Tom Flanagan and Ezra Levant expose how Canada’s 2021 claim of 215 unmarked graves at Kamloops Residential School—based on misinterpreted ground-penetrating radar and no excavation—became a weaponized narrative, silencing dissent like Frances Woodowson’s dismissal. Their book Grave Error reveals legacy media ignored alternative critiques, while the TRC’s "claims industry" prioritizes restitution over reconciliation, fueled by $40B+ in Indigenous funding. Flanagan warns of censorship risks, citing Amazon’s suppression of China Virus, and contrasts Canada’s victimhood focus with New Zealand’s and Hawaii’s cultural pride. With Trudeau’s selective "genocide" rhetoric and Poilievre’s potential avoidance of the issue, they argue evidence-based debate is stifled by ideological pressure, leaving systemic problems like reserve dysfunction unaddressed despite funding surges. [Automatically generated summary]
Can you be charged and prosecuted for denying that Indian people, Indigenous people in Canada were genocided?
We'll talk with Dr. Tom Flanagan, who would probably be the first person prosecuted.
He's got a new book out.
You're not going to want to miss this.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast.
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All right, here's today's interview.
Tonight, Dr. Tom Flanagan and his new book about what really happened in Kamloops, BC.
It's December 8th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
You know, for years, the left has tried to make it a kind of a crime to doubt the theory of man-made global warming.
They say if you don't believe in their theory, then you are a denier, not even a skeptic, not even someone with a different point of view, not even someone who believes in the scientific method of testing a hypothesis.
You are a denier.
And the word was chosen on purpose to have a memory of Holocaust denial, which of course is a grave moral crime.
It's tantamount to anti-Semitism in itself, and it shows an irrational hatred.
That was a word used by the climate extremists on the left.
You're a climate denier.
And of course, there was no legal penalty for being a climate denier, but you were banned from polite company.
And I'm not exaggerating.
The BBC and the CBC, two state broadcasters that deeply believe in the theory of man-made global warming, refused to platform deniers, just like they would say they wouldn't platform a Holocaust denier.
There was a power in the word.
Well, now that word is being expanded to anyone who has mere questions about the very curious case of the Kamloops accusation that there are hundreds of dead bodies outside the residential school.
You know what I'm talking about.
A couple years ago, ground-penetrating radar, which actually cannot detect people, but rather anomalies, was considered proof that there was, according to Jack Meet Singh, a mass grave outside the residential school there.
Our own Drea Humphrey actually made a documentary on the subject called Kamloops, the Buried Truth.
Here's a flashback to that video.
Well, the remains of 215 children have been found in a mass grave in Canada.
Many of you know that just over a year ago, the discovery of the remains of 215 children was found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School at the Tekumloop-Shoswamik First Nation.
But what if I were to show you that what I just said wasn't true?
And that in fact, a year later, not a single body has been found.
This mass grave is a painful reminder of the genocide.
Canada's leaders aren't condemning the burning of churches.
No, they're endorsing the burning of churches.
A juvenile rib bone that surfaced in the same area.
You'd be surprised at a number of people who say, I'm a doctor, I'm a paramedic, and this is definitely a human bone, and it's definitely not.
Well, that's an example of denialism.
That's the word being used in the industry of people who want to turn Kamloops into a proof point of a larger genocide against Indigenous peoples.
And they have called upon the Justice Minister to make denialism of the Kamloops accusation a crime.
It's not a crime to deny the Jewish Holocaust, by the way, but the idea is to make denying this genocide of Indigenous people a crime.
I'm not sure how you'd do that, but if they were to do it, I know who the first person they would prosecute would be.
And that's my old professor, Dr. Tom Flanagan.
He has been a skeptic of what he has in the past called the Indian industry.
That is not Indigenous people themselves, but rather Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who have dined out on the subject for decades.
If you study transfers to Indigenous people and Indian bands in this country, you'll know that much of the money is siphoned off by white liberal bureaucrats.
And of course, the chief class, very little makes it down to grassroots Indians themselves.
That's the Indian industry.
And imagine having the powerful tool of silencing through prosecution and therefore through self-censorship any deniers.
Well, Dr. Tom has a new book out co-authored by Chris Champion.
The book is called Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us and the Truth About Indian Residential Schools.
And Dr. Tom joins us now from Calgary.
Well, I'm talking to you before you're charged and convicted and imprisoned.
