Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Leah Gazan’s War on Free Speech： Her Second Attempt to Criminalize 'Denialism'

00:00:00.000 A radical NDP MP wants to criminalize, asking for proof of criminality.

00:00:20.340 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gun Show.

00:00:30.000 Have you seen this clip of NDP MP Leah Gazin?

00:00:45.400 She is for the second time introducing making it a crime to do what she calls residential school denialism,

00:00:55.900 but what normal people would call asking for proof when you are accusing people of serious crimes like murder, abuse, assault, and even genocide.

00:01:10.540 Look at this.

00:01:11.360 Madam Speaker, today I am deeply honoured to table my private member's bill,

00:01:15.920 an act to amend the criminal code promotion of hatred against Indigenous peoples to end residential school denialism.

00:01:23.100 I would like to thank the Honourable Member from Vancouver East for seconding my bill,

00:01:29.820 a bill I dedicate to all residential school survivors and our family.

00:01:35.860 Survivors have carried truths that this country needed to hear, truths of violence, loss, and resilience.

00:01:44.340 They shared their stories not to reopen wounds, but to help this country heal.

00:01:48.880 As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reminded us, without truth, there can be no reconciliation.

00:01:56.400 Yet today, denialism is spreading, twisting facts, denying genocide, and reigniting harm.

00:02:02.720 It is not only hurtful, it is dangerous.

00:02:05.980 It endangers survivors, our families, and our nations who continue the work of truth-telling.

00:02:11.400 Mr. Speaker, we owe survivors more than words.

00:02:13.940 We owe them action, and this bill is about protecting their safety, honouring their truths,

00:02:20.560 and ensuring that the hard-won truth of what happened in residential schools is never erased or denied again.

00:02:26.900 I call on all members of Parliament to stand with survivors to protect the truth, uphold dignity,

00:02:32.020 and walk the path of real reconciliation together.

00:02:35.360 Thank you, Madam Speaker.

00:02:37.120 Now, why do you think she wants to make it a crime to ask for proof, to ask for substantiation?

00:02:42.040 Do you think that it is an acknowledgement that maybe the allegations are not supported by the facts if people started looking for the facts?

00:02:55.640 I do.

00:02:56.420 Now, I should tell you, I take a nuanced approach to the idea of residential schools.

00:03:05.360 Did bad things happen?

00:03:06.920 Absolutely, definitely.

00:03:07.920 Is that the exclusive and only experience that people had there?

00:03:14.080 Also, absolutely, definitely not.

00:03:16.960 But we can't talk about it.

00:03:20.140 And in fact, they want to make it illegal for us to talk about it.

00:03:25.140 And if that is the case, I feel like our first life sentence under Leah Gazzin's new law,

00:03:37.240 which hopefully will not be adopted by the government, will be handed out to my guest today,

00:03:42.140 Michelle Sterling, an independent researcher on the issue of residential schools.

00:03:46.980 Take a listen to our interview.

00:03:48.060 Thank you.

00:03:48.120 Thank you.

00:03:48.180 Thank you.

00:03:48.200 Thank you.

00:03:48.260 Thank you.

00:03:48.300 Thank you.

00:03:48.720 Thank you.

00:03:48.780 Thank you.

00:03:49.280 Thank you.

00:03:49.780 Thank you.

00:03:50.200 Thank you.

00:03:50.280 Thank you.

00:03:50.720 Thank you.

00:03:55.140 So joining me now is good friend of the show, Michelle Sterling.

00:04:00.400 You may know her in another capacity, but today she's appearing as an independent researcher.

00:04:04.480 And I wanted to have Michelle on the show because she's done such great work on the residential school discoveries or lack thereof.

00:04:14.500 And the people involved in pushing the narrative that even questioning what has or hasn't been discovered at residential schools should be criminalized.

00:04:26.880 And I'm talking specifically, at least this week, about NDP MP Leah Gazzin.

00:04:33.200 Michelle, thanks so much for coming on the show.

00:04:35.380 Tell 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.

00:04:49.060 Well, 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.

00:05:17.000 And so she wants to have that similar thing applied to people like me who bring forward good stories.

00:05:26.480 She calls it downplaying the damage of Indian residential schools.

