The Candice Malcolm Show - This is a low point in the history of Parliament： political scientist

00:00:00.260 Many Canadians believe utter falsehoods about Canada's recent history, and specifically the federal government's residential school program.

00:00:08.320 Today, I speak to author and professor Dr. Tom Flanagan about his new book, Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us, and the Truth About Residential Schools.

00:00:16.920 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:30.000 Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. Don't forget to like this video, subscribe to True North Channel, leave us a five-star review if you enjoy the podcast, and head over to our website, www.tnc.news, to sign up for our newsletter so you never miss a story.

00:00:43.300 So like I said in my intro, many Canadians believe utter falsehoods about our residential school program. This is in part deliberate.

00:00:50.440 After an absolute bombshell of an accusation leveled in 2021 that human remains had been discovered in unmarked graves near a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, the legacy media took those accusations and weaved together one of the most destructive fake news narratives in Canadian history.

00:01:06.640 The legacy media invented facts to embellish a story, like the idea that there were mass graves or that human remains had been excavated and confirmed.

00:01:13.880 They turned accusations into historical facts without any evidence, without any proof, without even a published report.

00:01:21.060 They told us that the story had all been confirmed.

00:01:23.940 They told Canadians that these schools were death camps, akin to Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz.

00:01:29.180 They told us that nuns, priests, and teachers working in these schools, presumably, were actually mass murderers.

00:01:35.560 Now, the narrative went something like this.

00:01:38.660 Most First Nation children attended these residential schools.

00:01:41.660 Attendance was not voluntary.

00:01:43.880 It was compelled and it was enforced by the federal government.

00:01:46.880 Attendance at these residential schools has traumatized Indigenous people, creating social pathologies that descend across generations.

00:01:53.680 Residential schools destroyed Indigenous languages and cultures. 0.98

00:01:57.160 That there are thousands of children who simply went missing.

00:02:00.240 They went away to residential schools and were never heard from again.

00:02:03.540 Many of these missing children, we're told, were murdered by school personnel after being subject to physical and sexual abuse, even outright torture.

00:02:10.880 These missing children were then buried in unmarked graves, underneath and around schools and churches.

00:02:16.620 And the carnage is appropriately defined as genocide.

00:02:20.760 Finally, we are told to believe by legacy media that many of the human remains have already been located.

00:02:26.360 They've been discovered by ground penetrating radar and that many more will be found as government funded research continues.

00:02:31.880 So, as we all know, the narrative is false.

00:02:36.460 Much of this information is simply not true.

00:02:39.200 The legacy media has done tremendous damage to our national unity, our self-perception of ourselves as Canadians, and the stories we tell ourselves about our country.

00:02:47.660 That is why it is incredibly important to talk about how the media got it wrong, to correct the record as much as possible, and to try to reach as many Canadians as possible with the truth.

00:02:59.980 That's why I'm pleased and delighted that True North has teamed up with some of the top academics in the country to publish a book doing just that.

00:03:07.160 Joining me on the program today is Professor Tom Flanagan.

00:03:10.180 Tom is a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

00:03:14.080 Tom served as a campaign manager on Stephen Harper's Canadian Alliance Leadership Campaign, and again on Harper's Conservative Party Leadership Campaign.

00:03:21.900 He is an award-winning author specializing in Canadian politics and Indigenous rights.

00:03:27.260 And his latest book is a project with Dr. C.P. Champion, as well as several other leading academics in the field, including historian Conrad Black.

00:03:34.860 It's called Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us, and the Truth About the Residential Schools.

00:03:39.920 And Dr. Tom Flanagan, welcome to the podcast.

00:03:42.780 Great to be here.

00:03:44.080 Yeah, thank you so much for joining us.

00:03:45.940 So, why don't you just tell us, first of all, what inspired you to put this book together, to write this book, and tell us a little bit about the facts behind Canada's residential schools.

00:03:55.660 Well, it happened gradually after the big announcements from Kamloops in May of 2021.

00:04:04.220 And I, like many others, was kind of caught unprepared by that.

00:04:08.860 You know, I thought, gee, it sounds pretty bad.

00:04:11.420 But as I started to learn more about it, it seemed less and less plausible.

00:04:17.860 I got linked up with a group of other Canadians, just a loose association by email, but other people who were appalled by these announcements, but didn't believe them.

00:04:30.020 And these were mainly retired lawyers, judges, journalists, professors, peoples who had made their living for their career out of evidence and, you know, looking for evidence and reaching decisions on the basis of evidence.

00:04:50.980 And, you know, we all had more or less the same conclusion that the evidence wasn't there.

00:04:57.060 It was a ground penetrating radar, which doesn't identify graves.

00:05:00.700 And there were no excavations, and there were a lot of stories, but those stories lacked documentation.

