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177. Candice Malcolm: Should We Criminalize Indian Residential School Denialism?
Aaron Pete sits down with Candice Malcolm to discuss Indian Residential School denialism, free speech, True North Media, the CBC's unmarked graves story, and the impact of Leah Gazan's proposed bill on Canadian politics and freedom of expression.
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron Peet. Is Indian residential school denialism a growing issue? Should we criminalize people who downplay the harms of Indian residential schools? If we do this, are we eroding the right to freedom of expression? I'm speaking with the founder of True North Media, which published the book Grave Error. My guest today is Candice Malcolm. Candice, it is an honor to have you back on. I am so grateful to be able to follow up and dive deeper into this topic. But first would you mind please introducing yourself for people who might not be acquainted.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, sure, aaron. Well, it's great to be back. Thank you again for inviting me. My name is Candice Malcolm. I am a journalist. I was a longtime contributor to the Toronto Sun and Post Media in general and then a couple of years ago I broke off and I started the online media publication called True North. So we do podcasts, we do written news reports, investigative journalism, documentaries and recently we started doing live events. So we host these really fun in-person events called True North Nation where we get together and talk about big ideas and sort of the issues facing our country and our time. So, yeah, I'm a journalist.
Candice Malcolm:As I said last time I was on the podcast, I'm also very committed to my family. I'm a wife and mother of four children, including a little five-month baby. So just a little disclaimer to the audience I'm on maternity leave right now. I'm not hosting my regular podcast. I'm not deep into the political news, so forgive me if I don't have all the recent facts. I'm the editor-in-chief, a journalist, and I run a news site, but I've barely been following the news for the last several months just because I've been so focused on my baby and my family. So, as with last time, erin, I'm happy to discuss any topic that you want to talk about. Nothing's off limits, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Aaron Pete:Honored, and congratulations to you and your family. The last time we spoke you were pregnant, and so congratulations. The topic I'd like to start with is around your reflections to the response of the book Grave Error. There's been quite a few and I'm just wondering you must get a lot of emails, a lot of feedback. You've seen it in the news. What are your reflections on the book Grave Error and the response?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, sure, I had a feeling that you were going to ask about it, so I dug up my copy right here. No pun intended, dug it up, but I moved at the same time. I had a baby and we moved to a different house, so everything's kind of chaotic at my house and this book was in a box and I was literally like digging through boxes about 10 minutes ago so I could find it. But, yeah, so the book is called Grave Error. I'm the publisher. It was edited by Dr Champion, dr Chris Champion, who is the editor of the Dorchester Review, and Dr Tom Flanagan, who is just a prolific writer and scholar in Canada Previously well, he's retired, but he was a longtime professor at the University of Calgary.
Candice Malcolm:So, yeah, so we published this book because there was a huge vacuum, aaron, in the discussion around the unmarked graves. So just to go back to 2021, when the story was first broke about the so-called discovery of 215 unmarked graves in Kamloops, what we saw was basically a moral panic from the media, and I was one of the only journalists At the beginning. I was the lone journalist who was raising questions about the report, the lack of report, the big questions around these so-called unmarked graves that were discovered. I wrote about it in the Toronto Sun at the time and I think over time more people started asking the same kinds of questions that I was asking, and so what we did was Dr Champion and Dr Flanagan basically consulted with the top scholars in the field and they put together this book, which is just a series of essays, basically just bringing some more facts and different perspective to the story telling. I wouldn't say that it's a book promoting residential schools, but it's just offering another perspective, saying you know, like hold on, let's look at some facts, things that weren't getting out into the media. So I'm super proud of the book and that it was published. It's really interesting. I really encourage and recommend everyone watching this video to go pick up the copy. You can get it on Amazon. It's called Grave Error how the Media Misled Us and the Truth About Residential Schools, and there's a foreword by Conrad Black, who's a great Canadian historian as well.
Candice Malcolm:So the reaction's been kind of as you would expect, right Like the reason that True North exists. The reason that we wrote this book is because there's a huge void when it comes to a balanced conversation. No one wants to have the uncomfortable truth to say you know things that again, they're not popular, they're not in vogue. To say right now about residential schools, the fact that they were never compulsory, the fact that only one third of Indigenous children in Canada ever attended these schools, that parents willingly signed their children up, that by and large the conditions at the schools weren't nearly as bad as you would expect and I mean this shouldn't be controversial, aaron. But no, a genocide was not carried out at these schools. These schools were not death camps. They were not there to kill Indigenous children. I mean for you to believe that you would literally have to believe that nuns and priests and teachers in Canada, across the prairies in Western Canada, were willing to engage in murder of children. I mean it's unconscionable, it's so bizarre to even say it or speak it, it's so false. And so the book just really provides that context to say like, hey, you know, yes, some unspeakable things happened at these schools, at these boarding schools. It was a different time. A lot of regrettable actions were taken. The program as a whole obviously failed because it didn't reach the intended outcomes and also it's viewed in such a negative light today. It was a big federal program that failed, right, not denying any of that. But yes, I am denying the fact that they were death camps and that children were killed and slaughtered systematically, as it would take to meet the definition of genocide killed and slaughtered systematically as it would take to meet the definition of genocide. So again, I'm encouraging everyone to pick it up and look at it.
Candice Malcolm:And I of course have been disappointed but not surprised in the media reaction.