00:05:32.320 And, of course, we have in a circle of colleagues an intrepid researcher named Nina Green.

00:05:39.940 And Nina started exploring the history of Leah Gazzin's own family.

00:05:47.060 And guess what?

00:05:48.320 In her own family, she has a very successful Indian residential school thriver, a graduate of the school, her great-grandfather, John McCain.

00:05:57.940 So he was one of the Lakota people who came over the border after Custer's last stand.

00:06:06.620 And, of course, the cavalry was pretty much in hot pursuit.

00:06:10.080 We gave, we, Canada, gave them asylum in Canada. 0.99

00:06:14.340 And his mother took up with a Northwest Mounted Police officer who sustained the family because they were in very uncertain times.

00:06:26.460 You know, they didn't have status in Canada.

00:06:29.740 The buffalo were certainly dying out.

00:06:32.880 There wasn't much hunting.

00:06:34.300 So how would you survive?

00:06:35.500 So, 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,

00:06:52.320 she had sort of a common-law relationship with, with LeCain, who was a Archibald LeCain, a Northwest Mounted Police officer.

00:07:07.340 And they separated because he was moving to Eastern Canada, but she stayed here.

00:07:12.000 But the family took on the name LeCain.

00:07:13.980 So, 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,

00:07:27.940 he somehow was admitted to Regina Industrial School.

00:07:32.380 And there are instances where Métis people were, or non-status people were admitted.

00:07:37.860 It'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.

00:07:50.620 Anyway, he graduated successfully, learned carpentry, and he learned to read and write.

00:07:57.600 He became actually a historian of his people, of the Wild West, if you like, internationally recognized.

00:08:06.180 And he was a devout Catholic.

00:08:09.240 He helped build the local church.

00:08:12.340 And so, why is she hiding this story from us?

00:08:16.100 He was a success story.

00:08:17.680 He homesteaded.

00:08:18.680 He was a settler.

00:08:19.820 So, he became an independent Indigenous person, having started from probably the worst position possible. 1.00

00:08:28.040 And yet, telling that story, I guess, telling that story, what you're doing right now is something that Leah Gazzin would seek to criminalize. 0.97

00:08:43.280 Right.

00:08:44.000 And by contrast, why wouldn't I criminalize her?

00:08:47.180 Because she is downplaying the benefits of Indian residential schools by concealing her family's history.

00:08:55.700 Also, 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.

00:09:14.080 So, 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.

00:09:27.360 And the mother left them in a hotel room and abandoned them.

00:09:35.500 So, they were put into the foster child family services, the child welfare services.

00:09:44.700 The thing is that this has nothing to do with Indian residential schools.

00:09:49.960 Right.

00:09:50.140 But Leah Gazzin presents the story as if it does.

00:09:54.280 So, 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.

00:10:07.620 Canada welcomed him and other members of the family to Canada and gave them refuge, too.

00:10:13.800 And now, all Leah Gazzin can do is accuse us of genocide.

00:10:17.520 And, 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.

00:10:32.120 Well, genocide isn't decided by a vote in the House of Commons.

00:10:36.040 It's not decided by a travel-weary pope saying, okay, to badgering journalists, okay, okay, it's a genocide.

00:10:43.640 And, you know, it's not okay.

00:10:48.440 Like, Sean Carlton is one of the people who claims to be an expert on residential school denialism.

00:10:53.620 He would speak out vehemently against me.

00:10:56.900 He 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.

00:11:07.220 We're being ghouls.

00:11:08.540 That's how Mark Miller put it.

00:11:10.480 Well, 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.

00:11:21.540 If 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.

00:11:33.320 We want to follow the rule of law.

00:11:35.340 The presumption of innocence is enshrined in the Charter.

00:11:38.100 So 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.

00:11:52.040 Now, you've actually gone one step further.

00:11:57.460 So 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.

00:12:10.840 This 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.

00:12:27.040 Tell 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.

00:12:44.380 We 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.

00:12:55.580 Tell us about this.

00:13:26.440 He's probably the only person who covered the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the time.

00:13:31.840 So it began in secret and continued in secret.

00:13:35.740 It 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.

00:13:52.320 Like, 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.

00:14:04.660 But, you know, they're really helping bar us from finding information.