00:05:11.000 So anyway, we started pushing back.

00:05:13.060 We started writing critiques of the Kamloops announcement and related announcements,

00:05:21.500 because after Kamloops, there was a wave of other announcements from other reserves about similar types of, shall we call them, pseudo-findings.

00:05:32.740 So we started critiquing these things.

00:05:35.220 We immediately found that the legacy media or corporate media had no interest in running what we were writing.

00:05:44.320 And this is, you know, for me it was strange, because for the last 50 years I've been publishing voluminously in the establishment media, Globe and Mail, National Post, University Presses, Magazines, McLean's, you know, you name it.

00:06:03.260 And suddenly nobody wanted my stuff or anybody else's stuff that was critical of the Kamloops narrative.

00:06:12.580 So we started publishing in, let's call it alternative media, like True North, the journal C2C, Dorchester Review, Quillette, others, some international ones like Unheard.

00:06:32.820 They were interested in running what we were writing.

00:06:35.660 And so we gradually produced what I thought was a pretty impressive body of work, debunking the, and I'll call it the Kamloops announcements, but there's actually much more than that,

00:06:49.280 debunking this narrative about unmarked graves and missing children.

00:06:53.520 And it's all false.

00:06:55.320 None of it's true.

00:06:56.540 So we thought, well, let's try and bring together the most important pieces and publish it as a book.

00:07:07.560 A book has perhaps greater staying power than articles on alternative media, which are here today and gone tomorrow.

00:07:16.040 But books can get into libraries and students can find them over time, you know.

00:07:24.240 So True North was, what's the right word I'm looking for, courageous enough to step in.

00:07:32.580 And it does take a bit of courage.

00:07:34.940 It's no accident that most of the people in our research group are retired.

00:07:38.360 We are, to some extent, protected by our status of retirement.

00:07:47.980 You know, Janis Joplin sang, freedoms, just another thing, another word for nothing left to lose.

00:07:56.100 Some of our contributors are so worried about their careers that they are writing under pseudonyms.

00:08:03.300 They don't want their true names known.

00:08:05.920 And so there's a couple in this book who are in that status of, you know, I don't know who they are.

00:08:12.640 But they feel they have to protect themselves.

00:08:15.860 So a bit of courage is required on the part of the publisher, too.

00:08:20.280 And so we're grateful to True North for taking this on.

00:08:25.780 So that's the back story, anyway, to where we are now.

00:08:28.640 So I just want to dig in on a few places there, Dr. Flanagan, because one of the things, I mean, you're a very credible, established voice on this topic.

00:08:38.800 And you, like you said, you've been writing in the legacy media for years and years and years.

00:08:42.940 Why is it that the legacy media were unwilling to hear a contrarian voice?

00:08:47.040 Like, we're told that the media is interested in unique stories.

00:08:49.640 They're interested in hearing the other side of the story.

00:08:52.260 You know, when I looked at that press release when it got released, I read it 20 times to try to figure out, like, what am I missing here?

00:08:58.260 I don't see any evidence.

00:08:59.140 I see a report that's forthcoming that they don't even have a date that they're releasing it.

00:09:02.860 I see something about ground penetrating radar, which everything I Google about it doesn't really seem to be a very scientific, reliable method.

00:09:09.700 You know, it seemed there's a lot of red flags on the day that the story came out for me as a journalist.

00:09:14.020 Why is it that other editors, journalists, legacy media in Canada, did they not have the curiosity?

00:09:19.980 Were they afraid?

00:09:20.600 Like, why is it that no one wanted to tell this other side of the story?

00:09:24.200 Well, I think it's a kind of a moral panic.

00:09:29.060 I would call it Canada's George Floyd moment.

00:09:32.160 You have to remember the timing that the George Floyd hysteria in the United States had taken place that spring.

00:09:38.640 And Canadians are always looking for something to prove that they're just as bad as the Americans are. 0.99

00:09:48.860 And I think this was our George Floyd moment.

00:09:51.040 Suddenly we had this alleged evidence of children being murdered and secretly buried.

00:09:57.220 And it was irresistible for identity-waiving politicians of the progressive left, like the prime minister, you know, for example.

00:10:10.360 And so there was a sudden tipping point.

00:10:14.540 Like, up until then, the establishment media had been drifting more and more to call it a left progressive position.

00:10:26.940 But they hadn't been totally shutting out other voices.

00:10:31.700 But then suddenly things changed around Kamloops.

00:10:36.900 And so, you know, to me it's a moral panic.

00:10:40.260 That's the only phrase I can find to describe it when a bunch of people act together without very good reasons.

00:10:48.600 But ideas have caught on and people aren't asking critical questions about them.

00:10:53.180 And anybody who raises questions is attacked as a denialist.

00:10:59.120 So there was this tipping point that took place then.

