00:00:29.000welcome to the cory morgan show another lively week in politics they just keep going how about
00:00:35.500that calgary shaw i'm not going to start with that but i will get into that a little bit later yeah
00:00:39.960the provincial dynamic has changed a little bit and you know it's always the same thing with
00:00:45.120by elections everybody reads their hands you know the losing side will always say oh they don't mean
00:00:48.620anything it's just a by election and the winning side will always say it's a symbol of things to
00:00:53.000come i think in shaw's case there's a little bit of both to be said with it actually but uh we'll
00:00:58.520talk a little more on that i gotta admit that's one that i didn't see coming i i really thought
00:01:02.520the conservatives could at least hold on to that but uh should be a wake-up call for a few folks
00:01:06.960they're gonna have a guest on a little while lady named catherine cronis wrote a great piece in the1.00
00:01:11.300ctc journal about compelled speech because she had a long and extended battle with the school
00:01:17.760authorities in ontario about what i'm gonna rant about in a short moment here land acknowledgements
00:01:23.820Yes, she dared to question compelled speech, and it's led to an ongoing thing.
00:01:28.940With the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms helping her out there,
00:01:32.540people like me and her keep that group working quite steadily, it seems.
00:01:36.420They're a fantastic legal group, actually, so that we can push back on this stuff.
00:01:39.520So let me talk about these land acknowledgements and my thoughts on them.
00:01:44.100And you just can't escape them at hockey games, city council meetings, school assemblies, and town hall meetings.
00:01:49.420You see it at the bottom of some email signatures, and it's even done at the beginning of monthly meetings at the rock and lapidary club I belong to.
00:01:58.200I stopped going to the monthly meetings because of it. It really bugs me that much.
00:02:01.520The prayer begins, and we're expected to bow our heads in observance and shame.
00:02:06.040Someone must recite that we're gathered on the traditional, ancestral, and frequently unseated, apparently, territory of whichever nations the script committee decided on this year.
00:02:16.140Then everyone nods, and the real business of whatever you're doing begins, and nothing really changes.
00:02:31.760I'm sick and tired of woke institutions insisting I display remorse and contrition.
00:02:36.300It's indoctrination, and it's not harmless.
00:02:38.520The ritual is increasingly compulsory.
00:02:41.600Parents and school council members who politely object have been investigated, suspended, or treated as if they committed a hate crime by declining to read a political statement.
00:02:50.840Compelled speech is not reconciliation.
00:02:53.580It's a small daily lesson that certain aid to ideas may not be questioned in public institutions.
00:02:59.620Children absorb that lesson first, and this is where they're getting into it, guys.
00:03:02.560It's insidious, and it's where the danger lies.
00:03:04.920They learn that Canada's legitimacy is provisional.
00:03:07.760Their presence even requires a disclaimer, and it consists of this, you know, saying of the right paragraph in a woke liturgy.
00:03:16.400The acknowledgements help set the stage for increasingly aggressive and effective claims on what had been previously thought to be private land.
00:03:23.340How long do people think they could call themselves settlers, colonists, interlopers, or even uninvited guests?
00:03:29.340Yeah, that's what UBC guys call themselves now.
00:03:31.620In public prayers before the alleged victims of these historical crimes demand compensation.
00:03:35.640When the claimants go before the judges raised on land acknowledgements as well and make the case that the entire society agrees in regular public rituals that the land was somehow stolen, how do you think the judge is going to rule?
00:03:48.620Land acknowledgements aren't an apology for the actions of prior generations. They're a contemporary admission of guilt.
00:03:55.280Activists, legislators, and teachers may be too obtuse to understand where these acknowledgements are leading, but investors aren't.
00:04:01.460Resource projects, they already faced years of consultation, overlapping claims, litigation, risk, and endless negotiations.
00:04:10.200I mean, there's some potential legitimacy to the process, but what's not legitimate is layering a daily public confession on top of it that treats title as being forever unsettled.
00:04:20.600Uncertainty has a price. You think separatism causes it? Look at these land acknowledgements.