00:14:09.000 Secondly, this is a terrible blood libel on all of Canada, all Canadians, on the Catholic Church worldwide. 0.92

00:14:18.640 Many of the claims that are made are unproven.

00:14:21.640 And 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.

00:14:39.400 He 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.

00:14:49.100 And that's very, very true.

00:14:52.300 But in fact, at the TRC, as Nisen reports, if people tried to present a good story, they were shouted down.

00:14:59.660 And it turns out, if you go back in time a little bit to the independent assessment process, which proceeded and kind of crossed over,

00:15:08.360 the 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.

00:15:24.540 So 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.

00:15:33.400 Then there was like $3,000 a year for subsequent years.

00:15:38.240 And then there was this independent assessment process where you could sort of privately file a complaint.

00:15:46.840 Now, what happened in that is that a lot of lawyers had been ginning up the story for years prior.

00:15:55.380 And so they would be sending forms to reserves and saying, you know, please fill out this form to make your claim.

00:16:03.400 It won't cost you a penny and we'll get you lots of money. 0.99

00:16:07.540 And so the form would say things, you know, how many times was penis inserted into your anus? 0.99

00:16:13.500 And, you know, lots of very lurid kind of suggestions. 0.99

00:16:18.960 And so, of course, the idea is that the more complex your case, the more money you get.

00:16:25.220 And that's exactly what happened.

00:16:27.360 But 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.

00:16:38.300 But the people who could fill out the form because they wanted to cash in could fill out that form and did.

00:16:46.320 And, you know, there were many aberrations in that process.

00:16:50.860 It was not due process.

00:16:52.060 And 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. 1.00

00:17:09.380 So they could get a letter in the mail that accused them either of something stupid, like, he kicked me in the ass. 0.99

00:17:16.260 When did that happen? 1.00

00:17:17.220 Between 1958 and 1964.

00:17:21.980 Like, how do you defend against that?

00:17:24.400 Or there's another one that I've seen.

00:17:26.900 I was running around the gym. 0.99

00:17:29.080 And as I ran by, he grabbed me by the vagina. 1.00

00:17:34.120 I'm not sure how you could do that. 0.99

00:17:36.360 Anyway, and he did that twice.

00:17:38.080 When did that happen?

00:17:39.380 Between 1960 and 1964.

00:17:43.480 You know, these absurd claims received compensation.

00:17:47.440 Why?

00:17:47.760 Because they were decided on the basis of probability, not on actual evidence and testimony.

00:17:54.660 And the person who was accused, when they arrived at the adjudication, they were not titled as a defendant.

00:18:02.600 They were given the name of witness.

00:18:04.400 They were not allowed to ask questions.

00:18:08.120 And they were not allowed to defend themselves.

00:18:10.540 Like, it's a total breach of rule of law in every way possible.

00:18:14.120 And the accuser was not required to attend.

00:18:17.440 Like, the whole idea of law is that if someone accuses you of something, that you have a right to face them in court.

00:18:23.960 With some exceptions, for instance, you know, child rape or something horrible like that, where the victim is screened or from another location.

00:18:33.060 But, you know, this is not due process of law.

00:18:38.560 So, the whole thing is totally flawed and contrived.

00:18:42.660 And Nisen reports that there was one complaint against a priest that he'd sexually assaulted a fellow at a residential school.

00:18:50.200 Turned out the priest was still in theological college.

00:18:53.120 But, apparently, that complainant received like $100,000.

00:18:57.480 So, now that priest is marked for life.

00:19:00.480 This is why many of the priests and workers from the schools did not show up at the TRC.

00:19:06.300 And, furthermore, you know, because some of them now actually fear for their life.

00:19:10.980 Because they know that people assume that if the money was awarded, then the person is guilty.

00:19:17.540 When, in fact, that's not true at all.

00:19:19.360 It was only decided on the basis of probability.

00:19:21.600 And, furthermore, in the TRC process, there were two women who were assigned to interview former staff and clergy.

00:19:32.640 And they began their work and then they were told, well, no, we're going to cut your interviews.

00:19:38.500 They're not going to be transcribed.

00:19:40.000 We cut your budget from $100,000 to $10,000.

00:19:43.300 This is out of a $70 million budget.