Candice Malcolm:You've seen the CBC, ctv Global, all the legacy media outlets, particularly in British Columbia, really basically just saying that the book doesn't deserve to be published, it doesn't deserve a platform, that it's a peddler of misinformation, without really engaging with the contents of the book, just flat out saying this book is wrong.
Candice Malcolm:I don't know if you want to get into the controversy with the Quesnel mayor up there in northern British Columbia, but the whole idea that just even having this book or discussing the contents of this book or passing this book out to people should be some kind of a crime and that it sets us back, that's all ridiculous.
Candice Malcolm:And, you know, kind of ironically I guess, aaron, the reaction to the media reaction saying this book is dangerous, saying this book is misinformation or denialism or whatever they're saying, has actually led this book to become one of the most read book, probably the number one book of the year. My guess is that it's been purchased and read more than any other Canadian political book this year. We've sold I don't know the latest count, but like tens of thousands of people are reading this book and in large part that is because the more that the media tries to squash this and say you can't have these conversations, you can't ask these questions, you can't point out these facts, the more people are like well, what's in this book? I'm curious. I've never heard this perspective. Let's hear it. And so that's sort of the Barbra Streisand effect happening here where the book is tremendously popular as a result.
Aaron Pete:Agreed, I want to say the first conversation we had we kind of explored the ideas you started this with. I agree with some of what your comments were about the past not all of them. We already did that kind of discussion, did that kind of discussion. But I think what you sent me on after our first discussion which I recommend people go watch if they want to hear us kind of debate those key points is that there is room and there should be space for discussion on this topic and so, after speaking with you, I took a lot away from that. I believe conversations are important. I am a huge free speech advocate. I believe strongly in that.
Aaron Pete:So I've spoken with Nigel Begar, who wrote about colonialism and the confusion and the false narratives around that, and we discussed kind of different perspectives and he'll actually be coming out in a few months. I hope to have him on in person because I think he brings a lot of nuance to a topic that we kind of treat like an open and closed book. I spoke to Jonathan Kaye, who actually has one of his articles in the book. I've spoken with Michael Moses, who's a city councillor now and ran for the NDP in the province of BC. I've spoken with Chief Willie Sellers from Williams Lake to try and get different perspectives on this issue, and the one piece that I admire Michael Moses for is he does concede some of the points that you've made.
Aaron Pete:We go down a dangerous path when we start talking about restricting freedom of expression.
Aaron Pete:We go down a dangerous path when we don't allow the space and that there are a lot of key facts here that have been not acknowledged, not discussed, and that there was a bit of a moral panic when that happened that removed the ability to have a discussion on actually what just happened. And so so far I think I've learned a lot on this journey, but I'm concerned at the path that we're going, and you've described a little bit of that. I think we should start with the city of Quesnel. There was a petition by the mayor that alleged that the mayor's wife shared the book with someone, and the mayor later showed the book to two regional directors and that there was not a rational or reasonable basis for censoring and sanctioning an elected city of council member. There have since been calls for Paul to resign, something that he declined to do while many of the nations in his region say they refuse to work with him just for talking and discussing that book. What are your reflections on what's taking place in the city of Quesnel?
Candice Malcolm:I mean, this is not a free society. This is not how a free society engages with ideas, right? So the whole idea is that the mayor's wife right, not the mayor, but the mayor's wife found this book interesting and distribute it to a few friends, right? We don't know whether she distributed it because she agrees or disagrees. We don't know if it's because of one article that she read that she found interesting or that she wanted to share, or whether she wanted to promote the whole concept of the book, which any of those would be perfectly fine.
Candice Malcolm:First of all, we don't have guilt by association in Canada.
Candice Malcolm:So the fact that Just to be clear the mayor did show it to two regional directors, okay, Well, sorry, the original kerfuffle was over his wife and maybe he engaged in that a little more than my knowledge, but regardless, the idea that there's a book that's off limits and again I'm sorry, like this is mainstream. These are, these are these are the leading scholars in the field when it comes to looking at the history of relations between Canada and First Nations. This isn't this, isn't, you know, black extremists. This is Conrad Black, who started the National Post. This is Tom Flanagan, who's Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary, and Chris Champion, who is a historian. He previously worked in the government.
Candice Malcolm:Like these are mainstream people and, like you said, jonathan Kaye wrote one of the chapters. Just about every chapter is written by an academic. So this is, this is an academic book, right? And so the idea that you can't even have these conversations, that someone raising questions about you know the technology used in ground penetrating radar or looking at you know the actual statistics from Statistics Canada, looking back at historical records, looking at the facts around residential schools and using that to you know, disprove a lot of the media narrative. That's quintessential. That's, the bedrock of a free society is having the ability to read books, to exchange ideas, to think and to try to understand our history, and we're constantly grappling with it. Like, by no means do I think that early Canadians were perfect. I don't think that the residential school system was a good idea. I don't think that it was. It was the right thing to do.
Candice Malcolm:I oppose. You know, if anything like that were to be introduced today, I would staunchly oppose it. But what this book does is just add more nuance to the conversation, including some facts that were very you know, intentionally, in my opinion ignored when the unmarked graves, moral panic came up. And so trying to have a balanced conversation shouldn't end the conversation, it should just open it. And I mean, how can we get towards true reconciliation if we don't want truth, if we don't want facts, if we don't want things that go against the narrative that we've allowed to create? And so again, like if you oppose the idea of a free press and you oppose the idea of books that are filled with facts, I mean those aren't the building blocks, those aren't the foundations of a free society.
