Roundup: O’Toole soft-pedals residential schools

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It may or may not have been coincidence that on the fifth anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on residential schools in Canada, at a time when the commissioners are lamenting that progress toward reconciliation is going too slowly, that video emerged of Erin O’Toole telling campus conservatives a version of history that soft-pedals the evils of those residential schools as being “primarily about education” that went horribly wrong. That is of course completely wrong, and horrific to contemplate, because they were explicitly about assimilation.

O’Toole’s office later claimed he was trying to make points about free speech on campus and opposing “cancel culture” (whose actual definition O’Toole has consistently failed to grasp), that’s just another lie that he’s been telling himself and others. There is a great deal of defensiveness that the Conservatives have adopted around any criticisms of Sir John A. Macdonald (which is a bit ironic considering that the party he lead is a different one from the modern Conservative Party, no matter how much they try to subvert its legacy in order to make themselves look like they have a longer history than they do), and it goes a long way to informing how O’Toole spent that video trying to reiterate that Liberals were worse than Conservatives on a number of Indigenous issues (though his specific claims were dubious at best). Of course, they were both horrible, and it’s not a contest to try and claim who was better or worse – it’s about changing direction and making a meaningful step toward actual reconciliation. And more to the point, it’s not the lip service of reconciliation that the Conservatives have been wrapping themselves in to promote resource extraction projects while claiming that they are for the benefit of those Indigenous communities.

This also goes to illustrate how O’Toole has so embraced the shitposting outrage culture that he thinks won him the leadership that he’s lost all moral sense around what he’s actually saying. He’s lost all semblance of truth, and I’ve counted up lies he’s told, but that doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is stoking anger for the sake of populist gains, and trying to “own the Libs.” It’s poisoning our discourse, and as we can see with this video, sinking into racism for the sake of cheap point-scoring.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau says that 168,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine could arrive within 48 hours of Health Canada approval, which sounds like it will be soon.
  • Ontario is planning for a new surge of hospitalizations, and for there to be holiday super-spreader events because people won’t stay home.
  • Ralph Goodale released his report on the downing of flight PS752, saying Iran shouldn’t be allowed to investigate itself.
    François-Philippe Champagne says he doesn’t believe that PS752’s being shot down was “human error,” but won’t go so far as to call it deliberate.
  • Carla Qualtrough says the CRA “education letters” were trying to get ahead of a complex tax time, and people who can’t repay won’t be forced to right now.
  • The government is apparently planning changes to the Official Languages Act to update rules for federally-regulated businesses in Quebec – but it’s not capitulation!
  • The NSIRA says that the government should rethink its use of polygraph tests for top secret security clearances, as they are unreliable.
  • The RCMP say they’ll revamp how they do protester surveillance after a Civilian Review and Complaints Commission report (but nobody believes them).
  • Maclean’s lists ten Indigenous rights disputes to watch for in 2021.
  • The Leader of the Government in the Senate concedes that Bill C-7 on assisted dying may still be unconstitutional because of the mental health carve-out.
  • The Conservative nomination race in Thornhill is turning out to be a bit of a contest between the federal party and the provincial PC party.
  • Max Fawcett spells out how the carbon price announcement is a win for the oil and gas sector in Alberta, while Kenney’s government tries to spin it as an attack.
  • Kevin Carmichael offers a thoughtful meditation on capitalism, oligopolies, and the inability to have a reasonable debate on inequality in Canada.
  • Carmichael also speaks with the president of the World Bank about the international development aspect of the pandemic and economic crisis.
  • Heather Scoffield wonders just what the Conservatives propose to do about climate change, besides yelling at the Liberals.
  • My column looks at the lies being told about the increasing carbon price in the face of this government’s inability to properly communicate the how and why about it.

Odds and ends:

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: O’Toole soft-pedals residential schools”

  1. Great column on the “gas {burp} tax” This should be a handout in every government, local, provincial and yes, federal. This will educate every official. Along with it should be a simple list of jurisdictions to assist our legislators. Then again in this age of the tiny, medium and big lie, does it or would it make any difference? Wonderful piece though, Dale.

  2. So he’s already built much of his Make Canada Great Again platform around railing against GHINA, George Soros, low-ratings fake-news CBC, Crooked Justin’s WeMails, Hillary Freeland being a nasty woman, and the deep-state Liberal swamp full of bad hombres and dopey lying low-energy losers. I guess the next square on Donald J. O’Toole’s bigot bingo card will be to call JWR “Pocahontas”? Just not ready — nice orange hair, though.

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