There was yet more sobering news yesterday, that as many as 751 unmarked graves were located near the former Marieval residential school in Saskatchewan. Aside from the sheer number, some ways in which this site differs from Kamloops is that not all of the graves will be of children, and that many had headstones, which the Catholic Church removed in the 1960s during a dispute – which is a criminal offence, and the local First Nations chief said that they are treating this like a crime scene. And non-Indigenous Canadians should brace themselves, because we’re going to hear about hundreds, perhaps thousands, more of these graves over the next few years as the work of locating them ramps up, making it impossible to ignore the true face of our country’s history.
In response to the announcement, prime minister Justin Trudeau stated that this is Canada’s responsibility to bear, which was met by the usual calls that this was not enough action. The government has already committed to funding these searches in accordance with the wishes of local First Nations communities, as not all of them want the same approach, and Marc Miller said that they are open to boosting the funding if the need is there. There are also calls for an independent inquiry into these sites, but that could be a complicated structure if it requires provinces to get involved (and it likely will), and we could find ourselves with a repeat of some of the problems faced by the MMIW inquiry if that is the case.
Of course, the government’s response was made all the more problematic because Carolyn Bennett sent a spiteful one-word text to Jody Wilson-Raybould, who then tweeted it out and declared it to be “racist and misogynistic,” listing the tropes that she felt it invoked. Bennett publicly apologised and stated that it was their “interpersonal dynamics” that got the better of her, by which she means that the pair pretty much cannot stand one another, which lines up with the stories of their fights in Cabinet. It doesn’t excuse it, and Bennett absolutely should know better (especially because Wilson-Raybould has demonstrated that she keeps receipts), but that hasn’t stopped this from eclipsing some of the coverage of the day, which should have focused on Marieval, and what the next steps need to be.
Good reads:
- The government’s new hate crimes legislation revives old concerns that a too-low and arbitrary threshold for human rights complaints is a chill on free expression.
- Here is some analysis from security experts as to why the government may have gone to Federal Court to block release of those Winnipeg Lab documents.
- The Public Health Agency is reorganizing to create a new security and intelligence division to better monitor public health threats abroad.
- An Afghan veteran and a Liberal MP have been trying to get the government to keep its promise to resettle Afghan interpreters in Canada.
- The Canadian Forces’ psychological operations unit kept running operations in Canada for six months after they were told to stop.
- A number of defence experts are amplifying the call for Harjit Sajjan to resign, citing that he has lost all credibility on dealing with sexual misconduct.
- A previously unreleased report from 2019 warns of more aggressive cyber-attacks by countries like China and Russia.
- BC’s privacy commissioner is concerned that the federal Liberals are using facial recognition as part of their tools for online nomination votes.
- Heather Scoffield notes that Canada’s penchant for caution helped in this and previous downturns, and may serve us well as we take our reopening a bit slower.
- Colby Cosh remarks on the Victorian and theological origins of the prohibitions on single-sports betting, as the laws against it are finally about to be repealed.
Odds and ends:
It’s so great how Alberta loves to wrap its homophobia in the guise of “parental rights.” Never gets old. https://t.co/A8HzOuf0Af
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) June 24, 2021
Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.
It was stupid of Bennett to engage with JWR at all, period. What she said wasn’t racist. It was an unpleasant fact and kudos to Heather Mallick for being one of the lone voices in media calling it out. The TMZ lugenpress chose to focus on the drama between Bennett and JWR instead of the indigenous school discovery itself, because “interpersonal dynamics” are what gets ratings, and because they don’t really want to interrogate the uncomfortable systemic oppression of Indigenous peoples that they, themselves perpetuate.
They’ve made St. Jody unreproachable as their go-to default “penance,” so they can point fingers and deflect to Trudeau (who they already hate) for “how she was treated.” Then they’ll go and pump the NDP’s tires and amplify their sanctimonious BS in hopes of splitting the vote. No one actually thinks Indigenous matters are “high on the Cons’ radar.” Which is why the systemically racist MSM wants to use a wedge issue to throw Trudeau out.
It’s just like you can’t criticize Israel or Bibi without being proclaimed a Na_zi antisemite, you can’t call out Singh for his lying and obfuscating without being named a racist, or you can’t label Glenn Greenwald as a fifth columnist shill for the right or he’ll sic his mob on you and say you’re a homophobe. They weaponize “identity politics” for their own benefit, and in doing so, end up hurting the very people they’ve bamboozled into thinking they want to help.
Jody Washed-Up Reject is a narcissistic concern troll who makes everything about her and her alone. Not “her people,” but her as the self-anointed Jody of Arc fighting the evil white man Trudeau. She thinks she’s the queen of everything because daddy put those ideas in her head when he had his own slap fight with Pierre. I don’t know too much about the Habs goalie or his mom, but they seem to be much more constructive in addressing this issue. JWR, Koch heiress to the fascist Fraser Institute, is an absolute fraud who exploits her census checkboxes to serve entrenched power, not challenge it. She’s like if Darth Vader raised Leia as evil and she went on a mission to kill Han Solo. Fuddle duddle her!
The pope, the titular head of the bullshit company called the “roman catholic church” will never apologize to the natives in Canada. To do so would require him to apologize to every country where the aboriginal population was forced to accept the doctrines of that “church” at the behest of the invading and conquering european armies. This will not happen. This despicable organization will continue to strip the freedom from innocents the world over. Most distressing is the indoctrination of children who are taught a a magical story about an all merciful god who preordains everything, whose voice has never been heard and whose face has never been seen…..it’s in the bible. But this is an all loving and merciful deity who promises that entry into his “kingdom” of heaven can be entered as long as one professes “faith” Those who do not measure up in the faith department will of course be sent by this beneficent “god” to a place of fire, pain and eternal damnation or in the case of the aboriginals around the world and particularly at this moment their children will first be forced to accept this doctrine at the end of a strap, fist or a nightime visit to a dark closet and be dumped into an unmarked grave and forgotten by the ministers of the pope”s company when they lose their lives while under the “tender” care of the administrators of the r c church. Lots of blood shed but no mercy from the r c “god” or the pope.
What I find interesting about all these discoveries is how the media treats it as if it was the first time they had heard of it. This is not new at all. I remember in the 1960’s stories about the schools and the cemeteries and the natives. Yes those schools were dreadful and horrid, no doubt about it. However society then saw this completely differently. Today it seems we want to correct the past in general. How do you do this? Do you see the British Government apologizing for the excess of the Empire? No not at all. France is in the same boat on this one. Portugal, Spain? No not at all. In Canada because we were part of the Empire and had none of our own, we simply went along then with the ideology of the time. Blaming Sir John A. for the schools is truly stupid, he simply reflected what everyone around him was doing and wanted done. Are we now going to look at our own families and prosecute them for attitudes our ancestors had, this would include Mom, Dad, Granny, aunt and uncles. I would like to meet the brave soul who will turn on his or her family and ask for accounts. We are trying to make things right now, but you know, society is not going to change because an activist wish it.