This may be one of your few interviews, or actually it may be the interview that causes you to be jailed.
I'm half joking, of course, but of course the other side is not joking.
They have been talking about criminalizing what they call denialism, which is strange.
I'm not sure what you have to deny to be a denier and to be prosecutable, but I think the whole thing works even if they don't have the answer because it's just designed to scare people into self-censoring, don't you think?
I think it is, yeah.
And, you know, but fortunately, I'm retired.
I don't have to worry about losing my livelihood.
You know, you go back to the old song, Me and Bobby McGee, Janice Joplin saying freedom's just another thing for nothing left to lose.
So I've kind of reached that point.
I'm 79 years old.
I can say what I want without worrying about, you know, supporting myself, my wife, my children, etc.
And so our book, you know, it's a compendium of efforts by about a dozen people who've been working on this issue.
And most of us are retired.
Most of us are at that point where we have some protection against intimidation.
And interestingly, a couple of the younger contributors don't want their names known and they're contributing under pseudonyms.
I mean, they're that afraid.
This is the first time in more than 50 years of research in Canada that I've encountered a situation of colleagues who are afraid of having their names publicized and want to be, what's the word, want to be anonymous.
We're dealing here, you know, so with some pretty serious issues that could have consequences.
You know, the word genocide is thrown about so casually these days.
The chief justice, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, called Canada a genocidal regime.
She used that word.
Justin Trudeau picked it up.
It's now thrown around handily.
It's funny because Trudeau, of course, will not call what China is doing in Xinjiang province a genocide.
He doesn't want to hurt their feelings, but he condemns Canada as a genocidal regime.
Pope Francis himself has said that it has the hallmarks of a genocide.
I'm not sure if that's true.
I know a few alumni of these Indian residential schools.
I think of two people in particular, both of whom said it was not just not bad, but it was a wonderful thing.
It put them on a path for success in the modern world.
And in fact, one fellow who I interviewed when I was at Sun News said at his family reunions, the entire family would reminisce about the time at these schools, and not one of them had a complaint.
I know some Holocaust survivors, many of them are dying now.
I've never in my life encountered a Holocaust survivor who ever looked back on their time in Auschwitz or another death camp with fondness.
Like never.
Like there's no doubt about it whatsoever.
So to use the word genocide to describe these Indian residential schools in the face of these alumni who said, no, actually, it was sort of great.
It taught me life skills.
That is a shocking appropriation and dilution of the word genocide in my mind and the word denier too.
Yeah, the use of the word genocide is a tactic of raising the stake, raising their rhetorical stakes, making it more emotional.
There's been a trajectory here.
Before genocide, we had cultural genocide.
That was the term that was used in the conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
So they, only a few years ago, the TRC explicitly denied that the treatment of Canada's Indians was a genocide.
They said it was, however, a cultural genocide, which was really just a synonym for assimilation, allowing Indians to penetrate in the larger society.
But a few years later, we see people using just the word genocide.
So genocide refers to the actual killing of people.
So they have to have dead bodies to support the use of the term.
And that's where the Kamloops mythology comes in.
The Kamloops announcement appeared to provide the proof of genocide.
If there were hundreds of bodies scattered around the residential school and nobody knew about them before, this would be proof of all these deaths.
You know, we now know, though, and the people who did that announcement should have known that what the ground-penetrating radar was finding was a sewage system.
In the 1920s, the school installed a big septic tank.
This was before they could connect to city sewage.
They installed the big septic tank, and then if you have a septic tank, you have to have a way of dispersing the fluids.
So you use a weeping tile and bury it and create a network of pipes radiating out or tiles radiating out.
So those tiles are still in the ground.
The system isn't used anymore, but the tiles are still buried in the ground.
And so what that ground-penetrating radar was finding was probably those tiles.
We don't know for sure because the report has never been released.
Throwback to Local Museum Records00:03:23
So you can't compare the map, but that's what it looks like.
So there's nothing there.
No excavation has taken place at Cam Loops, where excavations have taken place at a few other sites.
Nothing has been discovered.
So until some evidence comes up, you just have to say there's nothing there.
If you approach this thing as a kind of belief system, you must believe.
There's deniers who disbelieve the faith and we must cast them out and punish them.
And we don't debate disbelievers because they're, you know, that's a form of blasphemy.
We punish disbelievers.
