FLETCHER: ‘Grave error’ battle rocks B.C. Conservative Party, movement

Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984When three suddenly independent MLAs addressed reporters at the B.C. legislature on Monday after leaving the brand-new B.C. Conservative caucus, they stood in front of steps that had been covered for months with little shoes in response to claims of more than 200 secret graves of children at a long-closed residential school in Kamloops.B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad actually agreed with the original Feb. 22 statement by his then-attorney general critic, Vancouver lawyer Dallas Brodie, that there have been no actual graves discovered at the Kamloops site. But after what was described as a shouting match in the party caucus room, Rustad concluded he had to eject Brodie for her persistent defiance of his leadership.That prompted two other rookie MLAs, Jordan Kealy from Peace River North and Tara Armstrong from Kelowna-Lake Country, to quit in solidarity with Brodie. This is a crisis for the newly formed official opposition party, especially considering that Brodie’s Vancouver-Quilchena seat and those of her two supporters are traditionally the top three anti-NDP ridings in the province.I won’t recount what the Western Standard has reported about this episode, but rather attempt to add some context to it. First, Rustad’s team manufactured their reason for dumping Brodie, claiming that she mocked the testimony of residential school survivors of sexual and other abuse. Most media accepted this version without question, just as they have maintained a studied ignorance of the inconvenient facts surrounding the Kamloops residential school.We’re in an era of communication where a five-second clip taken out of context can become the whole story, and that’s what happened here. Brodie’s video conversation with author and cancelled professor Frances Widdowson showed Brodie mocking the notion that I can have “my truth” and you can have yours. There is no more truth when that is allowed to happen. A fair viewing of the conversation shows Brodie was not talking about residential school students, but making a general point about the value of facts.Widdowson’s work on this topic became known in 2009 when she co-authored a book called Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry. It caused a storm in academic circles, arguing that Canada’s policies do little for indigenous people while enriching lawyers, consultants and band chiefs. Widdowson was ultimately fired from Mount Royal University in Calgary for her rebellion against the conventional wisdom of indigenous relations and law.Here’s a sample quote from her 2009 commentary in the Toronto Star: “Unproductive economic practices, tribal forms of political organization, superstitious ‘healing’ initiatives, pre-literate languages and unscientific forms of ‘knowledge’ are also encouraged because of the condescending assumption that this will raise aboriginal self-esteem and give native people the confidence to participate in modern society.”Meanwhile new information keeps trickling out about the Kamloops residential school claim. First there was a series in the National Post by author and columnist Terry Glavin, which revealed that the moral panic about Kamloops and other residential schools was essentially a media creation. Then came the book Grave Error, edited by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan, shunned by bookstores and panned without being read by the CBC and other outlets.Retired judge Brian Giesbrecht is known to Western Standard readers, most recently for his Feb. 26 debunking of the false documentary Sugarcane, which also uses selective editing to concoct a horror story about a residential school in Williams Lake. Giesbrecht notes that the Williams Lake band received $9 million from the federal government to investigate claims, with no apparent result. The Kamloops band collected $12 million, apparently spent mainly on communications consultants and 24-hour security to keep the alleged grave site from being examined.Residential school researcher Nina Green was first to blow the whistle on Sugarcane, tracking down the 1959 news report in the Williams Lake Tribune that showed what really happened to a baby abandoned by his mother at the school.Green’s latest work with writer Michelle Stirling exposes the claim repeated by Rustad and others that more than 4,000 students died at residential schools. Canada’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission put the number at 423.Brodie’s original point came as she defended a fellow B.C. lawyer who wanted a single word added the Law Society of B.C.’s training materials. He wanted the Kamloops site described as “potential” graves, and has sued for libel after the society’s hostile response.We are learning the hard way that there can be no reconciliation without truth.Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984. tomfletcherbc@gmail.com X:@tomfletcherbc