CBC’s Front Burner – Advocating for Criminalizing Due Diligence and Due Process

By Michelle Stirling ©2026

CBC’s Front Burner recently produced a podcast featuring host Jason Markusoff, settler historian Sean Carleton and Indigenous activist Niigaan Sinclair on the topic of “What’s fueling residential school denialism?”

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Carleton and Sinclair have written a book on the topic of said denialism which will be released this fall.

Though I am not personally named in the production, I would be one of the people who might be criminally prosecuted for allegedly ‘denying or downplaying’ the Indian Residential School experience, because I present the historical context that is missing in the mainstream media propaganda, like that of Front Burner.

As a research colleague wrote to me one day about the bizarre efforts to censor and silence people like me, “they are not criminalizing denialism but rather are criminalizing due diligence and due process.”

A dedication to due diligence is what is fueling the public’s interest in more details on both the Indian Residential School experience and history, and more details on the Indian Grievance Industry (IGI). The IGI, formerly identified by scholars Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard in their 2008 book “Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry,” is now bilking some $60 billion from taxpayers in various forms of compensation for alleged harms to the ancestors of the present day 1.8 million Indigenous people (includes Status Indians, Inuit and First Nations). Almost NONE of this money reaches the poor and destitute average native person on reserve.

See Prof. Emeritus Tom Flanagan’s reports on Fraser Institute’s website - this one in particular.

There is nothing racist or hateful about demanding due diligence on these matters of public concern. Good public policy is based on transparency, thoughtful consultation, and measurable constructive outcomes.

The public does not see any of that in current affairs related to so-called “Truth” and “Reconciliation”; this is contrary to the principles of reconciliation, in fact, the opposite of reconciliation is the outcome. People are angry and feeling abused and that their goodwill has been taken advantage of.

A desire for appropriate due process is what is fueling the public’s rejection of the tropes and unproven accusations of ‘genocide’. Yes, a sticking point, as identified in the Front Burner show, is definitely the unproven claim that the human remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves, as reported on May 27, 2021, by the Kamloops (Tk’emplups) Indian Band, said to have been discovered in the old apple orchard of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School by a Ground Penetrating Radar search. These alleged missing children were said to lie in a mass grave or in unmarked graves (depending on the media outlet) and it was reported that they were covertly laid to rest at night, according to alleged witnesses, in graves dug by children aged 6 for deceased classmates, often described as murdered, as young as 3 years old.

Most people do not know that the minimum age of admission at Indian Residential School was seven years of age. Exceptions were made for orphans or those from destitute or neglectful homes.

Bottom section of a typical admission form.

Five years on, we have learned that prior to making the announcement, there was no search of previous land use records, and that in fact, the area that the GPR operator, Dr. Sarah Beaulieu, claimed were shallow graves, consistent with those dug by children, overlie 2,000 feet of septic trenches dug back in the 1920s.

Five years on, the Canadian public wonder where the RCMP investigation is at, into this alleged mass murder? The answer is, there is no investigation by the RCMP.

There is no list of names of children alleged to be missing.

No families have stepped forward with evidence of missing loved ones, such as photos, birth certificates, school registrations.

While it may be that over time, a family’s knowledge of the location of the burial of an unfortunate child who died has become lost, due to lack of care of records like burial certificates, that does not imply nefarious deaths or intentional negligence on the part of the schools or the Department of Indian Affairs or the church.

Jason Markusoff, the stand-in host of Front Burner, for this episode, has an emotional story written for Maclean’s pinned to his X header about the finding of a lost loved one, “Finding David Lightning: The decades-long quest to locate an unmarked grave.”

In Markusoff’s story for Maclean’s he notes that “by 1907, 56 students—one-quarter of those enrolled—had died at school or within a few years of returning home,…” Without historic context, that sounds dreadful! But the mortality rate at the time in North America was 1 in 4, from Tuberculosis alone – higher on reserve. Likewise, dying “within a few years of returning home” does not mean that attendance at the Indian Residential School caused the death. This is the problem with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation’s memorial register – it contains the names of many people whose deaths had nothing to do with Indian Residential School!

