Manitoba premier, and Progressive Conservative Leader, Heather Stefanson kicked off Manitoba’s 43rd provincial election campaign outside a downtown Winnipeg supermarket on September 5, highlighting pocketbook promises aimed at making life more affordable if the Tories are re-elected to a third consecutive term..These included lower taxes, immediately removing the federal carbon tax from hydro bills, continuing to reduce the education property tax so it ends over the next 10 years, slaying the $363-million provincial deficit and balancing the budget by 2025 — two years ahead of schedule..Unmentioned in her first official campaign speech were two other recent promises, one also containing serious financial implications..One of Stefanson’s election slogans, “Fighting for Manitoba Parents,” can be interpreted as referring to a plan to amend the Public Schools Act to expand “parental rights.”.These include the right for parents to be involved in addressing their child’s “behaviour changes” at school. Many commentators argue this is part of a thinly veiled scheme to prevent young students from arbitrarily altering their gender identity and pronouns..As one political commentator stated, many woke supporters of unbridled gender rights, “regard the pledge as a dog whistle pandering to the anti-LGBTTQ+ faction in our province.”.These advocates may assume most Manitobans also oppose Stefanson’s plan but this seems wishful thinking: an Angus Reid poll just revealed three-quarters of Manitobans feel parents should be informed about any changes to their child’s gender preference..The second unmentioned issue, a potential $184 million cost for the province, is Stefanson’s refusal to support efforts to search the Brady and Prairie Green landfill sites on the outskirts of Winnipeg for the remains of four indigenous women who went missing last year and are suspected to be victims of an accused serial killer..Her determined refusal to allow the excavation of Prairie Green allegedly rooted in the health risks to searchers and the way a lengthy search might compromise the first-degree murder charges against their reputed killer, Jeremy Skibicki, a white man, has ignited protests causing road closures and the blockade of the Brady landfill site, disrupting garbage collection and disposal..Even though the premier’s resolute position also finds support in the bias and questionable methodology inherent in the feasibility study supporting a landfill search, not to mention the near-zero chance of any human remains ever being found, this has not prevented disdainful criticism from many influential individuals, organizations and media commentators..The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the body responsible for what should have been an impartial government-led feasibility study, recently passed a unanimous resolution demanding her resignation because of her position on the proposed landfill searches..Given all the vitriol hurled at Stefanson, it could be assumed her position will jeopardize her government’s re-election hopes..This may again be wishful thinking by her political foes..As seasoned political commenter, podcaster, and Winnipeg Free Press columnist Charles Adler has opined, “I believe the majority of voters quietly agree with the premier.”.His guess may be based on the view of Dan Lett, another Free Press columnist, that “It’s becoming clear now that Heather Stefanson’s rejection to search the landfill for the remains of indigenous women is a deliberate strategy. In the outer areas of Winnipeg and the rural areas there is blowback… a reconciliation fatigue that the premier is stoking for support in the election.”.Yet another Free Press commentator called reconciliation fatigue “a polite euphemism for ‘racism.’”.This claim has no credibility, not the least because the term 'reconciliation' as applied to indigenous issues has nearly as many definitions as people championing it..The leader of one of four church denominations visiting Winnipeg on September 5 to urge Manitoba’s political leaders to search the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of two of the four tragically murdered indigenous women, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, claimed anti-aboriginal racism explained the province’s refusal to support such an effort..“I think sometimes we have a preference for people who are white in this country and we tend to ignore people who are indigenous,” said Susan Johnson, national bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. “I can’t imagine that if there were white people in the landfill that we wouldn’t be searching for them. So I think in many ways, this is racist and it certainly does not work in terms of our commitment to reconciliation.”.This charge is based on the accusation that not searching “would send a dark message that Canada’s governments condone the act of disposing of indigenous women in landfills,” according to Cathy Merrick, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs..One indigenous writer even called the government’s decision “the empowerment of racist ideology and behaviour.”.These are indeed serious charges in a multi-cultural province such as Manitoba, so require sound evidence to be taken seriously..If these cries of racism mean hating or disparaging aboriginals as a people, they do not apply to more than a handful of Manitobans..Such inflammatory rhetoric has no credibility because there are also thousands of missing white Canadians buried across the land and overseas, many of them Manitobans, whose remains are unknown or forgotten..These include the “British Home Children,” some 100,000 offspring of destitute parents forcibly exiled to Canada between 1869 and 1948 to work as menial indentured servants for farm families in rural areas, a human tragedy few people have ever heard of. Their final humiliation was burial in unmarked plots, some of which have only recently and privately been commemorated..Even worse was the fate of tens of thousands of unknown, unmarked, or poorly maintained graves containing the remains of Canadian soldiers of multiple races and ethnicities, again including many Manitobans, who lost their lives in two world wars, and today lie anonymous and alone in Canada and around the world despite having paid the ultimate price for their country..Moreover, if there is systemic anti-indigenous racism, it is not directed at individuals or groups but at our apartheid-like politico-legal system that has granted aboriginals special constitutional and allied rights and privileges denied other Canadians, reinforced by a constant and financially exorbitant call for reparations masquerading as “reconciliation” rarely offered to any other disadvantaged national group or category of people..In today’s Canada, white adversity counts for nothing..This does not deny that violence, including homicide, is disproportionately committed against indigenous women..Statistics Canada data between 2011 and 2021 show that of all 1,125 gender-related homicides of women and girls, 21% of victims were indigenous, despite comprising only 5% of the Canadian female population in 2021..It is often said that the authorities are racially indifferent to the murder of indigenous people. The facts dispute this assertion. Data between 2017 and 2021 show that while 51% of homicides involving an indigenous victim were solved within two days, it took up to seven days for 50% of homicides to be solved when it involved non-Indigenous victims. Within the first 100 days, 71% of homicides of indigenous people were solved, compared with 61% of homicides of non-Indigenous people..This is surely a tragedy but like the murder of non-indigenous women, few of these heinous crimes appear to be racially or ethnically motivated. This is because RCMP data for the period between 1980 and 2012 says up to 92% of “female homicide victims generally know the person who kills them — more than 90% had a previous relationship with them. This is true for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal female victims.”.In short, intra-racial murders are much more common than inter-racial ones and the crimes allegedly committed by Jeremy Skibicki, a man whose two wives were indigenous, are the exception rather than the rule..Seemingly oblivious to such facts, Bishop Johnson hopes adding the church voices to the call for a landfill search will prompt the province to reconsider its stance..“We’re taking reconciliation seriously, so I hope they’ll be able to listen. I hope they’ll be able to change their minds,” she argued..Church voices, regardless of their grounding in Christian ideology, and demands for “reconciliation” regardless of their grounding in indigenous grievances, whether real or contrived, still need to take notice of rational, evidence-based truth-telling if they wish to be taken seriously..Despite a flood of emotion and race-based virtue signaling urging it to reverse course, the government of Manitoba has good grounds for standing firm on its decision not to engage in a fruitless search for the remains of these tragically murdered women..Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology, the University of Manitoba
