at least 2,000 children who went to school were killed and there's
00:21:30.400 no record of them. There's no record of them ever existing. Now, I personally find that one hard to
00:21:34.240 believe as a parent of three children. I can't imagine sending your child off to school and them never
00:21:39.760 coming home and you never even bothering to write down their name or file a police report or anything like
00:21:44.640 that. I, I find that claim very hard to believe, uh, Tom, but, but, but certainly there was
00:21:49.600 mistreatment. There, there were many children that did die. Um, and, and, and, and I wonder if,
00:21:54.720 if you can help us understand like how that claim went from, you know, children, some children were
00:21:58.960 mistreated and abused as, as they were at many Catholic schools, it seems. Uh, we went from there
00:22:05.200 to this idea that Canada committed genocide, which is a statement that all of the parties in Canada's
00:22:11.120 political system unanimously agreed, including the conservatives, that Canada's residential
00:22:15.760 school program was guilty of genocide. I wonder if you can comment on that.
00:22:21.760 Well, you know, first of all, you have to remember that residential schools existed over a long period
00:22:26.320 of time. And I'm just talking about government subsidized residential schools existed from the 1880s.
00:22:34.720 Uh, well, up to the 1990s on a small scale, but, um, you know, uh, certainly about over 150 years. So
00:22:46.240 conditions were not the same at all times and at all places, they were all over the country. And so
00:22:52.560 you're talking about, you know, almost 150 schools over 150 years. So
00:22:58.160 almost any generalization is probably going to be not entirely accurate. Um, secondly, you have to
00:23:05.280 remember that in all schools in Canada, um, in the early and, and extending into the mid 19th century,
00:23:15.360 uh, corporal punishment was the norm. Uh, all schools use the cane or the strap on recalcitrant,
00:23:25.680 um, students, or maybe just unlucky students. So of course, uh, this happened in residential schools
00:23:33.200 as well, but it was thought to be, uh, the normal part of the educational process. Um, there probably
00:23:43.680 were, uh, and I'm sure there were, uh, some abuses of that, uh, you know, carried, carried way too far,
00:23:52.480 but the, you know, the general approach was consistent with, with Canadian norms. Um,
00:24:00.880 sexual abuse, uh,
00:24:04.960 I think there was, you know, I think it existed. Um,
00:24:07.440 um, even with all the talk about it, there's only a very small number of, of, um, missionaries
00:24:17.760 who've been identified as complicit in sexual abuse, you know, a handful. Um,
00:24:25.840 then there, there are more, uh, non-religious staff. There was a large number of staff in these
00:24:31.360 schools. You know, there were cooks and janitors and dorm supervisors and so on. Um, and some of
00:24:38.080 these people have been identified, but probably the greatest, uh, uh, occurrence of sexual abuse was,
00:24:45.680 uh, in, in the dormitories among children themselves. This is, uh, sort of a universal pattern
00:24:51.600 in boarding schools all over the world. Um, older children, uh, introducing younger children to,
00:24:58.320 uh, you know, sexual adventures. Um, so yeah, that, uh, that existed. Um,
00:25:09.360 we don't know exactly how much, uh, but again, you know, I think kind of consistent with, uh,
00:25:15.680 experience of boarding schools everywhere. Um, the lurid stories that have emerged are all
00:25:23.200 post-1990s, post-1990. And it starts with Phil Fontaine claiming that he was sexually abused at,
00:25:31.200 um, um, his boarding school, Fort Alexander School in Manitoba. He never provided any details,
00:25:37.440 and he never explained who it was that was, was doing this, whether it were the missionary super,
00:25:43.200 or, uh, secular staff or other students. But that, uh, unleashed a flood of, of complaints.