00:19:45.920 And, so, that valuable information that the adult perspective of what was going on was not part of the TRC.

00:19:55.540 And, this is really important because most of the children, I mean, most of the people who testified, or they didn't actually testify.

00:20:03.040 They just gave their recollections.

00:20:05.200 Most of those people were children at the time.

00:20:07.960 So, 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.

00:20:18.460 All you remember is that you were taken away.

00:20:21.560 You don't remember what was going on in the family home and they maybe will never tell you.

00:20:26.360 You know, that's a family secret, right?

00:20:28.940 But, the children's point of view, told as adults, you know, is really heart-rending.

00:20:34.280 And, it's true, I'm sure that many of them did suffer at home or at the school.

00:20:40.300 But, you know, there was no evidence required.

00:20:44.960 So, you could say anything.

00:20:47.280 And, furthermore, these were in large sharing circles.

00:20:50.280 So, what happens in a sharing circle often is that there's this sense of one-upmanship.

00:20:56.280 You 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.

00:21:04.740 So, I mean, that sounds perhaps unfair, but these are very true psychological elements that are well-known.

00:21:13.860 And, 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.

00:21:33.700 It's just, eyewitness reports are, even contemporary eyewitness reports are not very reliable or credible.

00:21:40.720 So, you know, we've accepted everything that people said at face value.

00:21:45.580 And, 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.

00:21:54.340 These were statements by people.

00:21:56.780 The things that happened to them may or may not have happened at the school.

00:22:00.780 They may have happened within their family or on reserve.

00:22:04.160 You know, it may be projection.

00:22:06.300 So, because we know that the incidence of sexual assault and violence on many reserves is extremely high.

00:22:17.000 To this day.

00:22:17.520 So, you know, I think we need an inquiry into all of this.

00:22:20.920 And I think we also need an inquiry into Kimberly Murray's work.

00:22:24.440 She was a special interlocutor on missing children and unmarked graves related to Indian residential schools.

00:22:31.940 First of all, her office was located on territory that claims to not be part of Canada.

00:22:38.360 So, were we paying somebody millions of dollars to do this research who's acting as a foreign entity?

00:22:48.180 Right.

00:22:48.280 Secondly, she was required to report to the justice minister.

00:22:52.680 But she, of her own volition, sent off very lurid, unvetted reports to the UN.

00:22:58.980 And thirdly, she was supposed to be, her mandate required her to be impartial and objective.

00:23:11.860 But she publicly stated and also wrote in her reports that she would not be so.

00:23:16.160 Now, her reports hand China the advantage. 0.99

00:23:22.120 They hand a weapon to China, who has accused Canada of genocide on the world stage.

00:23:27.660 And when did that happen?

00:23:28.700 It happened the day after UNDRIP went through and received royal assent.

00:23:33.760 So, Kimberly Murray's report actually reports actually hand China a weapon against Canada.

00:23:40.620 And we paid for it.

00:23:41.720 So, 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.

00:23:54.860 And you can see why now.

00:23:56.120 Because things are not right.

00:23:58.440 The things that happened are not right.

00:24:00.440 They were not legal.

00:24:01.800 And we're paying a huge multi-billion dollar price.

00:24:05.800 And our country is being destroyed bit by bit.

00:24:08.100 And frankly, I think they know they've incentivized lies through cash payments.

00:24:17.180 And I know that they, I think they know they're getting the story wrong because that's what this is about.

00:24:24.760 Not 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.

00:24:44.000 Right.

00:24:44.440 And 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.

00:24:54.020 One 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.

00:25:04.500 And that child had passed away, I think, from influenza.

00:25:08.460 Anyway, he was looking for some remnant of him.

00:25:12.740 And 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.

00:25:30.440 So they did find this individual who years ago, you know, died and was buried and it kind of blossomed from there.

00:25:40.200 And, 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.

00:25:55.680 This is a story from Fort Albany. It's in Eric Bay's book.

00:26:02.380 And he talks about how a trapper came to the Hudson Bay post.

00:26:08.620 He was sick and he said, my wife is sick in the tent and we have no food.

00:26:13.700 The trapper died. So the Hudson Bay sent a couple of guys out with food to find the tent there.

00:26:19.540 The mother was deceased. There was a two month old baby.