Candice Malcolm:And when I saw what was happening in Quesnel, like I actually couldn't believe the news reports that I was seeing. It was like CBC, ctv, interviewing chiefs and indigenous leaders, saying you know we're burning this book and you can't have this book and anyone who truly cares about having relations with us will denounce this book. It's like, well, no, I'm sorry, like that's again, that's not leadership, that's not a willingness to engage in in an honest and fair way. That's saying, um, my facts override the truth and I don't care about the truth. I want my narrative and my facts, and if you're not going to, uh, adhere to that, then the conversation's over, and to me it's.
Candice Malcolm:It's a scary sign of illiberalism. But then again, I like to see the silver lining right. Like true north is thriving, this book is doing well, it's a pretty dry academic book and yet again it's sold tens of thousands of copies only on Amazon. Right, it's not out there in bookstores, you have to go online and order it. And still it's again being read far, far more than so many other books, which I think just shows the fact that there is interest and willingness among the Canadians writ large to hear the other side of the story, to revisit the truth, to try to understand the history, to get that nuance that, sadly, is so absent from the legacy media these days.
Aaron Pete:I guess my big fear, being a First Nations councillor working with Indigenous communities, is that we go down this path at our peril and I understand that with Quesnel it's somewhat unique but my fear is that this isn't really being led by First Nation communities or Indigenous groups specifically. This is a lot of media organizations, politicians using this as a wedge issue, as a political talking point, and then we're being led, in my opinion, down a path that makes Indigenous politics controversial. There are lots of things that are very important that we discuss about First Nation communities the reservation system in regards to getting clean water, upgrading infrastructure, improving the quality of life for people in poverty, Like those are all key issues. But when we're debating or when we're focused on censoring people for their ability to have opinions, we're losing the argument on what the key issues that actually impact my community are, because the comments on our last discussion were very much that this is being used for people just to make money, that this is a Ponzi scheme, that this is a way of First Nations just taking, and that's not the narrative I want people to have when we're talking about First Nation communities.
Aaron Pete:I think that does us a disservice when we're trying to shut down legitimate conversations that are historical in nature, that require facts, that require discussions just like any other conversation, and we've lost the plot if we're focused on denouncing people, stopping them from being able to talk, because then it seems like we're hiding something, Then it seems like we're focused on keeping a narrative that we didn't start, that we haven't driven. It wasn't my community that started. It wasn't most First Nation communities that started this. Most of them are just focused on rising out of poverty and helping their community members. They're not focused on on issues like this and stopping people from communicating. But when I see bills coming out of the House of Commons preventing people from being able to speak, then you're it's making it look like Indigenous communities are wholly driving this, and I just don't think that that's the fact.
Candice Malcolm:Well, I thank you for pointing this out and I think you really hit the nail on the head when you talked about the fact that there are real issues in First Nations community. I mean, there's reserves in this country, for goodness sake, that don't have access to clean drinking water. I mean it's scandalous and it's profoundly embarrassing, frankly, for Canada. We're this incredibly free, wealthy, amazing civilization, and here we have a population that is struggling, that doesn't have access to the same things as other Canadians. And what does our leadership class do? What does the prime minister do? You know he sits here and he he makes these issues about the surface stuff that you're talking about. Right, like looking at a report on missing and murdered indigenous women in 2017, justin Trudeau said it was an example of genocide. Right, like, I'm sorry, but the statistics don't show that. The statistics show that around 90% of women in Canada who are indigenous, who are murdered or missing, sadly, were murdered by someone in their community, someone in their family, even someone in the same household. And so for the prime minister to go and basically just throw gasoline on that fire and make it divisive and turn it into a racial issue and then he did the same thing with the unmarked graves, you have someone who's playing politics and who's, frankly, who's BSing the population rather than looking at the actual problems and trying to address them. Like I'm so sick of having discussions about whether Sir John A Macdonald was a horrible racist who destroyed the country. It's like no, we wouldn't be a country without Sir John A. Okay, yes, he had some views that would not be in vogue in 2024. That's the reality of anyone in human history. But let's put things into context Right. Like we have problems today that that are facing First Nations community. Let's address those problems rather than try to relitigate and obsess and focus on things that happened 150 years ago or, in the case of residential schools, 100 to 50 years ago. Why don't we start looking at issues like the ones that you're talking about, like drinking water, access to education, like let's make sure that we have programs so that First Nations children feel empowered and positive and that they don't have a victim mentality? I think we touched on this a little bit in the last episode, erin.
Candice Malcolm:But one of the things that really worries me and saddens me about the Canadian sort of narrative. You know, I grew up thinking that Canada was the greatest country in the world. It's an amazing you know example of a mosaic of people who come from different backgrounds, who come from different walks of life that can come to Canada and succeed. It's the place that immigrants want to be. They want to move to Canada and join the Canadian family and we took that sort of positive message of like Canada can do everything. The world needs more Canada.
Candice Malcolm:All this stuff, and in the last 10 years under Justin Trudeau, we flipped it and now it's like you should be ashamed of being Canadian. Canada's a horrific country with an awful history, equivalent to the Nazis, and Canadians should hang their heads in shame and we should. Everything should be racialized and you're a settler and you should wear. The Toronto District School Board had an event where they told kids who were from settler families to wear blue. I mean, this is dystopian. It's so disturbing, right? This is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing, what we should be focusing on. We should be focusing on what makes Canada amazing, what makes Canada great, how we're all part of this amazing journey, together, in this story, and make people feel like their lives are in their own hands, that they have the opportunity to succeed, that they're not destined to live in poverty and be a failure just because of their skin color or because of their background.
