A few days ago, Public Services and Procurement Canada tabled their audited consolidated financial statements of the Government of Canada for 2024. This is the official and complete report on the state of government finances. When I say “complete”, I mean the report’s half million words stretch across three volumes and total more than 1,300 pages.
The idea that residential schools have caused harm to Indigenous people is not based upon evidence and facts.
There have been no bodies found at the so-called mass graves.
There is no long list of missing residential school students.
There is no evidence that Indigenous students who went to residential schools had any worse outcomes than Indigenous students who did not go to residential achools.
There is no evidence that the level of abuse at residential schools was any higher than at other schools in similar circumstances.
Attendance at residential schools was voluntary until the 1920's and then it became like others - no truancy, all children had to go to school.
Many Indigenous parents insisted that their children go to residential schools so that they would get an education, learn English, get good jobs and have a better future.
In fact many were so persistent that the provision of residential schools were written into some of the treaties.
Billions have been spent on Indigenous affairs with no improvement in the desperate plight of Indigenous people.
There is no transparency in how and where the money is spent.
Instead new approaches are needed, such as getting rid of the Indian Act and therefore treating Indigenous people the same as any other Canadian, total transparency in money spent on them, and the Indigenous people having more self-responsibility for their own situation.
Indigenous people are the equal of any other Canadian and freeing them from the restrictions of the Indian Act will give them a more prosperous future.
The media should or must publicize the positive aspects of residential schools instead of only publicizing a very one-sided negative version of them.
Your analysis dovetails with what I have seen in my lifetime, but I do think it’s a lot more complicated than you would have it.
We live in a town across the Ottawa River from an non-reservation indigenous community. Social and economic ties between the two predate Confederation and continue to this day.
At the height of the Catholic Church’s residential-schools mandate in Quebec, a number of Mohawk families settled in Hudson, where they could attend English public schools while remaining practising Catholics.
Those ties have evolved and have been reinforced over generations, to the point that during the 1990 Oka Crisis (over a European developer’s attempt to annex traditional tribal land for a real estate project) Hudson residents smuggled essentials to Kanesatake under the noses of the provincial police and Canadian Armed Forces.
In the 35 years since then, Ottawa’s policy of appeasement, coupled with Quebec’s withdrawal of basic policing, have resulted in Kanesatake becoming a lawless territory where illegal dumping of possibly contaminated soil and construction waste from Greater Montreal have destroyed wetlands to create a waterfront strip of tax-free cannabis dispensaries, roadside bars and gas shacks.
The only people voicing their objections are Kanestake residents risking their safety by demanding that Quebec and Ottawa enforce federal and provincial laws. Only one online daily (La Presse) and a gutsy little alternatve new provider (The Rover) continue to cover what is otherwise a mass dereliction of duty by Ottawa, Quebec and most of Canada’s mainstream media, where the residential-schools outrage machine continues to support the biggest industry in indigenous Canada.
Whenever I talk with Indigenous entrepreneurs and with my old classmates from the far side of the river, they remind me of why they left — sick and tired of the victimization song, they seek a path to personal success.
I write as a retired accountant and my comment is - predictably - with respect to your commentary about declining corporate income tax revenues.
You note that corporate income tax revenues decreased and you find that surprising. You note issues associated with potential tax avoidance, economic inequality and over-reliance on other revenue streams, all of which are useful points in my view.
What is missed, however, is the fact that the federal government has been hostile to business and viewed corporate profitability and individual earnings as bad things. Certainly, the efforts of the government to paint various economic actors as not "paying their share" and similar unjustified assertions of malfeasance and resulting changes to laws, rules, regulations and so forth have put a chill on investment in Canada and caused many businesses to move investments outside of the country where they could do so.
Further, the government has demonized high income earning Canadians in many ways and has changed the laws to penalize them, from changing capital gains rates, higher tax rates, changes to income splitting among family members, etc. I never did and never will enjoy a high income, particularly given that I am now retired and no longer in the workforce. Nevertheless, I dealt with many high income individuals as well as many more modest income folks and my experience was that all my clients tried to follow the law scrupulously. I can absolutely say that no one was eager to pay taxes but all my clients knew that was part of the game. As tax rates and inclusion rates rose and greater difficulty in income inclusion rose it became common, particularly among those who had economic mobility, for taxpayers to muse about leaving the country.
Put differently, it seems to me that the government has chosen to chase out of the country and threaten economically our greatest income generating resource, our successful people.
Modernizing and reinforcing the apartheid inherent in the Indian Act (inverting the relationship) is an expensive proposition. The part of the grievance industry (especially the SCOC) that pretends to represent the Crown (taxpayers) is essentially in Stockholm Syndrome and their idea of justice is to ignore all other benefits accrued since treaties or contact and focus on legalisms of treaties to award settlements on grievance that no living taxpayer was responsible for but now financially liable.
No Canadian government has voiced the notion of ending apartheid and the closest they came in recent years was P. E. Trudeau and Chretien's White Paper which they buried. The notion of equality before the law is not something that the current parties are interested in.
The increasing expectation of collective Indian ownership of all Crown land and therefore all land (Illegitimately granted Crown land to become private land) if realized, is the extinguishment of Canada and the provinces and this is the absurdity pushed by many in provincial governments, academia, and the judiciary.
"Truth and Reconciliation" and Residential school mass murder allegation are side shows of apartheid reinforcement politically exploited to prolong any actual reform.
