Based prof HUMILIATES CBC reporter, leaves her in tears over unmarked graves LIES
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Summary
In May of 2021, the CDC published a bombshell report. This is what the headline said: Remains of 215 children found buried at former BC residential school. That report was based on a press release put out by the Kamloops Indian Reserve.
Transcript
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Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. We have a great episode for you
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today, folks. We have Professor Frances Widowson joining us in just a few minutes. But first,
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I'm going to spend a bit of time providing some background, giving you a bit of a refresher
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on what has happened in Canada with the story of the unmarked graves and the legacy media
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hoax surrounding it. So we're going to go through a timeline. This episode is brought to you by
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Albertans against no-fault insurance. More on them later. So as you recall, back in May of 2021,
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the CDC published a bombshell report. This is what the headline said, remains of 215 children
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found buried at former BC residential school. That report was based on a press release that was put
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out by the Kamloops Indian Reserve. And let me tell you, the report was based on a preliminary finding.
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It wasn't a detailed report. It wasn't any hard evidence. It was just a claim that a report was
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forthcoming. Well, that didn't matter. The report went around the world. And the way that the media
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covered it globally was even more hysterical than the way the Canadian media reported it. So here you
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see the New York Times had this headline, horrible history, mass graves of Indigenous children reported
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in Canada. And so you can see how they went from unmarked graves to a mass grave. While the Canadian
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media quickly followed suit, the Toronto Star and others started calling them mass graves. Here is
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a report just three days later, May 31st, 2021, from the Toronto Star, mass grave of Indigenous children
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discovered at Kamloops, BC. We all remember how at the time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jumped on these
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allegations. He wanted to be in front of them. He wanted to be Mr. Compassionate. And so here he was
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photographed at one of the sites of another First Nations reserve, this one in Saskatchewan,
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that claimed to have found 751 unmarked graves, part of the same moral panic and story. And of course,
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Prime Minister was more than happy to do his photo op there. In reality, that one cemetery is worth
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pointing out in Saskatchewan. That was not part of the residential school. Even in the initial Globe
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and Mail report that was published on July 19, 2021, tucked away at the end of the report, it quotes a
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band leader who said that they knew about the cemetery, that everybody knew about the cemetery.
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It was a rural municipal cemetery. It had people that were Indigenous and non-Indigenous buried there,
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and it was known by the entire community. That doesn't matter. The media narrative had already
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taken off on its own. By the end of 2021, here is the Canadian press named the discovery of the
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unmarked graves as the story of the year. It certainly was the most impactful, the most important
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story of 2021. Part of the problem, folks, to be perfectly honest, is that there was no pushback,
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right? Even the Conservative Party of Canada was more than happy to go along with this. They even
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participated in a motion in the House of Commons saying that genocide was committed. Of course,
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no such thing happened. Us at True North and here at the Candace Malcolm Show, we didn't buy it from
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the very beginning. We were skeptical. We were asking questions. In fact, in 2021, the same year,
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the Candace Malcolm Show, we named it the biggest fake news narrative of the year. It landed at number
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one. And I also published this piece earlier in the year, back in July of 2021, the six things the
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media got wrong about the graves found near the residential schools. I should have written the
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alleged graves found near the residential schools. That became the most read article in the history
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of True North. It was later surpassed by Cosmic Church's reporting on the maps of the churches that
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have been burnt. We had a map of Canada and we kept track of all of the churches that have been
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vandalized or burnt down or victims of arson. I think the total number is over 125 now. And that has
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become the number one piece that we have reported. But still, we were part of the small handful of
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Canadians that were pushing back against this narrative. And look, folks, the truth has come
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out. The truth has come out. More and more Canadians know that this story is not based on facts. There have
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been no human remains found at these residential schools. In Kamloops, there hasn't been any kind of
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excavation at all. It's based on very sort of preliminary science and something called ground
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penetrating radar that suspects that there are anomalies. They don't even call them graves anymore.
