RUBENSTEIN: 'Garbage in, garbage out' characterizes public opinion polls about complex, divisive indigenous issues

“Garbage in, garbage out” is a well-known aphorism that refers to the idea that the quality of the input determines the quality of output in any system. For example, if a mathematical equation is improperly stated, the answer is unlikely to be correct. The same applies to public opinion polling. If the questions asked come from biased researchers, are not given to a randomized sample of the larger population, or exceed the knowledge level of the survey participants, the results are likely to be incorrect.That’s my take on the polling of Canadians following the shocking May 27, 2021 announcement by the chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops Indian Reserve) that “confirm[ed] an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented — the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths. At this time, we have more questions than answers. We look forward to providing updates as they become available.”This announcement gave considerable respectability to and widespread public acceptance of the long standing claim that Canada’s Indian Residential Schools were genocidal institutions..RUBENSTEIN: Parks Canada drops ‘genocide’ but keeps the narrative.Not surprisingly, given the contagious moral outrage the Kamloops announcement created, an early June 2021 survey conducted by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the Assembly of First Nations, and Abacus Data showed that 58% of the 3,000 adults, supposedly representing all Canadian adults, believed the residential school policy was genocidal.The veracity of the poll can be questioned on the grounds of the participants' knowledge level. When asked, “Before today, how familiar would you say you were with the residential school system?” a whopping 67% replied that they knew little or nothing about it. Still, the responses of these two-thirds of individuals with low or no knowledge were included in all the other questions, thereby challenging the credibility of the survey’s findings.Also, while the Canadian Race Relations Foundation is a Crown corporation, the Assembly of First Nations cannot be considered a non-partisan body. .More important still, despite this polling result, the Kamloops claim has never been substantiated with informative updates in the more than four years since the Band’s astounding announcement. Indeed, today there are even more questions than answers.This is because, to date, no human remains have been confirmed or exhumed at Kamloops or its many copycat findings around the country. Combined with the lack of evidence repeatedly pointed out by skeptical critics, this eventually forced the Band to transform the “remains” of children into soil “anomalies,” subterranean disturbances of unknown contents, on May 18, 2024..GIESBRECHT: Can a vote for sovereignty fix Section 35?.This lack of evidence, combined with the pushback from credible researchers, as noted here, here, here, here, and here, may also have influenced public opinion. Or perhaps not. Doubt about the meaning of shifting public opinion characterizes a new survey from the Angus Reid Institute claiming that most Canadians, whether indigenous or not, are unwilling to accept that the Kamloops “anomalies” contain the remains of school children in the absence of physical evidence. .Angus Reid conducted an online survey from July 24-29, 2025, among an allegedly “randomized sample of 2,508 Canadian adults drawn from the Angus Reid Forum,” a self-selected cohort of Canadians that anyone with an email address can join. This renders the poll’s claim of being a “randomized sample” that represents all Canadian adults highly dubious. The survey may have been weighted to be representative of adults nationwide, according to region, gender, age, household income, and education, based on the Canadian census. However, this did not guarantee randomness if the larger pool from which the sample was drawn was unrepresentative of the entire Canadian population.Random or not, the survey results still suggest that “Awareness of the Kamloops discovery is massive across the country. Fully three-quarters of Canadians (77%) have followed the issue and had at least some conversation about it. This peaks in B.C. at 88%.”.RUBENSTEIN: Is indigenous approval now mandatory?.As true as this assertion may be, the impact of the 55% who claimed they knew nothing about the Kamloops announcement or only “saw some media coverage and had the odd conversation about it,” like the Canadian Race Relations Foundation survey, was never weighed against any of the other poll questions. This is particularly disconcerting given that answers to many of the other questions about the Indian Residential Schools were differentiated by geographical region, ethnicity (indigenous vs. non-indigenous), gender, age, and political affiliation..For example, survey participants were asked to answer the following critical question: “The Kamloops band’s claim of 215 unmarked graves of children was later revised to about 200 ‘anomalies’ and suspected burial sites. The federal government has given $12.1 million in funding to assist in investigating this issue. To date, no additional reports have been made public. What is closer to your view?”.Sixty-three percent of respondents chose: “People should only accept the claim that this is evidence of unmarked children’s graves if further information is publicly available to verify it through excavation.” The remaining 37% agreed with: “People should accept the claim that this is evidence of unmarked children’s graves, even if no further information is publicly offered.”But it is unknown how the views of the 55% who knew little or nothing about the Kamloops issue affected these results. It should have been imperative to show the results without the 55% majority of less informed individuals, if only to deflect a charge of “garbage in, garbage out.”.RUBENSTEIN: Moral relativism haunts the CBC’s coverage of the war in Gaza.Still, it is worth noting that when the indigenous responses were tabulated, as might be expected, a slightly higher number (44%) thought people should accept that the anomalies are unmarked children’s graves. Nevertheless, most (56%) felt more information was needed to verify the claim. Despite the continuing uncertainty about the nature of the anomalies, the survey suggests that Canadians generally believe that the residential schools perpetuated “cultural genocide,” with 68% agreeing or strongly agreeing with the term, and only 23% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. The remaining nine percent weren’t sure. Full question text: “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has referred to what happened at Canada’s former Indian Residential Schools as 'cultural genocide’. Do you agree or disagree with using the term “cultural genocide” to describe what happened at these schools?”Highlighting its inherent knowledge-based limitations, the survey also found that most Canadians overestimated how many indigenous children attended residential schools. Roughly a third of respondents thought it was 40% to 60% of children, while another third chose 60% to 80%. Some thought it was even higher..This is more evidence of “garbage in, garbage out.”Equally important, only about 30% of indigenous children spent an average of 4.5 years attending residential schools, two well-known facts about school attendance. Of the remaining children, roughly half attended Indian Day Schools located on the Indian Reserves, while the other half attended no school at all. Despite the survey showing a high level of public support for “cultural genocide,” mass cultural loss would have been impossible given these attendance figures, compounded by high absentee rates among registered students.Such misunderstandings are far from unexpected. It is well known that even straightforward surveys are often inaccurate; the best example is electoral polls, which simply ask participants to name the candidate they plan to support. The results of recent elections around the world suggest that poor methodology combined with voter mendacity are producing inaccurate polling results. Even more inaccuracy is found in simple opinion polls. To assess levels of ice cream consumption in a population, for example, a thoughtful researcher would never ask informants if they like ice cream, a question that is vacuous at best. Instead, they would question “How many servings of ice cream have you eaten in the past seven days?” However, even such a straightforward query would be conflated with growing health concerns about ice cream’s fat, sugar, and calorie levels, which could likely cause many survey participants to underestimate their consumption levels.With simple questions like these being rife with potential errors, it is small wonder that opinion polls dealing with complex and divisive issues like the Canadian indigenous one should be considered inherently inaccurate. This is why it’s possible to question the results of both the June 2021 Canadian Race Relations Foundation survey and the August 2025 Angus Reid Institute poll based on the principle “garbage in, garbage out.”Hymie Rubenstein, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba, is the editor of REAL Indigenous Report.

RUBENSTEIN: 'Garbage in, garbage out' characterizes public opinion polls about complex, divisive indigenous issues

Related Stories

RUBENSTEIN: Denying Indian Residential School denialism

GIESBRECHT: Is Wab Kinew a denialist?

MORGAN: Reminder — Kamloops Residential School child burial controversy is a hoax

STIRLING: Every living child matters — the overdose epidemic hiding in plain sight