00:11:04.600 Very strange, you know.

00:11:05.940 Nobody predicted this, but it happened and it was extraordinary.

00:11:10.180 I mean, some of the things that happened after Kamloops, the prime minister declaring that the Canadian flag should be flown at half-mast, which continued for six months until Veterans Day in November.

00:11:24.860 Remember, the story was declared to be the story of the year.

00:11:30.780 A photograph was declared to be, and it wasn't even a photograph of a real person.

00:11:35.900 It was a photograph, what was it, a photograph of a shirt.

00:11:39.360 It was declared to be the photograph of the year.

00:11:42.520 I mean, these are extraordinary events.

00:11:44.580 And that's the kind of resistance that we were up against.

00:11:51.500 And I can remember in the early days of my research, friends, acquaintances, relatives would ask me what I was doing.

00:12:03.300 I'd try and explain it, you know.

00:12:04.680 And people would get very upset, people screaming at me, how wrong I was, you know.

00:12:13.560 And these, in some cases, were people that I'd known for a long time.

00:12:17.900 That's not quite as true now.

00:12:19.680 I think there's been, you know, our research has perhaps had some impact gradually.

00:12:24.540 And people are a little more open-minded, excuse me, about it now.

00:12:29.040 But initially, you know, there was just this river washing over you.

00:12:36.840 So we kind of huddled down in our research group, and we shared results and published where we could

00:12:43.400 and tried to gradually build up the case, which we are now presenting in this book.

00:12:49.420 Well, I'm very glad you did.

00:12:50.240 And I remember those early days as well.

00:12:52.180 It took some convincing of even my editors here at True North to put out a piece just ever so slightly

00:12:57.380 pushing back against the narrative, Tom.

00:12:59.480 I think Canadians feel a great deal of compassion and a sense of sort of sorrow about the state of

00:13:05.860 First Nations people in our country.

00:13:07.260 We can see that they aren't as well off as other Canadians.

00:13:10.640 And I think that the idea that everything can be blamed on residential schools, and if it wasn't

00:13:15.660 for this one program, you know, things would be fine and everyone would be equal.

00:13:19.500 And so I think a lot of Canadians just felt a sense of guilt and sorrow.

00:13:24.380 And so it was easy for them to sort of believe this narrative, even though the facts never

00:13:28.660 held up.

00:13:29.780 So why don't you tell us a little bit about Canada's residential schools?

00:13:32.300 Maybe you can touch on some of the, you know, perceptions that aren't quite true that people

00:13:37.680 have, like the idea that these schools were compulsory, that students were, you know, taken

00:13:44.160 from their homes and forcibly put into these schools.

00:13:47.080 Maybe talk about the origin of the school, the rationale, and the intended goals of this program.

00:13:51.700 Yeah, I will.

00:13:52.660 Before that, I just want to say that True North was not alone in feeling this hesitation.

00:13:59.160 I don't want to name names, but I can think of at least three other editors of alternative

00:14:04.880 media that I would regard as personal friends who initially were reluctant to publish anything

00:14:13.500 critical of the Kamloops narrative.

00:14:15.380 Now, eventually they all got on board.

00:14:16.880 That's, you know, that reluctance is over.

00:14:19.480 But that was the attitude initially, that the people were afraid.

00:14:25.140 I mean, either they thought maybe they thought we were wrong, or they were just afraid to stick

00:14:30.140 their neck out.

00:14:30.800 But it was difficult, even in alternative media, initially, to get the story out.

00:14:35.660 Okay, residential school schools.

00:14:37.780 Well, residential schools have been around in Canada since the earliest French exploration

00:14:45.160 in the 17th century, the Jesuit missionaries established residential schools in what is

00:14:51.960 now the province of Quebec.

00:14:53.960 And schools were established later in Ontario by Protestant missionaries in the 18th century

00:14:58.900 and in the early 19th century.

00:15:01.700 The government had nothing to do with it.

00:15:03.240 They were, these were purely missionary activities.

00:15:08.000 These students attended on a voluntary basis.

00:15:15.460 There were quite a few of these schools by the late 19th century still operating without

00:15:21.780 government assistance.

00:15:22.780 The turning point came in the 1880s.

00:15:24.860 And the reason was the, the settling of the West, signing of treaties, the disappearance of

00:15:35.220 the Buffalo, settling down of Indians on reserves where they were supposed to become farmers.

00:15:42.960 So a lot of things changed all of a sudden.

00:15:45.060 The, the main form of education for Indians up until then, although there were some residential

00:15:57.320 schools, but the main form of education were day schools, which are also operated by Protestant

00:16:03.120 and Catholic missionaries.

00:16:05.200 The problem with day schools was found that attendance was sporadic.

00:16:10.040 They weren't as effective as they wanted.