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They call them anomalies. The few places where there have been excavations, no remains have found. And
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even the legacy media has been forced to admit that. So here is the CBC reporting in August of 2023,
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no evidence of human remains found beneath the church at Pine Creek residential school sites. That was
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another one of these sites that was claimed to have bodies been found. When they did the excavation,
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none were found. There are several other examples of places where there have been excavations in August
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2021. In Nova Scotia, they conducted an excavation at a former site of residential school. No bones were
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found. There's allegations of clandestine burials. Nothing was found. And then again, in Edmonton,
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in October of 2021, there was an excavation done at the Camsell Hospital. And once again,
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no human remains were found. And so that is where we are today. I'm very pleased that True North was
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part of an important book that was published. We published this book called Grave Error. It was
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published in December of 2023. It quickly became the number one bestselling book on Amazon in Canada,
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became a Canadian bestseller. And one of the authors is a collection of essays. It's edited
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by Dr. Champion and Tom Flanagan, a retired professor at the University of Calgary. One of
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the contributors to that book is Frances Widowson. She is a political scientist and a free speech
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activist. She was an associate professor at Mont Royal University from 2008 until she was dismissed
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in 2021. I'm very pleased to welcome her to the show today. Frances, thank you so much for doing the
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program. Thanks for having me on. Well, first, I want to say that you were dismissed from your role
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at the Mont Royal University, but then your dismissal was deemed to be disproportionate. So
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after an arbiter ruled that the university had acted disproportionately when they dismissed you. So
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why don't you tell us what is the latest with you and Mont Royal University in Calgary?
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Yes. So that decision came down last year. But unfortunately, the arbitrator decided that
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although I had been unjustly terminated, I could not be reinstated because of the friction that
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supposedly existed between me and a number of scholar activists at Mount Royal University who cannot
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tolerate their views being questioned. So my case is being appealed to the Alberta
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Labor Relations Board and that appeal is going to be heard in December of this year. So we'll find
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out whether hopefully the Alberta Labor Relations Board will seriously look at this case. The arbitrator's
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decision, in my view, was seriously flawed and the union agrees as well. So hopefully I will be
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reinstated very shortly to Mount Royal University and be back doing my research and classroom activities
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providing a much needed counterbalance to the advocacy that is going on at Mount Royal University around
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things like the unmarked graves and the false claims that were made about that.
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Well, I think the students at that university would be very lucky to have you back there. So let's talk a little
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bit about the book Graver. So we published it at the very end of 2023. We just felt like we needed to have
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a counter piece of evidence, right? There's so much misinformation floating around in the media and
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because of that there's a perception I think in the minds of too many Canadians that something horrible,
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something akin to genocide happened at schools across the country. We just wanted something to be able to
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point to point to and say, like, hear the other side of the story. Hear the side of the story that most Canadians
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believed up until about five years ago. And so you did a great service by providing that. Tell us a little bit about
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why you want to be involved in this project and then some of the reaction to the book from your perspective.
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So I wanted to be involved because I, from very early on and just like yourself, I was quite skeptical
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about the claim that was made in May 2021 because I had been studying the residential schools since,
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I guess, 2016 after the Truth and Reconciliation report came out. And I thought that the report was
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very unbalanced and advocacy oriented and needed to be critically analyzed. And then when this claim came
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out, we actually held an event on July 10th, 2021, with Brian Giesbrecht and Rodney Clifton,
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where we were raising the alarm about how this was premature, claiming that remains have been found.
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And Brian Giesbrecht, in fact, raised the issue of the cemeteries, the abandoned cemeteries, of which
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there are many. But it turns out that Kamloops is not an abandoned cemetery because it is the apple orchard.
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And there's actually a cemetery on the reserve itself where some children from the residential
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school are buried. And there are many unmarked graves, graves that are now unmarked in that cemetery
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because the markers have deteriorated. So I sensed that there were, there were some problems with these
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claims and I wanted them to be investigated. But it was a really, it was a huge battle trying to get
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pieces published to critique that claim. And this book was the first initiative, kind of written
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initiative, a compilation of the work of all the critics who had been working on this issue for a
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few years by the time that that book came out. Well, it's interesting, Frances, because at the time
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when this happened, I was still writing in the Toronto Sun. I wrote for the Toronto Sun for about eight years,
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finishing at the end of 2021. And so initially I was writing columns on these stories and I had no
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pushback whatsoever from my editor. They actually liked it because it was an interesting other side
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of the story. Even though I will tell you in my personal life, friends, even professional colleagues,
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even people at True North were opposed to what I was doing. Like I had a member of our board quit.
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I had an editor quit and rage over this stuff. Like they, they really didn't like, didn't like this
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because it was so sensitive at the time, right? Everybody was so careful and worried and they
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didn't want to be seen as sensitive. And even conservatives said, well, you know, we didn't
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like the idea of the residential schools because it's a big government program, et cetera, et cetera.
