Canadian state media backs secret plot to trap and humiliate Indian mass-grave skeptics

Canada's Indian mass-graves hoax never stood up to scrutiny, so radicals are now working to denigrate and discredit their most vocal scrutineers — those derisively referred to in recent years as "denialists."

A propaganda program called "Northland Tales" is currently being produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — a Canadian state media outlet — and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

According to the Indigenous Screen Office, the show is "an unscripted, half-hour comedy series where an Indigenous activist trio uses pranks as a form of social action."

'This fraudulent activity is being conducted with our tax dollars.'

Those behind the program have reportedly used false pretenses and fake companies to lure skeptics of claims about Indian mass graves into sitting for what are effectively struggle sessions.

Conservative lawmakers and critics have condemned the deceitful propaganda campaign, while defenders have alternatively framed it as a means toward reconciliation and a better understanding of perceived historical wrongs.

Quick background

Residential schools were established across Canada in the 1880s as part of a federally mandated campaign both to educate Indian children who had no alternative local school options and to assimilate them into contemporary society.

These schools — which were in many cases operated by various Catholic dioceses as well as by Anglican and Presbyterian churches — operated until the second half of the 20th century. An estimated 150,000 children attended the schools over the course of a century.

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Kamloops Indian Residential School. NICHOLAS RAUSCH/AFP/Getty Images

While thousands of children allegedly died while attending the schools, the main killer was reportedly tuberculosis, a disease that swept the rest of the nation as well.

Years after the last school was shuttered, a grievance industry grew around claims of abuse and so-called cultural genocide in the residential schools — claims that former newspaper publisher Conrad Black called "an outrage and a blood libel on the English- and French-Canadian peoples."

Apparently getting in on the action, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced in May 2021 that it had confirmed the discovery of children's remains in an apple orchard near a former Catholic-run residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

To date, not a single child's body has ever been located there.

Despite a glaring absence of evidence,

• The liberal media and various academics hyped the false narrative;
• Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other officials in Ottawa expressed grief, observed a "moment of silence" to mark the supposed discovery, and badmouthed the country;
• A radical parliamentarian passed a motion with unanimous consent demanding the Canadian government "recognize what happened in Canada's Indian residential schools as genocide."
• Canadian institutions lowered the national flags in memory of the imagined missing children;
• Canada Day festivities were canceled around the country;
• Statues remembering historic figures were toppled; and
• Hundreds of churches were vandalized and/or torched.

After fruitlessly blowing hundreds of millions of dollars on the Kamloops investigation and similar grievance industry initiatives, the powers that be considered amending Canada's Criminal Code to prohibit "denialism," thereby criminalizing the public recognition of the whole thing as a hoax.

Legislation banning such wrong-think has so far failed to advance.

Unable to silence critics of the hoax, radicals are apparently attempting to humiliate them.

Stitch-up artists

Author Lindsay Shepherd — an outspoken skeptic of the unmarked graves claims who was fired from the B.C. Conservative Party over her criticism of the provincial legislature's flying of a flag honoring so-called survivors of the residential schools — is one of the individuals targeted by the propaganda program.

Shepherd has written extensively about Canada's first prime minister, John A. MacDonald, often regarded as a key architect of the residential school system. Shepherd noted online that "a production group with what I now know has a fake name and fake identities gave me a friendly interview about my book A Day with Sir John A, and about Sir John A Macdonald, back in Feb."

The production group allegedly connected Shepherd with a fake company that "hired" her to perform consulting work.

"We had what I now know were fake meetings, fake documents, fake commercial shoot, fake prototype of a Sir John A collectible," Shepherd said. "Then in a second filmed interview last week, they turned on me, and it was revealed to have all been a setup in order to demonize Sir John A and smear me."

Frances Widdowson — a Canadian political scientist who was fired from Mount Royal University partly over her criticism of leftist revisionism about the residential schools and imagined genocide of Indians in Canada — was also targeted by the propagandists.

Widdowson told state media in a recent interview that she was asked in March to be part of a docuseries by an organization calling itself Forge Media. Widdowson said she was flown to Vancouver for an interview about how historical figures were portrayed. A man poorly dressed up as John A. MacDonald joined her during the supposed interview, then a pair of Indian men interrupted, dumping "a whole bunch of children's shoes" on a nearby table.

Activists led to believe there were unmarked children's graves by the Kamloops residential schools have left children's shoes on the steps of government buildings and churches in protest of the imagined harms of yesteryear.

After cluing in that it was "all part of some kind of setup," Widdowson took out her phone and began recording.

Igor Vamos, one of the activists involved in the propaganda program, told Widdowson that it was a "social experiment," that she wasn't a target but rather a "participant."

Widdowson told state media, "I've seen this happen with numerous individuals, and it can be quite a funny and a liberating thing to watch that, but I don't think that's what's going on here."

Instead, she suggested the propagandists were targeting "citizens who are dissidents."

The propagandists have allegedly attempted to bamboozle other dissidents and perceived foes of the revisionist left, including veterans of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who were allegedly brought in to discuss life after service only to be criticized by ideologues.

Backlash

Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said, "This is appalling, doubly so as this fraudulent activity is being conducted with our tax dollars."

"I can't believe the CBC did something like this," Canadian Conservative politician Aaron Gunn said in a statement. "Using taxpayer money to mislead, deceive and outright lie to ordinary Canadians, including retired RCMP veterans, to trick them into taking part in some sort of twisted political propaganda film. Fake documentaries that slander Canadian history, defame Canadian institutions like the RCMP and smear the reputation of our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald."

Gunn has demanded that the Carney administration provide an "explanation and accountability for ... the apparent use of taxpayer money to mislead, deceive and lie to Canadian citizens, including Members of Parliament, in attempts to trick them into participating in a fake documentary smearing the reputation of Canada's first prime minister."

Melissa Lantsman, deputy leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, wrote, "Fake documentaries. Hidden agendas. Entrapping ordinary Canadians and spending your tax dollars lavishly doing it. History-erasing ideologies who spare no expense."

Chuck Thompson, CBC's head of public affairs, defended the practice to the Canadian Press.

"Social experiments and satirical prank shows are a long-established television format used by broadcasters and streamers around the world, including many public broadcasters," Thompson said. "In this case, the Indigenous creators are using the format for Northland Tales."

Thompson added, "A form of comedy is being deployed to increase better understanding of historical injustices against indigenous peoples and support truth and reconciliation in Canada."

CBC News and APTN both claimed to have "no involvement in this production or prior knowledge of it."