After serving for 13 years as an elected member of Manitoba’s Legislative Assembly and for several years as a federal citizenship judge, I began work as chair of Manitoba’s Social Services Appeal Board (SSAB), an administrative tribunal that hears appeals, largely from folks on social assistance.
Many of these people were Indigenous. Some of my SSAB fellow board members were Indigenous.
For my six years as chair, the SSAB provided annual reports to the Manitoba Legislature. MLAs of all parties knew who I was.
On May 10, 2023, my term with the SSAB expired. With that experience, and many years of previous public service, readers might understand why I initially felt comfortable accepting my latest appointment to the King’s Bench Masters Selection Advisory Committee.
Accordingly, I was shocked when the Tory government that appointed me immediately came under fire because of my published writing on Indigenous issues in which I argued that the Indian Residential School system did not engage in physical genocide of Aboriginal children.
Of particular concern to my ideological opponents was a June 14, 2022, commentary titled “Yes, it is indeed time to move on,” an essay promoting the education of Indigenous children.
Still, I felt it was best to step aside from the voluntary role, and did so on May 25, given the concerns about this appointment. As I told the Winnipeg Free Press, “I don’t wish to be the source of any pain or bad feelings in my province.”
Readers will no doubt agree that justice must not only be done but also be seen to be done. Former NDP deputy premier Rosann Wowchuk’s niece, Christine Harapiak, was appointed a judge of the Provincial Court, in 2005, using the fair and less partisan judicial selection system I implemented when I was attorney general. Quite properly, Rosann Wowchuk took no part in the selection. Justice was done, and it was seen to be done. It should always be so. Judge Harapiak served justice with distinction for 15 years, a good judge.
During my later SSAB years – and certainly the past two since the Kamloops unmarked graves story broke – people have been aware of my writings about the Indian Residential Schools. This is why I was surprised when it was only recently raised in the Legislature.
If we aren’t going to be honest about the truth, the truth will eventually bite us. However, if we’re honest, the facts could very well set everyone free.
More and more people are having doubts about the Kamloops findings, especially when after two full years, no bodies have been recovered from the Kamloops school’s former apple orchard. This, despite Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief RoseAnne Archibald’s 2021 assertion that 1,600 children’s bodies have been “recovered” across Canada, “so far.” And “We’re going to be into the thousands upon ten thousands of children found.”
Two years later, not one has been recovered.
More people are beginning to doubt the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), given Commissioner Murray Sinclair’s 2010 false statement (never corrected or challenged) to the United Nations – on behalf of our country – that “nearly every Indigenous child in Canada” was forced to attend an Indian Residential School.
Basic research which should have been done by the TRC would easily have shown that approximately one-third of school-aged Indigenous children attended residential schools, one-third attended Indian day schools, and one-third attended no school at all (see census records, school quarterly reports, Indian agent reports, Indian Affairs records, Library and Archives Canada documents).
Another Sinclair statement, this one to the CBC’s The Current radio program in June 2021, when referring to “missing” children, claimed the number of children who died as a result of their school experience “could be in the 15-25,000 range, and maybe even more.”
This throwaway comment needs to be seriously questioned.
The sensational statements made by these highly-placed and influential leaders would be fundamental to a proper understanding of the history of the schools, if they were true. They are appallingly incorrect, yet none have been researched or challenged by politicians or the legacy media. Sinclair’s false United Nations statement laid the foundation for all his commission’s work that followed, as well as the work of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). This organization acknowledged to me in an email a year ago that its Memorial Register includes the names of Helen Betty Osborne (a name well-known to Manitobans, especially Murray Sinclair) and hundreds of other children who did not “die at or go missing from” their schools. How do we know? Because provincial death records clearly demonstrate this.
And yet “Betty” Osborne’s name remains on the list a year later. Manitobans know very well that her despicable murder had nothing at all to do with any Indian Residential School.
It offers no succour whatsoever to Indigenous families across Canada when their leaders tell them horrible things that are not true.
The telling of the history of Canada needs to be factual. Exaggeration of tragic events simply intensifies the unhappiness and bitterness of Indigenous Canadians, and magnifies the guilt felt by non-Indigenous people. It stifles reconciliation.
If and when the bodies of 200 Indigenous children allegedly buried under sinister circumstances are recovered from that former Kamloops apple orchard, and when we know who they and their families were, my position will certainly be very different.
James C. McCrae is a former attorney general of Manitoba and Canadian citizenship judge.