Candice Malcolm:I don't like the victim mentality and I don't like little kids growing up in Canada being told that this is an unfair society or that this is an illegitimate country. I mean, once you lose that I'm curious to hear your perspective on this, erin but once you lose your sort of unifying myth of a society, like the idea of like, what is Canada? What is the foundation of this country? What does being Canadian mean If the answer to all those things is like shameful, racist, colonial, white supremacist, like you're not going to have a country for much longer, like that's not sustainable and that's not something that is going to unite and inspire people to live peacefully and coincide and want to contribute and want to make something of their lives. It's going to encourage people to be hateful and resentful and you see that. You see that division pouring out in our society.
Candice Malcolm:So many people it's like Canada's not very safe anymore, canada's not very united, people aren't very optimistic, people don't trust their neighbors Again the things that me growing up in Canada in the 80s and 90s. It's like Canadians were safe, we didn't lock our doors. Like Canadians were super friendly, super nice, everything was clean. Canadians respect order and those kind of like basic things that are underpinning a society, you can see them kind of coming apart and I really think that when you engage in identity politics and you play these divisive political games, as our prime minister, sadly, has done from day one, there's real repercussions.
Candice Malcolm:I didn't think our society would fall apart as fast as it did Erin, but I'm sitting here looking at things in 2024. And again, at the bottom of my heart, I'm optimistic, hence why I have four children. I don't think you would have four kids if you were a pessimistic person and pessimistic about the future. I'm, at my heart, optimistic but, as I see things, we're definitely not heading in the right direction and I think a lot of it can be tied, sadly, to these founding myths and these stories that we tell ourselves and the things that we believe about our own history and how our country was founded. And again, I'm super curious to hear your response to this one.
Aaron Pete:There's a lot there. The first thing I'll say is it feels like we're less mature as a culture and as a society than perhaps we used to be, because a lot of the things that I'm seeing I think we agree on. I think banning the book is a horrible, terrible idea. That wouldn't have happened 20 years ago, because for the most part, we understand that more dialogue is the key, not less. That's why freedom of expression is in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We really did understand that at a certain point of time. It doesn't feel like we understand that now.
Aaron Pete:I do think that the internet contributes to siloing of voices, a disconnect between people, where we're not reading the same newspaper anymore, so we don't agree on what the top issues are and people can have vastly different viewpoints. You can be in a university for 30 years and never hear some of the perspectives you're sharing right now, because you're insulated from those voices and you think that you must be correct. And then I do find that people who lean significantly left are not ready to debate these issues, are not willing to have the conversation because they have a book somewhere that they can just point to and say the facts are in there, I don't need to know more. I was told that this is correct. Everybody who's around me says it's correct and they're not willing to discuss it or debate it or have their viewpoints challenged or be willing to take in new information, humble themselves and learn something. And that's the benefit that I had. The last time we spoke was there was a lot I needed to reflect on, learn from, because some of the perspectives you shared I hadn't heard somebody genuinely share, or a perspective I didn't consider previously, and I think that's the beauty of a democratic and healthy constitutional society is that we can do this.
Aaron Pete:We might not agree on everything. You might learn something, I might learn something, but that's the process in which we learn and it seems like we're moving in a direction where more and more of the majority doesn't want to have the discussion because that's just too much work, that's just too much research, that's just too much information to have to gather to have like a coherent perspective. You get a political talking point, you run with it and you denounce somebody if they don't do a land acknowledgement. You get mad at people if they don't do something on a certain day, and I don't believe in that and I think a lot of people the silent majority agree with, with our approach, but they just don't want to participate, and they're allowed to do that.
Aaron Pete:But we're in the circumstance where the loudest voices are kind of leading the conversations and I think we're in dangerous territory when that starts to happen, because then it looks like we're more divided than we are when most people just want to understand the issue. And that was the big takeaway. Like our conversation was one of the fastest growing interviews I've ever had, and I think it's because people were like whoa, these are two people willing to kind of hash some of these issues out and not insult each other or say that you're an evil person or I'm an evil person, or we're just willing to have the conversation. I think we're starved for that right now, because we do have two teams that just kind of talk to themselves rather than discussing these issues.
Candice Malcolm:Well, it's interesting because, basically, I started leaning more to the political right, like around the time I was in university, and I remember thinking, like you know, if you're a conservative, you have to fully understand the liberal worldview because it's out everywhere, right, it's dominated in the universities, it's dominated in the media, and this was like 15 years ago. It's not like this is anything new, right. And then if you're a conservative, you know their narrative and you also have to know your own. And sadly, that's not reflected the other way around, right, like if you go along with what you're taught at university, what your professors tell you. Again, like I was there, I was in university and I remember being taught that you know capitalism is exploitative and white colonialists like pillaged and destroy these countries. And if you just go along with that, you might not ever be aware that there is a whole other story, a whole other side of the story. And you know, the media used to be responsible for telling both sides and trying to keep things fair and balanced. And something's happened over the last number of years where they've shrugged off that responsibility. And something's happened over the last number of years where they've shrugged off that responsibility and I think we see that really strongly in the United States. If you look at the media and the way that they treat Donald Trump and the Republican Party and the whole Make America Great Again movement, as if it's some kind of a dangerous far right, you know something to be feared. You know something to be feared and because of that you've seen a huge growth in conservative media. That's been incredibly successful in some ways running circles around the legacy media to the point where you know, the biggest, most important interview of the election didn't happen. It wasn't a debate, it wasn't a town hall on CNN, it was with podcasts. It was all of these podcasts that Donald Trump went out and did, where he sat with Joe Rogan for three hours, or you know he sat with comedians like irreverent people who have told really bad jokes like you know, really, really blue kind of stuff.