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By the end of 2021, the Toronto Sun told me that I was no longer welcome to publish pieces. They
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didn't tell me why. But this was the kind of thing that I was writing a lot. And like I said, I said that
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it was the biggest hoax of 2021. So connecting those lines, I think that it was part of the reason.
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And you're right. There was almost no coverage of this in the legacy media, despite so many
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voices and so many people just asking really basic questions, not even making any claims,
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just asking questions about like, you know, what, what the accusations were and, and asking for more
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facts. Now I want to move this along. So in March of 2024, so some three months after this book was
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published, um, basically the, there was a controversy at the Quesnel city council, um,
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because this book, uh, was distributed to members of the city council by the wife of the mayor.
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And so the Quesnel city council voted unanimously to denounce this book, um, saying that it downplayed
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the harms of the residential schools and first nations and counselors raised concerns that the
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mayor's wife had been distributing it. And so at that point you were invited or you decided to travel
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to Quesnel to speak at a city council meeting. And, um, I have a clip from the, um, from the city council
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meeting, uh, where you were basically, um, told that you were not welcome there. Let's, uh, let's play that clip.
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Does the council concern itself with misinformation? Is it opposed to misinformation being spread
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and entered into the record? If so, does it agree that this is misinformation because there is no
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evidence of, uh, unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian residential school?
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Her opinion in this, in this chambers does not count. She's asking us to comment on something that comes
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from qualified individuals that dealt with this, that lived through this. Ma'am, you are not welcome
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here. So, I mean, what a scene, right? Hundreds of people showing up, heckling you, booing you,
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and you just stating the facts, uh, being very calm and measured, um, and sort of a hysterical reaction
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to you. So, uh, walk us through what happened, what brought you to Quesnel and some background to that.
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Yeah. So Pat Morton, as soon as I heard that Pat Morton was under fire,
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for just sharing the book with a friend and, uh, sending a copy to the school board saying that
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they might consider having it in their library. She got, her husband, the mayor, uh, got, uh,
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attacked. He was being attacked because of her, what she had done. Unfortunately, he sort of allowed
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himself to be, you know, drawn into this discussion when he should have just said, look,
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my wife is not a public figure. She's allowed to share books with whoever she wants. Anyway, um,
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things started to get really nasty in Quesnel. And for example, her son has a tax business and the band
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was, you know, withdrew its business and there was, you know, it's a very small community, so it was
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not pleasant. And she heard there was going to be this terrible protest that was going to be happening. So
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she asked if any, you know, person who was a contributor to grave error could come. And because
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I was in Calgary, I was, I was sort of the person to like, I, I volunteered to do it and drive to
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Quesnel. And, uh, when I arrived there and was in the, uh, the gallery, we were supposed to be given,
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um, some time about a, I'm not sure what the time limit, I heard that we were going to be given,
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everyone was going to be given a certain amount of time to make a statement,
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but I thought that that was going to be unlikely. So I knew according to the rules,
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you could pose a question, uh, from the gallery. So I had both, both things planned.
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And then when I went up there, uh, they allowed the, the Aboriginal,
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you know, representatives to talk for, you know, minutes on end about things completely
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unrelated to the agenda. And then they strictly controlled what Pat Morton and I could say.
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And then, but I had my question, the most important question, which was in this document
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from the British Columbia assembly of first nations, they had the false claim that remains of
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or graves of 215 children have been found. And so I was asking a question specifically on that.
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And I was booed and treated absolutely horribly by these two counselors, Scott Elliott and another,
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uh, counselor's name is Laurie Ann Rudenberg. They were unbelievable in their totalitarianism.
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And that whole meeting was a circus and it is, and Pat Morton was treated, she was treated worse
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than me. So the whole thing was just an embarrassment, uh, for that city council. And there's a number of
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city councils who have similar problems, Powell River city council, and also Sechelt city council. So
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it's a very dysfunctional situation in terms of the, you know, Aboriginal groups being able to control
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what happens in city councils now. Well, we're going to get to the documentary that you published,
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I think it was last month, where you do an excellent job sort of outlining the sort of post-truth
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world that we live in, where people don't even care about the truth. And you can say like,
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hey, you said that this book is racist. Can you give me an example of how it's racist? And they'll
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basically accuse you of being racist for just even asking that question and saying that they don't need to
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to have any evidence whatsoever. I want to talk about your interview with the CBC and with their
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young reporter out there named Dorden Tucker, which they thankfully you recorded your own side of it
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because this was an absolute train wreck and so embarrassing on behalf of the CBC. So this is all
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in the context of you going up to Quenelle, maybe, uh, before I start playing some clips, can you sort of
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walk us through how this interview came to be? Did she just sort of reach out to you out of the blue
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or had you been communicating with her in the past? Let me just give us a bit of background.