00:16:13.280 And so officials started looking for something more effective.

00:16:16.880 And they, this was the, right, right at the moment when the United States was setting up

00:16:22.240 a system of government-supported residential schools.

00:16:26.420 So after a study of the American example, Canadian officials recommended to the government

00:16:32.260 that the government start to subsidize, initially it was only a handful of what they called

00:16:39.220 industrial schools, they're kind of like high schools, but they would teach trades, you know,

00:16:45.040 carpentry or blacksmithing, things like that.

00:16:48.980 Like everything else that government does, it grew from a small start in the 1880s.

00:16:55.300 The government started to subsidize more and more residential schools in the belief that

00:17:02.020 they were a more effective form of education.

00:17:05.200 Attendance was voluntary.

00:17:06.420 There was no obligation until 1920 for any Indians to attend school.

00:17:15.500 Unlike the rest of Canadians, they had, their parents weren't obliged to send them to school. 0.70

00:17:21.140 1920, attendance was made compulsory, but not necessarily attendance at a residential school.

00:17:28.220 Attendance at residential school was obligatory only if there was no day school close by.

00:17:37.340 Even then, the law wasn't enforced very consistently.

00:17:43.100 There was a large number of Indians that didn't go to any school at all.

00:17:48.040 The largest number who went to school went to day schools.

00:17:51.380 So they continued to live at home, go to school during the day, much like other Canadian students.

00:17:58.480 Then you had the residential schools, which were boarding schools.

00:18:03.660 And there was a sizable number of students who attended residential schools during the day only.

00:18:10.980 These were, residential schools were mostly located on reserves.

00:18:15.060 So that meant that there were, you know, Indian children living around them.

00:18:18.300 And so some of those would attend on a daily basis.

00:18:24.180 They were co-known as day scholars.

00:18:25.660 So that's the background, and the system continued for a long time.

00:18:34.840 At its height, about a third of, maybe 40% of Indian students were attending residential schools.

00:18:45.240 Of those who attended any school, 35, 40% perhaps, were attending residential schools.

00:18:52.460 That number tended to decline.

00:18:57.060 As we get into the modern times, government wanted to shift away from residential schools to having Indian children mixed with others in public schools.

00:19:11.480 There was quite a bit of resistance to that.

00:19:15.400 A lot of Indian parents felt that their children would be discriminated against in public schools.

00:19:21.520 Yeah, I think with good reason.

00:19:23.220 They were afraid for the safety of their children.

00:19:25.200 They'd be afraid they'd be beaten up in public schools.

00:19:31.960 But anyway, as we get into the 1950s, the numbers of residential schools start to decline.

00:19:38.460 And you get more and more Indian children going to public or Catholic schools, mostly off reserve, which is sort of where we are now, except that we've established government-supported schools on reserve.

00:19:59.640 Now, we've gone back to the reserve, you might say we've gone back to day schools on reserve.

00:20:07.100 There's some still attending public schools in town.

00:20:10.560 That's an important minority, but probably the majority now are attending day schools on reserve.

00:20:19.640 So we've kind of come full circle back to the 1880s, where officials were not satisfied with the results they were getting.

00:20:28.580 And I have to say, it's really a national scandal, the results of children going to day schools on reserve today.

00:20:36.020 I mean, the results are very poor.

00:20:39.280 But for political reasons, under the heading of self-government, this has been deemed to be the only possible approach.

00:20:49.380 It's so unfortunate.

00:20:50.400 I mean, I think you can objectively say that the program failed because, you know, half the country believes that these schools were actually death camps.

00:20:58.540 And, you know, the people who are skeptical of that claim would still be critical of the system because clearly it didn't work in its intended goal, which I believe was to raise the standards and help integrate First Nations children into the modern economy.

00:21:12.560 Can we talk about the abuse that happened at residential schools?

00:21:15.240 I mean, some of the claims are pretty fantastical, like the idea that 6,000 children were killed, 4,000 of whom we have the names and records of.

00:21:23.680 So that means that there's the claim is that there's 2,000, at least 2,000 children who went to school were killed and there's no record of them.

00:21:31.180 There's no record of them ever existing.

00:21:32.560 Now, I personally find that one hard to believe as a parent of three children.

00:21:35.780 I can't imagine sending your child off to school and them never coming home and you never even bothering to write down their name or file a police report or anything like that.

00:21:45.240 I find that claim very hard to believe, Tom, but certainly there was mistreatment.

00:21:50.580 There were many children that did die.

00:21:53.800 And I wonder if you can help us understand, like, how that claim went from, you know, children were mistreated and abused, as they were at many Catholic schools, it seems.

00:22:03.000 We went from there to this idea that Canada committed genocide, which is a statement that all of the parties in Canada's political system unanimously agreed, including the conservatives, that Canada's residential school program was guilty of genocide.