00:26:22.180 There were three little children, you know, very small, like toddler baby age and a 16 year old boy.

00:26:30.440 The 16 year old boy they sent on a hunt with family members.

00:26:35.220 The two month old baby they gave to a biological aunt, sister, family member.

00:26:42.960 And the three small children they did take away to Indian residential school to care for them.

00:26:47.640 And 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.

00:26:55.460 Or survived or survived at all.

00:26:58.460 Right. They wouldn't have survived at all.

00:27:00.960 And so, but, you know, in that community, there would be this feeling that this whole family vanished in one day.

00:27:10.960 And those children never came home.

00:27:14.200 So 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.

00:27:27.200 But why would they go home? There was no one that they would know there.

00:27:30.380 So that's just one example.

00:27:32.780 Or when people were sent to a TB sanatorium.

00:27:36.340 So let's say you're seven years old, you're at the school, your TB develops.

00:27:41.140 You probably arrived with latent TB, it develops.

00:27:43.920 They send you on to a sanatorium.

00:27:45.980 Most sanatorium treatments were months long, often years long.

00:27:50.440 In one report, they say that our brother came home.

00:27:53.960 He went at age seven to the sand.

00:27:56.280 He came home at age 13, like nobody knew who he was.

00:28:00.660 There had been two or three children born in the interim.

00:28:04.160 And, 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.

00:28:12.620 They feed you up.

00:28:13.760 You know, you come home and no one knows who you are.

00:28:17.140 You don't remember the language.

00:28:20.080 There's these new people in your family and everyone in town is like, who are you?

00:28:24.840 You're not so-and-so, you know, because he was this high and, you know, he was very active and skinny. 0.66

00:28:33.000 And you're fat and pale and not active.

00:28:37.180 It's not you. 0.74

00:28:38.560 So you can see why these thoughts would develop.

00:28:42.600 So there is some real basis for it.

00:28:44.800 But the idea that thousands of children have vanished, there's no evidence of that.

00:28:49.080 No, and I was researching the Edmonton General Hospital because it had been a TB facility.

00:29:02.120 And there was a local Indigenous fellow who, as they were redeveloping the General Hospital to be something else, 1.00

00:29:13.200 they, the developer said, okay, if you think that there are just bodies on the grounds here that have been just discarded of Indigenous people,

00:29:23.220 let's look before I start building.

00:29:25.840 And he did.

00:29:26.860 No bodies were found.

00:29:29.580 And the Indigenous fellow just wouldn't let go. 1.00

00:29:35.220 Like, there was no sense of relief for him.

00:29:37.020 Or they must have moved them.

00:29:38.300 Yeah.

00:29:38.440 They must have moved them or they're somewhere else in the city.

00:29:42.880 And so I thought, okay, well, what is the underlying psychology of all of this?

00:29:50.380 And, you know, I think it has something to do with the rates of tuberculosis death once contracted.

00:29:57.540 Like, at some point, it was one in two people who contracted tuberculosis would actually die.

00:30:02.840 So if you were sent to a residential school, contracted tuberculosis, ended up at a tuberculosis facility in Edmonton or wherever,

00:30:11.660 you had a one in two chance of not going back.

00:30:14.560 And for the, you know, for the people who said bye to you when you went off to the residential school,

00:30:19.320 they don't know what point along the food chain you passed or why.

00:30:25.860 Well, and also people have to remember, back in the day, there were not the same kind of communication facilities there are now.

00:30:32.840 And usually when people were very sick or disabled, they were turned over to the government as a ward of the state.

00:30:39.000 So once there, the government had no particular obligation to report on progress.

00:30:43.920 It's not like today where you have informed consent and, you know, you have a family member in hospital

00:30:49.200 and they need to do some critical kind of surgery or something.

00:30:53.880 They, you know, they will phone a loved one and say, this is what we have to do next.

00:30:58.920 You know, do we have your permission, et cetera, et cetera.

00:31:01.280 That kind of thing didn't exist then.

00:31:03.100 It was, it was too onerous, too difficult.

00:31:06.280 So they did keep records of people, but they didn't necessarily send reports, you know, on a weekly basis.

00:31:14.860 So people didn't know what was going on.

