Morrigan Johnson is an independent journalist in Calgary.Dissidents often thank me for having taken the time to read ideas, most obscure in careful detail, and more importantly, for treating those individuals as human beings. Some of them become great friends. Even if those ideas are ones I may disagree with or even reading thoughts amid upheaval or contention, I read each nation’s great persons, as much as their dissidents, with some level of care. Of course, facts matter too, even if it is uncomfortable, just as much as our humanity and the natural world. An important update for Canada, as a dissidence quickly passes the threshold into patriotism, the moral questions being confronted today will have heavy consequences across the whole of society. I even still read former Prime Minister Stephen Harper as closely as I had read Pope Francis. My love of slow, careful philosophic reading is what I would wish for all of mankind. But Canada is not without its controversial thinkers, persecuted now more than ever with worsening free speech conditions. Pope Leo XIV, in his first ‘State of the World’ address, warned envoys of 184 nations of Orwellian world trends.Barry Cooper, Tom Flanagan, and Frances Widdowson were some of the only faces I fondly remember from university. Even the Canadian philosopher George Grant (referred to as Canada’s C.S. Lewis and ‘Conservatism’s Greatest Canadian Teacher’), who talked fondly of Tolstoy, or Simone Weil, was very impressionable on us on the Left. Frances Widdowson has experienced several mobbings in the last few years over the search for forensic truth regarding indigenous residential schools, often operated from the nineteenth century into the late twentieth century by churches of many denominations, not limited to just Catholic. Barry Cooper has argued that Aboriginals have no claim to sovereignty in Canada.A few years ago, I introduced Doctor Frances Widdowson to my conservative friends and journalistic colleagues, saying something like “the classical Marxist view,” referring to her first book, and often alluding to George Orwell, which raised a number of eyebrows. She had a noticeable smile before she began to explain the state of Canada’s unsubstantiated genocide claims as a consequence of woke identity politics, and why the persecution of the truth signified the end of our national history and the collapse of our academic institutions..On the morning of February 6, I arrived at Frances Widdowson’s residence, where friends and journalists gathered. We sat adjacent to her, listening quietly and taking notes while she met online to observe proceedings for the Mount Royal Faculty Association (MRFA) and the Alberta Labour Relations Board (ALRB) regarding tribunal matters arising from the case with the Board of Governors of Mount Royal University (MRU), which was open to public observation, with many observers logging in. The post-award review proceedings come after she was found to have been wrongfully terminated as a professor with tenure.The MRFA’s counsel is asking the ALRB for a review of the decision, while MRU is defending the arbitrator’s remedy decision after termination was found to lack just cause. The original dispute, Board of Governors of Mount Royal University v Mount Royal Faculty Association, was conducted as a grievance arbitration pursuant to the collective agreement between the employer and the union. Arbitrator David Phillip Jones had previously found in July of 2024 that the Board of Governors of MRU lacked just cause for the wrongful termination; she was dismissed in December 2021, but declined to order reinstatement of her position.Dr. Frances Widdowson, the affected employee, was present as the grievor in the labour tribunal whose termination gave rise to the dispute, but the legal parties to the proceeding remain the employer and the union. The review repeatedly referenced the Havilland test in labour law around terminations without just cause.The union counsel (MRFA) advanced the review application by challenging the remedy, while the employer defended the arbitrator’s original remedy as a refusal to reinstate. The arbitrator’s original decision is binding unless challenged. In labour law, you can find termination “wrongful” and still deny reinstatement only if you give clear, evidence-based, legally coherent reasons. The MRFA position is that this portion had failed, making it legally unsustainable.The ALRB role is supervisory regarding enforcement, review, or compliance, but not appellate in a tribunal review in the ordinary sense. It does not decide whether Widdowson should be reinstated. It was reviewing whether the arbitrator’s remedy decision was legally sustainable, which the union described as having “no legal basis for the original decision not to have reinstated her.”.The union also raised concerns about procedural unfairness, arguing that the arbitrator relied on disputed allegations without permitting the union an opportunity to respond, as they raised questions. Dr. Widdowson has sometimes referred to MRU’s position as driven by a group of colleagues she says were offended by her views; however, the arbitrator did not identify those views in his reasons or explain why those views might have made reinstatement unviable. The arbitrator did not identify those views or explain why, under the collective agreement, they rendered reinstatement unviable in an environment where academic freedom is part of the job and encouraged in the agreement. “Despite what the employer and the arbitrator did in our submission, downplaying the role of academic freedom… we do submit it’s something that you need to keep as a significant part of the context…” MRFA counsel explains, pointing to Article 23 of the collective agreement.The hearing exposed what the union characterized as a failure to respect the distinct roles of the employer, the union, and evidentiary reasoning in labour law. “This is an application for review that is focused on the question of whether it was appropriate that Dr. Widdowson was not reinstated, and whether that was a reasonable decision” ... “There is nothing on the record that gives us any factual basis for this finding” explained MRFA counsel, “our position is that there is a total inadequacy of reasons, a failure to give us any understanding of why the arbitrator made the decision that he did” they said.Careful not to overstep jurisdiction, MRFA counsel recommended remittance in that “we are not asking this Board to substitute its own remedy” (referring to a potential