00:04:25.080Pipelines, mines, housing, transmission lines, they aren't getting built, guys.
00:04:28.280They only get built when the rules are knowable, and how do we set rules when we're constantly claiming we stole the land we're standing upon?
00:04:35.580No nation's history is spotless. Canada's record includes broken promises, residential schools, and dispossession.
00:04:41.640These facts, though, they belong in history class, books, and museums.
00:04:44.640They don't require a prayer before every junior hockey face-off.
00:04:48.160Reciting a claim doesn't return any land, it doesn't build a water plant,
00:04:51.700and it doesn't make a teenager on a reserve any less likely to finish school or end up in jail.
00:04:56.360It does make a room full of people, I guess, feel they've discharged a duty and a collective act of virtue signaling.
00:05:01.440It solves no real problem, so it increases a sense of victimhood among a large segment of the population.
00:05:07.660There's two terrible things that can be instilled upon impressionable children as they grow in this world.
00:05:12.580One's a sense of guilt, and the other's a sense of entitlement.0.75
00:05:15.320Non-Indigenous children are being immersed with lessons through these acknowledgements that they're responsible for the sins of the father.
00:05:21.260Indigenous children are being taught that they were robbed and the world owes them a debt.
00:05:25.340Both the children indoctrinated by these lessons are certain to become dysfunctional in a society already ripping itself apart
00:05:30.700in the pursuit of some kind of intergenerational reconciliation, which is never going to come.
00:06:17.220I just got off the phone with Provincial Treasurer Jason Nixon.
00:06:20.360Listen, he wanted to call and thank you for your contribution to paying down the deficit today.
00:06:25.320Yeah. Yes, yes. I did drive into the newsroom from Wainwright this morning, had to get up very early.
00:06:32.640And to try and make better time in an act of foolishness in a wide open area, middle of nowhere, I thought, I don't need to stop for that stop sign.
00:06:40.040I can see forever. But what I didn't see was the RCMP officer apparently parked not too far up that crossroad.
00:06:45.340But thus, I've contributed $405 towards the provincial treasury.
00:06:52.460And I have no one to blame but myself.
00:06:54.160Well, the citizens of Alberta, thank you.
00:11:46.420you can get in totally free see the articles see the columns don't have to reach into your wallet
00:11:53.380this is an opportunity because we're in the middle of a referendum because we have such
00:11:57.760singular times going on we feel it's important for everybody to get in there and be able to
00:12:02.460read those articles without hindrance so take advantage of that while you can it's a good deal
00:12:06.660you know we are independent though and we do rely on subscriptions so still if you want to keep
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00:12:40.160for a little while and if you haven't subscribed yet uh please do guys it's uh how we keep media
00:12:46.980independent because legacy media won't touch the issues you need to hear about you know i and i'm
00:12:53.800still going to talk as it is kind of the news of the day about the calgary shaw by election
00:12:57.020i'll talk about that after i've spoken with our guest a bit more but i i think it's kind of linked
00:13:02.580to when we see those those polls on premier popularity and i mean there's so many polls
00:13:07.000and polls and polls and we love them i gotta admit and you know they always give us something
00:13:10.460to read a read into and write about and rant about the the popularity of a premier doesn't
00:13:16.420necessarily mean the popularity of a party or where they would land in election but premier
00:13:20.740smith has really been sinking and i think it's for the same reason that we saw a loss in what
00:13:28.320had been thought to be a safe seat in calgary shaw on monday in a by-election and it's all
00:13:33.800See, people are blaming it on the independence referendum, and there's kind of some truth to it, but each side is blaming the other.
00:13:39.380I think it's kind of both, because it is such a divisive issue.
00:13:42.660Now, Smith's been trying to play both sides.
00:13:45.220She has facilitated the referendum and allowed it to happen, and hardcore federalists don't feel the referendum should happen at all, no matter what.
00:13:53.760So they're furious with her over that.
00:13:55.700Meanwhile, a large part of the United Conservative base is supportive of independence, and they like the referendum.
