STIRLING: The truth is buried and some people will do what it takes to keep it that way

If Canada passes NDP MP Leah Gazan’s Bill C-413, which forbids downplaying or supporting the establishment of Indian Residential Schools, will I be prevented from presenting evidence to vindicate my country and countrymen from a charge of genocide at the International Criminal Court?Will I and others go to jail, charged under Bill C-413 here at home, for the heinous crime of setting historic context? Will it be a crime to try to prevent Canadian ministers, politicians, clergy or former Indian Residential School staff from facing an ICC kangaroo court over a phantom genocide? We have yet to see a list of names of missing persons, yet to see evidence of genocide in the form of bodies, yet to determine if old, unmarked graves were just forgotten or crimes scenes? Yet a charge of genocide via the ICC may inspire the now multi-polar world to embargo or otherwise impose damaging trade arrangements our once wonderful country? Here's why it's a dreadful possibility.The ICC has been handed the tax-paid work of Kimberly Murray and her volumes of hear-say criminal allegations. If you are ignorant of Canadian history, her reports paint our efforts to educate indigenous children to operate in a New World of agro-industrial activity, as if mild-mannered priests and nuns were all genocidal murderers — and no Canadian cared. Nina Green, independent researcher, writes that Canada has now twice been referred to the ICC for genocide and rejected — a genocide for which no such evidence exists.Kimberly Murray was the Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Burials Related to Indian Residential Schools. Her office operated from Ohsweken on the Mohawk Reserve where a sign says, “You are now entering repatriated sovereign Mohawk Nation Land…. you are no longer in Canada.” It's clear where she begins her analysis.She, and those who believe as she does, also have this advantage; Canadians, for the most part, are hopelessly naïve about politics in general and in particular how other countries try to manipulate Canada. How many people know that six provinces and several First Nations bands were pushing back on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) for months? That resistance vanished with the Kamloops First Nations claim of finding mass graves of children – the news shot round the world. And UNDRIP sailed through parliament within less than a month after the atrocity headlines.The day after UNDRIP passed, China accused Canada of genocide at the UN, citing the Kamloops story as proof.It all fitted so well... The day after UNDRIP was proclaimed, China accused Canada of genocide at the UN, citing the Kamloops find as proof.Nor did they know that six provinces and several First Nation bands had been pushing back on UNDRIP legislation. (There were outstanding issues of clarity on consent, retroactivity, and resource and energy development.)But the atrocity propaganda of the Kamloops claim of bodies, human remains, mass graves swept around world media and prepared public sentiment such that the once-contested UNDRIP legislation sailed through Parliament and the Senate.As a piece of narrative management, it's a classic.Kimberly Murray was subsequently appointed as a civil servant to consult with the Minister of Justice (then David Lametti, now Arif Virani) on the claims of unmarked graves and residential schools. She then spent the last 2 ½ years writing reports with ever more lurid allegations about Indian Residential Schools. Her reports are dripping with presentism and a lack of historical context or understanding. Her most recent final report is ~1,000 pages in length. The report was hand-delivered to Minister Virani on Oct. 29, 2024. Ms. Murray’s official position ends on Dec. 12, 2024. And the location of her office was… not in Canada. No questions?It is also blameworthy that Ms. Murray gave no time to interested parties — the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops, for example — to review her work. Instead, she sent her unvetted magnum opus of wild allegations overseas to the International Criminal Court (ICC.) Indeed, she and her colleague Mark Kersten recommend that Canada ‘turns itself in’ to the ICC on charges of genocide, enforced disappearance and human rights violations, related to her interpretation of events at Indian Residential Schools in Canada.Thing is, if we don’t turn ourselves in, some other country could do that for us. That's how things work these days.And, it sounds like China is poised to do so. It jumped at the chance to exploit the Kamloops First Nation’s claim of a mass grave and human remains, the day after UNDRIP passed. Most of Murray’s claims about Canada’s legal obligations and reparations she says are required under UNDRIP. That is just such a curious coincidence of timing, I can’t get it out of my head. While the country was distracted and in mourning over acres of allegedly unmarked graves of children in historic, abandoned untended cemeteries, flag at half-mast, China accused us of genocide. From peacemakers to genocidal murderers. Just like that. And with no evidence! Well played!Now, despite having received ~$8 million from the federal government for assessment of the alleged mass graves, no excavations or exhumations have been done at the Kamloops First Nation, as far as anyone knows. This year, on the third anniversary of the find, the Kamloops website story “Reflections on the Third Anniversary of Le Estcwicwéy̓ (the Missing) said they were reflecting on the ‘anomalies.’ That’s a far cry from a mass grave or human remains.Fact: The images of graves she presented in her earlier report “Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience” are known graveyards that were not kept up. In Murray's fulsome report— the executive summary runs to 300 pages — the word ‘genocide’ appears 95 times, compared to the word ‘Tuberculosis’ which appears 22 times. This despite the fact that the 6-year, $60 million cross-Canada research efforts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) found that the children’s deaths were overwhelmingly caused by Tuberculosis (an incurable global plague prior to 1950). The TRC also only found that a ‘cultural genocide’ could be ascribed to Indian Residential Schools.A reminder: Ms. Murray was the Executive Director of the TRC! Now she is rewriting history and putting Canada at great risk of retaliation by China or any despot nation, wanting to further twist the shifting power centers of this now multi-polar world.Ms. Murray and NDP MP Leah Gazan are pushing for Bill C-413 to be adopted, to silence people like me. They don’t want anyone to be able to defend Canada by presenting balanced and true historical facts and context.In these days of known foreign interference in Canada, you have to wonder about that.

STIRLING: The truth is buried and some people will do what it takes to keep it that way

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