From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

The vast scale of the waste, the damage to Canada’s international standing and the willingness of political leaders in all parties to accept a falsehood without question demand a full public inquiry. Such an inquiry should be led by someone with the stature of Preston Manning or Jean Chrétien—someone trusted across party lines to tell the truth.

No graves have been found but the spending hasn’t stopped—and no one in Parliament is asking the hard questions

The “Kamloops Hoax” is the largest misuse of taxpayer dollars in Canadian history, yet, unlike past scandals, the Official Opposition has failed to challenge it.

Critics use the term “Kamloops Hoax” because, more than three years after the 2021 announcement that 215 Indigenous children’s remains had been detected at Kamloops, no human remains have been recovered and no forensic evidence has confirmed the claim.

It’s worth recalling how past scandals have been handled when governments were caught misusing public funds.

In earlier eras, major political scandals brought down governments. The Pacific Railway Scandal toppled John A. Macdonald’s Conservatives less than a decade after Confederation, when opportunists exploited an over-generous government eager to complete a vital national railway. Public money was handed out freely, political allies were enriched and the opposition of the day seized the opportunity to expose the waste and corruption.

More than a century later, the Sponsorship Scandal forced Jean Chrétien’s Liberals from office after it became clear that party operatives had misused public funds in Quebec. Again, the opposition—then the Conservatives—did its job. The wrongdoing was debated in Parliament, reported in the press and discussed by Canadians from coast to coast. In both cases, the system worked because the opposition held government to account.

The Kamloops case is different. Whether it is a hoax, a scandal or a boondoggle—or all three—nothing in Canadian history comes close in scale to the waste it has triggered, or in the willingness of all parties to look the other way.

In May 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in British Columbia announced that ground-penetrating radar had detected what they believed were the remains of 215 children on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The announcement was accepted as fact by the media and political leaders.

The claim set off a wave of similar announcements across the country, each citing radar anomalies as possible graves. Governments at every level pledged billions of dollars for searches and compensation. The narrative quickly became fixed in the public mind: atrocities, murders and secret burials had taken place at residential schools.

This single unproven claim has driven the passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, $70 billion in extra spending on questionable Indigenous claims and a parliamentary motion branding Canada guilty of “genocide.”

The cost is staggering and still growing. Blacklock’s Reporter and Professor Hymie Rubenstein, a senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, point out that applications for a $320-million federal fund to search for alleged graves have been so numerous that the amount would have to double to meet demand. And the spending shows no sign of stopping.

The damage extends far beyond wasted dollars. Based on the assumption that graves had been discovered, the genocide motion has tarnished Canada’s reputation internationally. It has entrenched a narrative of national guilt unsupported by evidence and weakened our ability to speak credibly on human rights abroad.

The Trudeau Liberals bear full responsibility for creating this crisis. They turned an unverified allegation into a moral panic, then spent public money as if there were no limits. Whether Mark Carney’s government will continue this course remains to be seen.

Yet the most glaring failure lies with the Official Opposition. In past scandals, opposition parties seized every opportunity to expose government waste and misconduct. This time, the Conservatives have been largely silent.

Aside from a few tentative remarks from Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, no Conservative MP has challenged the core narrative of atrocities, murders and secret burials at residential schools. Worse, they reinforced it. When NDP MP Leah Gazan introduced her genocide motion—rooted in the same unsubstantiated claim—every Conservative MP voted for it. Not one dared to oppose a motion based on no credible evidence.

Think about that. A motion alleging that 215 children died under sinister circumstances and were secretly buried by priests sailed through Parliament unanimously. In my view, it was one of the most shameful moments in Parliamentary history and in the long history of the Conservative Party.

Carney appears ready to continue a boondoggle largely created by his predecessor.

Eventually, there must be a reckoning. The vast scale of the waste, the damage to Canada’s international standing and the willingness of political leaders in all parties to accept a falsehood without question demand a full public inquiry. Such an inquiry should be led by someone with the stature of Preston Manning or Jean Chrétien—someone trusted across party lines to tell the truth.

Until then, Conservatives must find the courage to speak if their leader will not. Fear of offending Indigenous sensibilities or jeopardizing “reconciliation” cannot justify the misuse of taxpayer money. Truth must not be sacrificed for political convenience.

Canadians deserve better. They deserve leaders who will question unverified claims before committing billions of their hard-earned dollars. They deserve a Parliament willing to defend both fiscal responsibility and historical accuracy. And they deserve an Official Opposition that understands its role is to hold government to account, not to nod along as the country is led into one of the costliest boondoggles in its history.