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Yes. So I never heard of her. I'd never interacted with her. She had obviously heard that I was coming
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to Quenelle and, you know, wanted to, you know, find out if there were nefarious, uh, things at work.
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And, and so she set up an interview with me and I think this was, uh, the day before or a couple,
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two days before I went to Quenelle. And then we had, she, we set up a zoom call. This, this was on
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zoom. Uh, I wish I had a screen, you know, and I now know how to screen record. I wish I'd had a screen
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recording of that, but I just had audio on it. And I was, I was, I, I've never had an interview like
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that before. I I've had bad interviews, but usually the interviews are quite professional.
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It's in the actual piece that is produced afterwards where the problem arises. But this
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interview right from the start, she was making all these accusations and that what, that's what got me
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in such a confrontational kind of position is because I was being asked all these questions
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about who was paying for my trip and whether I was financially benefiting from it. You know, when,
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you know, I was taking a great deal of time out of my own schedule. Uh, I was getting, you know,
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probably going to get some expenses paid, but I wasn't making any money off of it. I was doing it
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purely to ensure that the city council was held to account for the, the libelous things that they
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were saying about, um, you know, the contributors of the book, Grave Error. Okay. We've got a bunch
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of clips that we are going to play just in a moment, folks. I want to take a second though,
00:18:27.380
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All right, Francis, I want to play, let's go with the first, uh, clip that we have here,
00:19:18.820
which is alluding to what you were saying, where the interviewer, Jordan Tucker, a CBC reporter,
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is pressing you on who's covering your travel funds. And then I've spliced it together with
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a clip later on where you talk about how she's wondering, you know, why would people invent or
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embellish these claims? And you said, well, the government has given them $7 million. So that's
00:19:38.260
pretty good incentive. $7 million is pretty good incentive to exaggerate your story. And she kind
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of like shrugs it off like, oh, who cares about $7 million? Um, so let's play that clip, please.
00:19:47.860
Are you being, are your travel expenses being paid by anyone? Um, or are you paying them yourself?
00:19:55.380
We'll see what, what washes out of the whole thing. What do you mean by that?
00:20:00.500
It depends on how much the expenses are, but I don't really see why I have to, uh, justify my,
00:20:08.020
my travel to Quesnel, uh, to people. Uh, I'm coming. Well, if you were invited.
00:20:13.140
I was invited. Yes. And you won't tell me by who, and I'm wondering, are you selling books?
00:20:18.500
What's your motivation to go? Um, first of all, I received no money whatsoever for the books.
00:20:25.140
Don't you think that it's quite like a lot, a lot of trouble to go to, to say that 215 children
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died in order to get $7 million? There's a lot of other ways to get $7 million.
00:20:38.500
I just, I, you, you could have made this up, right? First, you could sense in her voice,
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just how insecure she is, how whiny, she just seems really upset. She doesn't
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want to have to justify anything she's doing. Um, and, and, and she's really concerned over,
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I don't know, I don't know what gas money from Calgary to Quesnel is, maybe a few hundred dollars.
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And then like in the same breath, she's like, oh, seven, there's a lot of ways to get $7 million.
00:21:02.500
Um, just totally unbelievable. I want to play one more clip for you here.
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Um, this is unbelievable. This, this goes to show folks how ill-informed some members of the press
00:21:11.940
are and sadly how many Canadians are. So, so the, the reporter again, you know, you would think that
00:21:17.140
she would come to an interview prepared with facts, with research, probably having read the book,
00:21:23.380
or at least the chapter that you could review. You know, you, you just wrote one, one chapter of
00:21:27.060
the book. I think it's like 20, 25 pages. I get that it's not the easiest book to read,
00:21:31.060
um, but you can get it at libraries across Canada. You could go and pick this book up,
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read it for free. Uh, just, just even read Francis's, um, uh, one essay in there. You could
00:21:40.420
tell she didn't do that. And in the interview, she claims, she claims as fact that 6,000 bodies
00:21:47.540
have been found, 6,000 bodies. And you asked her, her source, and she said the Truth and Reconciliation
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Commission report, which is a written report that came out in 2015. It doesn't even make any sense.