The above image is the century-old graveyard of the Kamloops Indian Band. Do they know who is buried here, let alone those of the no-name phantom genocide in the old apple orchard?

Is it cruel or hateful of me to say that? No. Thousands of people’s lives, in Canada, have been ruined by the heinous accusations of mass murder and genocide; our international reputation as peacekeepers has been turned upside down; over 400 churches have been vandalized or burnt down since the TRC reports were issued, two people died in one of these church arsons. Very little police action seems to have been taken to catch the perpetrators. Thousands of devout Catholics and Christians live in fear – for their faith, their church, their own personal safety.

In addition to that, some 5,315 “Persons of Interest” who suffered through the amorphous gauntlet of accusations of abuse in the Independent Assessment Process were denied the right of due process; some had their reputations ruined; some now fear also for their lives.

To clarify, the Common Experience payment (to any former student), the Independent Assessment Process payment (to any student who claimed significant abuse, and whose adjudication was successful), the Truth and Reconciliation process and reports, and the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, under the umbrella of the University of Manitoba, were all part of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, which was to END all litigations and class actions claims on this file. Instead, it has been seen by the IGI as a stepping stone to more litigation, land claims, and the witch hunts of the hapless ‘Persons of Interest’ who were accused and effectively convicted of crimes, with no right of defence or due process. The accuser did not even have to appear at the hearing.

The massive number of claims and horrific stories of abuse, all stem from intentional agitation by various lawyers who spent years ‘leading the witness’ to up the potential compensation to ‘windfall profits’ which would benefit both client and lawyer, as outlined in this 2006 article in Maclean’s – i.e., which predates the alleged residential school denialism period of today.

As Ronald Niezen points out in his book “Truth and Indignation”, people who had their claims ginned up by lawyers typically cashed in; while most actual victims of real abuse at schools, whether from staff or other students, were too emotionally shaken to even fill out the form. Justice was denied all around – and you don’t want me to talk about that?

How will this abuse of due process be rectified and reconciled? Most Canadians don’t even know this happened!

When accusations of this heinous nature have been made against an entire nation, and when the Kamloops claim is focussed narrowly on the Roman Catholic Church, which administered the Kamloops Indian Residential School (and many others), this is simply a blood libel without evidence. This is criminal defamation. This is criminal defamation of some 10 million Canadian Roman Catholics and criminal defamation of some 10 million Canadians of other denominations of Christianity, most of which also operated Indian Residential Schools.

This is an immoral blood libel on thousands of priests, nuns, clergy and staff who provided dedicated service to Indigenous communities, at the request of the Canadian government, who, as part of fulfilling treaty obligations, provided Indian Residential Schools to Chiefs and band councils as requested. The education and community services were fulfilled by various religious orders because missionaries had:

a) Long-term established relationship with the tribes across Canada

b) The priests spoke native languages; most of the oral languages were saved from extinction by the priests

c) Most native families had adopted Christianity decades prior to the establishment of the schools; thus, the schools were designed to follow that denominational view and children’s applications for admission were assigned accordingly, they were not converting students.

d) Missionaries had established a physical presence in remote communities across Canada, building churches and community graveyards, had established supply chains for goods and services; thus, providing an immediate launching pad for the program. There were graveyards beside some schools because the school was built near the mission. Where ever people live, they also die. Graveyards are essential for public health and for spiritual sanctity.

e) Various chiefs had travelled East to see how society was developing, to tour the Mohawk Institute and to see what the children were learning and how the graduates were coping in the agro-industrial world, so foreign to their prior lives as hunter-gatherers. The chiefs were satisfied that Indian Residential Schools were a suitable model for educating their children.

None of the foregoing context is presented in the Front Burner episode. In the introduction by host Jason Markusoff, the items he claims as ‘fact’ are simple repeated tropes like the claim that 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families.

They were not taken. Children’s parents voluntarily applied for admission.

