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Retired judge slams Trudeau gov’t for promoting ‘false’ accusation about residential school deaths

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Retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht observed that allegations were made with ‘no real evidence’ and that reports ‘that thousands of indigenous children had died at residential schools under suspicious circumstances’ are patently ‘false.’

A retired Canadian judge blasted what he said is a “conspiracy theory” lie and “shocking” yet unproven “accusation” being pushed by the Liberal federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and legacy media that thousands of Indigenous residential school kids died due to negligence by the Catholic priests and nuns.

“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) accused Canadian priests, nuns, teachers, and staff at residential schools of somehow being responsible for the disappearance of thousands of indigenous children who attended the schools. That is a shocking accusation,” retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht wrote in a commentary piece published in the Western Standard last week.

“But it is even more shocking that the accusation was made with no real evidence to support it.”

Giesbrecht observed that reports from TRC commissioners that “that thousands of indigenous children had died at residential schools under suspicious circumstances” are patently “false.”

“Those allegations were false, and based on a conspiracy theory,” Giesbrecht said.

The judge lamented the fact that hundreds of Christian (mostly Catholic) churches have been burned to the ground since the first TRC report came out in 2010, with more than 100 being reduced to ashes since 2021.

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media and federal government ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools.

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation was more or less the reason there was a large international outcry in 2021 when it claimed it had found 215 “unmarked graves” of kids at the Kamloops Residential School. The claims of remains, however, were not backed by physical evidence but were rather disturbances in the soil picked up by ground-penetrating radar.

The First Nation now has changed its claim of 215 graves to 200 “potential burials.”

“Where did that Tk’emlups story come from? Most importantly, why would anyone believe such obvious nonsense?” he wrote.

According to Giesbrecht, the “conspiracy theory that launched the entire missing children claim” came from a “largely created” claim by defrocked United Church minister Kevin Annett.

“For reasons that defy rational explanation this unusual man made it his life’s work to take the alcoholic ramblings of a few Vancouvers east side street residents, polish them up, and present them as fact to the world,” the retired justice wrote.

Giesbrecht gave an example of how Annett repeated the story that “Queen Elizabeth had kidnapped 10 children from the Kamloops school, and those children were never seen again,” but was later exposed by an investigative reporter.

According to Giesbrecht, Annett “repeated stories about priests clubbing students to death and throwing them into graves dug by other students, dead boys hanging on meat hooks in barns, and babies thrown into furnaces by priests and nuns.”

“Respected investigative reporter Terry Glavin exposed Annett as a crank and debunked Annett’s wild stories in detail in a 2008 Tyee article. Annett’s stories are so obviously fake that it seems incredible that anyone believed them,” he said.

Giesbrecht noted that it is “hard” to believe that anyone thought the defrocked pastor’s tales were true, but the truth is, people “did” fall for it.

“In fact, some of the people who fell for these stories occupied important positions. One was Gary Merasty, a Member of Parliament. Merasty became so convinced that these claims, as presented in Kevin Annett’s most famous documentary, ‘Unrepentant’ were true, that he was able to convince the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and other important politicians that the newly appointed TRC commissioners must investigate Annett’s claims,” he said.

According to Giesbrecht, the newly appointed TRC commissioners had “unwisely accepted this new area of study, despite the fact that they had no mandate to do so.”

“When the federal government refused their request for a mandate and funds to search for these phantom ‘missing children’ they ignored the rebuff, and pursued the subject anyway,” he wrote.

“It appears from their statements on the subject that they completely bought into the Annett conspiracy theory. Commissioner Murray Sinclair gave many interviews about these supposedly “missing children” and hinted frequently that dark forces were at play.

LifeSiteNews reported last week that Leah Gazan, backbencher MP from the New Democratic Party, brought forth a new bill that seeks to criminalize the denial of the unproven claim that the residential school system once operating in Canada was a “genocide.”

Media and Trudeau feds worked together to create unproven claims, says judge

Giesbrecht observed that the mainstream media, meanwhile, did not “question any of these always improbable claims,” and “quite the contrary, they not only played along with these baseless claims, but actively encouraged them.”

