A radical NDP MP wants to criminalize, asking for proof of criminality. She wants to make it a crime to ask for proof when accusing people of serious crimes like murder, abuse, assault, and even genocide. Michelle Sterling, an independent researcher on the issue of Indian Residential Schools, joins me to talk about why this is a bad idea.
00:00:00.000A radical NDP MP wants to criminalize, asking for proof of criminality.
00:00:20.340I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gun Show.
00:00:30.000Have you seen this clip of NDP MP Leah Gazin?
00:00:45.400She is for the second time introducing making it a crime to do what she calls residential school denialism,
00:00:55.900but what normal people would call asking for proof when you are accusing people of serious crimes like murder, abuse, assault, and even genocide.
00:02:37.120Now, why do you think she wants to make it a crime to ask for proof, to ask for substantiation?
00:02:42.040Do you think that it is an acknowledgement that maybe the allegations are not supported by the facts if people started looking for the facts?
00:03:55.140So joining me now is good friend of the show, Michelle Sterling.
00:04:00.400You may know her in another capacity, but today she's appearing as an independent researcher.
00:04:04.480And I wanted to have Michelle on the show because she's done such great work on the residential school discoveries or lack thereof.
00:04:14.500And the people involved in pushing the narrative that even questioning what has or hasn't been discovered at residential schools should be criminalized.
00:04:26.880And I'm talking specifically, at least this week, about NDP MP Leah Gazzin.
00:04:33.200Michelle, thanks so much for coming on the show.
00:04:35.380Tell us what Leah Gazzin wants to do, I guess, to people like me and you, and then we'll get into a little bit more about who exactly Leah Gazzin is.
00:04:49.060Well, Leah Gazzin, in the past parliament, submitted a bill, C-413, which was intended to criminalize residential school denialism in the same way that in terms of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe during World War II, it is forbidden in Canada to deny that the Holocaust happened.
00:05:17.000And so she wants to have that similar thing applied to people like me who bring forward good stories.
00:05:26.480She calls it downplaying the damage of Indian residential schools.
00:05:32.320And, of course, we have in a circle of colleagues an intrepid researcher named Nina Green.
00:05:39.940And Nina started exploring the history of Leah Gazzin's own family.
00:05:48.320In her own family, she has a very successful Indian residential school thriver, a graduate of the school, her great-grandfather, John McCain.
00:05:57.940So he was one of the Lakota people who came over the border after Custer's last stand.
00:06:06.620And, of course, the cavalry was pretty much in hot pursuit.
00:06:10.080We gave, we, Canada, gave them asylum in Canada.
00:06:14.340And his mother took up with a Northwest Mounted Police officer who sustained the family because they were in very uncertain times.
00:06:26.460You know, they didn't have status in Canada.
00:06:35.500So, anyway, the, his mother, whose name I'm just going to pronounce properly here if I can find it, his mother, Tshunke Nupawin, also known as Emma Loves War,
00:06:52.320she had sort of a common-law relationship with, with LeCain, who was a Archibald LeCain, a Northwest Mounted Police officer.
00:07:07.340And they separated because he was moving to Eastern Canada, but she stayed here.
00:07:12.000But the family took on the name LeCain.
00:07:13.980So, John LeCain ended up somehow, because he was considered by the government as non-status and a half-breed, meaning that his father was white,
00:07:27.940he somehow was admitted to Regina Industrial School.
00:07:37.860It's not very common, but, you know, sometimes the local priest would take pity on someone who was very destitute or maybe a promising person, you know, where they saw they could benefit.
00:07:50.620Anyway, he graduated successfully, learned carpentry, and he learned to read and write.
00:07:57.600He became actually a historian of his people, of the Wild West, if you like, internationally recognized.
00:08:19.820So, he became an independent Indigenous person, having started from probably the worst position possible.
00:08:28.040And yet, telling that story, I guess, telling that story, what you're doing right now is something that Leah Gazzin would seek to criminalize.
00:08:44.000And by contrast, why wouldn't I criminalize her?
00:08:47.180Because she is downplaying the benefits of Indian residential schools by concealing her family's history.
00:08:55.700Also, in the House of Commons, she told a very sad story about her mother, who was basically in a compromised situation because her grandmother had become, I guess, her life has kind of gone off the rails, as Nina likes to put it.
00:09:14.080So, she had taken up with a Chinese man, we don't know his name at this point, and had two children, which were Marjorie, Leah's mom, and Bill, her uncle.
