The Steering Committee for the Residential Schools National Monument has announced a prominent location on Parliament Hill where the future memorial will be built to honour survivors and victims of residential schools. The announcement follows calls from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC) for the federal government to “commission and install a publicly accessible, highly…

Commentary On Jan. 31, Dr. Michael Mahon, president of the University of Lethbridge, cancelled a talk that Dr. Frances Widdowson was scheduled to present. Like all scholars, Dr. Widdowson has nuanced views on many issues, and she was going to speak on “How Wok-ism Threatens Academic Freedom.” Even though President Mahon had not listened to…

Commentary University of Lethbridge president Michael J. Mahon’s recent cancellation of a talk by Frances Widdowson marks yet another failure of Canadian universities to maintain open academic environments where candid speech and robust discourse are encouraged. Dr. Widdowson is a noted scholar of aboriginal issues whose views diverge from the mainstream narrative concerning Canada’s treatment…

Commentary So here we go again, with a flag flying on Parliament Hill to commemorate allegedly universal horrors of residential schools for the indigenous. Nobody says there was no abuse, although it’s nothing compared with today’s hell-hole prisons across Canada. They hold more indigenous inmates, nearly 15,000, than at peak enrolment in residential schools, just…

Commentary The announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc indigenous band of Kamloops, B.C. on May 27, 2021, about finding remains of 215 children on the grounds of an Indian Residential School instantly became headline news worldwide, even though the band’s press release said that “At this time we have more questions than answers.” Across Canada, the meagre…

Commentary Across the political spectrum, a new orthodoxy on indigenous issues has taken hold since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the one for murdered and missing women. Reconciliation and compensation require ever more taxpayers’ money, and elimination of accountability for how it’s spent. My problem is that incontinent compassion doesn’t cut it. The…

Commentary The first couple of sentences in the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) report contain a stark condemnation of the way Canada has treated its indigenous peoples: “For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights, terminate the Treaties; and through a…