00:22:19.100 I wonder if you can comment on that.

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00:22:46.100 Well, you know, first of all, you have to remember that residential schools existed over a long period of time.

00:22:58.020 And I'm just talking about government-subsidized residential schools existed from the 1880s, well, up to the 1990s on a small scale, but, you know, certainly about over 150 years.

00:23:15.500 So, conditions were not the same at all times and at all places.

00:23:20.400 They were all over the country.

00:23:22.080 And so, you're talking about, you know, almost 150 schools over 150 years.

00:23:27.420 So, almost any generalization is probably going to be not entirely accurate.

00:23:32.900 Secondly, you have to remember that in all schools in Canada, in the early and extending into the mid-19th century, corporal punishment was the norm.

00:23:49.980 All schools used the cane or the strap on recalcitrant students or maybe just unlucky students.

00:23:59.980 So, of course, this happened in residential schools as well.

00:24:04.760 But it was thought to be the normal part of the educational process.

00:24:11.060 There probably were, and I'm sure there were some abuses of that, you know, carried way too far.

00:24:22.440 But, you know, the general approach was consistent with Canadian norms.

00:24:27.540 Sexual abuse, I think there was, you know, I think it existed.

00:24:39.020 Even with all the talk about it, there's only a very small number of missionaries who've been identified as complicit in sexual abuse.

00:24:51.720 You know, a handful, then there are more non-religious staff.

00:25:00.040 There was a large number of staff in these schools.

00:25:01.920 You know, there were cooks and janitors and dorm supervisors and so on.

00:25:07.680 And some of these people have been identified.

00:25:10.220 But probably the greatest occurrence of sexual abuse was in the dormitories among children themselves.

00:25:18.820 This is sort of a universal pattern in boarding schools all over the world.

00:25:25.160 Older children introducing younger children to, you know, sexual adventures.

00:25:32.740 So, yeah, that existed.

00:25:39.180 We don't know exactly how much.

00:25:42.560 But, again, you know, I think kind of consistent with experience of boarding schools everywhere.

00:25:48.820 The lurid stories that have emerged are all post-1990s, post-1990.

00:25:56.180 And it starts with Phil Fontaine claiming that he was sexually abused at his boarding school, Fort Alexander School in Manitoba.

00:26:05.980 He never provided any details and he never explained who it was that was doing this,

00:26:11.880 whether it was the missionary or secular staff or other students.

00:26:16.520 But that unleashed a flood of complaints.

00:26:23.280 And these were, to a large extent, induced by financial rewards.

00:26:29.600 The government of Canada introduced a system of settlements for claims which required no checking of evidence.

00:26:43.240 The only evidence that was checked was, you know, were you actually attending the school at that time?

00:26:49.220 And was the person you identified as the abuser, was he there as well?

00:26:53.980 So, just minimal checking.

00:26:55.640 But there wasn't any evidence and cross-examination and so forth.

00:27:00.500 So, when the first settlement was made for residential schools,

00:27:05.820 there was a basic payment just for simply attending.

00:27:11.840 But then there was another payment for abuse, which could go up, you know, well over $100,000.

00:27:19.460 And the more grievous the abuse, the higher the payment.

00:27:25.020 So, there was a financial incentive to present abuse in, you know, the maximum possible terms.

00:27:35.080 Deaths in the schools.

00:27:37.680 Were the schools death camps?

00:27:39.400 No.

00:27:39.660 So, Indian health was very poor in the early 19th century.

00:27:47.180 Or, excuse me, early 20th century.

00:27:49.020 They had lost their traditional diet based on the buffalo and other game.

00:27:53.520 They were eating unfamiliar foods.

00:27:55.560 But the biggest problem was probably that they had no inherited resistance to diseases that had come from Europe.

00:28:05.100 Smallpox, measles, diphtheria.

00:28:07.020 These were all, you know, for white children, these were mostly just, call them childhood diseases. 0.99

00:28:14.720 I had some of these when I was young. 0.95

00:28:19.380 But they could be killers for Indian children. 0.98

00:28:22.240 And the worst was tuberculosis.

00:28:23.880 And studies suggest that just about every child who came to a residential school was already infected with tuberculosis,

00:28:35.600 which they had caught at home on the reserve before they ever came.

00:28:39.740 People who ran the schools tried to cope with this.

00:28:46.060 They set up nursing wards.

00:28:47.520 In extreme cases, the children were sent to Indian hospitals.

00:28:50.520 But inevitably, there were a lot of deaths, which is sad.

00:28:57.060 But I don't know that it was something that anybody had the power to change at the time.

00:29:05.320 The death rates improved dramatically once, I forget the exact date,

00:29:11.800 but a vaccination was discovered against tuberculosis, which was the first measure.