Candice Malcolm:But again, the fact that the internet is there I know you kind of mentioned it like as if it's a negative thing that we used to all consume the same news, so we're all on the same page, whereas now we all consume different media. I think that's great. I think that the diversity of opinions and ideas on the internet is one of the things keeping us sane. It's keeping our society free. Like the internet is the last bastion of freedom that we have, right? Like you can't go and give a political speech in a university, if you're of my persuasion, without getting deplatformed or booed or whatever. Like they don't want to hear from you. But you can go on a podcast, you can go on YouTube, you can go on Spotify and this information gets out there. And you know. Same with Grey Bear.
Candice Malcolm:Again, to go back to this great book that we've published, no major publishing house in Canada would touch it. No way. They don't want to be involved in something controversial. They don't want to have the negative blowback. You know it would embarrass them at their Toronto dinner parties. So they would say no. But the fact that I don't care about any of that stuff, right. I think that the truth is more important. I'm happily willing to publish this book and again, because of it, it has ever so slightly changed the conversation and allowed for more information to get out there.
Candice Malcolm:So I think that the proliferation of ideas it's like a true battle of ideas out there and the fact that True North is really successful we have, you know, we're raising millions of dollars, no-transcript.
Candice Malcolm:We want to hear both sides, we want to hear other perspectives and opinions and we don't want our media to filter all the stories designed for one particular worldview, which should go back to the point I was making before, a worldview that is pretty far left and pretty extreme, pretty anti-Canadian, anti-west, anti-western civilization, very utopian, something that I think could lead us down a very dangerous path of tribalism and division and hatred and tearing apart the foundations, the institutions that have been built and created over hundreds of years, that have allowed us to have this thriving, prosperous, stable, free civilization. We shouldn't be tearing it apart or we should proceed with caution if that is the direction we're going to go. So, again, I think free press, free voices it's all at the foundation. So, again, I think free press, free voices, it's all at the foundation. Again, I'm grateful to be on the spot just with you and happy to be having these conversations and reaching new audiences.
Aaron Pete:That was a point that I should have responded to. I agree with you that we need to be able to reconcile the past, understand the failures of leaders from the past. We need to be able to comprehend that. That comes with maturity. If you think John A MacDonald's a bad guy, I'm not a fan of him, but I can understand exactly what you said. I'm viewing it through the lens of somebody in 2024. I don't have a lived experience of what he was going through, what the common understanding was.
Aaron Pete:And when we judge people with our understandings of morals today in the past, we're always going to come up thinking we're better than people in the past. That's not the game that you should ever play. You should put yourself in the shoes of someone in the past and try and see and understand where they were coming from. And again, you don't have to land on agreeing or supporting many policies that existed in the past, but you should do it with humility because you weren't there. You will never be able to go back there and you're doing it with kind of a bird's eye view of what actually took place and you need to embrace that and just try and understand. You can't undo history. You can understand it. You can understand that many good things obviously came from that. That's one thing I try and remind people is like we can talk about how we hate colonization. All we want, while you use your phone, use your laptop, start your car, sit in your warm house with heating Like we have to understand that you're doing that with a complete bias of you benefit from everything from the past. You have to do it with that moral responsibility.
Aaron Pete:But I do think we need to develop a clear, shared hopefulness in the future that unites us. We do all have basic needs and goals that we all want. We all want a strong family. We all want a good income. We all want to be able to travel and spend. This is who most people are. They want these things. We all agree on those things. We can debate kind of sideline issues or nuanced perspectives, but like at the heart of it, we all have similar goals. We want a healthy economy. We want more money in our pockets so we can do more things with our family. Worry and I'd be interested in your perspective on like.
Aaron Pete:I feel like the pendulum was very like for a hundred years focused on Canadian values, canadian history, the world kind of started in 1876 and we've moved on from there.
Aaron Pete:Today we've swung that pendulum and now it's indigenous issues, first nations, perspectives the history goes back 10,000 years and and there are good from both.
Aaron Pete:But my fear is what we're about to do is we're about to do a big swing back the other direction, because a lot of these issues are again like. I get feedback I have been called terrible names more recently than ever before because that pendulum is like maybe all these First Nations are just grifters, like that was one of the number one comments I got from our last conversation is look at all these first nation grifters and it's like I don't think that's what's like, I don't think that's the intent of those local first nation community, I don't think that's their plan. But when you, when we do this continued back and forth without kind of trying to stabilize and my goal with this conversation and others is to try and let's just stop the pendulum from swinging so extremely we can do a little back and forth, but when we're going fully one way, fully the other way, we're losing a lot of people and we're creating more division than the unity that you and I are talking about.