00:31:18.400 But, and also, you know, people should remember that in the time of TB, once people understood that TB was contagious

00:31:26.900 and 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.

00:31:41.500 Because you didn't want people saying, oh, what did your sister die of?

00:31:45.760 Because if you said TB, you know, and it would be the assumption at the time, then you might lose your apartment.

00:31:51.940 You might get kicked out of your work, you know, because you'd be perceived as a risk.

00:31:56.540 So, you know, all these historical contexts, these are things that Leah Gazan does not want me to tell you.

00:32:03.640 But once you understand them, you have a much better picture of what went on in that time.

00:32:08.860 So I don't think that Leah Gazan should be allowed to shut me up.

00:32:13.840 I don't think that the House of Commons, which is supposed to support the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada,

00:32:20.140 should be actively involved in trying to shut up people who are independent researchers, who are exploring historical data.

00:32:29.780 And you have to remember, there's thousands of documents.

00:32:32.760 I 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.

00:32:48.760 You know, so, and that's just there.

00:32:52.220 And also, at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, they have millions of records as well.

00:32:59.020 And also, you know, when the Senate, the Senate had called a number of people to look into this, you know,

00:33:07.020 supposed lack of records and lack of response and where are the bodies?

00:33:11.340 We know bodies are out there.

00:33:13.860 The actual coroner for Manitoba said to them, you know, it's really hard for us to find any information if we don't have a list of names.

00:33:26.920 And that's the key thing about this.

00:33:29.420 This is a phantom genocide.

00:33:30.900 Going back even to the 215 or 200 supposed bodies in Kamloops, no one has a list of names of the alleged missing.

00:33:40.200 No one has a list of missing persons reports filed by the families that were not resolved in that time period.

00:33:47.920 So Canadians are paying through the nose, both financially and emotionally, for this claim of genocide.

00:33:57.540 It's a phantom genocide.

00:33:59.360 And until there's an inquiry to set things straight, we're still going to be burdened by this terrible injustice to all of us.

00:34:11.240 Michelle, how do people find your research and the things that you're publishing on this topic?

00:34:18.500 Because 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. 0.68

00:34:28.140 You look and see, and they don't produce anything, like anything.

00:34:31.560 And you're saying, here's the historical record.

00:34:34.580 Tell us how people can find your work.

00:34:37.560 Well, I have a blog called michellesterling.com.

00:34:40.800 That's S-T-I-R. 1.00

00:34:42.780 And I'm also on Substack called Sorry No More, Exposing the Bitter Roots of Sugarcane.

00:34:50.880 I'm also on Medium.

00:34:53.520 And I'm going to start doing some videos as well.

00:34:57.200 And, you know, I do want to say one thing.

00:34:59.440 I feel that the Indigenous community is really suffering from what I call ambiguous losses.

00:35:08.340 I think their sense of loss is real.

00:35:11.940 But if you look at it, because they've had so many sudden, tragic deaths in their community over the centuries, actually.

00:35:22.140 You know, from the smallpox epidemic, the splannish flu, tuberculosis, and more recently, the opioid crisis.

00:35:33.920 Yes.

00:35:34.120 The suicides, alcoholism, you know, all these things have stacked up.

00:35:38.280 So I think the grief is very real.

00:35:40.760 But blaming it on Indian residential schools will not solve anything.

00:35:45.100 But trying to deal with that unresolved grief over these ambiguous losses can help.

00:35:53.920 And I've done a report with a number of my essays, and that's what it's called, Ambiguous Losses.

00:35:59.720 And there's another one that I've done called Confronting Irresponsible Media.

00:36:07.700 I can't even remember.

00:36:08.660 Well, on Kindle, it's called Mask Psychosis.

00:36:12.660 But the point is that the media have really driven this story.

00:36:17.480 And if you look at, I did one item about the Globe and Mail.

00:36:21.300 Well, you know, the whole story of the Kamloops fine actually emanated from the Globe and Mail reporter, Tanya Talaga.

00:36:30.180 And Nina Green, again, our interpreter, Nina Green, was reviewing Tanya's book, The Knowing.

00:36:35.920 And it turns out that, you know, parliamentary secretaries were calling and saying, hey, is this real?

00:36:44.300 Like, they had advance warning, and they were like, are these numbers real?

