From the Fraser Institute

By Tom Flanagan

The new book Dead Wrong: How Canada Got the Residential School Story So Wrong is a follow-up to Grave Error, published by True North in 2023. Grave Error instantly became a best-seller. People wanted to read the book because it contained well-documented information not readily available elsewhere concerning the history of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (IRS) and the facts surrounding recent claims about “unmarked graves.”

Why another book? Because the struggle for accurate information continues. Let me share with you a little of what’s in Dead Wrong.

Outrageously, the New York Times, one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers, has never retracted its absurd headline that “mass graves” were uncovered in Kamloops, British Columbia. Jonathan Kay, the North American editor of Quillette, exposes that scandal.

The legacy media were enthused about the so-called documentary Sugarcane, a feature-length film sponsored by National Geographic, which was nominated for an Academy Award. The only reporter to spot the dozens of factual errors in Sugarcane was independent journalist Michelle Stirling; Dead Wrong includes her analysis “The Bitter Roots of Sugarcane.”

In the spring of 2024, the small city of Quesnel, B.C., made national news when the mayor’s wife bought 10 copies of Grave Error for distribution to friends. After noisy protests held by people who had never read the book, Quesnel city council voted to censure Mayor Ron Paull and tried to force him from office. It’s all described in Dead Wrong.

Also not to be forgotten is how the Law Society of B.C. forced upon its members training materials asserting against all evidence that children’s remains have been discovered in Kamloops. As told by James Pew, B.C. MLA Dallas Brodie was expelled from the Conservative caucus for daring to point out the emperor’s lack of clothing.

Then there’s the story of Jim McMurtry, suspended by the Abbotsford District School Board shortly after the 2021 Kamloops announcement about “unmarked graves.” McMurtry’s offence was to tell students the truth that, while some Indigenous students did die in residential schools, the main cause was tuberculosis. His own book The Scarlet Lesson is excerpted here.

Historian Ian Gentles and former IRS teacher Pim Wiebel offer a richly detailed analysis of health and medical conditions in the schools. They show that these were much better than what prevailed in the Indian reserves from which most students came.

Another important contribution to understanding the medical issues is by Dr. Eric Schloss, narrating the history of the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton. IRS facilities usually included small clinics, but students with serious problems were often transferred to Indian Hospitals for more intensive care. Schloss, who worked in the Camsell, describes how it delivered state-of-the-art medicine, probably better than the care available to most children anywhere in Canada at the time.

Rodney Clifton’s contribution, “They would call me a ‘Denier,’” describes his experiences working in two IRS in the 1960s. Clifton does not tell stories of hunger, brutal punishment and suppression of Indigenous culture, but of games, laughter and trying to learn native languages from his Indian and Inuit charges.

Toronto lawyer and historian Greg Piasetzki explains how “Canada Wanted to Close All Residential Schools in the 1940s. Here’s why it couldn’t.” For many Indian parents, particularly single parents and/or those with large numbers of children, the IRS were the best deal available. And they offered paid employment to large numbers of Indians as cooks, janitors, farmers, health-care workers, and even teachers and principals.

Finally, Frances Widdowson analyzes the charge of residential school “denialism” used by true believers in the Kamloops narrative to shut down criticism or questions. Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan in 2022 persuaded the House of Commons to give unanimous consent to a resolution on residential school genocide: “That, in the opinion of the House this government must recognize what happened in Canada’s Indian residential schools as genocide.”

In 2024, Gazan took the next step by introducing a private member’s bill to criminalize dissent about the IRS system. The bill failed to pass, but Gazan reintroduced it in 2025. Had these provisions been in force back in 2021, it might well have become a crime to point out that the Kamloops ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey had identified soil anomalies, not buried bodies.

While the wheels of legislation and litigation grind and spin, those who wish to limit open discussion of residential schools attack truth-tellers as “denialists,” a term drawn from earlier debates about the Holocaust. As the proponents of the Kamloops narrative fail to provide convincing hard evidence for it, they hope to mobilize the authority of the state to stamp out dissent. One of the main goals of publishing Dead Wrong is to head off this drive toward authoritarianism.

Happily, Dead Wrong, like Grave Error, has already become an Amazon best-seller. The struggle for truth continues.

Fr0m LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Department of Immigration has had research done to investigate digital passports as an identity document, but MPs have soundly rejected the idea as dangerous and costly.

Without oversight from elected federal MPs, Canada’s Department of Immigration had research done to investigate a national ID system using digital passports for domestic use and how such a system would be enforced.

According to Access to Information documents, a senior analyst wrote in a staff email, “One of the things that came up in our discussions with Canadian Digital Services is the assumption the passport would be used within Canada as an identity document.”

“This warrants a policy discussion,” the staff email added.

MPs have soundly rejected any national ID system as both dangerous and costly.

According to internal records, managers at the immigration department put a new question regarding national ID into a 2024 voluntary Passport Client Experience Survey.

The files do not say who requested the new question to be added, and no MPs, Senators, or even Canada’s own Privacy Commissioner were told about this question.

Liberal MP Marc Miller, who is now Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture but was then the Immigration Minister, offered no comment to the media when asked early this year about why the new question was inserted in the passport survey.

The question was asked, “How comfortable would you be sharing a secure digital version of the passport within Canada as an identity document?”

Responses were given as “very comfortable,” “comfortable,” “neutral,” “not comfortable,” or “not comfortable at all.”

The results of the questionnaire in general showed that only a fifth of Canadians would consider their passport to serve as a form of ID, with about the same amount rejecting the idea of using one’s passport for domestic ID purposes.

One of Canada’s most staunchly pro-life MPs, Leslyn Lewis, recently warned Canadians to be “on guard” against a push by the ruling Liberal Party to bring forth Digital IDs, saying they should be voluntary.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Canadian government hired outside consultants tasked with looking into whether or not officials should proceed with creating a digital ID system for all citizens and residents.

Per a May 20 Digital Credentials Issue memo, and as noted by Blacklock’s Reporter, the “adoption” of such a digital ID system may be difficult.

Canada’s Privy Council research from 2023 noted that there is strong public resistance to the use of digital IDs to access government services.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Carney federal government plans to move ahead with digital identification for anyone seeking federal benefits, including seniors on Old Age Security.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre sounded the alarm by promising to introduce a bill that would “expressly prohibit” digital IDs in Canada.

Digital IDs and similar systems have long been pushed by globalist groups like the World Economic Forum, an organization with which Carney has extensive ties, under the guise of ease of access and security.