00:14:01.540they're campaigning in the referendum. But meanwhile, Premier Smith has come out and said,
00:14:05.400I'm going to spend $4 million tax dollars campaigning against independents in the referendum.
00:14:09.220So she ticked them off too. The result was a terribly low turnout in this by-election. The
00:14:15.380NDP vote share didn't really grow. The Conservative voters who came out collapsed. They stayed home.
00:14:21.800They said, you know what, I'll just rather not vote at all than get in the middle of this when1.00
00:14:26.580she's playing both sides like that. And I think that's a reflection of where her personal0.99
00:14:30.220popularity is landing too. She's trying to be everything to everybody and it's turning into
00:14:35.080nothing for nobody. But I think once we get past the referendum period, some of this is going to
00:14:39.740change and we will see a little more stabilization in polls as we figure out our issues. Everything's
00:14:46.660in flux. Okay, let's get on to our guest. We're looking forward to this. This is Catherine Kronis
00:14:51.140and she's from Ontario and dared, kind of as per my opening monologue, dared to speak up against
00:14:58.480compelled speech and got, yes, the usual cascade of opposition and, boy, just pushback in general.
00:15:07.720I'm glad that JCCF's there to help people like her. And maybe I'll bring her in right now so
00:15:12.380she can kind of explain a bit of that. So thank you very much for joining us today, Catherine.
00:15:18.100So I really appreciate this. You wrote a fantastic extended piece in the CTC Journal,
00:15:23.280which really lays out the story in detail but perhaps in a nutshell you know in a few minutes
00:15:28.800could you kind of explain where you ended up in this situation? So I knew that the board had no
00:15:37.700authority to impose a land acknowledgement at our school council meetings so I objected to
00:15:45.500that imposition at a meeting in April 2024. And it was a really brief interaction during the
00:15:53.360meeting, but it wound me up in basically having to participate in a, be subjected to a human
00:16:01.160rights investigation, confidential human rights investigation for six months. And then I was
00:16:07.880found innocent of that human rights investigation. They found that I hadn't broken any code of
00:16:13.240conduct or human rights violation and so I wanted to put my I wanted to continue to object to these
00:16:19.560because I thought that it was wrong for the board to be imposing these on our school council
00:16:23.220so I objected again after I had been found innocent I objected again for the same same
00:16:30.440reasons and this time the board didn't even investigate they went straight to a suspension
00:16:37.140yeah and so you were part of I mean you you had run for the school board and had a very respectable
00:16:42.660showing. And then so you want to be active within the education system, which is fantastic. I think
00:16:47.220we'd have a lot fewer problems in general if just if more people got up and paid closer attention
00:16:51.360to what's going on. But we have busy lives. Then you got on the parent council. So that's a little
00:16:55.720different. But as you sort of wrote, I mean, you found that it's not a two way thing. It's sort of
00:17:01.640where you're just invited to sit there and listen. And they really don't actually want to hear your
00:17:05.340input on issues no i mean the the legislation actually was designed to um give a parent the
00:17:12.340right to have a voice to advise the principal to advise the board on any issue any matter and
00:17:18.600that's not the way that these councils are operating they're operating as a way for the
00:17:23.740board to sit back and i guess look for affirmation about what they've what they've what they're doing
00:17:30.000And any sort of perceived criticism, particularly on controversial issues, is a no-no.
00:17:37.680Yeah, well, and the issue with land acknowledgments, it's not, I mean, part of what I kind of read in with what's going on with you,
00:17:43.760it's not a matter of whether a person agrees or disagrees with the acknowledgment, though, I mean, individuals do disagree with it.
00:17:49.220I made it quite clear in my opening, I'm not fond of them.
00:17:51.780But it's the compelled speech, the fact that you can't exempt yourself from these.
