Many Canadians believe utter falsehoods about Canada s recent history, and specifically the federal government s residential school program. 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.
00:00:00.260Many Canadians believe utter falsehoods about Canada's recent history, and specifically the federal government's residential school program.
00:00:08.320Today, 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.
00:00:16.920I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:30.000Hi, 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.
00:00:43.300So like I said in my intro, many Canadians believe utter falsehoods about our residential school program. This is in part deliberate.
00:00:50.440After 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.
00:01:06.640The 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.
00:01:13.880They turned accusations into historical facts without any evidence, without any proof, without even a published report.
00:01:21.060They told us that the story had all been confirmed.
00:01:23.940They told Canadians that these schools were death camps, akin to Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz.
00:01:29.180They told us that nuns, priests, and teachers working in these schools, presumably, were actually mass murderers.
00:01:35.560Now, the narrative went something like this.
00:01:38.660Most First Nation children attended these residential schools.
00:01:43.880It was compelled and it was enforced by the federal government.
00:01:46.880Attendance at these residential schools has traumatized Indigenous people, creating social pathologies that descend across generations.
00:01:53.680Residential schools destroyed Indigenous languages and cultures.
00:01:57.160That there are thousands of children who simply went missing.
00:02:00.240They went away to residential schools and were never heard from again.
00:02:03.540Many of these missing children, we're told, were murdered by school personnel after being subject to physical and sexual abuse, even outright torture.
00:02:10.880These missing children were then buried in unmarked graves, underneath and around schools and churches.
00:02:16.620And the carnage is appropriately defined as genocide.
00:02:20.760Finally, we are told to believe by legacy media that many of the human remains have already been located.
00:02:26.360They've been discovered by ground penetrating radar and that many more will be found as government funded research continues.
00:02:31.880So, as we all know, the narrative is false.
00:02:36.460Much of this information is simply not true.
00:02:39.200The 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.
00:02:47.660That 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.
00:02:59.980That'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.
00:03:07.160Joining me on the program today is Professor Tom Flanagan.
00:03:10.180Tom is a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.
00:03:14.080Tom served as a campaign manager on Stephen Harper's Canadian Alliance Leadership Campaign, and again on Harper's Conservative Party Leadership Campaign.
00:03:21.900He is an award-winning author specializing in Canadian politics and Indigenous rights.
00:03:27.260And 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.
00:03:34.860It's called Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us, and the Truth About the Residential Schools.
00:03:39.920And Dr. Tom Flanagan, welcome to the podcast.
00:03:44.080Yeah, thank you so much for joining us.
00:03:45.940So, 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.
00:03:55.660Well, it happened gradually after the big announcements from Kamloops in May of 2021.
00:04:04.220And I, like many others, was kind of caught unprepared by that.
00:04:08.860You know, I thought, gee, it sounds pretty bad.
00:04:11.420But as I started to learn more about it, it seemed less and less plausible.
00:04:17.860I 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.
00:04:30.020And 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.
00:04:50.980And, you know, we all had more or less the same conclusion that the evidence wasn't there.
00:04:57.060It was a ground penetrating radar, which doesn't identify graves.
00:05:00.700And there were no excavations, and there were a lot of stories, but those stories lacked documentation.
00:05:13.060We started writing critiques of the Kamloops announcement and related announcements,
00:05:21.500because after Kamloops, there was a wave of other announcements from other reserves about similar types of, shall we call them, pseudo-findings.
00:05:32.740So we started critiquing these things.
00:05:35.220We immediately found that the legacy media or corporate media had no interest in running what we were writing.
00:05:44.320And 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.
00:06:03.260And suddenly nobody wanted my stuff or anybody else's stuff that was critical of the Kamloops narrative.
00:06:12.580So 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.
00:06:32.820They were interested in running what we were writing.
00:06:35.660And 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,
00:06:49.280debunking this narrative about unmarked graves and missing children.
00:07:34.940It's no accident that most of the people in our research group are retired.
00:07:38.360We are, to some extent, protected by our status of retirement.
00:07:47.980You know, Janis Joplin sang, freedoms, just another thing, another word for nothing left to lose.