Candice Malcolm:Well, and you have to look at incentives, right. It's like this is one of the unfortunate things I agree with so much you're saying. Like the interesting thing from a historical perspective is that if you talk to historians, like people who have PhDs and teach history and write history books, there's almost like a consensus around the facts regarding early Canadians, the development, the trade industry, the residential schools, everything. And it's so interesting to see that void in the conversation because, like you said, the pendulum has swung so far that when you have commissions like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission or the Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, they don't include the traditional voices, they don't include the scholars and the historians, they include sort of like radical left-wing activists, and so it's like they're rewriting history before our very eyes and books like Grave Error are just basically just saying stop, stop that. We have the facts, we have receipts, we have all the information here and you can't do that. So let's just go back to finding a common ground when it comes to the sort of accusation of grifting. Look at the incentives, look at the structure. I mean it's just to me almost unfathomable that we live in a society, we live in a culture where there's a huge elephant in the room, erin. It's like this idea that we are all Canadians, we're all equal, we're all free.
Candice Malcolm:But not exactly when it comes to a lot of First Nations people who live on reserve. Their livelihood in so many ways is restricted because of the way that the budgeting works. You know you have reserves, that the money goes to the chief. Many times it's not even an elected chief, or at least there's the bloodline that contributes to who gets to run this band and the money is kind of distributed. And it's like if you're not living in a free society where you go out, you own property, you have property rights, you can take a mortgage against your house, take out a loan, start a small business and that's how so many Canadians make a living is being a small business owner and having their houses collateral. And then over here on reserves you have people that don't really own their homes and that they have to rely on the federal government. They give money to their chiefs who will then distribute it as they see fit.
Candice Malcolm:In some cases and a lot of times, there's no accounting records. There's not the same kind of transparency and accountability as you would see in a municipal or provincial or federal government. The books are oftentimes completely secret, so you have no idea where the money is going. You have no idea where the money is going, and this was a case in, for instance, the reserve up in northern Ontario at Awapiskat, which was constantly declaring states of emergency because they didn't have drinking water and people were living in absolute squalor. But then there was no accounting, there was no books. It turned out that this reserve had been receiving $131 million and the money was nowhere to be found.
Candice Malcolm:Right, and it's like there's just corruption. There's corruption, and it's sad to me that we have this sort of weird two tiered system that a lot of Canadians probably aren't even aware of. And when we're talking about, you know, stepping forward together and coming up with solutions for how we can have a prosperous future for indigenous children, young people having opportunity, which, again, to go back to being a mother, like the thing that you want the most. Yes, you want freedom and security, you want a good job and all that kind of stuff, but more so than any of that, you want that for your children. You want to know that your children will have opportunities, that they'll have safety and security and freedom. For the next generation. It's even more important, and to me, I think that there is this weird system that's been put in place that I think. Do you know why it exists? Because of the treaties right.
Aaron Pete:Well, like, my nation isn't a treaty, but like, do you understand? Like, do you know why they wanted to go down that process? No, please tell me. Yeah, so there's cons. The people who are very vocal are going to say because they wanted to separate Indigenous people, that they wanted to segregate them, that that was kind of the path, and perhaps that's true.
Candice Malcolm:Who's they in this scenario?
Aaron Pete:The government, the Canadian government, because they created yeah, the Canadian government created the Indian Act, which created reserve systems. In British Columbia we specifically had individuals. Douglas wanted to create anticipatory reserves that would be nice and large for the communities to develop on and grow on, and Trutch came along and downsized them in some cases 90%. But the logic behind having communal land is that we lived as communities, we didn't live as individual owners of things, and so you would create a system that would allow them to live there into the future and then they wouldn't have to worry about passing their land on or having private ownership rights. That was something that is a a very uh european canadian government approach, the. The approach was we share this land, we pass it on to our children, we live and we enjoy this land into the future. A bunch of problems came with that. One is like with my community. They moved us our our historic site. We were moved from that away from the river onto the spot that's in the flood plain that we're not able to develop in. But the. The mindset was you're a communal people, you live as communities. This gives you the ability to continue that into the future. The reason you're not able to buy or sell your land is because it's not yours, it's the communities to live on into the future. And so if you have it and you build, uh, like a bamboo plant, or if you do something with it that destroys it, you've destroyed it for future generations. And as Indigenous people we often argue we're thinking seven generations into the future. So having communal land puts us in the circumstance to continue that approach without being burdened by the fact that we might have to sell it or pass it on or do things like that.
Aaron Pete:Then in the 1980s, they brought in this process called certificate of possession, which more gave more property rights to First Nations communities. But the problem that I see with it, that I don't like that process, is that it gave people control over land that they cannot buy or sell. So now they have control over it and they don't have any resources to develop it economically or build houses. And now they're stuck in the circumstance that just kind of perpetuates. We have a bunch of CP land in my community that's undevelopable today and has been for 40 years since they started the process, because there was no plan in place on how people would go about utilizing their land rights to build things. And so we're stuck in this strange process where we still have a tradition, but that tradition isn't serving us today, and so at least that's for BC. I can't speak for treaty nations across Canada, but that was the logic.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, it's so interesting. Thanks for sharing that. Like my experience, is BC too right, because I grew up in Vancouver and I lived in Campbell River for some time when I was in high school and I saw it firsthand. And to me, what I studied in university and then grad school was looking at your land and having that as the basis that, like every individual, every family, every unit having this opportunity to own something that the government then says, yes, you own it and we will guarantee that that's yours.