00:29:17.540 And then antibiotics, particularly streptomycin, by about 1950, streptomycin had been introduced.

00:29:28.560 And that didn't eliminate all deaths from tuberculosis, but it certainly reduced it down to a more manageable proportion.

00:29:38.480 So, yes, there's a history of children dying in the schools, but it was probably no worse,

00:29:48.560 probably better than the deaths of children on reserves.

00:29:52.620 But those weren't recorded in the same concentrated way.

00:29:58.380 Okay, so what about the claim then that genocide was committed at these schools,

00:30:03.240 a claim that all parties, including Pierre Polyev and the conservatives, agree with?

00:30:07.400 And what about that claim, Tom, that there's been more than 6,000 deaths, but only 4,000 whom we have the name for?

00:30:15.460 Like, what do you make of that discrepancy?

00:30:17.080 Do you think it's fair and accurate, or do you think that this is something that's being executed?

00:30:20.360 Well, we don't even have the name for the 4,100.

00:30:22.900 If you go through and look at the names that are listed in the website of the Center in Winnipeg,

00:30:33.040 which is the successor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,

00:30:38.240 there's the National, what's it called, the National Center for something or other in Winnipeg,

00:30:44.760 at the University of Manitoba.

00:30:45.800 So they've published a list of children who died at the schools.

00:30:55.760 And that's online.

00:30:58.420 You can go see it.

00:30:59.760 If you add it all up, it's about 2,000 names.

00:31:02.020 But even all of those didn't necessarily die at the schools.

00:31:10.920 If you study more carefully, if you drill down name by name and look at the records,

00:31:15.980 there are provincial records, death certificates as you get into the 20th century.

00:31:20.020 Quite a few of those children died, oh, in accidents, off reserve, maybe after they had left the school.

00:31:30.480 They include names who died within a year of having studied there.

00:31:35.920 So a kid could graduate, go home, have an accident when he's out trapping, drown,

00:31:43.720 still be called a residential school death.

00:31:46.160 So the real number is somewhere south of 2,000.

00:31:51.820 These other numbers are just imagination.

00:31:55.840 Adding together poorly understood reports.

00:31:59.580 There were individual reports, and then there were quarterly reports which aggregated names.

00:32:06.840 And so there's duplication between them.

00:32:08.360 So if you add those two together, you get larger numbers.

00:32:10.660 And then you get into people just making it up, just estimates, you know,

00:32:16.460 which start to get bigger and bigger, 6,000, 15,000.

00:32:20.600 But those are just fantasy.

00:32:23.340 They're not based on anything.

00:32:26.440 So if you look at names that can be documented as actually having died while they were at the schools,

00:32:33.800 it's, as I say, somewhat less than 2,000.

00:32:39.460 And that's over the period from 1882 to 1996 for the period of the existence of the schools.

00:32:47.760 Now, is that a lot of students to die at a large system operating for 150 years?

00:32:55.400 I mean, I don't know, 150 schools for 150 years, having lost perhaps less than 2,000 students

00:33:03.420 doesn't seem to me to be a huge number under the circumstances.

00:33:08.900 So there's been a deliberate attempt to magnify the numbers.

00:33:13.500 But the lower estimates are the more reliable ones.

00:33:16.720 Why do you think there's such a lack of sort of scientific rigor and balance and pushback

00:33:24.360 when it comes to these government reports, like when it comes to the truth and reconciliation report?

00:33:27.720 I wanted to mention another one.

00:33:29.140 There was a special report that the liberal government put together on perhaps possibly criminalizing

00:33:34.740 what they call denialism.

00:33:36.100 There's a report that the interim report came out in June.

00:33:39.260 The final report is supposed to be out in 2024, written by an individual named Kimberly Murray.

00:33:44.880 I'm not sure if you saw it.

00:33:45.640 It was in the news last week.

00:33:46.900 But this author is pushing parliamentarians to preemptively pass a law banning denialism

00:33:52.360 before the report is even released.

00:33:54.400 Why is it that when it comes to this topic, Tom, there's so little, like I said, scientific rigor,

00:34:01.080 really detailed analysis, pushback?

00:34:03.100 You don't see both sides.

00:34:04.300 You really just see sort of one side pushing through making declarations

00:34:07.520 and then not a lot of, you know, any kind of verification happening.

00:34:13.540 Yeah, I could be wrong.

00:34:15.220 But I don't think that the criminalization of denialism is going to pass.

00:34:23.800 Now, by that I mean amendments to the criminal code that make it a criminal offense to deny allegations

00:34:30.860 allegations about the residential schools.

00:34:33.760 When that came out, there were quite a few negative editorials in, not just in alternative media,

00:34:41.620 but in the legacy media as well.