00:07:56.100Some of our contributors are so worried about their careers that they are writing under pseudonyms.
00:08:03.300They don't want their true names known.
00:08:05.920And so there's a couple in this book who are in that status of, you know, I don't know who they are.
00:08:12.640But they feel they have to protect themselves.
00:08:15.860So a bit of courage is required on the part of the publisher, too.
00:08:20.280And so we're grateful to True North for taking this on.
00:08:25.780So that's the back story, anyway, to where we are now.
00:08:28.640So 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.
00:08:38.800And you, like you said, you've been writing in the legacy media for years and years and years.
00:08:42.940Why is it that the legacy media were unwilling to hear a contrarian voice?
00:08:47.040Like, we're told that the media is interested in unique stories.
00:08:49.640They're interested in hearing the other side of the story.
00:08:52.260You 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?
00:08:59.140I see a report that's forthcoming that they don't even have a date that they're releasing it.
00:09:02.860I see something about ground penetrating radar, which everything I Google about it doesn't really seem to be a very scientific, reliable method.
00:09:09.700You know, it seemed there's a lot of red flags on the day that the story came out for me as a journalist.
00:09:14.020Why is it that other editors, journalists, legacy media in Canada, did they not have the curiosity?
00:11:05.940Nobody predicted this, but it happened and it was extraordinary.
00:11:10.180I 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.
00:11:24.860Remember, the story was declared to be the story of the year.
00:11:30.780A photograph was declared to be, and it wasn't even a photograph of a real person.
00:11:35.900It was a photograph, what was it, a photograph of a shirt.
00:11:39.360It was declared to be the photograph of the year.
00:11:42.520I mean, these are extraordinary events.
00:11:44.580And that's the kind of resistance that we were up against.
00:11:51.500And I can remember in the early days of my research, friends, acquaintances, relatives would ask me what I was doing.
00:18:57.060As we get into the modern times, government wanted to shift away from residential schools to having Indian children mixed with others in public schools.
00:19:11.480There was quite a bit of resistance to that.
00:19:15.400A lot of Indian parents felt that their children would be discriminated against in public schools.
00:19:23.220They were afraid for the safety of their children.
00:19:25.200They'd be afraid they'd be beaten up in public schools.
00:19:31.960But anyway, as we get into the 1950s, the numbers of residential schools start to decline.
00:19:38.460And 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.
00:19:59.640Now, we've gone back to the reserve, you might say we've gone back to day schools on reserve.
00:20:07.100There's some still attending public schools in town.
00:20:10.560That's an important minority, but probably the majority now are attending day schools on reserve.
00:20:19.640So we've kind of come full circle back to the 1880s, where officials were not satisfied with the results they were getting.
00:20:28.580And I have to say, it's really a national scandal, the results of children going to day schools on reserve today.
00:20:50.400I 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.
00:20:58.540And, 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.
00:21:12.560Can we talk about the abuse that happened at residential schools?
00:21:15.240I 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.
00:21:23.680So 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.
00:21:31.180There's no record of them ever existing.
00:21:32.560Now, I personally find that one hard to believe as a parent of three children.
00:21:35.780I 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.
00:21:45.240I find that claim very hard to believe, Tom, but certainly there was mistreatment.
00:21:50.580There were many children that did die.
00:21:53.800And 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.
00:22:03.000We 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.
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00:22:46.100Well, you know, first of all, you have to remember that residential schools existed over a long period of time.
00:22:58.020And 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.
00:23:15.500So, conditions were not the same at all times and at all places.
00:23:22.080And so, you're talking about, you know, almost 150 schools over 150 years.
00:23:27.420So, almost any generalization is probably going to be not entirely accurate.
00:23:32.900Secondly, 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.
00:23:49.980All schools used the cane or the strap on recalcitrant students or maybe just unlucky students.
00:23:59.980So, of course, this happened in residential schools as well.
00:24:04.760But it was thought to be the normal part of the educational process.
00:24:11.060There probably were, and I'm sure there were some abuses of that, you know, carried way too far.
00:24:22.440But, you know, the general approach was consistent with Canadian norms.