00:17:56.360if you dare to chair a meeting without inserting this little prayer you're going to be on the
00:18:01.360carpet as you found right i mean it's not uh not everybody agrees with it so how can you force it
00:18:09.500force it on to other other people uh yeah it is i find it a form of compelled speech um the board
00:18:16.160the board was treating it as expected um now we found out after two years of me fighting this and
00:18:25.440having to go through two human rights investigations and a suspension that the board actually admitted
00:18:30.580in writing that it they are not legally mandatory but i believe that they will the board will
00:18:35.860continue to um lead parents to believe that they are yeah well that's part of it i mean
00:18:42.020an implied rule if they aren't clarifying what it is can be still as as problematic as as a real
00:18:49.280entrenched one in fact it's worse i mean if you've got solid rules in in a mandate or something you
00:18:53.780know what your limitations are going in these are unspoken rules that you ran afoul of yes
00:19:03.380so with the justice center for constitutional freedoms what what remedy are they pursuing
00:19:07.540like how are you moving forward with this so i um they supported me through the first investigation
00:19:14.500i was found innocent then they supported me through the suspension and i was reinstated and
00:19:18.980And then after I was reinstated, the board tried to prevent recordings of our school council meetings, and they helped me through that recording ban, and the board had to back down every single time.
00:19:33.060Yeah, but is there a way then you can have this entrenched in local rules and regulations, or does this need provincial legislation?
00:19:45.640So the issue is we have legislation, but we need to be able to enforce the legislation. And I think part of the problem is we don't have parents basically speaking up for their own rights. And we need to we need to have parents attending these school council meetings, understanding what the legislation is and speaking up when it's not being followed.
00:20:08.440We don't, we are supposed to be, the parents are supposed to be a mechanism, like the councils are
00:20:14.700supposed to be like a mechanism to help to enhance the accountability of the education system,
00:20:19.320but it's not functioning right now at all. So we need parents to be able to start to take a stand.
00:20:28.560Yeah, and I mean, part of, you know, people who don't necessarily take a part in committees or
00:20:32.740boards or things like that might not understand, you know, some of those rules of order and the
00:20:35.700way things work but a very common thing of course is to take minutes throughout that's part of the
00:20:40.000transparency that's part of having a record to look back on if there's disputes over what was
00:20:44.860agreed upon at the meeting or transparency for people outside of the meeting to see what happened
00:20:49.860and you've had they wouldn't approve the minutes that were taken in some of the meetings you made
00:20:53.560so yes there the board was interfering in our normal approval process of the minutes
00:20:59.720on multiple occasions that is in non-compliance with the Education Act and its Regulation 612,
00:21:07.020which is the law in Ontario for governing school councils. And they continue to interfere. And
00:21:14.880in the end, as my article details, is that in the end, a version of minutes wound up on the
00:21:25.000school council website that the council had never approved. And they were indeed different than the
00:21:30.080draft minutes. And they certainly had not included the land acknowledgement discussion.
00:21:36.660Well, and doctoring minutes and meetings in a lot of areas, I mean, whether it's associations or
00:21:41.280political parties, somebody that can get into very serious legal quagmire. It's not something
00:21:47.080minor. I mean, the point of them is to keep them sacrosanct. Has that been rectified yet? Or is
00:21:53.280this just still kind of in dispute uh currently there are no the last time i checked there were
00:21:59.040no minutes on the school council website whatsoever because hwdsb did go through like a revamp of their
00:22:05.280website uh if people want to get them they would have to contact the school now legally the school
00:22:11.200does not have to put post them to a website they just have to make them available to the public
00:22:15.560but i don't see how you can make minutes available to the public which have not gone through an
00:22:20.480approval a proper approval process of the council and then there's the some of the discussion over
00:22:27.280whether you know there was harm caused and so on harm caused by your you're daring to dispute it
00:22:31.300and such there were what allegedly a couple of parents said their feelings hurt or what was the
00:22:36.200the harm they could indicate that was caused by your questioning these acknowledgements this was
00:22:41.080very interesting cory so when i received the notice of the complaint it was uh two and a half
00:22:47.400months after the complaint was filed. It was filed in June. I received it in, you know,
00:22:53.660September 20th. The complaint said that there were three students who were not present at the meeting
00:23:00.100had filed the complaint. They had heard secondhand from parents and council members who were at the
00:23:08.220meeting what had happened at the meeting. And they were not apparently claiming harm themselves.