From the TRC: In addition to food, clothing, and shelter, many former staff said, parents sought out the residential school for the opportunities the school could offer their children. “Who came to residential schools?” asked former teacher Olive Saunders: “The elite. The councillor’s children, his family’s children, the Chief’s children.… They were wonderful kids. They were smart kids. So they were the elite … because their parents knew that someday their kids would need to be educated.”332 James Fiori felt that residential schools constituted the only educational opportunity available to students: “I know some of the ones that I have talked to of the whole thing, if they don’t have an education, they will not have a chance. And you know, like I know the north country, you know, like there simply wasn’t anything available.”333 (pg. 535[1])

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1925 letter from Kamloops Indian Residential school by James McGuire, OMI, asking for more allocation for students from 125 to 150 as “many are clamoring for admission.”

As I have written elsewhere: A main criticism of the TRC report by historian JR Miller was that “At no time in the history of residential schooling in Canada were parents “compelled to send their children to residential schools.”’[7] Yet this “forcibly removed” or “forced to send” is one of the main messages the TRC promoted in the media.

Likewise, Markusoff’s interviewees spout propaganda and provide no historical fact or context, contrary to CBC’s stated journalistic standards.

The podcast also includes a clip by Leah Gazan. Gazan’s own great-grandfather was a very successful, highly accomplished Indian Residential School graduate – John LeCaine. LeCaine was a devout Catholic who also documented the history of his people, the refugee Lakota who ran from the US Cavalry to the safety of Canada, following the massacre of Lt. Col. Custer and the 7^th Cavalry. LeCaine’s family was aided by a North West Mounted Policeman whose last name they adopted. LeCaine became a successful farmer as well. Leah Gazan always denounces Indian Residential Schools as genocidal; in fact, without the help of the NWMP and the granting of asylum by Canada, Sitting Bull and all his people might have been wiped out by the US Cavalry. Why does Gazan downplay her great-grandfather’s excellent experience at Indian Residential School? Why does CBC do no due diligence on these matters?

As I have written elsewhere, the public must be informed of the broader context of history related to Indian Residential Schools and the main actors behind the present-day narrative.

Is this act by me, an act of denialism…or factualism?

Curiously, in the Front Burner long discussion, there is no mention of the fact that Tuberculosis was the major cause of death of students – endemic at the time across the world; that 30% of the children were orphans; no mention that some children were saved from abandonment, destitution, neglect or domestic violence.

I would like Sinclair and Carleton to address what the alternatives were at the time for orphans and children living in dire straits at home?

Carleton mocks the notion that deaths were natural. The fact is, Tuberculosis (TB) was the greatest killer of ALL North Americans up until the development during the 1920s to 40’s of high public health standards and sanitation, along with streptomycin in the 1950.

Markusoff’s Maclean’s article shows his interest in this topic, but I found it a bizarre aberration that Jason Markusoff was chosen to host this session. As he stated in the podcast, Markusoff is a Jew.

In the introduction of the show, Markusoff claims that it is well-documented that several thousand students died, but more people are questioning these “facts”.

We have not seen thousands of death certificates proving that such numbers of children died AT or because of Indian Residential Schools. Of some ~500 death certificates gathered by volunteer researchers, very few indicate that the child died AT the school. Most died of Tuberculosis, in hospital or in a sanatorium. Most of the children were infected with TB at home; often orphaned by one or more parental deaths due to TB, or separated for months from parents, due to the long treatments prior to 1950.

This is why we must challenge the claim of ‘genocide’ when the Indian Residential School body count according to the named register of the TRC is 423 children who died AT Indian Residential Schools, versus the six million Jews and ~6 million other ‘undesirables’ or ‘useless eaters’ (gays, Roma, disabled, elderly, dissidents etc.) who were turned to living skeletons or ashes in an actual genocide at Nazi work camps and death camps dotted across Europe.

By not challenging the Indian Residential School claim of genocide, Canadians implicitly minimize the horror of the actual Holocaust, where the physical evidence is real, like the thousands of real shoes once worn by real people, now behind museum glass, versus the ‘215’ plastic children’s shoes never worn by any child who attended Indian Residential Schools, most likely made by Uighur slaves in China – who are experiencing an actual present-day genocide?

