GIESBRECHT: Is the CBC intentionally trying to mislead Canadians about the Kamloops residential school?

“The truth? You can’t handle the truth.” Those were the words spoken by Jack Nicholson to Tom Cruise in the classic movie, “A Few Good Men." It is also basically what Rebel News reporter Drea Humphrey told CBC’s Rosemary Barton, after Barton called Humphrey a liar at the federal election leaders’ debate before all of Canada that day.

Since the May 27, 2021 Kamloops announcement claiming that “the remains of 215 children” had been discovered in the apple orchard area of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) CBC has been consistently claiming that either 215 or 200 “bodies”, “graves” or “remains” were found there.

Drea Humphrey has consistently reported that this is not true, and never was. No “bodies, graves or remains” were found. Only soil anomalies, almost certainly from old sewage trenches were detected. No bodies have been found at all.

Rosemary Barton has accused Humphrey of lying. In a reply to Humphrey’s assertion that no graves, bodies or human remains have been found, as alleged by Tk’emlups Chief Casimir on May 27, 2021, Barton said this:

"Yes, there have been remains of indigenous children found in various places across the country ..."

Humphrey responded this way: "CBC's Rosemary Barton called me a liar and pushed false unmarked grave claims on national television. Now the state broadcaster is quietly backpedaling from their misinformation used to vilify Rebel News.”

Who is telling the truth?

It is no contest. Drea Humphrey is the truth-teller. CBC is not. They issued a quiet and sneaky apology, knowing that most of the Canadians who heard Barton’s false claim would not hear or notice the retraction.

CBC has been consistently spreading misinformation about the Kamloops claim since it was first made. They insist that “human remains, bodies, and graves” were found when the truth — namely that only soil anomalies were detected — has been known from the outset.

Jon Kay of Quillette (and former National Post comment pages editor) has written extensively on this topic. He is also one of Canada’s most respected journalists and commentators. Here is how he described CBC’s misinformation campaign.

“Whatever you think of Rebel News, what @RosieBarton did was appalling. CBC needs to do more than publish an obscure correction. And CBC should also take this opportunity to correct the many stories in which they falsely claimed that the "remains" of 215 children were discovered”

Then this: “... This thread contains links to half a dozen CBC stories in which CBC repeats the flat out lie that 215 corpses/remains were discovered by GPR in 2021. This was the result of a 2 minute Google search. There are lots more. They've had 4 years to correct this bullshit.”

Jon Kay doesn’t hold back.

So, Rosemary Barton was misinforming Canadians. Drea Humphrey was the person telling the truth.

But Rosemary Barton is simply repeating exactly the same misinformation that CBC has been peddling since the Kamloops claim was first made. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of examples of CBC making patently false claims about the Kamloops claim.

In fact, if you want to know who may be largely responsible for the hundreds of church burnings, let it be acknowledged that the CBC has been stoking the flames with incendiary misinformation about it, since May 2021 when the false claim was first made.

But they have spreading other misinformation about residential schools for much longer than that. For example, they have been consistently reporting that all indigenous parents were forced to send their children to residential schools.

This is both false and inflammatory.

In the first place, a small percentage of indigenous children attended residential schools, the great majority attended day schools, or didn’t go to school at all

But more to the point, the great majority of children who did attend residential schools were sent there by their willing parents. No indigenous parents were forced to send their children to residential schools, as J.R. Miller, the respected historian, who is the author of “Shingwauk’s Vision”, and is regarded as Canada’s senior authority on residential schools says:

 “At no time in the history of residential schooling in Canada were parents “compelled to send their children to residential schools.”’ J. R. Miller

Obviously, parental consent wasn’t given in the case of orphans, and in the case of neglected children from extremely dysfunctional families, signed applications might not always have been possible.

But in the usual case, the parents applied to have their children admitted to a residential school. They didn’t have to. They could choose to send their children to a day school instead. More parents chose day schools than residential schools. Before 1920 they didn’t have to send their child to any school at all.

Researcher Nina Green explains this in detail. She also provides samples of the actual applications indigenous parents were required to fill out if they wanted to have their children admitted to a residential school. In addition, she shows rejection letters in cases where the school could not accommodate the parents’ request.

In short, it is completely incorrect to assert that indigenous parents were forced to send their children to residential schools. They were not forced. It was at the parents’ request.

CBC knows all of this. Many of us have written to CBC over the years asking that they correct this and cease misinforming Canadians. But CBC executives and the ombudsman read these complaints, and dismiss them with gobbledygook replies that misquote the law, and make no sense.

I dare you to make sense of CBC’s dismissal of this complaint that CBC was misinforming Canadians by claiming that indigenous parents were forced to send their children to residential schools. It is a long, rambling and nonsensical reply that misquotes the law, and doesn’t even come close to making sense.

Is this incompetence or a deliberate intent to misinform? In Rosemary Barton’s case, is she simply misinformed, or is she deliberately trying — with CBC’s blessing — to deliberately misinform Canadians? The occasion when she misinformed Canadians was at the leaders’ debate — with an audience of hundreds of thousands.

The CBC’s quiet retraction of her misinformed claim had an audience of perhaps a few hundreds or a few thousand at most.

So, if the CBC’s plan was to deliberately misinform Canadians the plan worked, because very few will realize that they have been fooled.

Similarly, if the CBC’s quiet retraction is proof that CBC executives and ombudsman are deliberately trying to misinform Canadians on the “forced to attend” issue their plan worked as well. CBC reaches far more people than will this modest article.

The evidence suggests to me that the CBC is not misinformed — it is deliberately misinforming.

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge, and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.