00:25:52.880 And, um, these were to a large extent induced by financial rewards. The government of Canada
00:26:01.360 introduced a, uh, system of settlements for, uh, claims which required no checking of evidence. Um,
00:26:13.360 the only evidence that was checked was, you know, were you actually attending the school at the,
00:26:18.320 at that time. Um, and was the person you identified as the abuser, was he there as well? So just minimal
00:26:24.960 checking, but there, there wasn't any evidence and cross-examination and so forth. So when the first
00:26:32.640 settlement was made for residential schools, um, uh, there was a basic payment just for simply attending,
00:26:42.160 but then there was another payment for, for abuse, which could go up, you know, well over a hundred
00:26:48.000 thousand dollars. And the more, the more grievous the abuse, the higher the payment. So there was a
00:26:55.280 financial incentive to, uh, present abuse in, you know, in maximum possible terms. Um, deaths in the
00:27:05.600 schools, um, were the schools death camps? No. Uh, Indian health was very poor, uh, in the early 19th
00:27:16.080 century, or excuse me, early 20th century. They had lost their traditional diet based on the buffalo and
00:27:22.160 other game. They were eating unfamiliar foods. But the biggest problem was probably that, um,
00:27:28.880 they had no inherited resistance to, uh, diseases that had come from Europe. Um, smallpox, measles,
00:27:36.160 diphtheria. These were all, you know, for, for, for white children, these were mostly just, uh, uh,
00:27:43.360 call them childhood diseases. Um, I had some of these when I was young, uh, but they could be killers
00:27:50.560 for Indian children. And the worst was tuberculosis. And, uh, studies suggest that just about every
00:28:00.560 child who came to a residential school was already infected with tuberculosis, which they had, uh,
00:28:07.120 caught at home on the reserve before they ever came. Um, people who ran the, uh, schools, uh, tried
00:28:15.040 to cope with this. They set up nursing wards and extreme cases that children were sent to Indian
00:28:19.920 hospitals. Uh, but inevitably there were a lot of deaths, you know, which is sad, but
00:28:29.120 I don't know that it was something that anybody had the power to change at the time.
00:28:35.040 The death rates, um, improved dramatically once, um, I forget the exact date, but, uh, a vaccination
00:28:43.280 was discovered against tuberculosis, which was the first measure. And then, uh, antibiotics,
00:28:49.520 particularly streptomycin. By the, by about 1950, streptomycin had been
00:28:57.120 introduced. And that, uh, didn't eliminate all deaths from tuberculosis, but it certainly
00:29:04.800 reduced it down to a more manageable proportion. So, yes, uh, there's a history of children dying in,
00:29:12.640 uh, in the, in the, in the schools, but it was probably no worse, probably better than
00:29:19.920 the deaths of, uh, children on reserves, but those weren't recorded in the same concentrated way.
00:29:28.400 Okay. So what about the claim then that, um, genocide was committed at these schools,
00:29:32.960 a claim that all parties, including Pierre Polyev and the conservatives agree with? And, and, and what
00:29:37.840 about that claim, Tom, that there's been more than 6,000 deaths, uh, but only 4,000 whom we have
00:29:44.320 the name for, like, what do you make of that discrepancy? Do you think it's fair and accurate?
00:29:48.400 Or do you think that this is something that's being, well, we don't even have the name for the four,
00:29:52.000 the 4,100. Um, if you go through and look at the names that are listed in the website of the, um,
00:30:01.680 the center in Winnipeg, which is the, uh, uh, successor to the truth and reconciliation commission,
00:30:07.600 the, there's the national, what's it called? The national
00:30:12.400 center for something or other in Winnipeg at the university of Manitoba. Um, they've published a list
00:30:18.320 of, uh, children who died at the, uh, at the schools. And, um, that's online. You can go see it.
00:30:28.880 That's it. There's a, if you add it all up, it's about 2,000 names. But even all of those,
00:30:36.480 um, didn't necessarily die at these schools. If you, if you study more carefully, if you drill down
00:30:43.280 name by name and look at the records, there are provincial records, death certificates as you get
00:30:48.160 into the 20th century. Uh, quite a few of those children died, oh, in accidents,
00:30:55.520 off reserve, maybe after they had left the school. They, they include names who died within a year of,
00:31:03.920 of having studied there. So a kid could graduate, go home, um, have an accident when he's out trapping,
00:31:12.000 drown, still be called a residential school death. So the real number is somewhere south of 2000.
00:31:20.960 Uh, these other numbers are just imagination, um, adding together poorly understood reports.
00:31:29.360 Uh, there were individual reports, uh, and then there were quarterly reports, which aggregated,
00:31:34.960 uh, names. And so there's duplication between them. So if you add those two together, you get larger
00:31:40.160 numbers and then you get into people just making it up, just estimates, uh, you know,
00:31:46.240 which start to get bigger and bigger, 6,000, 15,000. Uh, but those are just, uh, those are just fantasy.