00:36:48.020 And she's like, yes, for sure they are.

00:36:50.020 So it's really the Globe and Mail.

00:36:53.380 And Canada Press, the Canadian press, that propagated this story that was based on no evidence whatsoever.

00:37:02.520 So, you know, that's something else that Sean Fraser can put on his list of inquiries.

00:37:06.920 Yeah, wouldn't that be great if they actually investigated the government-funded media for disinformation?

00:37:16.080 Michelle, thanks so much for coming on this show.

00:37:18.600 I'll have you back on, I think, after the UN Climate Change Conference in your other capacity,

00:37:27.640 because I know you and I pay close attention to what the UN is planning to do to, I guess, all of humanity

00:37:34.620 at their little globalist climate cabal meeting this year in the lovely port city of Belém, Brazil.

00:37:42.000 Michelle, thanks so much for coming on the show.

00:37:43.900 And as I said, we'll have you back on again very soon.

00:37:45.700 My pleasure.

00:37:48.600 The last portion of the show, I turn over to you because without you, there's no Rebel News.

00:37:57.720 So, of course, I have to care about what you think about the work that we do here.

00:38:01.820 This isn't the mainstream media where we get to do a bad job and then all of our viewers and supporters abandon us

00:38:08.200 and then we just go to the sugar daddy, Mark Carney, and ask for more money.

00:38:13.020 You get to have your say.

00:38:14.200 It's the reason I give you my email address right now.

00:38:16.700 It's Sheila at Rebel News dot com.

00:38:18.260 I'll put gun show letters in the subject line so I know exactly why you're emailing me and have your say.

00:38:24.880 Now, one of the ways that I also get viewer feedback is by going to the comment section either on YouTube or Rumble.

00:38:31.420 Well, 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.

00:38:42.580 And by the way, that's a good way to introduce people to our work.

00:38:45.500 If you see a clip, a free clip of the show, send it to your friends.

00:38:50.960 Ask them what they think.

00:38:51.760 Now, 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.

00:39:01.820 And look, I'll read your hate mail, too.

00:39:04.680 And this might be hate mail.

00:39:05.940 Now, it's from Marjorie Tavish Kulatova 2728.

00:39:17.840 I definitely didn't get that right, but we'll show it on the screen so you can read it for yourself.

00:39:24.280 Send me a letter about my pronunciation.

00:39:25.700 You might just see it right on here.

00:39:27.480 Anyways, she says it looks disrespectful when an interviewer is distracted from the person they talk to doing something on their phone or computer.

00:39:37.580 Sometimes I get this from time to time.

00:39:40.740 Some 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.

00:39:51.160 And that's just so rude.

00:39:53.040 And I can hear everything that they're saying to me because I have this earpiece in my ear.

00:39:59.560 Okay.

00:40:00.120 And I want you to know they're not in the room with me in case you were curious.

00:40:05.460 Most of the time or all of the time on the gun show, my guests are remote.

00:40:11.480 And I will tell you that I have to watch at least three screens at any given time.

00:40:18.560 Sometimes four.

00:40:19.880 Okay.

00:40:20.120 Sometimes it's also on my phone.

00:40:23.040 Um, so there's a monitor in front of me.

00:40:26.640 Oh, sorry.

00:40:27.340 Five screens.

00:40:27.980 If you count the little lens of my camera right in front of me.

00:40:30.840 So the camera's right there.

00:40:32.040 I have a monitor hanging on the wall over there where I can see the guests talking to me.

00:40:36.620 Then 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.

00:40:52.780 So I have to look at that because sometimes I've been recording and then discovered that I wasn't actually recording at all.

00:40:59.000 In fact, I did that before I hit record on this.

00:41:01.580 And 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.

00:41:10.880 I jot them down.

00:41:11.760 I will have the sources of the things I want to talk to the guest about on my screen right here.

00:41:18.800 So I have a lot of things going on.

00:41:21.240 Why?

00:41:22.100 Because I don't have a chase producer.

00:41:23.860 I don't have somebody in the control room, um, helping me.

00:41:27.800 I am the control room.

00:41:29.300 My little cubby under the stairs where I work, it's the control room.

00:41:33.200 And so I want you to know, I'm, I'm not, not paying attention to my guest.