00:34:44.280 Well, you know, anything is possible.

00:34:48.920 But I don't think that's going to pass.

00:34:51.200 The parliamentary resolution saying that there had been a genocide at the schools,

00:35:00.260 that is kind of a low point in the history of parliament to adopt a resolution like that.

00:35:08.880 But it happened at the height of the virtue signaling that took place after the Kamloops announcement.

00:35:20.980 The resolution had been defeated the first time it was introduced.

00:35:23.640 And then after Kamloops, it was passed.

00:35:29.000 But there was now this kind of attitude, a change in attitude after Kamloops.

00:35:38.680 So that was probably the high point of, the high point of the low point, if you want to put it that way.

00:35:46.220 That was the worst climate then.

00:35:48.980 But I don't think that the criminalization will be legislated.

00:35:53.540 There may be some other legislation, vaguer legislation.

00:36:01.220 We'll have to see.

00:36:02.320 I think it depends to some extent on which party is in power, how far they go.

00:36:12.160 Kimberly Murray is pushing to try and get it done now while the liberals are in power, supported by the NDP.

00:36:18.380 That would be the most favorable coalition of forces to support it.

00:36:24.460 But I think that, you know, probably the NDP is probably outside.

00:36:29.780 They always are for anything crazy like this.

00:36:32.740 But I think there are people within the Liberal Party who would have second thoughts about it.

00:36:42.200 So personally, I don't think it will pass.

00:36:44.640 But that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it and worry about it.

00:36:47.780 I mean, it is a very alarming idea that you would want to criminalize an area of historical research and public discussion in pursuit of a political agenda.

00:37:03.560 You know, that is absolutely contrary to the working principles of constitutional democracy.

00:37:11.480 So even if it's unlikely to happen, we should certainly keep an eye on it.

00:37:19.860 And I personally have been trying to lobby members of Parliament about it to the extent that I can.

00:37:25.080 And I will continue to do so because, as I say, it was a low point for all the parties to line up in favor of that resolution about genocide having taken place at the schools.

00:37:40.500 And, you know, and now members will tell you, well, it didn't really mean anything.

00:37:45.500 It was just a resolution.

00:37:46.620 It wasn't legislation.

00:37:48.220 This kind of stuff happens all the time.

00:37:50.080 They will say, it's rushed through at the end of the session, blah, blah, blah. 0.99

00:37:55.260 But it's, you know, that, to use a scientific term, that's all bullshit. 0.99

00:38:01.860 It was a low, a low point. 0.99

00:38:07.220 Well, I absolutely agree.

00:38:08.660 And even if it's symbolic, how is that symbolism of our country that every single elected official in the House of Commons agrees that Canada committed genocide?

00:38:17.560 I mean, it's the worst charge imaginable.

00:38:19.440 Well, how can you go on as a country with any sense of national pride if you truly believe that a school program was designed to mass murder and eliminate, exterminate an entire population?

00:38:29.940 Well, it's an example of unserious politics.

00:38:32.000 You make the statement, but you don't really think about the consequences.

00:38:35.720 You don't want the consequences of the statement that you make.

00:38:38.460 The consequences of admitting to genocide should be an international investigation and denunciation of international bodies and on and on and on and on.

00:38:47.660 And while the members of parliament aren't asking for any of that, they're just making the statement.

00:38:53.940 So it's pure virtue signaling without thought of what the real world consequences ought to be.

00:38:59.440 So, again, looking at it that way, it's another low point of parliament passing a resolution without any thought given to what it actually means or what the consequences might be.

00:39:10.780 It's such a good point.

00:39:13.060 And I hope you're right about the law that would potentially ban so-called denialism, a term that's never properly been defined or explained.

00:39:22.480 Just to sort of re-ask this final question here, Tom, why is it that when it comes to reports on First Nations in Canada, whether it be the Truth and Reconciliation Report or this latest report calling for banning so-called denialism,

00:39:35.420 why don't we see real pushback research?

00:39:40.560 I mean, every time you read one of these reports, it comes across like you're reading something out of a, you know, social science, like something out of a far left professor's social science curriculum.

00:39:51.840 It doesn't really seem to have the kind of scientific rigor that you would expect.

00:39:58.340 There's not two sides being presented.

00:39:59.960 There isn't the opposing view.

00:40:02.040 It's always very much just these really exaggerated claims that kind of get put into historical record.

00:40:09.180 I mean, that figure that I quoted that they – you know, in media reports, it says – it always says that there are 4,000 names recorded of dead children and that the estimates are upwards of 6,000.

00:40:21.980 Like how do these claims turn into facts through the Canadian government?

00:40:26.080 Yeah, it's – I mean, it really is quite extraordinary.