We prosecute them.
If that's your mindset, you can understand why you would not demand to see proof of, well, let's dig up what the ground penetrating radar saw, because that would be like saying, well, show me proof that there was a burning bush.
Show me proof that the Red Sea was split and the Israelites walked through.
I mean, you don't ask for proof if it's a question of faith, but that's very different than what's generally accepted as the scientific method or historical discovery.
Or frankly, if it's a crime that had been committed, you don't take things on faith.
You test them against the facts.
Here's when our date, Drea Humphrey, by chance, bumped into the chief, and she wouldn't even answer questions about answering questions.
Here's a quick throwback to that.
Yeah, we're doing an update, and I did reach out to your media a few times, but I haven't heard that.
Oh, okay.
What's the best way to reach you?
Because I've tried for over a year now, honest, to try to connect when we're an interviewer or something.
Okay.
Well, honestly, I've had done like a million interviews.
but i think you were just doing like no it was just a Oh, but no, I've done a million.
Can we get into the museum somehow?
No, the museum is shut down.
Oh, the museum is actually in this building.
Oh, okay.
But you can't, that's where the archives are, right?
Yeah, but you can't access it.
Okay, yeah.
How come?
The museum is shut down right now, like for do you know how much longer?
I'm determined.
Where's the best place to get like the history, like to look through archives and things like that right now?
Right now, that's not my problem.
Political.
Okay, technical.
Well, I guess I would have to come back and just find out exactly where all that stuff is because I know that if you're talking about like records, like whether it's a thing here.
Right, that, and also just in general, the mystic element and children.
So those are going to be probably convinced in places like the Office of Reconciliation.
Right.
I am pressing officers and okay.
Yeah, there's that place.
There's also, you know, contacting the local first station.
So that would be me.
That would be the records and the documents, but I know that a lot of that is also confidential.
It has to go as a proper process because it's very sensitive information to hold the integrity of the individuals and families that were directly impacted.
Yeah.
And of course, this also has to be done in trauma is a long way.
So there's a lot of different protocols and stuff that need to take place.
So I think this all fits.
The fact that it's an emotional accusation of genocide.
If you ask for proof, again, that's a form of denialism.
Legacy Media's Silence00:04:21
It's like someone saying, I don't believe 6 million died.
You know, it's, you, I don't, they're trying to use that same moral and emotional claim.
You cannot ask questions about this ground penetrating radar.
You must accept the narrative, even though actually, you know, when the Allies liberated the concentration camps, they saw it.
They documented it.
They filmed it.
They actually made locals march through the death camps, local villagers, to see what had been done.
I think it's astonishing, but I think it is absolutely universal within what I call the media party.
Other than a handful of independent journalists, Western Standard, True North, us here, Rebel News.
I don't know of any mainstream media.
Maybe the National Post is an exception, but I think it is absolutely taken as the new faith in the mainstream media, like the CBC, CTV, Globe and Mail.
Am I wrong on that?
Like, this is the new political faith.
No, you're absolutely right.
And so this book, it's a compilation of previously published work by about a dozen authors over the last two years, but they published it in alternative outlets.
The legacy media were closed to us.
We tried, but they were uninterested approaching mainstream newspapers or university presses.
Just absolutely no interest at all.
So everything was in outlets like True North, Western Standard, C2C, Quillette, Unheard, American Conservative, not part of the corporate media.
It'll be interesting to see what the corporate media does with our book now.
Will they continue to ignore it?
They're going to absolutely ignore it.
They're not going to tear it apart because that would acknowledge it and maybe spark some interest in it.
They will completely ignore it.
You know, Dr. Tom, the best-selling nonfiction book in Canada last year or this year was Tamara Leach's autobiography called Hold the Line that was the number one bestseller day after day, week after week.
And it didn't even get an attack review in the Toronto Star, let alone, I don't even think the National Post acknowledged it.
And that's what you do when you hate a book.
You don't give it the courtesy or the respect of a review.
You just pretend it doesn't exist.
In fact, my question to you is, of course it's not going to be reviewed.
The question is, will they try and ban it on Amazon?
And I don't know if you have this information, but I would like to ask you, has the book felt any censorship pressure?
Has Amazon showed any skepticism towards it?
That's happened to us before.
My book, China Virus, was knocked down by Amazon before they reinstated it.
Has your book faced any censorship threat like that?
