The Candice Malcolm Show - Churches burned on Canada Day long weekend, and the media is partially to blame

00:00:00.080 Churches burned on Canada day-long weekend, and the media is partially to blame.

00:00:04.560 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:11.760 We're witnessing a moral panic in this country over revelations of the alleged discovery of graves

00:00:17.340 at former residential schools across Western Canada.

00:00:20.420 This panic came to a breaking point over the weekend when prominent statues were knocked down

00:00:25.840 and at least 25 churches in Western Canada were either vandalized or completely burnt down.

00:00:32.520 To make the matters worse, several prominent commentators, including politicians, journalists, professors, lawyers, and activists,

00:00:39.940 excused the behavior of the mob.

00:00:42.040 They explained away and justified these riots, and in some cases, they even cheered them on.

00:00:47.520 Burn it all down, said the head of the BC Civil Liberties Association,

00:00:51.240 once the country's strongest voice for protecting the rule of law and civil liberties.

00:00:56.940 Likewise, the chair of the Newfoundland Canadian Bar Association branch said,

00:01:01.400 burn it all down.

00:01:02.780 Or how about this, from a radio host in St. John, New Brunswick.

00:01:06.740 Burn the churches down.

00:01:08.600 Arrest any staff that were actually there and any current staff that won't provide documentation.

00:01:14.040 Sell everything they own in Canada and give it to survivors. 0.97

00:01:18.100 Dismantle it completely.

00:01:19.220 And finally, not to be outdone, NDP MP Nikki Ashton cheered on the mob who toppled down statues

00:01:26.960 at the Manitoba legislature, calling it decolonization and saying,

00:01:32.060 no pride in genocide.

00:01:33.820 This kind of reckless language would be universally condemned if, say,

00:01:38.140 it were right-wing commentators talking about, well, anything.

00:01:41.740 It probably would be considered hate speech.

00:01:44.180 These accounts would be banned from social media platforms,

00:01:46.360 and the individuals behind them would probably have police officers knocking at their doors.

00:01:51.520 Likewise, it doesn't even need to be said, but if instead of churches,

00:01:55.100 these were synagogues, mosques, Sikh temples, or any other sacred space,

00:01:59.800 it goes without saying that every politician in this country would be urgently condemning it.

00:02:05.060 There would be candlelit vigils across the country,

00:02:07.040 and the RCMP would have launched a nationwide manhunt for those responsible.

00:02:12.140 It would be the top ongoing story in the country.

00:02:15.700 Instead, there's this sort of feeling that the church burnings are somehow justified,

00:02:19.580 that this violence is only to be expected,

00:02:21.940 and that this is all somehow a legitimate reckoning for our historical and collective sins.

00:02:26.900 So, how did we get here?

00:02:29.220 How did we get to this point of extreme tension, anger, and violence in our country?

00:02:34.120 Well, it's been six weeks now since the allegation was first made

00:02:37.660 by the chief of the Tekemloops Band in Kamloops, British Columbia,

00:02:41.140 who claimed to have discovered 215 unmarked graves

00:02:44.340 belonging to children who attended the residential school there.

00:02:47.900 Since that time, two other bands have come forward with similar allegations,

00:02:51.620 751 graves found in Cowessess, Saskatchewan,

00:02:56.240 and another 182 in Lower Kootenay, B.C.

00:03:00.060 Over these past six weeks, the story has evolved.

00:03:03.300 New facts have been uncovered,

00:03:04.880 and we've gotten a clearer picture of what exactly happened in these communities

00:03:07.980 and what exactly was uncovered.

00:03:10.860 But regardless of these new facts,

00:03:13.320 the media has allowed the narrative to get away from the truth.

00:03:17.300 Sensational headlines exaggerating the story

00:03:19.560 led some to truly believe that these graves were evidence of mass murder,

00:03:24.720 death camps, genocide, and of a legitimate holocaust in Canada. 0.64

00:03:29.200 So, let's take some time today to look at those facts

00:03:32.420 and to dissect the many ways that the media has gotten the story so wrong,

00:03:37.200 which has led us to this place.

00:03:39.720 Okay, first things first.

00:03:41.060 It's important to note that the story at this point is merely an allegation.

00:03:45.360 Nothing has been proven.

00:03:46.220 In fact, no evidence has been put forth for public consideration.

00:03:50.980 No reports have been released.

00:03:52.940 Every news story thus far has merely been based off of the claims

00:03:56.660 made by band leaders from these three bands.

00:03:59.820 This may be a minor point, but it's still an important distinction.

00:04:03.100 The typical standard in the media would be to clarify

00:04:06.100 that these allegations have not yet been proven.

00:04:08.900 Second point.

00:04:10.100 There has been incredible confusion over what exactly was discovered here.

