The cost of a hoax

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Wendy McElroy
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The cost of a hoax

The scandal surrounding Canada’s Kamloops Indian Residential School (1890-1969, British Columbia) is an ultracautionary tale about the damage inflicted by self-interested politicians and activists, backed by a media that toes the line. The 2021 scandal sprang from the alleged discovery of 215 graves of indigenous children. They were said to have died under suspicious circumstances at the Catholic-run school and then buried in unmarked graves behind the facility. Kamloops was one of the largest schools in the residential system through which indigenous children were culturally deprogrammed and indoctrinated to mold them into “proper” Canadians.

When the story broke, the press fell over itself in a race to sensationalism. CBC News on May 28 declared, “Remains of 215 children found buried at former B.C. residential school, First Nation says.” The Toronto Star announced on May 28, “The remains of 215 children have been found. Now, Indigenous leaders say, Canada must help find the rest of the unmarked graves.” The international press jumped on the speeding news train with their own headlines, such as “‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada’” from The New York Times on May 31.

Actually, no graves had been discovered; their existence was extrapolated from “anomalies” in the earth found by ground-penetrating radar. Such anomalies are commonplace, however, and usually indicate a tree root, a large rock, or some other innocuous presence. Today, after three years and almost $8 million of publicly unaccountable funds being expended, no graves have been found. No one has bothered to even start the digging necessary to verify anything.

Evidence is optional in the court of opinion

The world was ready to believe without evidence. The residential school system was a horrific page of Canadian history and an act of cultural assault, if not cultural genocide. Perhaps this history lent an automatic credibility to the accusations that many students died prematurely and were buried anonymously as a cover-up or out of callousness.

The fallout from these accusations was stunning. Canada was internationally smeared as a genocidal nation; the United Nations called for prompt action on a massive “human rights violation”; the Pope apologized; dozens of Catholic Churches in Canada were burned down in retaliation; the 2021 Canada Day celebrations were canceled in national shame, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking a knee to indigenous people. Subsequent government funds were pledged, including $3.1 million for a National Residential School Student Death Register and $238.8 million for a Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund. Other governments followed suit. For example, the government of Ontario pledged $10 million to search for unmarked graves at residential schools in this province.

Eventually, academics and journalists began to ask for evidence. In a 2022 New York Post article entitled “Biggest fake news story in Canada: Kamloops mass grave debunked by academics,” Professor Jacques Rouillard of the Department of History at Université de Montréal expressed an increasingly common concern. “Not one body has been found. After ... months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School?” And why hadn’t a single missing person’s report on them been found?

Almost alone among prominent Canadian media, the National Post ran a series of articles that showed cracks in what had become an almost sacred narrative about Kamloops. A Sept. 6, 2023, headline asked, “Who started calling residential school burial sites mass graves? At least in the beginning, First Nations didn’t claim there were deliberately hidden ‘mass graves.’ Media and activists did.” A May 30, 2024, article concluded, “Canada slowly acknowledging there never was a ‘mass grave’. There was much that was dark about residential schools, but no graves have been confirmed at Kamloops to this day.” In late 2023, the anthology “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)” appeared.

In response to a growing backlash, the special interlocutor assigned to the Kamloops criminal case asked Parliament to make “denialism” of this matter illegal under the criminal code. Those who expressed public skepticism would be vulnerable to prosecution for a hate crime in much the same manner as those who denied the Holocaust. Under section 319 of the criminal code, the willful promotion of antisemitism, unless in a private conversation, could lead to up to two years in prison. This includes “condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust.” Discussions of Kamloops would receive the same treatment. On Nov. 26, 2023, the Canadian Press reported that Justice Minister Arif Virani was still considering how to criminalize residential school denialism. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed sympathy for the idea.

Making the open discussion of a news story into an illegal act obviously guts freedom of speech and journalism. The government wants to control both the information we can hear and our judgment of its worth. This is nothing new, and it is well-explored ground.

But lesser-discussed damages inflicted by the handling of Kamloops are important and common to many cover-ups.

Every day that passes without exhumations casts more doubt about the validity of the Kamloops story. If the narrative is true, then refusing to confirm it is an outrageous offense against the indigenous children lying in these graves. If false, then it is an outrageous offense against any indigenous person who reports a true atrocity in the future and is received with greater skepticism due to Kamloops. If false, then Kamloops also provides shade for real genocides around the globe. The CBC reportedon June 22, 2021, “On the same day Canada helped to launch an international effort at the United Nations to demand that China allow free access to Xinjiang to investigate reported human rights violations, China and its allies have called on the UN to investigate crimes against Indigenous people in Canada.” When genocide becomes a game of political chess, it loses its connection to truth or justice.

The politicization of Kamloops also prevents genuine healing for those involved because healing rests on understanding, not lies. As it stands, there is deepening antipathy on the part of the main parties: the white Christians accused and the indigenous people. Since May 2021, at least 33 Catholic Churches have burned to the ground, with 24 being confirmed as arsons.The Catholic Register on June 5, 2024, noted, “Over 100 Canadian Christian churches have been vandalized, damaged by fire or outright burned to the ground since the Kamloops’ claim first came to light.” (A map of vandalized or destroyed churches is here, valid as of February 2024.) To some, it feels like open war has been declared on Christianity, especially Catholicism.

For their part, how can indigenous people join hands with white Christians when the latter are portrayed as the murderers of their children who bury the evidence in unmarked graves? The residential system has ceased to be the historical shame it truly is and has become, instead, a multigenerational burden of guilt that stretches forward forever.

It does not have to be this way. The continuing turmoil is created by those to whom it brings power and money. The Epoch Times is correct in stating, “It’s absurd that people can claim a site contains the bodies of hundreds of murdered children yet refuse to allow further investigation into the issue. Only when we have confirmed what did or didn’t happen in Canadian residential schools will we be able to close the door on that chapter of our national history. Until there are excavations at the Kamloops site, the myths will continue to be spun and national healing won’t happen.” In the most literal sense, it is time to start digging for the truth.

This is unlikely to happen. For one thing, in his 2021 federal election campaign, Trudeau leaned heavily on the promise to right the wrongs done against indigenous Canadians. For another thing, the federal government owns much of the mainstream media. Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa explained the government’s system of financially “supporting” the media:

“While the current system covers 25% of the journalist costs up to $55,000 per employee (or $13,750), the government’s fall economic statement increases both the percentage covered and cap per employee. Under the new system, which is retroactive to the start of this year [2023], Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations (which covers print and digital but not broadcasters) can now claim 35% of the costs of journalist expenditures up to $85,000 per employee. It increases the support to up to $29,750 per employee or an increase of 116%. This new support will run for four years at a cost of $129 million ($60 million this year alone).”

Thus, in a literal sense, the federal government owns much of the mainstream media, at least in terms of paying their salaries.

This is yet another cost of perpetuating an official narrative without evidence. Dismantling freedom of the press is a prerequisite to establishing the politically sacred version of an event, such as the discovery of 215 bodies of indigenous children. If the bodies exist, they will probably never be exhumed and given a proper burial. There is no political advantage in doing so.