00:23:13.760they were they were claiming harms uh on behalf of other groups of people so yeah so
00:23:21.280the usual i mean i i guess i won't go to the full stereotypes but there seems to be a certain
00:23:25.040category of people who always speak up for the harms on identifiable minorities but are rarely
00:23:29.680actually members of those particular minority groups uh so i take it there haven't been
00:23:35.120indigenous advocacy groups or uh you know uh parents or children that were upset with these
00:23:40.800discussions it's anonymous complaints well they're not anonymous complaints and it the process was
00:23:46.720confidential so i'm not even sure how i can prove who the who these students were now not to say if
00:23:53.920they were minors i'm not looking to have their identities but the point is is like this is a
00:23:59.120this is a process that's been run by the board um in in confident confidential um who's holding the
00:24:06.400board to account to its own processes they they're acting like judge and jury in their own sort of
00:24:12.880investigation and who's to say what those students actually told the board um you know who those
00:24:19.520students are do the students even exist yeah and and so i mean it turns into pressuring when we
00:24:28.160don't have proper documentation we got anonymous complaints you don't know if any of this exists
00:24:32.880i mean that's why we have processes and things like that but there's also in the broader issue
00:24:37.920of these acknowledgements there's social pressure i admit i i uh admire your courage and at least
00:24:43.680standing up and questioning or even just not including them i talked about in my opening
00:24:47.360monologue i'm a i'm a geek i'm a member of a rock and lapidary club and at our monthly meeting0.98
00:24:51.920they've started reading these stupid land acknowledge this is a rock club for crying out0.98
00:24:55.680loud but instead of complaining instead of speaking up or doing anything i actually just0.99
00:24:59.920stop going to the monthly meetings and that's what a lot of people do rather than make waves
00:25:05.440or make a fuss and i gotta admit that's more cowardly on my part but probably the more common
00:25:09.360approach and i i hope to grow more backbone on these sorts of things but i imagine the pressure
00:25:14.480against you has been pretty pretty strong even on the social sense i can say that it it was an
00:25:20.960immense pressure and i was um i i had no other public support in my in my community i mean i do
00:25:28.880have people approaching me privately and you know nobody on council was willing to take the stand
00:25:37.100with me at least in terms of the fact that like forget the land acknowledgement it was about
00:25:43.840my whole issue was about the board should not be interfering in council governance and our
00:25:50.780discussions so it was up to the council decide if they want to put a land acknowledgement on the
00:25:56.380agenda. That was always what the fight was about. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it wasn't
00:26:06.180easy. Well, and there's still not clarity. I see you wrote that, what, in February 2026, when you
00:26:11.140had a new chair of the council, they're saying that the government says these have to be on
00:26:16.880there and land acknowledgements aren't even up for discussion. Was there a declaration on the
00:26:23.180of the government saying you must have these in that meeting um it was very interesting because
00:26:28.700the chair was under the impression that the government says this is what we have to do
00:26:32.780um that meeting also had the principal and the superintendent um the the principal was saying
00:26:38.700well it's the chair's decision and then i directly asked the superintendent um lindsey snell i asked
00:26:45.420her point blank you know who's making these decisions and she sat there in the room and
00:27:30.920That case in B.C. was very disturbing where they actually called Provincial Child Protection Services on a mother
00:27:36.380because she questioned land acknowledgements.
00:27:39.740I mean, this is, talk about intimidation and using the state, threatening your children, basically.
00:27:45.080Yes, I think that Laurie Yates situation is terrible. And I can say that, oh, I can tell you an update in the HWDSB. I attended a parental involvement committee yesterday. It's a public meeting. It's open to the public. And the superintendent, Paul Denomy, I guess everybody's caught wind of my article in the community.