demand for reinstatement), “we are asking that the remedy decision be set aside and the matter returned to arbitration,” suggesting a fresh arbitrator. The ALRB, however, will aim for a decision in ninety days.The matter around Dr. Widdowson’s research revolves around the 2021 Kamloops deception, in which a book was published, “Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us And the Truth About Residential Schools” by C.P. Champion and Tom Flannagan. In 2021, the federal government allocated approximately $7.9 million to support an investigation connected to the discovery of “215 soil anomalies” identified at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site, broadly presumed to be a mass grave. Pope Francis was invited to Canada to apologize for “pain and shame.” That fund was later increased to about $12.1 million as reported by the Western Standard, citing documents obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter, most of which was awarded to the Kamloops-specific allocation, which initiated the ground-penetrating radar survey. To date, however, no human remains have been recovered or publicly confirmed at the controversial Kamloops site in particular and much of the media and the government have not corrected the record. There have now been three documentaries released on the topic: Kamloops: The Buried Truth, Making a Killing, WHAT REMAINS Exposing the Kamloops Mass Grave Deception's Impact on Powell River. In the case of Dr. Widdowson, trying to discuss the issue academically sets a dangerous precedent of not only losing one’s career but also being mobbed.There have been some counter-protests where civil discussion has been attempted, some of which have accrued hundreds gathering in what some reports have referred to as “violent mobs,” denoting a growing security crisis around Canada’s epistemic contestations. A non-exhaustive list: University of Lethbridge, February 2023; University of Alberta, January 2024; Thompson Rivers University, November 2025; University of Winnipeg, September 2025; University of Victoria, December 2025; University of British Columbia, January 2026; and University of Lethbridge, February 2026 again. As the National Post reports, 592 places of worship have experienced arson over twelve years, and the Macdonald Laurier Institute has released a report, “Scorched Earth,” studying arson against religious institutions as an indication that reconciliation is under threat..After the USA announced sanctions on European officials over growing Orwellian decline in civil liberties and civilizational integrity, Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers mentioned in her explanation that “if you question the Canadian blood libels about residential schools, you’re engaging in hate speech according to Melford and GDI” she said in a tweet, suggesting that the worsening situation in Canada is also being monitored internationally.The origin of Canada as a nation is in the British North American Act. Canadians originating from England, Scotland, Ireland, and France took much of Canada’s founding from Britain. First published by Ryerson Press in Toronto in 1945 during the height of the war, George Grant wrote a striking essay titled “The Empire: Yes or No?” posing the key post war question that lingers, whether or not the British Empire has a reason to continue, that the Crown separates America and Canada by a symbol of order, tradition, and stability. Ultimately, he asks what Canadians should do about it.In his essay, referring to the “development of retarded people” [in historical ad hominum], Grant mentions the politically undeveloped, economically undeveloped, lacking in modern institutions, and not yet capable of self-governance look to the empire, inasmuch as backward colonies, for a developmental pathway until they are ready to become real countries. The British Empire takes responsibility for its colonies and former colonies by way of the British Monarchy because these peoples are deemed unable to bear it themselves, and governance is framed as guardianship, not exploitation (even though exploitation exists). Later in his works “Time as History” (1969) and “Technology and Empire” (1969), he abandons the developmental nature of responsibility to bear, saying that responsibility degenerates into technocratic administration, administration replaces justice, and development becomes a mask for exploitive domination.If the Crown is no longer capable of restraining technocratic erasure of truth, then it has ceased to function of stability, tradition, and order as a constitutional limit at all. Canada is anything but stable, orderly, or maintaining tradition as mass replacement-level migration and aggressive DEI policies expel swaths of the population, destabilizing epistemology and cohesion. The continuity of Canada as a nation-state has broken down with secessionist movements on the rise. If what may be fictitious genocide claims still cannot be corrected by a standard of evidence close to certainty beyond a reasonable doubt, then what role can the Crown play today?Following the death of Pope Francis, his successor Pope Leo XIV has already taken actions interpreted by some indigenous groups as a continuation of the reconciliation path started under Francis. For example, in 2025, Leo XIV gifted 62 indigenous artifacts from the Vatican’s collection back to Canadian Catholic authorities for repatriation to indigenous communities — a gesture framed as part of dialogue, respect, and fraternity and connected to reconciliation efforts begun under Pope Francis.For the Vatican and Christians, however, the greater measure is not to assert that Christians did not partake in a fictitious state-sanctioned clandestine genocide. Where is the proof? The preliminary funding and activities at the controversial Kamloops site, claimed to be a mass grave, can be a tripwire for journalists and commentators; no bodies have been recovered because a robust excavation has yet to occur. What might be “soil anomalies” detected by ground penetrating radar, as Dr. Widdowson explained in an interview with Jordan Peterson’s wife Tammy Peterson, could be anything, despite portions of the population still believing without any evidence that mass clandestine graves are all over the country. The most responsible thing now is to ask Ottawa for a higher standard of evidence before Christians ought to apologize to the world, as churches continue to burn across the country.Morrigan Johnson is an independent journalist in Calgary.