00:04:13.760 My friend J.J. McCullough has made the same point on Twitter,

00:04:17.060 showing all the various ways that the media have described this discovery.

00:04:21.600 Let me just read a few.

00:04:22.720 So, according to NPR, they said that the remains of 215 children

00:04:26.520 have been found in a mass grave.

00:04:29.020 CTV wrote that the 215 children were recently uncovered.

00:04:34.040 Canadian Press said that the unmarked burial site

00:04:37.440 believed to contain the remains of 215 children.

00:04:40.620 CBC said that the remains of 215 children could be buried at the site.

00:04:47.000 Global News said that the remains of 215 children

00:04:50.320 were discovered in an unmarked burial.

00:04:52.940 And another story in the CBC said that the band announced

00:04:55.620 the search had confirmed the presence of the remains of 215 children.

00:05:00.720 So you can see the variation here.

00:05:02.740 The First Nations band leader said that they used ground-penetrating radar.

00:05:06.280 So there was no excavation, nothing was on earth, nothing was uncovered,

00:05:11.120 there were no bodies found, and no identities confirmed.

00:05:14.720 So let me refer back to a National Post story

00:05:17.060 that I've talked about before on the show,

00:05:18.800 and it explains what ground-penetrating radar actually does.

00:05:23.140 So for this report, they interviewed a professor of anthropology

00:05:26.520 who is also the director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology.

00:05:31.540 She said this of ground-penetrating radar,

00:05:34.440 quote,

00:05:34.740 It doesn't actually see the bodies.

00:05:37.160 It's not like an x-ray.

00:05:38.660 What it actually does is look for the shaft.

00:05:41.080 When a grave is dug, there is a grave shaft dug,

00:05:43.600 and the body is placed in the grave,

00:05:45.280 sometimes in a coffin, as in the Christian burial context.

00:05:49.120 What the ground-penetrating radar can see

00:05:51.020 is where that pit itself was dug,

00:05:53.960 because the soil actually changes when you dig a grave.

00:05:56.920 And occasionally, if it is a coffin,

00:05:59.100 the radar can pick up the coffin sometimes as well, unquote.

00:06:02.440 So this technology is not completely accurate,

00:06:06.100 and it doesn't tell us anything about who is buried.

00:06:09.380 So this brings me to my third point

00:06:10.780 about what the media has been getting wrong,

00:06:12.740 and that is whose graves were actually discovered.

00:06:15.800 The first band in Kamloops claimed that the graves

00:06:18.380 belonged to children at the former residential school.

00:06:21.960 So when the second two bands came forth with their claims,

00:06:25.260 many in the media just sort of conflated all the information

00:06:28.160 and said that these graves, too,

00:06:30.420 were from children at residential school.

00:06:33.020 But that's not what the claim is.

00:06:34.680 In fact, in both the cases of the Cowessess 0.94

00:06:37.120 and the Lower Kootenay,

00:06:38.700 the graves were believed to be community cemeteries

00:06:41.700 belonging to both First Nations

00:06:43.760 and the broader Canadian community.

00:06:46.060 So this is tucked away at the very end of a report

00:06:48.180 in the Globe and Mail

00:06:49.060 on the findings of that Cowessess reserve in Saskatchewan.

00:06:52.660 It says this,

00:06:53.540 It appears that not all the graves contain children's body,

00:06:57.260 Lorette said.

00:06:57.820 Lorette is one of the band leaders.

00:07:00.180 He said the area was also used as a burial site

00:07:03.080 by the rural municipality.

00:07:05.320 We did have a family of non-Indigenous people show up today

00:07:07.960 and notified us that some of those unmarked graves

00:07:10.700 had their families in them,

00:07:12.200 their loved ones, he said.

00:07:14.080 So what we have here is an abandoned community cemetery

00:07:17.260 where people of different backgrounds were buried.

00:07:20.320 So that's quite the leap from the original storyline,

00:07:22.620 which were that these graves all belong to children

00:07:25.280 who died at the residential school.

00:07:27.740 And this brings me to my next point.

00:07:29.740 Fourth, these are not mass graves.

00:07:32.260 So we saw this right off the bat.

00:07:34.240 Several media outlets, both in Canada

00:07:36.020 and international outlets like BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN,

00:07:40.040 New York Times, and Washington Post,

00:07:41.980 all erroneously labeled these findings as mass graves.

00:07:45.960 This is incredibly irresponsible.

00:07:48.200 The chiefs themselves explicitly stated

00:07:50.420 that these are not mass graves.

00:07:52.620 This is not a mass grave site.

00:07:56.640 These are unmarked graves.

00:07:59.520 So why is this important?

00:08:01.440 Well, mass graves are a hallmark of genocide.

