GIESBRECHT: Canada's blood libel must end

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge, and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public PolicyThe “Blood Libel” is the false claim that Jewish rabbis killed Christian children and used their blood to make unleavened bread for their religious rituals. Although its origin is ancient, the 'libel' gained prominence in the 12th century during the First Crusade. It has never completely gone away. Even today, a version — that Jews are eating Palestinian children — circulates widely on middle eastern streets. The libel has done incredible damage down through the centuries, resulting in pogroms, and even contributing to the Holocaust.Books and films even now continue to spread the vicious lie.So, the "Blood Libel" is an ugly, anti-Jewish slur. Imagine if a documentary dedicated to proving the truth of it to be made. Imagine that documentary being publicly praised by Canada’s political leaders and chattering class, with the documentary makers treated like heroes.Now imagine that this documentary was about to win an Academy Award, and thus “prove” the legitimacy of the dangerous misinformation it was promulgating. Finally, imagine if that public recognition, and the legitimacy it gave to the "Blood Libel," was about to be taught as fact to our children, as part of the regular public school curriculum.Couldn’t happen you say, even in the most backward countries?The fact is that Canada has an anti-Catholic version of the blood libel going through exactly that process today. A documentary spreading vicious anti-Catholic bigotry is currently nominated for an Academy Award, and has a good chance of winning in the “best documentary” category.That documentary is “Sugarcane”.“Sugarcane” claims — without one scintilla of proof — that priests at a residential school in B.C. regularly impregnated female students at the school, and then burned their babies in the school incinerator.By telling selected bits of the true story of an indigenous woman who placed her newborn baby in a residential school incinerator and left the baby to die, the documentary makers manipulate gullible viewers into believing that this sad story has something to do with priests impregnating indigenous students, and killing their babies.But it doesn’t. The woman, Antoinette Archie, was 20 years old when she had her baby. She hadn’t been a student at the school for years. The father was not a priest, but an indigenous man, Ray Peters, who also fathered several other of her children. Why the woman stopped at the residential school and placed the baby in the incinerator is not explained, but the reason had absolutely nothing to do with priests impregnating indigenous girls.The woman was convicted of the crime of abandoning her baby, and served one year in jail. The baby was saved by a dairyman who heard the baby’s small cries. The baby grew up to become Ed Noisecat, an accomplished artist. His son, Julian Noisecat, was one of the makers of Sugarcane. Julian makes it clear in this interview that his paternal grandparents were Antoinette Archie and Ray Peters.Why he hints in Sugarcane that Ed’s father was a priest is a mystery.In the documentary there is reference to a priest who had a sexual affair with a 22 year old indigenous woman who worked at the school. There is also a fellow who believes, for no good reason, that his father was a priest. But nothing in Sugarcane does what its makers claim — namely establish that there was a pattern of priests impregnating indigenous students, and disposing of their babies in incinerators.In short, Sugarcane tells a story that is not true. That false story accuses Catholic priests — and by implication all Catholics — of terrible crimes they did not commit.So, the question is: What is the essential difference between the antisemitic Blood Libel, and the anti-Catholic version that Sugarcane promotes?The answer: There is no difference. They are both vicious lies about religious groups that promote hatred against them. Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code makes it a crime to wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group.And the makers of Sugarcane are not the only people spreading this deeply anti-Catholic libel. The false May 27, 2021 claim by the Kamloops Indian Band — a claim made with no good evidence — that they found “the remains of 215 indigenous children” buried on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School is another example of the spreading of the libel. The truth is that they found no “remains”, “bodies” or graves”. All they found were blips from a radar device that turned out to be evidence of previous excavations on the property, not graves. Their claim was false when they made it, and they knew they were making a false claim.And yet the Kamloops Band somehow managed to get and spend $12,000,000 of taxpayers money for making a claim they knew was false. The money was given to them to excavate and prove their claim. Instead, they have not put even one shovel in the ground, but somehow managed to spend every cent of the money. (So far, no fraud charges have been laid.)Not to be outdone, Chief Willie Sellars, of Williams Lake, weighed in with his baseless and slanderous claims that not only did priests routinely torture, rape and murder students at the local residential school, but that the priests threw the bodies of the dead students in rivers, lakes, streams, and incinerators.To add to that whopper, Sellars went on to claim that for decades, there was a conspiracy between the federal government, the churches, and RCMP to keep all of this horror from the Canadian public. Think about it, every prime minister, bishop and RCMP for decades — according to Sellars — conspired with each other to keep silent about the worst crime in Canadian history. And every indigenous parent in that part of British Columbia kept silent about the disappearance of their children for generations?The federal government foolishly rewarded Sellars’ wild rhetoric with almost $9,000,000, although — like Kamloops — Williams Lake also found zero “missing children”.How they managed to spend $9,000,000 without putting one shovel in the ground is a question only Sellars can answer. Why no fraud charges have been laid to date is another unanswered question.Dozens of other indigenous leaders, who had been given millions of dollars to search for the thousands of phantom children supposedly buried in secrecy all over the country, rattled off equally bizarre stories, while coming up with nothing to prove their blustery claims. But they managed to spend millions of the $320,000,000 foolishly allocated for this wild goose chase by the Trudeau government.It is only now that Ottawa is finally turning off the money taps for all of this wasteful spending. Those taps should never have been opened in the first place.Every one of those outrageous claims is based on extremely ugly anti-Catholic conspiracy theories. And now there is this anti-Catholic documentary - devoid of facts - that is nominated for an Academy Award.Sugarcane was financed by the prestigious National Geographic Society. It is being praised by Canadian and American politicians, and by the beautiful people of Hollywood. Its young makers are being wined, dined, and treated as social justice heroes.The conclusion...Although remnants of the antisemitic blood libel live on, it has largely been confined to the dustbin of history, where it belongs.But the Canadian anti-Catholic version? It lives on in Canada. And in Hollywood.Meanwhile, timid Roman Catholic bishops are so afraid of offending indigenous sensibilities that they don’t defend their predecessors and their Church against even the most scurrilous of the charges. And wiser elements within the indigenous community, who know full well that priests and nuns helped their people, and did not throw them into furnaces, maintain their silence.Canada will have an election soon. Pierre Pollievre has promised to call for a full investigation into the entire unmarked graves claim. He said:“[Ottawa] should provide the resources to allow for a full investigation into the potential remains at residential schools.”This is common sense. But we need to go further than just conducting an investigation. Canada needs to have a full blown public inquiry into the entire unmarked graves controversy. It should include inquiring into all of the deeply anti-Catholic and deeply anti-Christian claims being recklessly made, such as those made in Sugarcane.It would also delve deep into the hundreds of church burnings that have occurred in Canada since the TRC commissioners in 2010 began promoting the baseless theories that “thousands of missing children” went missing at residential schools, and the spike in the burnings that occurred after the May 27, 2021 Kamloops claim inspired by that TRC misinformation.Such a public inquiry is needed to set the record straight. The promotion of hatred against Catholics, or any group, has no place in this country.Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge, and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

GIESBRECHT: Canada's blood libel must end

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