00:21:58.020
These claims of unmarked graves didn't come out until 2021. You just get a snapshot of just how
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ignorant these people are. Let's play that clip, please. Because there's, there's been over 6,000
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bodies found at this point. Um, are all of those? What, what bodies, what bodies have been found?
00:22:17.540
I, I'm going with information from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and then various other
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government bodies. No, no, but you said 6,000 bodies have been found.
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That's the current, that's the current number. Yeah, that's all.
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And you say the Truth and Reconciliation Commission says that 6,000 bodies have been found?
00:22:38.740
Can I complete my questions, please? I'm just, you're the one who made that claim.
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And as a journalist, you should be concerned about the accuracy of your claims.
00:22:49.700
Unbelievable. Um, so I guess just, uh, what was it, what was it like to be met with a CBC reporter like that?
00:22:56.180
I, I was, I was amazed. I, I've never seen a level of incompetence and, and, you know, she's not a,
00:23:01.780
uh, you know, uh, the, uh, head of the broadcasting department or anything. She's obviously sort of
00:23:08.100
freelance and so on, but still the CBC used to be, uh, in, you know, an important media institution
00:23:15.540
that would have had some oversight and be training its, the people that work for it to do
00:23:21.300
proper journalism. And that's obviously not happening at all anymore.
00:23:25.940
Well, absolutely. And so I'll just play one more clip from this, uh, interview. And folks,
00:23:30.260
if you want to watch the whole thing, it's well worth your time. Frances has put it up on her
00:23:33.220
YouTube page. We'll link that in the description so you can go, uh, you'll either be like wildly
00:23:37.780
entertained or just like sorely depressed at the state of the, the thinking, um, behind the journalists
00:23:44.500
in this country. Um, but here is how the interview ends, which is, uh, Frances rightly calling this
00:23:50.820
journalist out and, uh, discrediting her credibility. Uh, let's play that clip.
00:23:55.060
Uh, I think you really need to read that book because you do not have an understanding at all.
00:24:03.300
Well, you are a seriously incompetent journalist and this is what the CBC has sunk to these days.
00:24:12.900
I don't think that you accusing me or shouting at me is very helpful to your case.
00:24:18.580
Well, I don't really think I'm shouting at you. I'm just telling you for someone who is here
00:24:24.420
doing an interview on this case. Ma'am, please stop. Please stop. That's enough.
00:24:29.620
This interview is now over. Thank you for your time.
00:24:33.780
I mean, just not to, not to be too cruel to this young lady, but she was so unprepared for the
00:24:39.540
interview and any time you called her on her BS or called her out for pushing total lies, she would
00:24:46.180
just sort of like break character and be like, I don't need this from you or like stop shouting at me or
00:24:52.020
stop interrupting me. And it's like, this is how you have a debate, right? It's like you're making
00:24:56.900
claims that are false. So the person you're interviewing is calling you out on that. And
00:25:01.620
rather than trying to back it up, she's just sort of gets upset and pouts and has a temper tantrum.
00:25:08.420
Okay, Francis, I want to show the audience what the CBC published, because this is just classic CBC
00:25:14.660
deception, right? They she records this long interview with you, where she stumbles through
00:25:19.060
the facts, she can't get her questions out. And then she gets upset. I think she was in tears,
00:25:24.420
and she ended the interview. And yet, to the CBC audience, this is I believe it was a radio segment,
00:25:30.020
because we just had the soundbite of it. But this is how they presented it to the public. Let's play
00:25:35.220
that a soft five. After indigenous leaders called it harmful and painful. As Jordan Tucker tells us,
00:25:41.620
the author won't say who invited her, or if she's being paid for travel costs. There's terrible
00:25:47.220
censoriousness. Francis Widdowson co wrote a book casting doubt on the harmfulness of Canada's
00:25:52.820
residential schools. A former professor, she was fired from Calgary's Mount Royal University three
00:25:58.420
years ago following her comments on the residential school system and the Black Lives Matter movement.
00:26:03.700
The book features articles contesting evidence of unmarked graves at sites across the country.
00:26:08.660
As occurred in the case of the satanic panic, they are people who are distressed,
00:26:14.980
who have their memories influenced by these sorts of things.