Well, I'm not aware that it has.
I mean, it's only been online now for, well, this is Thursday, the fourth day.
It's been selling well.
And of course, our marketing is all, you might say, underground marketing, not in the legacy media.
But it's selling well.
Now, whether that will lead to pressures to downgrade it or ban it, I don't know.
We'll have to wait and see.
Do you plan on doing a book tour or a book launch anywhere in physical space?
Because that'll be interesting, not only who comes out.
I don't think so.
We haven't had any plans for that so far.
It's difficult for me to travel now.
I can't really leave my wife alone for long periods of time.
So we may not be able to do that.
So at the present time, we're trying to do the, as I say, underground marketing, appearing on alternative media.
And, you know, I'm grateful for the interview here with Rebel News, sending out mass emails to people's lists, getting coverages in print places that are interested like C2C and Quillette.
So, you know, we're going to reach tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people that way, but we don't reach millions.
Worries About Academic Silence00:06:25
Right.
The book is called Grave Error, How the Media about the Indian Residential Schools.
It's available on Amazon for now and hopefully forever, but we have some experience in cancel culture and deplatforming.
What I'm worried about is academia, that this is now just like you cannot dispute the faith when it comes to global warming.
You'll be called a denier.
I would imagine that any academia, any academic scholarship on this matter is predetermined.
And you'll get grants for saying the right things, just like you'll get a climate grant for saying the right things.
And so not only is it career suicide to talk about these things, but on the other side, it's a career advancement and lots of government cash if you follow these ideological paths.
I'm worried that we will absolutely, in an Orwellian way, rewrite history.
For those who know the book 1984 by George Orwell, the day job of the hero Winston Smith was to cut out old newspaper articles from the archives, throw them out, and glue in an updated revised history so often that after a while, no one actually knew what the truth was.
I mean, I'm worried that, you know, the generation of Indigenous people who went to these residential schools is getting old and they will die in a period of time.
And soon there will be no one else to say, hey, I actually went there and I'm Indigenous, so don't try and call me racist.
And here's what I liked about it.
And again, I've had those conversations, including on TV, but those people like Holocaust survivors will be gone after a certain point of time.
And then it'll all be in the hands of the revisionist historians.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My observation of the academic community here is that most of them are just keeping their heads down and ignoring it.
And then you've got the few enthusiasts who are pushing the denialist line and they're funded by the federal government.
And then there's, you know, I can't think, maybe somebody will appear, but I can't think of a currently employed historian or somebody in a related field who is standing up to challenge the Kamloops orthodoxy.
Maybe a couple of lawyers will, like Bruce Party and so forth, but historians, political scientists, sociologists, people who should be saying, hey, this is utter nonsense, they're just ignoring it.
Whether they're disgusted by it or afraid or some combination of that, but they're just ignoring it.
And of course, there are many who will believe it because it fits in with a generally woke outlook about the world being dominated by white male oppressors and everybody else being in victim groups.
So, yeah, the performance of the academic community is not encouraging.
As I say, I can't remember a single member who is still employed.
The people that I know who are challenging this myth from Kamloops are all retired.
I can't remember.
The one member who was employed was Frances Woodowson, and she got fired from Mount Royal University.
So everybody else, I think, drew lessons from that.
It's interesting.
I wonder if there are any Indigenous people themselves, if there's anyone from within the community who would have the moral authority and the aesthetic ability to repel cheap accusations of racism.
I mean, sometimes to say certain things, you have to be from the community itself, otherwise, you'll be condemned as a hater.
Are there any contrarian voices within the Indigenous community, either scholarly or just ordinary folks on a reserve somewhere who say, no, that didn't happen?
Or are they just thinking this is not our fight?
This is a white man's academic liberal battle in universities.
It actually has nothing to do with us.
Just let them quarrel amongst themselves in the faculty lounge.
Are there any folks in the Indigenous community?
I mean, I imagine there are, but I'm not aware of them.
They haven't emerged.
Nobody sent me an email, said, hey, Tom, right on.
Keep out of it.
You know, previous contacts I had in that world have just gone silent on the issue.
So I don't know.
As you pointed out, at an earlier stage, there were people who had been in the schools and talked about their positive experiences, but it's been a long time.
The last school closed in 1996, but almost all of them had closed prior to that.
So, you know, there haven't been very many schools now for 30 or 40 years.