00:09:27.360And the mother left them in a hotel room and abandoned them.
00:09:35.500So, they were put into the foster child family services, the child welfare services.
00:09:44.700The thing is that this has nothing to do with Indian residential schools.
00:09:50.140But Leah Gazzin presents the story as if it does.
00:09:54.280So, her mother, Marjorie, grew up to be a social worker and married Albert Gazzin, who was a survivor of the actual Holocaust in World War II.
00:10:07.620Canada welcomed him and other members of the family to Canada and gave them refuge, too.
00:10:13.800And now, all Leah Gazzin can do is accuse us of genocide.
00:10:17.520And, you know, I really have a bone to pick with her regarding her motion in the House of Commons, where she got all the House of Commons to support it, to describe Indian residential schools as a genocide.
00:10:32.120Well, genocide isn't decided by a vote in the House of Commons.
00:10:36.040It's not decided by a travel-weary pope saying, okay, to badgering journalists, okay, okay, it's a genocide.
00:10:48.440Like, Sean Carlton is one of the people who claims to be an expert on residential school denialism.
00:10:53.620He would speak out vehemently against me.
00:10:56.900He claims that, you know, they don't owe you their children's bodies, that none of us who demand evidence, you know, that we're being heartless.
00:11:10.480Well, I'm sorry, if you're going to accuse me and my country, 10 million Roman Catholics, 19 million Christians, including the Catholics in Canada, half the population of Canada.
00:11:21.540If you're going to accuse these people of genocide, then we want evidence, we want proper due process of law, and we want proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:11:35.340The presumption of innocence is enshrined in the Charter.
00:11:38.100So you can't run around calling Canadians guilty of genocide when the presumption of innocence is the Charter right of all Canadians, and we have no proof that there was a genocide.
00:11:52.040Now, you've actually gone one step further.
00:11:57.460So you've actually written an open letter at the time, it was to Sean Frazier, Minister of Justice, Attorney General of Canada, basically saying, we need an inquiry into this.
00:12:10.840This isn't just good enough for someone to make a claim and then we all just declare a national day of mourning and accept the facts as they are without a bone, a body, any evidence, any excavation being done.
00:12:27.040Tell us about your open letter about the call for an inquiry, and I think this is something that will, if they did this, I feel like it would stop a lot of the damage, division, and hate being sown against Christians in this country.
00:12:44.380We saw 100 plus churches being either burned or vandalized in the wake of the Kamloops Indian Residential School discovery, and it's not getting any better.
00:13:26.440He's probably the only person who covered the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the time.
00:13:31.840So it began in secret and continued in secret.
00:13:35.740It was never part of the TRC mandate and seems to have benefited most the archaeologists of Canada who have, as an association, agreed to sort of comply with, you know, Indigenous prior right.
00:13:52.320Like, we're not going to dig if you don't want us to dig kind of thing, which is, you know, perhaps, yeah, it has perhaps some ethical element to it that you have to do things in a culturally appropriate way.
00:14:04.660But, you know, they're really helping bar us from finding information.
00:14:09.000Secondly, this is a terrible blood libel on all of Canada, all Canadians, on the Catholic Church worldwide.
00:14:18.640Many of the claims that are made are unproven.
00:14:21.640And as Thompson Highway, who is also a residential school student, said, and he's now an internationally renowned artist of many different genres, writer, musician, etc.
00:14:39.400He said, you know, you've heard 7,000 sad stories in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but you haven't heard the 7,000 good stories.
00:14:52.300But in fact, at the TRC, as Nisen reports, if people tried to present a good story, they were shouted down.
00:14:59.660And it turns out, if you go back in time a little bit to the independent assessment process, which proceeded and kind of crossed over,
00:15:08.360the independent assessment process was an avenue where people who had suffered serious harms could apply for more compensation in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement.
00:15:24.540So there was a common experience payment of $10,000 for the first year that everybody got who ever went to Indian Residential School who's still living.
00:15:33.400Then there was like $3,000 a year for subsequent years.
00:15:38.240And then there was this independent assessment process where you could sort of privately file a complaint.
00:15:46.840Now, what happened in that is that a lot of lawyers had been ginning up the story for years prior.
00:15:55.380And so they would be sending forms to reserves and saying, you know, please fill out this form to make your claim.
00:16:03.400It won't cost you a penny and we'll get you lots of money.