00:28:10.120so they're taking a position of doubling down on this land acknowledgement they read the land
00:28:15.360acknowledgement at the parental committee which by the way is also supposed to be independent
00:28:20.520from the school board it's supposed to have its own governments and decide what gets said in their
00:28:25.120meetings as well but this superintendent decided to also do a little speech and talk about you know
00:28:32.220the reasons for the land acknowledgement in in my view what he was doing was he was sending a message
00:28:38.400to the other parents in the Parental Involvement Committee that, you know, good people say this.
00:28:45.900So, you know, in other words, if you try to object.
00:28:49.680Yeah, you must be some terrible, terrible soul who wants to harm the children.
00:28:54.480It's that narrative is just getting frustrated.
00:28:56.800I personally feel there's a silent majority who are getting exhausted with these things.
00:29:01.520And whether it's at hockey games or in schools or even on radio stations, we're hearing it now.
00:29:06.500But nobody wants to speak up because they don't want to be labeled that nasty, intolerant person, as you said.
00:29:15.120Before I let you go, where can people find what you wrote and what you're up to to continue to follow what you've been doing on this issue?
00:29:24.660They can find my article at C2C Journal.
00:29:28.840And I'm sorry, I don't have anything else to say.
00:34:59.140But remember, a majority within the party isn't the same as a majority at the voting booth.
00:35:04.300So just because you've got 60%, 70% of the members support this doesn't mean 60% of the people voting on the ground do.
00:35:10.900So we do have to think a little more strategically and a little less reactionary with some of these things.
00:35:17.520Maybe, maybe replacement is the better idea.
00:35:19.740But I tell you what, we're getting into some very dangerous territory.
00:35:24.460when we do see a Calgary seat that was considered safe has now swung to the NDP. We've been there
00:35:31.440before, guys. I'll tell you one thing the NDP never even would have given us is even the mushy
00:35:36.260referendum we have now. You'd get nothing. If we get another term of NDP, there is no movement on
00:35:42.480the independence front. None. We got socialism, and we're really up the creek. Just remember,
00:35:49.520when you vote, you're never going to get somebody who's 100% of what you like.
00:35:53.360you got to pick somebody who's 80 percent there somebody who's representing the majority i think
00:35:59.340there's going to be a lot more clarity on october 20th you know people are fighting the campaign
00:36:03.140right now i am as dave was saying i drove in from wainwright i spoke last night at a meeting and
00:36:08.160it was fantastic by the way a great crowd of folks that came out there um this campaign is going full
00:36:14.700bore you know the signs are out there the people are knocking on doors people are are doing
00:36:18.780conventional campaign things and we're now just a hair over a month away from voting day on it
00:36:23.840and uh we've never seen anything like it before you know the province is
00:36:28.120in uh new territory that's where we got to watch it a little too uh
00:36:33.440uh jacqueline saying uh we got rid of the progressive conservative party because they
00:36:37.880were corrupt uh do we need a repeat well i don't see corruption in the ucp part i see some
00:36:42.900competency issues. But I mean, the repeat and getting rid of them was a real painful process,
00:36:50.100right? How did we do it? Well, we did it by putting the NDP in power for four years.
00:36:55.160So let's just be a little careful about what we think might be a solution to things.
00:37:00.320Because sometimes the cure can be pretty darn painful. Again, wait until October 20th. Put
00:37:05.940out the torches, put away the pitchforks, wait until October 20th. Then we rethink strategy
00:37:12.160in general. Speaking on the other front, and here's somewhere that I find interesting. I was
00:37:19.060at a conference last weekend on Friday night and Saturday. It's called the Capitalism and Morality
00:37:26.000Conference. It's fantastic. Mostly libertarian-leaning types of folks, all sorts of great
00:37:30.440speakers, freedom-minded people. I was chatting with Frances Widdowson and Tamara Leach.
00:37:37.060You know, we were sitting, the funny thing when I look at the two of them, as I said, the combined weight of those two ladies is probably under 200 pounds between the two of them, yet they're a couple of the strongest people you'll ever meet.
00:37:50.520You know, the size of the package doesn't necessarily reflect the strength of it.
00:37:55.740But it was a good conference, and Drew Barnes was there, and I hadn't seen Drew in a couple of years.