“It did not seem to occur to them that they were actively supporting a conspiracy theory,” he noted.

The retired judge noted that “Trudeau and his ministers,” notably Marc Miller, “made matters immeasurably worse by immediately ordering all federal flags to be flown at half mast and promising enormous amounts of money to any other indigenous community that wanted to make a similar claim.”

“The truth is that the TRC’s missing children wild goose chase had thoroughly captivated journalists and entire indigenous communities to the extent that the baseless Tk’emlups claim seemed to make sense to them. Justin Trudeau and his ministers were in that gaggle of gullibles. Canada became the laughing stock of the world for dumbly accepting these wild claims,” he wrote.

Giesbrecht observed how since the unfounded claims exploded on the Canadian media and political scene, both the “Trudeau government” and the state-funded “CBC have doubled down on their refusal to correct the misinformation that they have promoted.”

He warned that the next “logical step” for the Trudeau Liberals and mainstream media “is to stop Canadians from even knowing about” the truth of residential schools, as well as for those who have been muzzled or speaking out.

LifeSiteNews reported in August that Trudeau’s cabinet said it will expand a multimillion-dollar fund geared toward documenting claims that hundreds of young children died and were clandestinely buried at now-closed residential schools, some of them run by the Catholic Church.

Canadian indigenous residential schools, run by the Catholic Church and other Christian churches, were set up by the federal government and were open from the late 19th century until 1996.

While there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the unproved “mass graves” narrative has led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment since 2021.

Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Jamil Jivani has urged support from his political opponents for a bill that would give stiffer penalties to arsonists caught burning churches down, saying the recent rash of destruction is a “very serious issue” that is a direct “attack” on families as well as “religious freedom in Canada.”

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Aristotle Foundation

Imagine being 18 and leaving your family and friends for war

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What does a farm kid from the prairies, a black American, a Mohawk native, and a girl from Montreal all have in common?

• Each fought for Canada in wartime;

• Each believed in freedom, national service, and a better future.

This Remembrance Day weekend, the Aristotle Foundation is highlighting their stories. See below for our latest mini-documentary, “Remembering those who served.”

The more Canadians who watch these stories of sacrifice, the more memories all of us can help keep alive.

Please share far and wide.

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Business

Here’s how the feds blew your money this week

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

If politicians don’t want you to think they’re shady and only out for themselves, then they should stop doing shady, self-serving stuff like this.

The Trudeau government wants to push back the next federal election (currently scheduled for Oct. 20, 2025) by one week.

Politicians claim the election must be moved to Oct. 27, 2025, because the original date conflicts with the religious holiday of Diwali.

But it just so happens that 80 MPs won’t be eligible for their taxpayer-funded, lifetime pensions until Oct. 21, 2025.

One day after the currently scheduled election…

What a coincidence!

If the election is moved, those extra pensions for politicians (who don’t deserve them) would cost you tens of millions of dollars.

In fact, the CTF estimates the price tag could be as high as $120 million. Some politicians will serve for barely six years and walk out the door with a $2-million pension.

But those politicians don’t deserve a penny more from you.

They already take annual salaries ranging from $200,000 to $300,000. They already take a pay raise every single year. They already take a $100,000 severance and a $15,000 transition allowance.

They can take those bloated, six-figure salaries of theirs and use them to save for their own retirements.

At minimum, politicians shouldn’t be trying to rig the system to stick their greedy fingers deeper into your pockets.

This week, CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano went into the belly of the beast and testified at a Parliamentary committee. He stuck up for you and called B.S. on the plan to pinch extra pensions for politicians.

Franco laid out two simple solutions.

  • Option one: If the election must be moved, then make it earlier.
  • Option two: make the pension eligibility date later.

We’ve got some good news to report back.

The Conservatives are opposed to the government delaying the election to secure millions in pensions for dozens of politicians who don’t deserve them.

So is the Bloc Québécois and the NDP.

And here’s something we’ve never seen before.

At committee, a Liberal MP told Franco she would vote against her own government and oppose moving the election.

You can watch Franco’s opening remarks at the Parliamentary committee by clicking the link below.

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