And so there aren't that many graduates of the schools around.
So, and of course, the people that were in the schools were lured into magnifying any uncomfortable experiences they had because they could get money for telling stories in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Everybody who attended a school got $10,000 a year just for being there.
But beyond that, if you could allege physical or sexual abuse, you could hit the jackpot.
You know, you could go up over $100,000 for that, depending on what it was.
You could get an additional $100,000 plus.
So, you know, everybody who had been through the schools in more recent times was encouraged to tell a story about how awful it was.
$100,000 is extremely compelling if all you have to do is tell the white bureaucrats.
Government's Emphasis on Victimhood00:15:21
You know, I was earlier this fall, I was in Australia and New Zealand, spent a little bit of time in New Zealand.
It was the first time I had met any Maoris, which is the Indigenous people in that country.
And maybe it was just the Maoris I met under the leadership of Brian Temeke, who's very Christian, has a collection of churches.
And he's a COVID skeptic.
I'd call him right-wing.
He's pro-Israel.
Like there's this whole strong, proud Maori movement.
I've seen it in Hawaii also, sort of Hawaiian national pride.
My favorite, I haven't been to Hawaii in years, but whenever I go, I remember seeing huge pickup trucks with two big flagpoles and flags, the American flag and the Hawaii, the Kingdom of Hawaii flag.
Like there are some places around the world where the Indigenous culture is proud and successful and actually cool.
And talking to some Maoris in New Zealand, you know, aesthetically in society, Maoris are sports heroes and regular ordinary folks, it's a celebrity status and it's cool.
And everyone wants to be like the Maori.
Like I really felt that in New Zealand.
And there was a, it wasn't, you know, obsessing over loss or grief.
It was, although I would imagine they have their stories as well, but it wasn't dwelling on victimhood.
was i mean there is some of that but i couldn't help but see both in hawaii and in new zealand an indigenous social culture of optimism strength pride can-do attitude and you know sports success popular success um and i i really wished that that were the dominant political culture in canada Now,
maybe it is on some Indian beds, but I don't think that's the political culture being projected by the Indian industry or by the Department of Indigenous Affairs.
What do you make of what I've just said?
Yeah, well, that's very interesting.
And, you know, the closest thing in Canada, it's not really very close, but the closest thing would be the movement of mainly First Nations, but it includes some Métis as well, to participate in the natural resource industries, particularly oil and gas.
And so they've created new organizations and they're interested in building a better life for themselves and their people, and they're not particularly interested in pursuing old complaints.
But the trouble is that the cause of natural resources and particularly oil and gas is generally unpopular in Canadian public opinion.
So by allying themselves with the oil industry, it doesn't really radiate out very well to the rest of Canada.
No, some Indian sports heroes would do more if we could get more of them, or Indian entertainers whose entertainment goes mainstream.
I mean, there is a sort of an Indian entertainment industry, but it tends to appeal only to other Indians.
So if you could broaden that out, that would do more.
So, yeah, I'd like to see that happen, but I would say it's not really happening in Canada right now, partly because the government itself has put so much emphasis on victimhood.
That shouldn't have happened.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is supposed to bring people together.
It's not supposed to make people even more concerned about grievances of the past.
But that's what happened in Canada.
Now, there's a whole story there, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, how the original commissioners resigned.
They couldn't get along with each other.
They resigned.
And then Harper had to replace them on short notice.
And things went south after that.
If we'd had a commission that was doing its job properly, maybe we'd be in a better position today.
But the commission, as appointed, interpreted its mandate as emphasizing victimhood and seeking restitution.
Well, even they didn't quite use the word reparations, but that's what it amounts to, is seeking reparations for the past.
You know, I was in Innevik about a decade ago, and I met a Métis man who was talking about how white liberals told his grandfather, you can't be a trapper because the fur industry is, you know, immoral and unethical.
And then they told his dad, you can't be into forestry because that's against the environment.
And now they're telling him you can't be into oil and gas.
And so, you know, he's starting to think, you know what, maybe it's not us.
Maybe it's you.
Maybe you just don't like, maybe you don't like it.
I'll try and dig up the clip of that.
It was quite a moment that I saw when I was in Innevik.
I mean, that is a place where, and especially further north in Tuck Tayuktuck, it's very indigenous.
I mean, there are some white folks up there, of course, but that's where it would be wonderful to see entrepreneurialism and industry.