00:24:27.540Sexual abuse, I think there was, you know, I think it existed.
00:24:39.020Even with all the talk about it, there's only a very small number of missionaries who've been identified as complicit in sexual abuse.
00:24:51.720You know, a handful, then there are more non-religious staff.
00:25:00.040There was a large number of staff in these schools.
00:25:01.920You know, there were cooks and janitors and dorm supervisors and so on.
00:25:07.680And some of these people have been identified.
00:25:10.220But probably the greatest occurrence of sexual abuse was in the dormitories among children themselves.
00:25:18.820This is sort of a universal pattern in boarding schools all over the world.
00:25:25.160Older children introducing younger children to, you know, sexual adventures.
00:36:02.320I think it depends to some extent on which party is in power, how far they go.
00:36:12.160Kimberly Murray is pushing to try and get it done now while the liberals are in power, supported by the NDP.
00:36:18.380That would be the most favorable coalition of forces to support it.
00:36:24.460But I think that, you know, probably the NDP is probably outside.
00:36:29.780They always are for anything crazy like this.
00:36:32.740But I think there are people within the Liberal Party who would have second thoughts about it.
00:36:42.200So personally, I don't think it will pass.
00:36:44.640But that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it and worry about it.
00:36:47.780I 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.
00:37:03.560You know, that is absolutely contrary to the working principles of constitutional democracy.
00:37:11.480So even if it's unlikely to happen, we should certainly keep an eye on it.
00:37:19.860And I personally have been trying to lobby members of Parliament about it to the extent that I can.
00:37:25.080And 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.
00:37:40.500And, you know, and now members will tell you, well, it didn't really mean anything.
00:38:08.660And 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?
00:38:17.560I mean, it's the worst charge imaginable.
00:38:19.440Well, 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?
00:38:29.940Well, it's an example of unserious politics.
00:38:32.000You make the statement, but you don't really think about the consequences.
00:38:35.720You don't want the consequences of the statement that you make.
00:38:38.460The consequences of admitting to genocide should be an international investigation and denunciation of international bodies and on and on and on and on.
00:38:47.660And while the members of parliament aren't asking for any of that, they're just making the statement.
00:38:53.940So it's pure virtue signaling without thought of what the real world consequences ought to be.
00:38:59.440So, 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.
00:39:13.060And 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.
00:39:22.480Just 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,
00:39:35.420why don't we see real pushback research?
00:39:40.560I 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.
00:39:51.840It doesn't really seem to have the kind of scientific rigor that you would expect.
00:39:58.340There's not two sides being presented.
00:40:02.040It's always very much just these really exaggerated claims that kind of get put into historical record.
00:40:09.180I 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.
00:40:21.980Like how do these claims turn into facts through the Canadian government?
00:40:26.080Yeah, it's – I mean, it really is quite extraordinary.
00:40:32.300Members 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,
00:40:42.700there 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.
00:41:04.720If you do get a response, they'll say – the CBC is a great one for saying, well, this meets our standards of journalism.
00:41:12.340You 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.
00:41:27.820All 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 –
00:41:43.820before 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.
00:41:59.380And so there's thousands of feet of weeping tile laid in the general area of the apple orchard.
00:42:05.680So 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.
00:42:18.800But it's not a – we have an article about that in our book.
00:43:49.540So 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.
00:44:06.400And 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.
00:44:21.720But they just – you know, I don't know what they say about True North.
00:44:24.880But they'll have a reason for ignoring it.
00:44:28.340Well, they'll call us the same stuff that they'll call the rebel.
00:44:30.720They'll just say we're far right and whatever.
00:44:32.440I mean, it's almost comical now, Tom, because, you know, we take great efforts to make sure that our journalism is factual and everything.
00:44:41.080And 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.
00:44:49.680And so, you know, you can see their power when it comes to creating fake news narratives like this one.
00:44:54.680But 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.
00:45:04.860But I think that, you know, your book is certainly a tremendous service even just to have that historical record there.
00:45:11.940And anyone who's curious can pick it up and you can give it to friends, give it to family for Christmas.