00:26:17.700
Unbelievable, Francis. This is why it's so important, folks. Anytime you're being recorded by,
00:26:25.300
interviewed by a CBC or any journalist, record it yourself. Have your own copy of it so that you can
00:26:29.940
bring the receipts and show the world the real interview. But what did you, what did you make of
00:26:34.820
all that? Yes, and the most serious thing, and I think it's very valuable for people to look at that
00:26:41.940
interview because it shows the thought process of not just this particular journalist, but people who
00:26:49.380
believe this claim. And it was about her arguing that the 215 bodies have been found. We got into a
00:26:56.900
big skirmish about this. And she said that, you know, why would, you know, all these smart people in
00:27:02.500
the government, why would they believe this if it weren't true? Like, this is a journalist. A journalist is
00:27:08.340
supposed to be, you know, holding leaders to account and so on. But she has been completely credulous
00:27:14.580
in her, you know, in her interaction with leaders, you know, politicians, Aboriginal leaders, and so on.
00:27:23.140
So I think it's a very valuable thing to look at just from the thought processes that are going on
00:27:30.260
about this case. Well, in your chapter in Grave Error, you do talk about the moral panic of the 1980s with
00:27:38.100
the satanic daycare scandal, which I didn't know that much about. I learned it from your book.
00:27:42.340
But it seemed like in the interview, she was kind of drawing you down a bit of a rabbit hole.
00:27:46.020
And then she took that one little clip and kind of played it out of context to make it seem like you
00:27:50.820
were talking about satanic rituals or something like that. Like it was, it was just classic bait and
00:27:55.380
switch, like deceptive journalism. And I'm glad that you again posted it so that Canadians can see,
00:28:02.580
OK, Frances, I want to move on to this excellent documentary that you have released. And I don't
00:28:09.300
know when it was published, but I watched it a few days ago and it really is worth your time. It's
00:28:13.860
called What Remains Exposing the Kamloops Massgrave Deception's Impact on Powell River. So can you tell
00:28:20.180
us about why you chose to do a documentary on Powell River, right? Like, I think that a lot of people are
00:28:26.180
focusing on what's happened in Kamloops and that Indian Reservation. Talk to us about what's
00:28:34.020
Yeah. So this documentary is actually the initial one in a series that Simon Hare got, who is a
00:28:41.060
videographer and journalist. He was a journalist who worked for Global News for 10 years and was fired
00:28:46.900
because of his opposition to the media outlets coverage of a number of issues. He's an incredible
00:28:53.700
talent and he was the one who did most of the work on this documentary. I was involved in sort of
00:29:00.820
with some of the background information that I had and obviously was featured in it. But anyway,
00:29:06.820
we're planning on doing another more in-depth kinds of examinations in the Kamloops case itself
00:29:15.300
and the massive institutional failure that has happened in the media, in the school board,
00:29:22.500
the universities and all these institutions which really explain why this deception has taken root.
00:29:30.020
But what people don't understand is that although this happened in Kamloops, this claim that was made
00:29:36.580
in May 2021 has had far-reaching consequences and one of the consequences was in the town of Powell River
00:29:47.380
where this claim was used by the chief of the local Indian band to demand, to make the demand that the
00:29:55.300
town's name should be changed. And it turns out, and another reason was that the town was supposedly
00:30:02.660
named after Israel Wood Powell, who was the superintendent. It was a head official in the Department of Indian
00:30:08.740
Affairs. It turns out that the town was not even named after Israel Wood Powell. It was named after Edward Powell,
00:30:15.060
who was a cartographer who had mapped the area. So both of the claims behind why this town's name
00:30:22.980
should be changed were not correct, yet they're still continuing to press for this. And this has
00:30:28.500
completely ripped apart this community. And this is the kind of thing that these so-called truth and
00:30:35.300
reconciliation efforts do is that they have nothing to do with truth. It is about fomenting these falsehoods
00:30:42.980
so that grievances can be stirred up. And then, of course, it results in all these fights between
00:30:50.580
people which then benefit all the legal disputes that are going to emerge out of all these interactions.
00:30:58.740
And one of the biggest things that's happened that has also impacted Powell River is the Kamloops claim
00:31:04.260
was used to push through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
00:31:10.100
into federal legislation. There was opposition from both the Conservative Party and six provinces.
00:31:16.340
And when that claim was made, everyone just was saying, well, what can we do to right this wrong?