And I think there could be industry in the far north of oil and gas, but not if Greenpeace has anything to say about it.
Well, listen, I'm depressed by your book, to be honest.
I'm sad about it.
I know a little bit about the subject because our own Drea Humphrey did a documentary on the subject.
You know, to see Jagmeet Singh, and I'm going to play you the clip right now of when he uses the phrase mass graves because that implies there was like a massacre and then bodies dumped into a pit and covered up.
It really, it was so factually false.
But Jagmeet Singh really is so dumb he could be an honorary Trudeau cabinet minister.
Like he gives Seamus a Reagan a run for the money.
Here's Jagmeet Singh with the lie that was heard around the world.
Take a look.
And it hurts Indigenous people.
It is hurting them right now.
So there is a lot that can be done.
And I think it has to be very clear that Canada, as a nation, committed genocide against Indigenous people.
That is a fact.
Look at all the evidence.
It is clear that the goal was to eradicate a people.
Well, I don't want to blame just Jagmeet Singh.
I mean, it was half of them.
Here's another clip from Drea's documentary showing the media lives.
Take a look.
And I read that first press release from the Tekumloop-Shaswamik First Nation ban that had the heart-wrenching claim that 215 former students' remains from the Kamloops Indian Residential School had been confirmed to be discovered.
I, like many across the world, grieved.
And it was being claimed to have been discovered by politicians and media outlets alike to be in a mass grave.
I want to talk about the heartbreaking news that 215 children were found buried at the former Kamloops residential school.
215 children.
Think of their loving families that they were ripped away from.
Think of the communities that never saw them again.
Think of their hopes, their dreams, their potential.
Of all they would have accomplished, all they would have become.
All of that was taken away.
I struggled to find words to express my horror and grief at the discovery of these remains of 215 First Nations children.
I realize it's because there are no words that can do justice to those children and the countless others who died alone and scared, far from home, far from the families who love them.
This weekend, my nine-year-old son, Jack, asked me why the flags were lowered to half-mast in Ottawa.
I had the difficult task of explaining to him the terrible news of the graves of children found at the site of a residential school.
Kids aren't supposed to die at school, Dad, he said to me.
As a parent, it is devastating to think of 215 children.
This mass grave is a painful reminder of the genocide.
And what we have to commit to is that in face, in light of this genocide, Canada has to make some real tough decisions.
There have been rumors of some kind of mass grave on this site for decades.
Yeah, I think it's just a very strange thing.
I mean, it's one of those things where it's just taken on faith.
And if you dare to challenge that, people can't answer other than to lash out and demonize you.
And I think that's a real shame.
I don't know.
I look forward to reading it.
I've read the preamble that you and Chris Champion wrote.
The book is called Grave Error, How the Media Misled Us and the Truth About Indian Residential Schools.
I find this subject very depressing.
And it's not because I'm hostile to Indigenous people.
It's sort of the opposite, actually.
I hate the fact that the official government directed ideology is one of victimhood and sorrow and loss rather than opportunity, growth, happiness, and a future orientation.
And I'm glad you've written the book and hopefully will not be censored.
Last word to you, Dr. Tom.
Well, I take your point about feeling depressed about it, but there is, I hope, an optimistic side to this because we're bringing the critique together.
We've assembled the evidence as to why all this victimhood talk is wrong.
The claims of genocide are absurd.
So maybe it won't have an impact immediately, but we think that we're laying the groundwork for future critique of these errors.
I guess you have to have a little, well, I like to say I'm a conservative, so I'm never optimistic, but I'm always hopeful.
Last question, just before we go, I said we were done, but I just got one more question that popped into my head because you used the word conservative.
And if polls are to be believed, Pierre Polyev will become the next prime minister.
Now, there's still lots of time before Trudeau has to call the election, but I saw the latest poll put the conservatives almost 20 points ahead.
And there is no region of the country, including in Quebec, where the Liberals lead.
And the latest projection I saw was in British Columbia, not a single seat for the Liberals, which used to be one of their strongholds.
Ironically, when Jodi Wilson-Raybold was in cabinet before Trudeau threw her out for being too ethical, I think.
I don't want to be too optimistic.
I take your point about being pessimistic but hopeful.
But I think it is a real chance that Pierre Polyev becomes the next prime minister, and with it, a new Indian minister, a new mindset, perhaps.