Candice Malcolm:And then going on from there and the difference between countries that have developed property rights versus not, like it might seem trivial but it's actually like so important in the development, in the, in the history of which countries became rich and which ones didn't, and so much of it was to do with english common law, um, and so I I totally get the reasoning why you would say, like we're communal people, we want this land to be ours forever. Because, say like in, say say like in the 1940s, they said, okay, we're going to break up these reserves and every first nations person gets like 10 acres, uh. Or even if you do that today, like you said, everyone gets 10 acres, uh. It'd be possible that, like two generations later, uh, they wouldn't own any land anymore, that the land wouldn't be theirs and that they wouldn't really have any show for it, and that would be something that you would have to wrap grapple with all over again as a society. Like you know, in 1950, we gave everyone 10 acres, and here we are in 2024 and most of them don't own the land anymore. They sold it or they were tricked into selling it for a lower price, and then developers came in and blah, blah, blah, and this community has kind of been displaced and I could totally see that rationale and I think it might be one of the examples of unintended consequences. Like it's well-meaning, it has historical roots and some people really still believe in it, but at the same time, the fact that you know where you grew up, you can't own your own home and there's repercussions of that right.
Candice Malcolm:It's like the tragedy of the commons theory and this is what I witnessed in Campbell River. I had friends that lived, lived on reserve, and I would go onto the reserve and it was like entering a twilight zone. It was like this weird, bizarre world where there'd be these big, beautiful, nice homes, um, but then on the inside they were in disrepair, like people weren't taking care of them, um, and a lot of times they're empty. There'd be holes in the wall and they would have sold like parts of their sink for like I don't know, like sold them or they're just gone. And it's like you know, if you don't own something, if you own something, you take pride in it and you make sure that it maintains its value because you have an incentive to do that, because you want to sell it in the future, whereas if you don't own it I mean, that's not your problem the government's just going to step in in 10 years and rebuild it anyway. So who cares? Right? And I think that there's all kinds of, again, unattended consequences that come from that.
Candice Malcolm:And to me, I do feel like this is the elephant in the room.
Candice Malcolm:It's like why aren't we talking about, why many First Nations obviously there's examples of super successful, really well-run, really entrepreneurial, business-friendly reserves that have made tremendous fortunes and they've created something really spectacular but that's not the norm and it's like let's talk about that.
Candice Malcolm:Let's talk about how we can help and change and empower this community today, rather than again focusing on grievances that we might not ever agree with. And I think, obviously, reconciliation is important and we have to come together as Canadians to be willing to have this country together, so you can't just ignore the past and pretend it didn't happen. But I don't think we're served by this whole sort of grievance, obsessed mentality, like I don't want young First Nations people to walk around Canada feeling like they've been the victim of a genocide, feeling that they're a victim, like being a victim, is not helpful. Having that self-image and believing every day that you are discriminated against, that the society hates you, that everyone's holding you down, like that's just not a good way to live your life and I don't think that anyone in positions of power should be encouraging people to embrace this narrative and this attitude that they're a victim and that whatever they do, you know they're just going to end up being failures because of this color of their skin or because of their heritage or ethnicity.
Aaron Pete:Yeah, I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to. I only have a few minutes left and I want to touch on these kind of key issues. Do you consider yourself an Indian residential school denialist?
Candice Malcolm:Well, I don't like the term. Obviously. I don't want to like sit here and say like I'm a denialist because it's just it's derogatory right, it's meant as a slur and I don't think that that term denialism, like I don't think that it should apply to anything Like. I don't think that, like, obviously the root of the word comes from Holocaust denial and so anytime that there's like someone who's asking questions about climate change or maybe has a different perspective on how we mitigate changing temperatures or whatever, they get slammed with this denialism. You're a climate change denier and I've been called that for over a decade now, and so it's like, okay, well, you might as well just add residential school denial to that list. No, I think they happened. I think the program happened. We have a historical record, we have the information, we know that the program happened.
Candice Malcolm:I'm not denying that there are residential schools or that there were. I know that there were there. I just deny that there were death camps. And then there's some of the most salacious accusations that have been printed in the legacy media, like that there were mass graves and that thousands of children were systematically murdered by priests and nuns and teachers. I reject that. So if you know a fringe section of the far left wants to call me a denialist for that, then so be it.
Aaron Pete:I guess Should we criminalize Indian residential school denialism? Ndp MP Leah Gazan, the former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, brought this forward. Should we criminalize Indian residential school denialism?
Candice Malcolm:We shouldn't criminalize conversation. We shouldn't criminalize discussion, right Like. Let's again focus on the issues that matter today. Let's focus on making sure that there's a brighter future and that there's more opportunities for all Canadians, but specifically for First Nations children. Let's focus on that rather than trying to ban historians from pointing to the historical record. So obviously that is one of the most despicable illiberal bills that I've seen introduced in the House of Commons, and shame on them for even putting this bill forward. It's repulsive.
Aaron Pete:I had no idea that it was coming and I had the opportunity to interview Minister Gary Anandchandgare, who's the head for CERNAC, and we were just talking about this issue and how we think about it and then he mentioned criminalizing it and that it should be treated like Holocaust denial and I raised with him that I have. There's a bunch of problems with that. One is to your point we can agree on the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We can agree that these things took place. Like to say denier encompasses a way too broad spectrum of an issue to like make any reasonable conclusions about where people lie. I don't think anybody denies that Indian residential schools were a real thing. That took place. Many people had one in their community that they know of. Nobody's denying that piece. I think the unmarked graves story is completely separate from this and should be discussed completely separate from things that we all kind of agreed on three, five years ago. Like we had somewhat consensus on what was going on here and this new story has completely muddied the waters for people on what we're agreeing to and what we're not agreeing to. But the idea that you're going to criminalize the discussion we're having. That was one of my posts on Twitter. Am I contributing to denialism by having a conversation with you?