00:08:04.160 They conjure images of pure evil,

00:08:06.140 the kind of evil that characterized

00:08:07.640 the collective governments of the 20th century,

00:08:10.220 governments like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

00:08:14.320 These were truly evil leaders who used mass graves

00:08:17.720 to cover their atrocities and crimes against humanity.

00:08:21.360 These leaders carried out mass murder,

00:08:23.300 and the mass graves went hand in hand.

00:08:25.940 So using this term, mass graves, is wrong,

00:08:29.480 and it's also reckless,

00:08:30.340 because it conflates Canada's policy,

00:08:33.220 which was forced assimilation

00:08:34.700 through mandatory universal education.

00:08:37.400 It conflates that with actual Nazi death camps.

00:08:41.220 Now, we should be clear, Canada's policy was wrong.

00:08:44.380 It was misguided, and in too many cases,

00:08:46.780 those who were responsible for caring for children

00:08:49.280 in this country let them down,

00:08:50.840 and they let the whole country down.

00:08:52.780 But that doesn't put Canada's residential schools

00:08:55.380 on any sort of equivalence with Auschwitz

00:08:58.160 and actual Nazi concentration camps.

00:09:01.480 And that brings me to my fifth point,

00:09:02.820 which is also connected, which is the cause of death.

00:09:05.100 So many of the children who died at these schools

00:09:06.880 died of natural causes.

00:09:08.300 According to the Truth and Reconciliation Report in 2015,

00:09:11.740 the number one cause of death for children

00:09:13.660 at these schools was tuberculosis.

00:09:15.760 The number two cause of death was influenza.

00:09:18.800 Now, you can argue that these children

00:09:20.120 didn't receive proper healthcare,

00:09:21.760 and that some of their immune systems

00:09:23.280 simply couldn't handle living in close proximity

00:09:25.340 to other children.

00:09:26.180 But negligence resulting in accidental death

00:09:29.280 is very different from firing squads and gas chambers.

00:09:33.540 And yet, there was this weird universal assumption

00:09:36.100 in the media that the discovery of these graves

00:09:38.780 was somehow evidence of Canada's Holocaust, 0.51

00:09:41.860 and that these children had been deliberately killed

00:09:44.300 in some kind of a genocide.

00:09:46.820 Look, genocide requires intent.

00:09:49.640 It requires a concerted and systematic effort

00:09:52.100 to conduct mass murder

00:09:53.420 and eliminate an entire race of people.

00:09:56.180 Canada's residential schools, however misguided,

00:09:59.120 had the intent of educating children,

00:10:01.040 of assimilating them into the broader Canadian population,

00:10:03.900 and ultimately, of lifting children out of poverty.

00:10:06.800 The policy was wrong, clearly.

00:10:08.640 It was flawed, and it resulted in much harm.

00:10:11.480 But there are a few orders of magnitude

00:10:13.460 that separate the misguided intent

00:10:15.620 of Catholic priests, nuns,

00:10:17.860 and Canadian government officials

00:10:19.800 versus those of Nazi soldiers

00:10:22.080 in the Second World War.

00:10:23.260 Next, the sixth point where the media

00:10:25.820 gets this story completely wrong.

00:10:28.340 It's possible that the graves that we're talking about

00:10:30.820 are not even necessarily unmarked graves.

00:10:34.260 Did you see this story in global news over the weekend?

00:10:37.540 The headline reads,

00:10:38.800 We knew it was there.

00:10:39.960 Former BC chief says unmarked graves

00:10:42.220 near Cranbrook need more context.

00:10:44.360 And I'm going to read this story

00:10:47.220 almost in its entirety

00:10:48.700 because it's so remarkable.

00:10:51.040 So it says,

00:10:51.980 The detection of human remains

00:10:53.960 in unmarked graves

00:10:55.060 at the site of a former residential school in BC

00:10:57.240 was not an unexpected discovery,

00:10:59.820 according to the area's former chief.

00:11:02.440 On Wednesday, it was confirmed

00:11:03.580 that ground-penetrating radar

00:11:04.800 found 182 unmarked graves

00:11:06.960 in a cemetery

00:11:07.600 at the site of the former

00:11:09.300 Kootenay Residential School

00:11:10.540 at St. Eugene Mission,

00:11:12.320 just outside Cranbrook, British Columbia.

00:11:14.600 The remains were found

00:11:15.820 when remedial work

00:11:17.000 was being performed in the area

00:11:18.920 to replace the fence

00:11:20.040 at the cemetery last year.

00:11:22.520 Sophie Pierre,

00:11:23.440 former chief of the St. Mary's Indian Band

00:11:25.480 and survivor of the school itself,

00:11:27.740 notice how they use the term survivor.

00:11:29.480 Again, this is supposed to

00:11:30.820 conjure images of Holocaust survivors

00:11:33.060 and they just, you know,

00:11:34.100 also use it here

00:11:34.900 to describe people who went to a school.