Do you think that the Conservative Party under Pierre Polyev is manifestly different?
Or is this one of those third rails of politics that Polyev would say, you know what?
I'm not going to expend political capital on this because I'll be called a racist and the liberals will try and make it stick.
I've got other things that are a higher priority like the economy.
I'm just not going to get involved here.
What do you think the future holds if Pierre Polyev becomes prime minister?
Well, you know, my limitations as a pundit were always that I could not foretell the future.
But I'll take a stab at it.
Based on the past performance of the previous Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, he put his priorities elsewhere and didn't really try to rein in the Indian industry very much.
He did a couple of things like trying to introduce annual reporting of Indian bands with how they're spending their money.
But by and large, he left the Indian industry alone.
And he even did actually a lot of damage, I don't think intentionally, but with his apology about the residential schools and then the appointment of the TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he set in motion the claims industry and new rounds of victimhood.
So I guess my hope for Pierre Poliver's leadership up to this point, he has really tried to avoid any questions about Indigenous peoples.
I can understand that because Canada has huge problems that affect the whole country, inflation, housing, things like that.
That's what's going to get him elected.
And Talking a lot about Indigenous peoples is only going to upset things.
So, my hope would be that if he does get elected, that at least he doesn't make things worse.
He turns down the dial on all the Trudovian claims of victimhood and maybe can make some amendments that will be modestly beneficial.
But I don't look for any major change to happen even from a conservative government, because that does bring forth all the catch calls of racism.
And if you're in government, you're going to say to yourself, I don't need this.
I'm going to talk about housing.
I'm going to talk about inflation.
I'm going to talk about the cost of living and all these widely popular issues.
So I just, you know, hope that things don't get any worse.
That's how I would put it.
And dial back some of the extreme stuff that has taken place.
A shocking rise in expenditures, for example.
You know, we now spend substantially more on the Indigenous spending envelope than we do on the Canadian forces.
Where's all the money going?
You know, there's room for cutting that back and reallocation, but that won't amount to major things that could people write about major changes, but we're just so politically blockaded on any of them.
I don't see them happening.
So that's a true conservative perspective.
Let's hope it doesn't get any worse.
Yeah, fair enough.
Well, listen, pleasure to spend some time with you one more time.
Conservative Concerns00:02:50
The name of the book is Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us and the Truth About Indian Residential Schools, available on Amazon.
We've been talking with Dr. Tom Flanagan.
Stay with us.
my final thoughts are next.
It's tough to talk about things like that because you want to respond to emotional issues emotionally.
If someone says, I'm hurting, I've been hard done by it.
And you can see with your own eyes the poverty and the social dysfunction, the crime, the addiction issues.
You see that.
And only someone with a heart of stone would not respond with love and the way we show love in our modern society with money.
But I think the more money we spend, especially if it's tied to a grievance mentality, I don't think that's fixing many problems in society.
It doesn't fix drug addiction on the streets of Vancouver.
I don't think it would fix dysfunction on an Indian reserve.
In fact, a lot of the problems in Indian reserves come from the Indian Act and its condescension.
I regret that we don't have the same inspirational, entrepreneurial, indigenous culture that I have seen in other places.
I mentioned in the interview the Hawaiian nationalism, but they're both American flags and Kingdom of Hawaii flags.
And that's sort of what I love best about it.
And Hawaiian culture is sort of cool.
Surf culture, athleticism, sporty, being outdoors.
It's sort of cool.
Same thing with the Maoris.
Cool, aesthetically beautiful sports, the Hakka, strength.
Of course, both of those Indigenous peoples have some grievances as well, but they don't seem to dominate.
And in fact, the Maori were often against the white-driven attempt to have a whole level of affirmative action in their parliament lately.
I just wish we could get some of that positivity in Canada.
But, you know, the phrase Indian industry, I don't know if you're even allowed to say that without being prosecuted anymore, but there are a lot of people who make a lot of money off of the grievances and the sorrow.
It's like the drug industry.
And by drug, I mean these safe injection sites.
As you may have seen, our reporters themselves have been attacked by the safe injection health authority types if we dare to criticize it.
I think a lot of the poverty industry in white Canada is the same way too.
They make a lot of money off of problems, and they don't really want those problems solved.
Well, that's the show for today.
Until tomorrow, actually, until Monday.
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
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