00:16:07.540And so the form would say things, you know, how many times was penis inserted into your anus?
00:16:13.500And, you know, lots of very lurid kind of suggestions.
00:16:18.960And so, of course, the idea is that the more complex your case, the more money you get.
00:16:27.360But as Ronald Nisen points out, a lot of the people who did really suffer could not even fill out the form for a claim because it so traumatized them.
00:16:38.300But the people who could fill out the form because they wanted to cash in could fill out that form and did.
00:16:46.320And, you know, there were many aberrations in that process.
00:16:52.060And as a result of the independent assessment process, there are 5,315 people in Canada who are now named as persons of interest, as if they are actual criminals who never, ever had due process of law to clear their name.
00:17:09.380So they could get a letter in the mail that accused them either of something stupid, like, he kicked me in the ass.
00:18:04.400They were not allowed to ask questions.
00:18:08.120And they were not allowed to defend themselves.
00:18:10.540Like, it's a total breach of rule of law in every way possible.
00:18:14.120And the accuser was not required to attend.
00:18:17.440Like, the whole idea of law is that if someone accuses you of something, that you have a right to face them in court.
00:18:23.960With some exceptions, for instance, you know, child rape or something horrible like that, where the victim is screened or from another location.
00:18:33.060But, you know, this is not due process of law.
00:18:38.560So, the whole thing is totally flawed and contrived.
00:18:42.660And Nisen reports that there was one complaint against a priest that he'd sexually assaulted a fellow at a residential school.
00:18:50.200Turned out the priest was still in theological college.
00:18:53.120But, apparently, that complainant received like $100,000.
00:18:57.480So, now that priest is marked for life.
00:19:00.480This is why many of the priests and workers from the schools did not show up at the TRC.
00:19:06.300And, furthermore, you know, because some of them now actually fear for their life.
00:19:10.980Because they know that people assume that if the money was awarded, then the person is guilty.
00:19:17.540When, in fact, that's not true at all.
00:19:19.360It was only decided on the basis of probability.
00:19:21.600And, furthermore, in the TRC process, there were two women who were assigned to interview former staff and clergy.
00:19:32.640And they began their work and then they were told, well, no, we're going to cut your interviews.
00:20:05.200Most of those people were children at the time.
00:20:07.960So, you know, if your parents are getting divorced and are involved in horrendous domestic violence and the police take you away, they apprehend you to save your life.
00:20:18.460All you remember is that you were taken away.
00:20:21.560You don't remember what was going on in the family home and they maybe will never tell you.
00:20:26.360You know, that's a family secret, right?
00:20:28.940But, the children's point of view, told as adults, you know, is really heart-rending.
00:20:34.280And, it's true, I'm sure that many of them did suffer at home or at the school.
00:20:40.300But, you know, there was no evidence required.
00:20:47.280And, furthermore, these were in large sharing circles.
00:20:50.280So, what happens in a sharing circle often is that there's this sense of one-upmanship.
00:20:56.280You know, that person said this was awful and it's like, for me, now it's my turn to witness, I'm going to say what was awful-er.
00:21:04.740So, I mean, that sounds perhaps unfair, but these are very true psychological elements that are well-known.
00:21:13.860And, one other thing, you know, it is known that psychologists and law enforcement officials know that historic sexual assault testimonies and memories, eyewitness memories of children are usually not very credible.
00:21:33.700It's just, eyewitness reports are, even contemporary eyewitness reports are not very reliable or credible.
00:21:40.720So, you know, we've accepted everything that people said at face value.
00:21:45.580And, here's where Leah Gazan would like to put me in jail for saying this, but I'm saying this was not evidence-based legal due process.
00:23:41.720So, and Kimberly Murray and Lea Gazan have been seen many times in interviews demanding that residential school denialists like me be thrown in jail and fined and silenced.
00:24:01.800And we're paying a huge multi-billion dollar price.
00:24:05.800And our country is being destroyed bit by bit.
00:24:08.100And frankly, I think they know they've incentivized lies through cash payments.
00:24:17.180And I know that they, I think they know they're getting the story wrong because that's what this is about.
00:24:24.760Not only do they not want people asking questions, they want to make it illegal for you to ask questions, which means that they are working really, really hard to protect what they know to be untrue or at least grossly inflated.
00:24:44.440And as I like to say, you know, this went from being like a little cottage industry where I think it began in, actually in Alberta, in Red Deer.