00:31:53.120 They're not based on, on, on anything. So if you look at names that can be documented
00:31:59.840 as actually having died while they were at the schools, it's, it's, as I say, somewhat, um,
00:32:06.480 um, less than 2000. And that's over the period from 1882 to 1996 for, for the period of the
00:32:16.000 existence of the schools. Now, is that a lot of students, uh, to die for at a large system operating
00:32:23.600 for 150 years? I mean, I don't know, 150 schools for 150 years having lost perhaps less than 2000
00:32:32.880 students doesn't seem to me to be a huge number under the circumstances. Um, so there's been
00:32:39.680 this kind of deliberate attempt to magnify the numbers. Uh, but the lower estimates are the more
00:32:45.760 reliable ones. Why do you think there's such a lack of, of sort of scientific rigor and, uh,
00:32:53.120 balance and pushback when it comes to these government reports? Like when it comes to the
00:32:56.080 truth and reconciliation report, I wanted to mention another one. There was a special report
00:33:00.320 the liberal government put together on perhaps possibly criminalizing what they call denialism.
00:33:05.840 There's a report that the interim report came out in June. The, the, the final report supposed to be
00:33:10.560 out in, um, 2024, written by an individual named Kimberly Murray. I'm not sure if you saw it was in
00:33:15.600 the news last week. Um, but this author's is pushing parliamentarians to preemptively pass a law
00:33:21.280 banning denialism before the report is even released. Well, why is it that when it comes to this topic,
00:33:25.840 Tom, there's so little, uh, like I said, scientific rigor, um, really detailed analysis, pushback,
00:33:32.880 you know, you don't see both sides. You really just see sort of one side, uh, pushing through
00:33:36.400 making declarations and then not a lot of, you know, any kind of verification happening.
00:33:43.600 Yeah, I, I could be wrong, but I don't think that the, uh, uh, criminalization of denialism
00:33:52.000 is going to pass. Now by that I mean amendments to the criminal code that make it a criminal offense to
00:33:59.360 deny allegations about the residential schools. When that, when that came out, there were quite a few,
00:34:07.440 uh, negative editorials in, not just in alternative media, but in, in the legacy media as well. Um,
00:34:15.280 um, you know, anything is possible, but I don't, I don't think that's going to pass.
00:34:21.600 The parliamentary resolution, uh, saying that there had been a genocide
00:34:29.200 at the schools, that is kind of a low, low point in, um, uh, the history of parliament to adopt a
00:34:37.520 resolution like that. Um, but it happened at the height of the, uh, um, height of the virtue
00:34:47.200 signaling that took place after the Kamloops announcement. The resolution had been defeated
00:34:52.320 the first time it was introduced. Uh, and then after Kamloops, it was, it was passed, but there was,
00:34:59.440 uh, this kind of, uh, attitude, uh, uh, the change in attitude after Kamloops. Uh, so that was probably
00:35:10.880 the high point of, uh, the high point of the low point, if you want to put it that way. That was
00:35:16.800 the worst climate then, but I don't think that the criminalization will be legislated. There may be
00:35:24.080 some other legislation, uh, vaguer legislation, um, we'll have to see. I think it depends to some
00:35:33.600 extent on, uh, which party is in power, um, how far, how far they go. Kimberly Murray is pushing to try
00:35:43.680 and get it done now while the liberals are in power, supported by the NDP. That would be the most
00:35:49.840 favorable coalition of forces to, to support it. But I think that, you know, probably the,
00:35:58.000 the NDP is probably outside. They always are for anything crazy like this. Uh, but I think there
00:36:03.360 are people within the liberal party who would have second thoughts, uh, uh, about it. Um,
00:36:12.240 so I personally, I don't think it will pass, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't
00:36:16.240 think about it and worry about it. I mean, it is a very alarming idea that you would, uh, want to
00:36:22.480 criminalize, um, uh, an area of historical research and public discussion, um, in pursuit
00:36:32.320 of a political agenda. Uh, you know, that is absolutely contrary to the working principles of, uh,
00:36:40.000 constitutional democracy. So, um, even if it's unlikely to happen, we should, you know, certainly,
00:36:47.760 certainly keep an eye on it. Uh, and I, I personally have been trying to lobby members of
00:36:52.000 parliament about it to the extent that I can. Um, and I will continue to do so because it, as I say,
00:37:00.000 it was a low point for all the parties to line up in favor of that resolution about genocide
00:37:06.560 having taken place at the, uh, at the schools. Um, you know, and now members will tell you,
00:37:14.160 well, it didn't really mean anything. It was just a resolution. It wasn't legislation.
