FLETCHER: BC’s former top cop weighs in on secret grave claims

Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984.Since childhood, I’ve heard about and occasionally seen conditions on some northern B.C. indigenous reserves. Kids I rode the school bus with were subjected to awful neglect and abuse, first at home and later at the hands of a foster father who was eventually imprisoned.Decades later, listening to former B.C. public safety minister Mike Morris struggle to speak of his time as an RCMP officer policing remote communities in the region, I realized I had only glimpsed the outlines of the problem. This is not to say all were failures, but the depth of the issue has to be seen to be believed. To understand the so-called “Sixties Scoop,” for instance, one must understand what children were being scooped from, on reserves blighted by alcohol and corruption.Morris contacted me after reading my March 12 Western Standard commentary on the sudden departure of MLA Dallas Brodie and two colleagues from the B.C. Conservative caucus. He supports Brodie’s position to question untested claims of secret graves at the former residential school in Kamloops, and shares his own testimony in a letter he originally sent to Brodie..Borrowing from the West Coast longhouse tradition of public speech, I’ll introduce Morris by his qualifications and history, and then give him the floor to speak in his own words.Morris spent 32 years in the RCMP, retiring in 2005 as Superintendent of the North District after serving in remote B.C. communities and then 20 years in Prince George. He was elected MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie in 2013, 2017 and 2020, serving as Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General in the B.C. Liberal government and then as a critic of that police oversight role after the NDP took over. A lifelong trapper and past president of the B.C. Trappers Association, he understands the forces that shaped Canada’s Indigenous relations from the fur trade to modern times..His letter to Brodie is as follows:"We haven’t met yet Dallas, but I admire your stance on the Kamloops residential school fiasco.The evidence I’ve reviewed since the announcement of graves and missing children at the Kamloops residential school, and subsequently, other locations across Canada, is significant.First, the children who attended residential schools, and who died while they were attending these schools, are properly documented with death certificates, cause of death, and place of burial. Although most of the children are classified as missing, this is not the case.I hired a summer student two years ago to go through the death certificates and organize the records by band, and also to compare each name to the official list of missing children on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation registry. We found that the NCTR registry incorrectly included every child we had death certificates for..Second, as a retired criminal investigator who has policed many First Nations communities since the early 1970s, I have never encountered a First Nations community who could not remember the name of any person in their community who disappeared over several generations. I therefore find it difficult to believe that we have hundreds or perhaps thousands of anonymous unnamed missing children.First Nations groups seem to rely heavily upon the stories of older individuals who attended residential schools, and the atrocities they have related. As a senior manager in the RCMP, I can attest to the fact that from the early 1990s for about a 10-year period, we had a dedicated provincial team of criminal investigators who investigated every allegation of criminal wrongdoing in every residential school in B.C. This did result in some criminal charges being laid, and some convictions.However, many complaints were deemed to be unfounded — they did not occur. Many more were deemed to be unsubstantiated — there was no evidence to support the accusations. Most did not involve schools, teachers, or staff. I believe many if not most of the current allegations made by residential school survivors have already been investigated.I need to comment on the rigour I put into my criminal investigations, the same rigour and attention that all police officers I’ve supervised and managed over the years, put into theirs. This rigour is necessary to protect all citizens to ensure the truth is uncovered, and that evidence is obtained to prove and substantiate criminal wrongdoing.This rigour became very difficult when complexities associated to alcohol abuse and generational Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) causing behavioural issues, difficulty with attention, reasoning and judgment. Many of these individuals had difficulty discerning right from wrong.The atrocities I’ve witnessed individuals committing against other family members, and members of their own communities, are the worst things you can imagine one human being committing upon another.I’m not alone. I would suggest that every police officer working in First Nations communities during the same time period (1970s to 2000s) will have similar experiences. Many nurses, social workers, and teachers from this period can also relate.I also believe that each First Nations community member living during this period of time, and witnessing these horrific acts of violence, was even more affected than the police, social workers and teachers, and lives with the memories of this every day as well.The evidence shows there are no missing children from residential schools. There is also no evidence that graves exist in the apple orchard at the Kamloops residential school. This is not denialism."Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984. tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX:@tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: BC’s former top cop weighs in on secret grave claims

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