00:24:54.020One of the people from the Moscow Cicero Reserve, formerly Hobima, you know, was looking for his brother who had gone to the Red Deer Industrial School.
00:25:04.500And that child had passed away, I think, from influenza.
00:25:08.460Anyway, he was looking for some remnant of him.
00:25:12.740And through historical research and a farmer who found some, you know, an abandoned, unmarked grave on the edge of his property, they actually found the headboards and they found that there were three students there and they did have historical records written down.
00:25:30.440So they did find this individual who years ago, you know, died and was buried and it kind of blossomed from there.
00:25:40.200And, you know, I do like to tell this one story that is, I think, very telling about the whole circumstance, because I think that there are reasons why people see that there or feel that their family members disappeared.
00:25:55.680This is a story from Fort Albany. It's in Eric Bay's book.
00:26:02.380And he talks about how a trapper came to the Hudson Bay post.
00:26:08.620He was sick and he said, my wife is sick in the tent and we have no food.
00:26:13.700The trapper died. So the Hudson Bay sent a couple of guys out with food to find the tent there.
00:26:19.540The mother was deceased. There was a two month old baby.
00:26:22.180There were three little children, you know, very small, like toddler baby age and a 16 year old boy.
00:26:30.440The 16 year old boy they sent on a hunt with family members.
00:26:35.220The two month old baby they gave to a biological aunt, sister, family member.
00:26:42.960And the three small children they did take away to Indian residential school to care for them.
00:26:47.640And while they are one of those children died, those children would never have gone back to their community because there was no one to care for them.
00:27:14.200So there must be something bad and awful at the Indian residential school when it's more likely that probably those children maybe became staff there or they learned something and moved on to another community.
00:27:27.200But why would they go home? There was no one that they would know there.
00:27:56.280He came home at age 13, like nobody knew who he was.
00:28:00.660There had been two or three children born in the interim.
00:28:04.160And, you know, for that community, this stranger showing up who's kind of chubby and pale, because that's a condition of the disease and a condition of the treatment.
00:28:44.800But the idea that thousands of children have vanished, there's no evidence of that.
00:28:49.080No, and I was researching the Edmonton General Hospital because it had been a TB facility.
00:29:02.120And there was a local Indigenous fellow who, as they were redeveloping the General Hospital to be something else,
00:29:13.200they, the developer said, okay, if you think that there are just bodies on the grounds here that have been just discarded of Indigenous people,
00:31:03.100It was, it was too onerous, too difficult.
00:31:06.280So they did keep records of people, but they didn't necessarily send reports, you know, on a weekly basis.
00:31:14.860So people didn't know what was going on.
00:31:18.400But, and also, you know, people should remember that in the time of TB, once people understood that TB was contagious
00:31:26.900and was actually contagious within families, then people often wanted to be buried without a headstone or the family wanted them to be buried without a headstone or marker.
00:31:41.500Because you didn't want people saying, oh, what did your sister die of?
00:31:45.760Because if you said TB, you know, and it would be the assumption at the time, then you might lose your apartment.
00:31:51.940You might get kicked out of your work, you know, because you'd be perceived as a risk.
00:31:56.540So, you know, all these historical contexts, these are things that Leah Gazan does not want me to tell you.
00:32:03.640But once you understand them, you have a much better picture of what went on in that time.
00:32:08.860So I don't think that Leah Gazan should be allowed to shut me up.
00:32:13.840I don't think that the House of Commons, which is supposed to support the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada,
00:32:20.140should be actively involved in trying to shut up people who are independent researchers, who are exploring historical data.
00:32:29.780And you have to remember, there's thousands of documents.
00:32:32.760I can't remember the number off the top of my head, but apparently the Alberta Provincial Archives have something like 52 metres of oblate records to be reviewed and digitised.
00:33:59.360And until there's an inquiry to set things straight, we're still going to be burdened by this terrible injustice to all of us.
00:34:11.240Michelle, how do people find your research and the things that you're publishing on this topic?
00:34:18.500Because I think it's so important because, you know, you're showing screenshots of historical records that you won't see the other side ever produce.
00:34:28.140You look and see, and they don't produce anything, like anything.
00:34:31.560And you're saying, here's the historical record.
00:34:34.580Tell us how people can find your work.
00:34:37.560Well, I have a blog called michellesterling.com.
00:38:18.260I'll put gun show letters in the subject line so I know exactly why you're emailing me and have your say.