00:37:18.160 This kind of stuff happens all the time. They will say,
00:37:22.000 it's rushed through at the end of the session, blah, blah, blah. But it's, um,
00:37:27.600 you know, that to use a scientific term, that's all. Uh, it was a low, a low point.
00:37:36.960 Well, I absolutely agree. And even if it's symbolic, how, how, how is that a symbolism
00:37:41.760 of our country that every single elected official in the house of commons agrees that Canada
00:37:46.400 committed genocide? I mean, it's the worst charge imaginable. How can you go on as a country with
00:37:51.120 any sense of national pride? Uh, if you truly believe that a school program was designed to
00:37:56.320 mass murder and eliminate, exterminate an entire population.
00:37:59.280 Well, it's an example of unserious politics. You make the statement, but you don't really think
00:38:03.840 about the consequences. You don't want the consequences of the statement that you make.
00:38:08.240 The consequences of admitting to genocide should be an international investigation and denunciation
00:38:14.880 in international bodies and on and on and on. Well, the members of parliament aren't asking for any of
00:38:20.640 that. They're just, uh, making the statement. So it's pure virtue signaling without thought of what the
00:38:27.040 real world consequences ought to be. Um, so again, uh, looking at it that way, it's another low point
00:38:33.520 of parliament, uh, passing a resolution without any thought given to what it actually means or what
00:38:39.200 the consequences might be. It's such a good point. I hope you're right about the, uh, law that would
00:38:45.600 potentially ban so-called denialism, a term that's never properly been, uh, defined or, or, or explained.
00:38:52.160 Uh, just, just to sort of re-ask this final question here, Tom, why is it that when it comes
00:38:56.800 to reports on first nations in Canada, whether it be the truth and reconciliation report or this latest
00:39:01.280 report, uh, calling for, uh, banning so-called denialism, why, why, why don't we see, you know,
00:39:08.240 real pushback research? I mean, every time you read one of these reports, it comes across like you're
00:39:12.880 reading, uh, something out of, uh, you know, social science, uh, like something out of a far left
00:39:18.560 professor's social science, uh, curriculum. It does, it doesn't really seem to have, have the kind of
00:39:26.080 scientific rigor that you would expect. There's not two sides being presented. There isn't, uh,
00:39:30.800 the opposing view. It's, it's always very much just these really exaggerated, uh, claims that
00:39:37.200 kind of get put into historical record. I mean, that, that, that figure that I quoted that they,
00:39:41.920 that, that, that, you know, in media reports, it says, it always says that there are 4,000 names
00:39:46.880 recorded of dead children and that the estimates are upwards of, of 6,000. Like how, how do these,
00:39:53.040 how do these claims turn into facts through the Canadian government?
00:39:56.000 Yeah, it's, um, it really is quite extraordinary. Uh, members of our little group will,
00:40:05.440 when stories run in legacy media about the 4,000 or the 6,000 or the 15,000 or whatever it may be,
00:40:13.040 uh, there are members of our group who believe in, uh, trying to correct the media. And so they will
00:40:21.280 write a letter to the journalist who's written this nonsense or to the internal ombudsman of the
00:40:28.080 newspaper. Um, you know, and nothing happens. Usually, often you don't even get a response.