00:31:22.820
And that allowed that legislation to be pushed through. So now we've got to deal with a whole bunch of
00:31:28.820
implications of what it means to have this kind of internationalist notion undermine Canadian sovereignty
00:31:37.780
and all the disputes, all the legal disputes that are going to result from that. So we went into Powell River,
00:31:44.100
Simon Hergott and me, and did a lot of footage of the various kinds of problems that existed in Powell River.
00:31:51.700
And it was quite a fascinating case study, which showed a lot of the, you know, flawed thought
00:31:57.620
processes that are occurring with respect to the Kamloops case.
00:32:00.820
Well, you do an excellent job. The documentary does an excellent job debunking some of the
00:32:05.380
prevalences, exposing the sort of industry around First Nations, like the consultants and sometimes
00:32:11.060
even the academic professors. You debunked a New York Times documentary or clip segment pretending to
00:32:18.820
show that they had found babies buried. And you had a geophysicist who said, there's no way,
00:32:23.620
you know, these, these images of the guys showing on the screen are maybe 10 to 12 centimeters.
00:32:29.140
Those aren't remains of humans. Those are probably boulders or animal burrows. There's another part where
00:32:35.220
a protester shows up to, to protest you, you confront her. We're going to play this clip of you just
00:32:42.020
trying to engage with a protestor and just showing how totally unprepared and unwilling
00:32:47.460
these people are to debate their ideas. Let's play Saud 8, please.
00:32:50.580
Could you explain to me your position? No. Are you not interested in what my arguments are?
00:32:58.900
I know what they are. Okay. Okay. So, so what, what are my arguments?
00:33:06.100
I don't need to speak your work back to you. I'm not in a lecture. I'm not your student. I won't be
00:33:12.420
summarizing your work for you. No, but do you want to be accurate in your,
00:33:16.100
the way you're portraying my work? Do you think that being accurate? You think your work isn't racist.
00:33:22.420
Um, but you think it is? Yes. So why do you think it's racist? It fully is racist. But, but what,
00:33:30.180
if you're going to say that my work is racist, don't you think that you have a responsibility to
00:33:35.860
say why you think it's racist? Not to you. So, you know, I, it, it, it, it would be funny again,
00:33:43.220
if it weren't so depressing, the state of our country and how these people are totally unwilling.
00:33:48.020
Like I was even looking, Francis, I was looking before this episode to see if anyone had written
00:33:51.860
a thoughtful rebuke or like criticism of grave error to see if, if anyone had kind of gone through it
00:33:58.580
and tried to debunk it. And from the best I could tell, there hasn't been any effort to do anything
00:34:03.220
like that. Um, there's another, uh, part in your video that just sort of shows, it's almost like a
00:34:08.260
nihilism, right? It's like people don't care about what the truth is. They, they just care that
00:34:13.620
someone's truth. It's like, we have to respect their truth. Um, and it, it, it does sort of show,
00:34:19.140
um, a sad state of affairs in British Columbia. Any, any final thoughts? And where can people,
00:34:23.780
uh, find the documentary? Yes. So it's on YouTube. Uh, the, the documentary,
00:34:30.020
uh, you can just, uh, it's Francis Whittleson 1600. Um, and we are now fundraising to try to
00:34:37.780
produce a whole bunch of other related documentaries on the institutional failure
00:34:43.460
that has surrounded the Kamloops case, um, especially in the universities and in the media,
00:34:49.140
but also institutions like the RCMP and the school board and the coroner's office,
00:34:57.220
just endless institutions that if they had been operating properly,
00:35:02.260
they would have been able to sound the alarm and, you know, created a bit of caution
00:35:07.300
about people making these outlandish claims. And it just doesn't stop because now we have the
00:35:13.220
Cooper Island residential school case, which is just as crazy. And everyone, all the journalists
00:35:19.940
are just covering this in the exact same way, which is just completely lacking in any kind of skepticism
00:35:26.660
and any kind of critical questioning of the claims that, uh, Aboriginal leaders and their
00:35:32.660
lawyers and their consultants are making with respect to these unmarked, unmarked graves.
00:35:38.100
Well, I definitely encourage everyone to go out and watch the documentary and support Francis's
00:35:41.780
work, allow her to do more of these important documentaries to help get the truth out there.
00:35:46.500
Francis, thank you so much for your time and keep up the great work.
00:35:50.820
All right, folks, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm
00:35:53.940
Candice Malcolm. This is the Candice Malcolm Show. Thank you and God bless.