Bodies? You can see many horrible Holocaust pictures here. There are no pictures like this related to Indian Residential Schools.

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/gallery/historical-pictures-and-documents/extermination,11.html

I find the use of ‘215’ shoes to represent the nameless, unproven victims of a genocide that has only been proclaimed in the media, to be humiliating, and an extraordinary insult to the memory of all Holocaust victims, citizens of Israel today, and Jewish Canadians. It is an insult to my parents, my uncles, and the millions of other soldiers who fought in World War II to snuff out the Nazi regime and restore freedom and dignity to human life.

A declaration of genocide in the media, in a parliamentary motion, or a brief comment by a travel-weary Pope is not a court ruling beyond reasonable doubt.

Sinclair babbles on about how ghoulish it is that so-called ‘denialists’ want to see bodies. In fact, there is NO denying that people like me want evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. That doesn’t mean we want to see a body – we want the RCMP to supervise an independent site excavation, and if bodies are found, to conduct a forensic assessment. This is what due diligence and due process is all about.

Most families of murder or accident victims DO want the police to find the body of their missing loved one – for closure, and if the victim was murdered, for justice.

If there really are 215 murdered children, I want them found and the perpetrators charged and convicted!! Now!

Sinclair says with confidence that bodies were buried inappropriately – when no one knows if any bodies were buried there at all! He claims that then organic matter would not stay in the same place, this process of discovery may take a hundred years. That’s ridiculous.

So-called ‘denialism’ is on the rise because ordinary Canadians are well-aware that things have gone dreadfully awry in Kamloops.

1) Secure the crime scene. (Not done – the scene of the crime is in the hands of the alleged victims. This is unheard of in policing and law.)

2) Assess the evidence behind the claim. Provide the list of names of children alleged to be missing to the RCMP. Nada.

3) Interview their families. We’ve only heard from random people with wildly exaggerated claims of abuse, for instance, CBC Fifth Estate’s “The Reckoning” where alleged ‘survivors’ were allowed to spew outrageous claims with no ‘reckoning’ by CBC.

For instance, how is it that NONE of these ghastly claims were made during the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996? How is it that at the 1977 Kamloops Indian Residential School reunion, where many of the priests and staff attended, none were charged or arrested for these heinous crimes? Former student and then retired high-ranking politician Len Marchand attended the salmon bar-be-que and Father Noonan brought a slide deck. Why would anyone who suffered a ‘genocide’ return to such a place for a salmon bar-be-que and dance?

4) Review the 2003 report of the RCMP which concluded an 8 year, $1 million dollar investigation across 15 Indian Residential Schools in British Columbia of the claims of various forms of abuse – none were substantiated. Had that report been released then, in 2003, it is likely that the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement would never have been written, and the billions paid in compensation would have never left taxpayer wallets, as it showed there was no viable case. Here is a redacted version. For some reason the report was hidden.

5) The RCMP should have interviewed the Kamloops living witnesses (i.e. the alleged Knowledge Keepers, some of whom claim to have witnessed clandestine burials). Not done – but the media provide them or those who know them (i.e. journos like Tanya Talaga) access and they repeat and spew their claims without question or restriction.

6) Review the historical archives. The first step would be to match the names of those alleged to be missing with the school’s register. But there is no list of missing names. Thus, I conclude that this is a phantom genocide that has generated millions of dollars in funding for a wild ghost chase.

Is that hurtful, what I wrote? To some people, probably. No doubt, many former students who did NOT have issues with their educational experience at Indian Residential School, were shocked, gut-punched, to be told repeatedly in the mass media, that their once-loved priests and nuns were murderers of children! It may be a relief for many of those people to read my blunt writings and realize they have been had.

Sinclair and Carleton find it appalling that some ‘denialists’ suggest that people have made up or exaggerated their experience.

Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson is a psychologist who has assisted former Indian Residential School students and other native people with healing. As noted above, there is much pressure to conform with the narrative. Likewise, much as Sinclair and Carleton denounce Prof. Emeritus Tom Flanagan and former professor Frances Widdowson, in fact, Robertson read and reviewed the book “Grave Error” and says there is nothing controversial in the book.

Excerpt of my submission to the Permanent People’s Tribunal.

And indeed, as the BC Law Society reports, there were coercive efforts in at least one case where some 624 clients had a paroled, convicted murderer, hired by their lawyer, to help them fill out their Independent Assessment Process claim form. This exposed their deeply personal secrets to a questionable individual. There were reports of extortion and threats from this individual (not proven in court) and he was reincarcerated. The average payouts to the individuals involved was some $21,000 higher than the average compensation across Canada. That is a curious anomaly. Also, curious that the ruling was issued the same day the claim of the ‘215’ was announced. These are facts.

With respect to my diatribe here, though Markusoff, Sinclair and Carleton will likely be highly offended, it may be a relief to other readers to have someone speak up and call out this charade and national disgrace.

Many Canadians had a sudden change of heart about the ‘215’ when it was revealed last year, that in 2015, the Kamloops Indian Band had filed a civil suit for aboriginal title over the entire city of Kamloops, Sun Peaks Resort, and surrounding area.

For my part, and for many others who now have questions, once people understood that UNDRIP slid through the Senate on the tears over the ‘215’ and that UNDRIP is the tool of the ‘land back’ movement, the claim of genocide and murderous priests and nuns became understood as evil, laughable tools of propaganda against the rights and freedoms of the compassionate, ever-sorry, average Canadian.

The question is, did the Kamloops Indian Band think that the passage of UNDRIP would shake their 2015 civil claim for all of Kamloops out of the tree of legal process?

This is a fair question.

Once people read the demands from the 13 ‘grassroots’ families of the Kamloops Indian Band published as an open letter to Justin Trudeau in the Globe & Mail on Oct. 18, 2021, it is clear (to me) that there’s something strange going on. The letter feels like a threat, to me, as if the Kamloops Indian Band had ‘something big’ that might bring down the government. This may explain why so many Liberal parliamentarians were quick to accuse their own country of such heinous crimes, rather than taking a measured approach. Imagine a more thoughtful approach where perhaps the government might have politely accepted that such a claim had been made but, instead of lowering the flag and cancelling Canada Day, effectively affirming Canada’s guilt, they had issued a public statement that the Government of Canada would engage in due process of law; that the site would be secured immediately by the RCMP, and that the government would reject such accusations without further evidence.

Yes, Niigaan. Bodies.

In fact, is that not fundamental to law as ‘Habeus Corpus’ is literally translated from Latin as “you shall have the body”?

Canadians, Roman Catholics, Christians have been criminally defamed by the Kamloops Indian Band. We have all been denied due process and due diligence, and you want to put me in jail for explaining this?

One more thing. Both Sinclair and Carleton seem to think that people like me are making millions of dollars. For the record, I have not monetized any of my websites to date; I declined payment for a long form article on this principle. I made the documentary “The Bitter Roots of ‘Sugarcane’” on my own time with no funding and with the unpaid help of friends and research colleagues. I have never monetized the production, which debunks the blood libels of the Oscar-nominated shock-u-mentary, “Sugarcane,” which reportedly, National Geographic picked up for a distribution deal in the low seven figures.

Contrary to what Carleton claims about so-called ‘denialists’, it seems like it is the “gravers” who have, for the past five years, dined out on and cashed in on these tawdry blood libels, including filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat cashing in on his own grandmother’s desperate act of decades ago.

These impending laws are not criminalizing denialism, they would be criminalizing due diligence and due process, completely contrary to rule of law.

It is shameful that CBC is using any part of their $1.4 billion annual funding from your tax dollars to further propagate this atrocity propaganda, instead of investigating it like real journos used to do.

We must be Sorry No More, Canada. Go forth and conquer this monstrous defamation with facts and evidence, a monstrous defamation made against all the decent people who once made this nation great.

Image licensed from Adobe Stock. Text added.