00:41:39.120 I'm trying to make sure that the show is still recording, be becoming a product that I can turn over to you.

00:41:48.060 And I, I work alone.

00:41:49.520 I book my guests on my own.

00:41:51.660 I record my show on my own.

00:41:53.620 My, 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.

00:42:03.200 By me entirely alone.

00:42:06.960 So I'm not distracted.

00:42:09.300 I'm still, as I say, paying close attention to every word coming out of my guests mouth and respecting their time with me.

00:42:17.780 I'm just also making sure that the show is still showing as they say, don't attribute malice when incompetence will do.

00:42:28.480 And in this case, it's actually not incompetence.

00:42:30.940 It's just, uh, working hard to save money.

00:42:36.200 Um, because if I can do all those things, then we don't need to hire somebody else.

00:42:41.060 Then we get to be more careful with the money of our donors and subscribers.

00:42:45.500 That's what I'm trying to do.

00:42:46.480 I'm doing for people's jobs.

00:42:48.960 Um, because we're not the CBC.

00:42:50.660 So anyway, I thought I would address that because I get that one once in a while.

00:42:55.260 And if you're a regular viewer, you know, I probably answer that same criticism once a year.

00:42:59.940 And 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.

00:43:17.420 Uh, Woohoo Wally writes, as a teacher, I'm glad we're back.

00:43:23.280 The deal is and was always fair.

00:43:27.440 The Alberta government is investing heavily in Alberta schools.

00:43:30.740 We got into the profession, I hope, for the kids, not the soapbox.

00:43:34.680 I don't own any red clothing.

00:43:36.240 Now, 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.

00:43:49.600 And I would love to believe that Woohoo Wally is the majority of the teachers out there.

00:43:56.740 I feel like that could be the majority of the teachers, at least at my, my daughter's school.

00:44:00.700 She's still in, um, high school.

00:44:03.180 My other ones are off being adults.

00:44:04.700 But I, I think, I think that's the majority.

00:44:09.100 It's the loud political ones and their union, the ATA, who drown out the voices of these teachers here.

00:44:22.200 Uh, Larry Notum 3232 says the rejection by teachers was political.

00:44:29.260 Now, I don't, I don't even want to say rejection by the teachers.

00:44:31.560 It was the ATA, the union, um, who, uh, who rejected the deal.

00:44:41.460 Um, 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.

00:44:59.280 It's wild.

00:45:03.680 F. H. L. Devils says the teachers union is a political activism body, not an actual for the workers union anymore.

00:45:13.080 I believe that wholeheartedly.

00:45:14.500 It 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.

00:45:27.080 Seniority.

00:45:28.320 Yeah.

00:45:28.840 Seniority is just, uh, the ability to not get fired in a year.

00:45:33.340 Um, now, do I think teachers should be independent contractors?

00:45:40.620 I 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.

00:45:49.740 I think the answer is right to work legislation.

00:45:53.500 If 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?

00:46:04.800 And you have to provide the negative right.

00:46:07.000 Um, and, uh, I think that's the answer.

00:46:10.600 And I know the unions hate that because when given a choice, people don't join.

00:46:18.200 They just don't.

00:46:20.940 And I think that's great.

00:46:24.600 Um, Williams one, two, three, seven, three says you two are awesome.

00:46:31.000 Keep up the good work that you do.

00:46:32.420 I think Chris is wonderful.

00:46:34.480 And I think we're lucky to have her fighting on behalf of Alberta taxpayers.

00:46:39.500 And 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.

00:46:53.440 Um, like when she says, you know, a billion dollars is a hospital.

00:46:59.340 And when you are spending a billion dollars on debt servicing charges, that's one hospital just poof.

00:47:04.840 You know, I think that's a great way to explain government spending in terms of hospitals or tanks of fuel or, uh, individual families.

00:47:16.060 And that's what she does because it is individual families who bear the burden of these things, whatever your family looks like.

00:47:23.600 Okay.

00:47:24.040 Well, everybody, that's the show for today.

00:47:25.380 Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:47:26.680 I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next weekend.

00:47:29.480 And as always, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

Rebel News Podcast - November 06, 2025

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Leah Gazan’s War on Free Speech： Her Second Attempt to Criminalize 'Denialism'

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