Aaron Pete:I'm a First Nations councillor trying to understand this issue in a meaningful way. Like I don't agree and I'll take the penalties if they come, because this is crazy. Like all of the people I've had have been good faith discussions on complex issues that deserve discussion. It's not like I'm one-sided or the other side. I'm trying to to understand this issue, like everybody else, and most people aren't able to engage with individuals like yourself. So to ask questions and to rule that and say that's not allowed is just it's un-canadian, it's undemocratic and it's just wild to see people who say that they're advocating for me and my community using us as a wedge issue on an issue that I think deserves more discussion, and every person First Nations chief, uh, city councillors all agree on that. This is an issue worth discussion before we start trying to make laws about things, and even if it is the case that it's harmful in some way which I don't think that it is I think it's important.
Aaron Pete:I understand that some people might not want to be a part of the conversation. Some of the elders in my community might not be up to having this conversation with you. I understand that, but that's not hateful. You're not harming me in any personal way and so, even if they did argue that it's hateful and that that shouldn't be allowed, we have hate speech laws. We already have laws that I don't really agree with that already cover this issue, so why do we need new? Why do we need to make this a political hot potato for us to discuss when we already the hub already covered and Camden Hutchinson already talked about? We already have laws on the book that would cover this, if you're going to make this argument, but it likely won't survive a constitutional challenge or a charter challenge. So why are we even putting this on the table? I don't understand what NDP MP Leah Gasson is trying to accomplish for me. My community, like the people within my circle, there are certain people who disagree, but they're not the majority.
Candice Malcolm:Well, I mean, first of all, I 100% agree with everything you said. You just summed it up way better than I could, so you don't need to ask me that question. You got it, man, like you're completely right, and I saw I caught part of your interview with the minister. I don't know if you articulated your criticism quite as well in that interview as you did just now. I hope you did. I hope you said that because I think that the purpose of laws like this is really pandering right, that they're just. You know, the minister probably expected you to be like wow, that's amazing, thank you. Where the reality is like actually, no, I'm like a free thinking person and I want to be able to have conversations, and the idea that you would use a term like denialism, which is so vague, doesn't mean anything. Right, like again. Just to go back to the book, you know the picture on the cover here is a picture of a residential school. These are children who were at the school. So in what world is this book denying a school system that it literally has pictures of? It's not denying, it is just providing more facts and historical record from scholars, right? So the idea is really muddied.
Candice Malcolm:I don't agree with hate speech laws. I think that sunlight is the best disinfectant and you should actually be able to have conversations, even if they're very uncomfortable, and ugly views should be exposed so that we can we can mock them and ridicule them and tear them apart. Guarantees, freedom of expression and hate speech laws go against that. So I don't agree with hate speech laws. I don't agree even with, you know, holocaust denial.
Candice Malcolm:There's a very famous case I don't know if you're familiar with it a neo-Nazi named Ernst Sundell, who was for many, many years a vocal Holocaust denialist and anti-Semite, who published books about why he loved Hitler. He was jailed for his political activism and his convictions were actually overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992, which said that the laws went against the right to free speech in the Charter of Rights and Freedom. So free speech is there in Canada. It's just a matter of whether or not the courts want to respect it, and I think that these kind of laws should be struck down by the Supreme Court as a purpose of the Supreme Court. Whether or not the current justices will actually, you know, take that action yet to be seen. I'm a little bit skeptical and doubtful that they would. But the idea that the Liberal government would even entertain the idea of banning conversations about our history, about things that happened in Canada that you know can be fact-checked using Statistics, canada facts I mean it's absurd that they would even propose that.
Aaron Pete:On that much we agree. Could you please tell people how they can keep up to date with you?
Candice Malcolm:Well, like I said, I'm on maternity leave right now, so I'm not really doing very much on the political journalism front, but I probably especially. It looks like we might be heading towards an election, maybe sometime in the next few months, or maybe not, but anyway, yeah, you can always find me on Twitter. I'm at Candace Malcolm. True North is our website is TNC, true North Center, tncnews. We have a pretty big presence on YouTube. You can't find us on Facebook anymore, thanks to the online censorship backs of the Trudeau government. Hopefully those will get struck down as well. We'll be back on there. But but basically, yeah, the main platforms for us are our website, uh, twitter or I guess I should call it x now and youtube candace, thank you so much for being willing to do this.
Aaron Pete:I think these conversations are incredibly important. I understand that identity politics can continue to arise. I do think, as a First Nations person, I have a responsibility to do these interviews because they provide space. For whatever reason, I'm allowed to say things that other people who are not of my descent are not allowed to say, and I hear that all the time from people. You said what I was thinking, but I'm not allowed to say that, and I think it's important that we have these discussions and embrace the nuance. Again, we don't agree on everything, but we agree on the key fundamental points that we need the right to have this discussion, that there is complexity here that should be embraced, and that we shouldn't shy away from conversations. We need to have more of them so that we can stay a cohesive and strong society with a good social fabric. So thank you so much for being willing to do this.
Candice Malcolm:Well, thank you, aaron. You're such a role model and you know, to people out there that feel that they can't talk about this kind of stuff, like, yes, you can just do it right. It's like, yeah, there might be some people out there that disagree with you, but you have to. If you want free speech in a society, you have to use it right and and I really have a great admiration, uh, for you, the voice that you have and the topics that you're willing to discuss. So keep at it, man, you're doing great appreciate it.
Aaron Pete:Thank you so much.
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