Getting rather big for their taxpayer-funded britches:
Indigenous Canadians should be formally consulted on all new foreign treaties, the Assembly of First Nations has told the Senate.
Consultation with chiefs must be mandatory, they said: “First Nations
have engaged in trade since time immemorial.”
Why?
Did you do anything to even secure meetings?
Will pay into the bottomless Ukrainian kitty?
How are those grave funds coming along? Did you find anything yet?:
May 27, 2026, is the fifth anniversary of the announcement
from the Kamloops First Nation, in which Chief Rosanne Casimir told us that
ground penetrating radar (GPR) had located 215 previously unknown graves
containing the remains of missing Indigenous children.
Media, politicians, and academics uncritically accepted the
story. The New York Times even amplified it by speaking of a “mass burial
site,” making it sound like the outcome of a civil war. Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau ordered the Canadian flag to be flown at half-mast on federal buildings
for almost six months, an unprecedented display of public mourning. MP Leah
Gazan persuaded the House of Commons to vote that the Indian Residential
Schools constituted a genocide. The resolution had no legal effect, but the
impact on public opinion was substantial.
Despite all the hype, the Kamloops narrative began to fall
apart almost immediately. Sarah Beaulieu, the Kamloops GPR operator, cautioned
that excavations would be necessary to confirm the findings because GPR could
discover soil anomalies but not identify what was underground. An alternate
explanation for the 215 soil anomalies emerged when it was re-discovered that
the Kamloops Indian Residential School had installed a sewage disposal system
in the 1920s with thousands of feet of weeping tile in the area where unmarked
graves were allegedly found.
Difficulties continued to pile up. Independent researchers
found death certificates showing the place of burial for almost all students
who died while attending the Kamloops school. So, who were these missing
children? No one came forward with the names of children who had disappeared.
In any case, the claim was implausible because both the Indian Affairs
bureaucracy in Ottawa and the school administrations kept detailed lists of all
students. The schools were supported by per capita payments, so they wanted to
ensure they got all the money to which their enrolment entitled them, while
officials in Ottawa wanted to ensure they didn’t overpay.
On the third anniversary of the Kamloops announcement, the
First Nation’s leaders threw in the towel, admitting that what had been found
were not graves but soil anomalies that might be potential grave sites. But the
Kamloops narrative has acquired a life of its own and is now embedded in the
minds of true believers.
Earlier this month, we also learned that a CBC-affiliated
comedy series called Northland Tales conducted an elaborate hoax, attempting to
embarrass several high-profile critics of the Kamloops narrative, such as
academic Frances Widdowson, B.C. MLA Dallas Brodie and MP Aaron Gunn. Should
public money be spent to trash the reputations of people who take one side in a
public debate?
The CBC sting operation was obviously a hoax, but was the
Kamloops narrative a hoax in the same sense of being a deliberate deception?
Some think so, but I don’t. I believe it was confirmation bias, caused by an
inexperienced GPR operator meeting a tribal leadership wanting to believe their
own folklore about unmarked graves and missing children. That the Kamloops
leadership ultimately repudiated the finding of human remains showed goodwill.
But goodwill or not, the original announcement unleashed a moral panic that
will persist for years.
In the wake of the Kamloops announcement, Parliament adopted
the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is
now unsettling the received constitutional jurisprudence of Aboriginal title.
Perhaps as significant (and more sinister in my view) is the attempt of MP Leah
Gazan and sympathetic academics to criminalize residential school “denialism.”
Gazan said in the House of Commons on Oct. 31, 2025:
“Denialism is spreading: twisting facts, denying genocide and reigniting harm.
It is not only hurtful; it is dangerous.” Her solution for dissent is to amend
the Criminal Code to make it illegal.
Let this sink in for a minute. A politician is urging other
politicians to regulate the writing of Canadian history, prosecuting historians
who don’t agree with the official interpretation of the evidence. Gazan’s
private member’s bill probably won’t pass. The real danger is that the Liberal
government may add it to a piece of its own legislation and pass it with its
new majority. Let us hope the governing party remembers that its name “Liberal”
is derived from the Latin liber, meaning “free.”
So, people who get millions of taxpayer dollars to locate children for whom there are already records now want to dabble in international affairs?
What can go right?
The audacity!, some might exclaim.