00:11:37.120 But it says,

00:11:37.960 A survivor of the school

00:11:39.020 told Global News

00:11:39.940 that while the news

00:11:41.040 of the unmarked graves

00:11:42.140 had a painful impact

00:11:43.520 on her and surrounding communities,

00:11:45.240 they had always known

00:11:46.640 the graves were there.

00:11:48.400 There's no discovery.

00:11:49.240 We knew it was there.

00:11:50.800 It's a graveyard,

00:11:51.840 Pierre said.

00:11:52.900 The fact that there are graves

00:11:54.200 inside a graveyard

00:11:55.220 shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

00:11:58.180 According to Pierre,

00:11:59.600 wooden crosses

00:12:00.260 that originally marked

00:12:01.340 the grave sites

00:12:01.980 had been burned

00:12:02.880 or deteriorated over the years.

00:12:05.060 Using a wooden marker

00:12:06.220 at a grave site

00:12:07.480 remains a practice

00:12:08.460 that continues to this day

00:12:10.120 in many Indigenous communities

00:12:11.540 across Canada.

00:12:12.900 So when we're talking

00:12:14.160 about these so-called

00:12:15.120 unmarked graves,

00:12:16.160 what we're more likely

00:12:17.500 talking about

00:12:18.240 is abandoned cemeteries.

00:12:20.140 Abandoned cemeteries

00:12:21.200 where people

00:12:21.700 of different backgrounds,

00:12:22.840 not just children

00:12:23.440 from residential schools

00:12:24.560 and not just

00:12:25.220 First Nations people

00:12:26.240 were buried.

00:12:27.200 We should obviously

00:12:27.820 make an effort

00:12:28.380 to address this problem

00:12:29.620 and make sure

00:12:30.340 that graves and cemeteries

00:12:31.800 are cared for.

00:12:33.320 But what an amazing

00:12:34.680 leap of logic

00:12:35.740 to go from

00:12:36.940 an uncared community cemetery

00:12:38.800 to mass graves,

00:12:41.140 mass murder,

00:12:41.940 and genocide.

00:12:43.620 Mark Twain once said,

00:12:44.840 never let the truth

00:12:45.620 get in the way

00:12:46.040 of a good story.

00:12:47.340 Well, for many journalists,

00:12:48.680 it seems,

00:12:49.420 they never let facts

00:12:50.560 get in the way

00:12:51.100 of a good narrative.

00:12:52.380 And that narrative

00:12:52.980 is that Canada

00:12:54.000 is an evil

00:12:55.200 white supremacist nation

00:12:56.540 that committed genocide

00:12:57.800 against its First Nations people. 0.99

00:12:59.760 It's not true,

00:13:00.580 but that is the narrative

00:13:01.720 that they are pushing.

00:13:03.260 So is it any wonder then

00:13:04.740 that some out there

00:13:05.840 are so angered

00:13:06.820 by this news

00:13:07.480 that they've reacted

00:13:08.540 with violence and rioting?

00:13:10.660 Or is it any wonder

00:13:11.580 that a radical faction

00:13:12.860 of the far left

00:13:14.220 are using this crisis

00:13:15.260 as an opportunity

00:13:16.180 to wreak havoc,

00:13:17.720 tear down our history,

00:13:19.040 tear down all the statues,

00:13:20.360 and burn down the churches

00:13:21.520 that they hate so much?

00:13:23.220 Of course,

00:13:23.980 these violent criminals

00:13:24.920 who are burning down churches

00:13:26.280 are the ones

00:13:27.060 who are to blame

00:13:27.640 for their own actions.

00:13:29.080 But the media

00:13:29.900 are also partially to blame

00:13:31.340 for raising the temperature,

00:13:33.260 for pushing

00:13:33.820 a hysterical narrative

00:13:35.180 that in no way

00:13:36.040 represents the facts

00:13:37.080 of this story,

00:13:37.980 and for wrongly

00:13:39.100 and recklessly

00:13:39.960 accusing Canada

00:13:41.320 of unspeakable crimes

00:13:42.660 like genocide.

00:13:44.080 I'm Candace Malcolm,

00:13:44.920 and this is

00:13:45.420 The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:13:47.140 оду of the Heys

00:13:48.740 of the Heys

00:13:49.660 ğı

00:13:49.780 of the Feats

00:13:51.300 of the Heys

00:13:53.660 of the Heys

00:13:54.320 of the Heys

00:13:55.040 and the Heys

00:13:55.440 of the Keys

00:13:57.240 and the Heys

00:13:59.560 of the Heys

00:14:01.660 or from the Heys

00:14:11.700 of the Heys

The Candice Malcolm Show - July 08, 2021

Churches burned on Canada Day long weekend, and the media is partially to blame

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