00:38:24.880Now, one of the ways that I also get viewer feedback is by going to the comment section either on YouTube or Rumble.
00:38:31.420Well, I want to know what the people who are not yet subscribers to our premium content are saying about the clips that they see of the show.
00:38:42.580And by the way, that's a good way to introduce people to our work.
00:38:45.500If you see a clip, a free clip of the show, send it to your friends.
00:38:51.760Now, this one comes to me by way of my interview with my friend Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on the teachers strike last week.
00:39:01.820And look, I'll read your hate mail, too.
00:39:27.480Anyways, she says it looks disrespectful when an interviewer is distracted from the person they talk to doing something on their phone or computer.
00:39:37.580Sometimes I get this from time to time.
00:39:40.740Some of you will write to me and say, Sheila, you're not looking at your interview subject or you're looking all over the place.
00:40:32.040I have a monitor hanging on the wall over there where I can see the guests talking to me.
00:40:36.620Then over here, I have a computer that controls my camera and it allows me to see like my recording levels to make sure that nothing stopped, that my mic is still working properly, that my guest isn't having technical difficulties.
00:40:52.780So I have to look at that because sometimes I've been recording and then discovered that I wasn't actually recording at all.
00:40:59.000In fact, I did that before I hit record on this.
00:41:01.580And then if I'm looking at sources or show notes, I, I sometimes have physical notes on my desk, but that's just like my thoughts.
00:41:53.620My, uh, producers back in Toronto, after I'm done, they give the show a light little edit and, and gussy it up a little bit, but the bulk of the work is done.
00:42:50.660So anyway, I thought I would address that because I get that one once in a while.
00:42:55.260And if you're a regular viewer, you know, I probably answer that same criticism once a year.
00:42:59.940And now on the actual topic of the interview, the end to the teacher strike in Alberta, wherein our United Conservative government led by Premier Daniel Smith legislated the teachers back to work because the kids have been out of school for three weeks and held hostage by this nonsense.
00:43:17.420Uh, Woohoo Wally writes, as a teacher, I'm glad we're back.
00:43:36.240Now, that's a reference to, um, the teachers wearing red back on their first day back after being legislated back to work in protest of the government's back to work legislation.
00:43:49.600And I would love to believe that Woohoo Wally is the majority of the teachers out there.
00:43:56.740I feel like that could be the majority of the teachers, at least at my, my daughter's school.
00:44:04.700But I, I think, I think that's the majority.
00:44:09.100It's the loud political ones and their union, the ATA, who drown out the voices of these teachers here.
00:44:22.200Uh, Larry Notum 3232 says the rejection by teachers was political.
00:44:29.260Now, I don't, I don't even want to say rejection by the teachers.
00:44:31.560It was the ATA, the union, um, who, uh, who rejected the deal.
00:44:41.460Um, and it's fascinating to think that our government had to bring in back to work legislation to give teachers a raise and hire more teachers and put more money into education spending.
00:45:14.500It should lose its legal protections and teachers should all be converted into independent contractors, able to negotiate their own wages and benefits based on skills and merit instead of the most useless measure possible.
00:45:28.840Seniority is just, uh, the ability to not get fired in a year.
00:45:33.340Um, now, do I think teachers should be independent contractors?
00:45:40.620I don't know, but there's got to be a better way than forcing people into a collective body, uh, that engages in political activism that they don't necessarily support.
00:45:49.740I think the answer is right to work legislation.
00:45:53.500If your workplace is a union workplace, you should have the right not to associate with those people in the same manner that you have a charter protected right to associate, right?
00:46:04.800And you have to provide the negative right.
00:46:07.000Um, and, uh, I think that's the answer.
00:46:10.600And I know the unions hate that because when given a choice, people don't join.
00:46:34.480And I think we're lucky to have her fighting on behalf of Alberta taxpayers.
00:46:39.500And she does such good work breaking down these huge, complicated, terrible government ideas and the numbers, um, attached to them by way of tax dollars into things that you can really understand.
00:46:53.440Um, like when she says, you know, a billion dollars is a hospital.
00:46:59.340And when you are spending a billion dollars on debt servicing charges, that's one hospital just poof.
00:47:04.840You know, I think that's a great way to explain government spending in terms of hospitals or tanks of fuel or, uh, individual families.
00:47:16.060And that's what she does because it is individual families who bear the burden of these things, whatever your family looks like.