00:40:34.480 If you do get a response, they'll say the CBC is a great one for saying, well, this meets our standards,
00:40:39.200 uh, of, of journalism. Um,
00:40:43.280 uh, you know, and we, uh, we're, we're, we're prepared to furnish evidence of the fact that the
00:40:49.600 numbers are much, much smaller than are being reported or that in fact, no graves, no actual
00:40:56.400 graves have been found. Uh, all that's been found is soil disturbances. Um, and I can't help saying in
00:41:04.240 passing that the soil disturbances in Kamloops are almost certainly due to the sewage disposal system that was
00:41:11.840 set up in the 1920s when, uh, before they could tap into the city of Kamloops system,
00:41:18.480 they installed a big septic tank with their own field of, uh, and that means, uh, installing weeping
00:41:25.440 tile under the ground to disperse the liquids from the septic tank. And so there's thousands of feet of
00:41:30.880 weeping tile laid in the general area of the apple orchard. So it's almost certain that what, uh,
00:41:37.440 uh, um, the young anthropologists found, uh, was the weeping tile from the sewage disposal system,
00:41:46.080 uh, which of course is a soil disturbance, but it's not a, we, we have an article about that in our,
00:41:52.880 in our book. Um, it's not, well, if that's not a great, if that's not a perfect metaphor for the
00:42:00.560 whole situation, I don't know. Intellectual sewage disposal is about what it is, but you know,
00:42:05.760 this article has been out there now. It was posted on free press a couple of years ago. It's been out
00:42:11.440 there for anybody to read for a long time. And, uh, anybody who reads it should say, Hey, wait a minute,
00:42:17.600 what's going on here? But the, the statement keeps being repeated that, that these 215 or 200,
00:42:24.720 uh, grave sites were, were discovered at Kamloops. Um, we're, we're in a strange period of time when
00:42:34.080 facts don't matter. Um, it's, uh, and you have to look at, uh, dominant theories of the intelligentsia,
00:42:43.520 some of which are quite hostile to the traditional notion of fact. Uh, and these have taken over the
00:42:50.080 thinking, um, of, uh, well, you know, it starts in universities. Uh, maybe it even starts earlier
00:42:58.960 now, but it was starting in the universities. And so it carries on. And journalism today is
00:43:06.080 largely a profession of university graduates. So they're absorbing all of this. At one time,
00:43:11.760 journalists were more like tradesmen that didn't go to university, but now they do. Um, and they
00:43:18.720 absorb this. So, uh, it's possible for obvious untruths to continue for long periods of time,
00:43:28.240 even though the evidence showing that they're wrong is readily available, uh, because of the
00:43:34.800 alternative media, thank God. Uh, the, the evidence showing the falsity of these statements is out there,
00:43:42.480 but it will be, uh, ignored because Ezra is a radical or, well, I don't think anybody calls you
00:43:50.800 a radical, but they just, you know, I, I don't know what they say about true north, but, um,
00:43:56.160 they'll have a reason for ignoring it.
00:43:58.000 Well, they'll call, they'll call us the same stuff that they'll call the rebel. They'll just
00:44:00.800 say we're far right and whatever they're that. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's almost comical now,
00:44:05.200 uh, Tom, because, you know, we, we, we take great efforts to make sure that our journalism is
00:44:09.840 factual and everything. And it doesn't even matter that the legacy media will continue to write you
00:44:13.920 off, which I think, I think, you know, increasingly they, they, they don't matter as much as they
00:44:18.880 once did. And so, you know, you can see their power when it comes to creating fake news narratives
00:44:23.920 like this one, but at the same time, I think you're right that many Canadians now have seen past
00:44:30.160 the narrative and make some doubt everything else they're hearing, uh, from the, from, from the media.
00:44:34.560 But I think that, uh, you know, your book is certainly a tremendous service, uh, even just
00:44:39.280 to have that historical record there and anyone who's curious can, can pick it up and you can
00:44:44.400 give it to, to friends, give it to family for, for Christmas. It's, it's a great read. I encourage
00:44:49.360 everyone go pick it up. The book is called Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us and the Truth about
00:44:54.000 Residential Schools. You can find it on Amazon and head on over to our website, tnc.news, uh,
00:44:59.760 slash Grave Error. You'll find the book there. Uh, Tom, thank you for your time. Thank you for all
00:45:03.760 your efforts in putting this all together. It's, it's a tremendous service you've done for the
00:45:07.520 country and I appreciate it. Yeah. And thanks to you for the title. I have to say the title was your
00:45:12.560 idea, so you deserve a lot of credit for that. Okay. All right. Well, um, thank you again for joining
00:45:19.280 us and, uh, take care, Dr. Flanagan. Thank you for tuning in. I'm Candace Malcolm and
00:45:23.600 this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:45:29.760 Thank you.