00:40:32.300 Members of our little group will – when stories run in legacy media about the 4,000 or the 6,000 or the 15,000 or whatever it may be,

00:40:42.700 there are members of our group who believe in trying to correct the media and so they will write a letter to the journalist who's written this nonsense or to the internal ombudsman of the newspaper.

00:40:58.720 You know, and nothing happens.

00:41:03.140 Often you don't even get a response.

00:41:04.720 If you do get a response, they'll say – the CBC is a great one for saying, well, this meets our standards of journalism.

00:41:12.340 You know, and we – we're prepared to furnish evidence of the fact that the numbers are much, much smaller than are being reported or that, in fact, no graves – no actual graves have been found.

00:41:27.820 All that's been found is soil disturbances – and I can't help saying in passing that the soil disturbances in Kamloops are almost certainly due to the sewage disposal system that was set up in the 1920s when –

00:41:43.820 before they could tap into the city of Kamloops system, they installed a big septic tank with their own field, and that means installing weeping tile under the ground to disperse the liquids from the septic tank.

00:41:59.380 And so there's thousands of feet of weeping tile laid in the general area of the apple orchard.

00:42:05.680 So it's almost certain that what the young anthropologists found was a weeping tile from the sewage disposal system, which, of course, is a soil disturbance.

00:42:18.800 But it's not a – we have an article about that in our book.

00:42:25.960 It's not –

00:42:26.840 Well, if that's not a great – if that's not a perfect metaphor for the whole situation, I don't know what it is.

00:42:32.760 Intellectual sewage disposal is about what it is.

00:42:35.180 But, you know, this article has been out there now.

00:42:38.060 It was posted on Free Press a couple of years ago.

00:42:41.020 It's been out there for anybody to read for a long time.

00:42:44.340 And anybody who reads it should say, hey, wait a minute.

00:42:47.600 What's going on here?

00:42:48.580 But the statement keeps being repeated that these 215 or 200 grave sites were discovered in Kamloops.

00:42:59.020 We're in a strange period of time when facts don't matter.

00:43:05.340 And you have to look at dominant theories of the intelligentsia, some of which are quite hostile to the traditional notion of fact.

00:43:17.700 And these have taken over the thinking of – well, you know, it starts in the universities.

00:43:27.540 Maybe it even starts earlier now.

00:43:29.640 But it was starting in the universities.

00:43:32.100 And so it carries on.

00:43:34.220 And journalism today is largely a profession of university graduates.

00:43:38.960 So they're absorbing all of this.

00:43:41.420 At one time, journalists were more like tradesmen that didn't go to university.

00:43:45.960 But now they do.

00:43:47.960 And they absorb this.

00:43:49.540 So it's possible for obvious untruths to continue for long periods of time, even though the evidence showing that they're wrong is readily available because of the alternative media, thank God.

00:44:06.400 And the evidence showing the falsity of these statements is out there, but it will be ignored because Ezra is a radical or – well, I don't think anybody calls you a radical.

00:44:21.720 But they just – you know, I don't know what they say about True North.

00:44:24.880 But they'll have a reason for ignoring it.

00:44:28.340 Well, they'll call us the same stuff that they'll call the rebel.

00:44:30.720 They'll just say we're far right and whatever.

00:44:32.440 I mean, it's almost comical now, Tom, because, you know, we take great efforts to make sure that our journalism is factual and everything.

00:44:41.080 And it doesn't even matter that the legacy media will continue to write you off, which I think, you know, increasingly they don't matter as much as they once did.

00:44:49.680 And so, you know, you can see their power when it comes to creating fake news narratives like this one.

00:44:54.680 But at the same time, I think you're right that many Canadians now have seen past the narrative and make some doubt everything else they're hearing from the media.

00:45:04.860 But I think that, you know, your book is certainly a tremendous service even just to have that historical record there.

00:45:11.940 And anyone who's curious can pick it up and you can give it to friends, give it to family for Christmas.

00:45:17.840 It's a great read.

00:45:19.160 I encourage everyone to go pick it up.

00:45:20.300 The book is called Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us and the Truth About Residential Schools.

00:45:25.120 You can find it on Amazon and head on over to our website, tnc.news slash grave error.

00:45:31.020 You'll find the book there.

00:45:32.600 Tom, thank you for your time.

00:45:33.540 Thank you for all your efforts in putting this all together.

00:45:35.500 It's a tremendous service you've done for the country and I appreciate it.

00:45:39.420 Yeah.

00:45:39.600 And thanks to you for the title.

00:45:41.260 I have to say the title was your idea.

00:45:43.140 So you deserve a lot of credit for that.

00:45:45.320 OK, all right.

00:45:47.820 Well, thank you again for joining us and take care, Dr. Flanagan.

00:45:52.080 Thank you for tuning in.

00:45:52.920 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - December 06, 2023

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

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