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

From the Fraser Institute

By Dwight Newman

The Cowichan, who are based mainly on Vancouver Island, claimed they had a village on an island that is now part of Richmond that they used seasonally. They had to prove with evidence that they were fearsome enough that other groups—like the Musqueam and Tsawwassen, who incidentally were both part of the opposition to the Cowichan claim—would have been scared and thus reluctant to use the claimed area when the Cowichan were away.

The recent decision of the British Columbia Supreme Court in Cowichan Tribes v Canada (Attorney General) (cited as 2025 BCSC 1490) granting a declaration of Aboriginal title over city-owned land in Richmond and fishing rights in the Fraser River has already drawn attention and concern.

This is because the judgment’s reasoning on Aboriginal title has potentially widespread implications for private property in B.C., and perhaps elsewhere. At the same time, the judgment is also totally inaccessible for most readers. At a monster length of more than 3,700 paragraphs, it does not yield legal guidance easily.

The judgment comes after a trial that started in 2019, with more than 500 trial days. The judgment lists out more than 80 lawyers involved so far. It was the longest trial in Canadian history, and the case will probably ultimately reach the Supreme Court of Canada—perhaps with a decision by the end of the decade.

Estimating the likely costs based on the length of proceedings, and normal legal fees, I will not be surprised if overall legal costs in the Cowichan Tribes case approach or even exceed $100 million by the time all is said and done.

What does $100 million of such spending get you these days? A few things.

First, and explaining significant parts of the expense, it got a lot of detailed evidence from documents, from experts, from Aboriginal oral history, and other forms that the trial judge, Madam Justice Young, considered against the established Aboriginal title test. In other words, the trial allowed a multitude of sources, many new, for the trial judge to try to apply the existing rules on Aboriginal title.

That test looks for whether a claimant group has proven “sufficient” and “exclusive” occupation of land as of just prior to the date of assertion of European/Canadian sovereignty—in this part of B.C., that date is 1846. The Cowichan, who are based mainly on Vancouver Island, claimed they had a village on an island that is now part of Richmond that they used seasonally. They had to prove with evidence that they were fearsome enough that other groups—like the Musqueam and Tsawwassen, who incidentally were both part of the opposition to the Cowichan claim—would have been scared and thus reluctant to use the claimed area when the Cowichan were away. Sorting through these facts and other elements pertinent to the Aboriginal title test took massive amounts of evidence and time.

Second, the spending includes consideration of various defences that parties to the case mounted. The federal lawyers, the provincial lawyers, and City of Richmond lawyers all made different arguments. Both the federal and provincial lawyers were restricted in what they could argue, based on a combination of their own policies and on the judge’s rejection of some of their arguments as inconsistent with other legal acts, such as B.C.’s recognition of title in the Haida Agreement. This is an important recognition of how the trial judge’s decision was influenced by discretionary provincial policy in the province, namely its recognition of the Haida Nation’s title on their claimed land.

The City of Richmond was less restricted in its defence but critically failed with portions of its defence that might apply to private landowners. For example, the lands the City of Richmond owned were determined to not have been acquired “for value,” which means that the City didn’t buy them. The failure of meeting this test means the City of Richmond was not afforded the significant protection in property law that many private landowners would receive (under a technical category of “bona fide purchasers for value”).

Third, the spending gets you a decision that included some unclear paragraphs that say there will be interesting questions to be faced down the road, including what happens when there’s an Aboriginal title claim directly over privately owned land. Some text from the decision in the case suggest Aboriginal title might take priority over any other property interest, but private landowners will have a future chance to invoke defences such as the “bona fide purchaser for value” concept. Despite the fact the Cowichan avoided these issues for now by not asking for a declaration concerning any private land, those cases are coming. The broader trajectory is precisely towards that clash, and there are active cases of that type elsewhere, including over major private landholdings throughout New Brunswick.

There’s not any definitive legal clarity from the judgment on this crucial point of how Aboriginal title and private property interact. For $100 million, the trial delivered lingering uncertainty and heightened risks on the legal status of property, which influences the economy and residents across the province, not just those directly involved in the case.

This issue has been key in motivating a provincial government appeal, which is unlikely to take less than a year to resolve and could take two or even three years, and even then it’s likely to move on to the Supreme Court of Canada. Until then, British Columbians, including Indigenous Peoples, will continue to face heightened uncertainty and the economic costs it imposes.