Imagine the outrage if a government had the courage to suggest that in order to fund contingent liabilities and the extortion attributed to indigenous claims that they would have to suspend or significantly reduce funding of many social programs (EI, Equalization, Healthcare, etc). Or alternately have to significantly raise all forms of taxation. Nothing like a little dose of reality to get the tax paying publics attention. Plus the effects would be felt by everybody which would really serve to bring the message home.
Great idea and I look forward to reading your findings. For far too long we have allowed governments to continue their profligate spending, bowing down to extortion from the indigenous victim industry, carrying huge amounts of debt and catering to the demands of climate change activists all the while failing to recognize that at some point we are all going to directly be affected in a manner which will threaten our individual economic well being and standard of life. People need to be shown how they personally are going to be hit with some rather nasty negative consequences. Until that realization becomes reality governments are not going to develop a spine and stand up for the majority who dutifully pay their taxes, work hard and try and feed their families.
Thanks for this. Numbers don’t lie, but they usually end up getting spun. This is the most significant post I’ve read since the Freeland eruption.
The idea that residential schools have caused harm to Indigenous people is not based upon evidence and facts.
There have been no bodies found at the so-called mass graves.
There is no long list of missing residential school students.
There is no evidence that Indigenous students who went to residential schools had any worse outcomes than Indigenous students who did not go to residential achools.
There is no evidence that the level of abuse at residential schools was any higher than at other schools in similar circumstances.
Attendance at residential schools was voluntary until the 1920's and then it became like others - no truancy, all children had to go to school.
Many Indigenous parents insisted that their children go to residential schools so that they would get an education, learn English, get good jobs and have a better future.
In fact many were so persistent that the provision of residential schools were written into some of the treaties.
Billions have been spent on Indigenous affairs with no improvement in the desperate plight of Indigenous people.
There is no transparency in how and where the money is spent.
Instead new approaches are needed, such as getting rid of the Indian Act and therefore treating Indigenous people the same as any other Canadian, total transparency in money spent on them, and the Indigenous people having more self-responsibility for their own situation.
Indigenous people are the equal of any other Canadian and freeing them from the restrictions of the Indian Act will give them a more prosperous future.
The media should or must publicize the positive aspects of residential schools instead of only publicizing a very one-sided negative version of them.
Your analysis dovetails with what I have seen in my lifetime, but I do think it’s a lot more complicated than you would have it.
We live in a town across the Ottawa River from an non-reservation indigenous community. Social and economic ties between the two predate Confederation and continue to this day.
At the height of the Catholic Church’s residential-schools mandate in Quebec, a number of Mohawk families settled in Hudson, where they could attend English public schools while remaining practising Catholics.
Those ties have evolved and have been reinforced over generations, to the point that during the 1990 Oka Crisis (over a European developer’s attempt to annex traditional tribal land for a real estate project) Hudson residents smuggled essentials to Kanesatake under the noses of the provincial police and Canadian Armed Forces.
In the 35 years since then, Ottawa’s policy of appeasement, coupled with Quebec’s withdrawal of basic policing, have resulted in Kanesatake becoming a lawless territory where illegal dumping of possibly contaminated soil and construction waste from Greater Montreal have destroyed wetlands to create a waterfront strip of tax-free cannabis dispensaries, roadside bars and gas shacks.
The only people voicing their objections are Kanestake residents risking their safety by demanding that Quebec and Ottawa enforce federal and provincial laws. Only one online daily (La Presse) and a gutsy little alternatve new provider (The Rover) continue to cover what is otherwise a mass dereliction of duty by Ottawa, Quebec and most of Canada’s mainstream media, where the residential-schools outrage machine continues to support the biggest industry in indigenous Canada.
Whenever I talk with Indigenous entrepreneurs and with my old classmates from the far side of the river, they remind me of why they left — sick and tired of the victimization song, they seek a path to personal success.
As usual an excellent analysis! Thank you for you great work.
I write as a retired accountant and my comment is - predictably - with respect to your commentary about declining corporate income tax revenues.
You note that corporate income tax revenues decreased and you find that surprising. You note issues associated with potential tax avoidance, economic inequality and over-reliance on other revenue streams, all of which are useful points in my view.
What is missed, however, is the fact that the federal government has been hostile to business and viewed corporate profitability and individual earnings as bad things. Certainly, the efforts of the government to paint various economic actors as not "paying their share" and similar unjustified assertions of malfeasance and resulting changes to laws, rules, regulations and so forth have put a chill on investment in Canada and caused many businesses to move investments outside of the country where they could do so.
Further, the government has demonized high income earning Canadians in many ways and has changed the laws to penalize them, from changing capital gains rates, higher tax rates, changes to income splitting among family members, etc. I never did and never will enjoy a high income, particularly given that I am now retired and no longer in the workforce. Nevertheless, I dealt with many high income individuals as well as many more modest income folks and my experience was that all my clients tried to follow the law scrupulously. I can absolutely say that no one was eager to pay taxes but all my clients knew that was part of the game. As tax rates and inclusion rates rose and greater difficulty in income inclusion rose it became common, particularly among those who had economic mobility, for taxpayers to muse about leaving the country.
Put differently, it seems to me that the government has chosen to chase out of the country and threaten economically our greatest income generating resource, our successful people.
Modernizing and reinforcing the apartheid inherent in the Indian Act (inverting the relationship) is an expensive proposition. The part of the grievance industry (especially the SCOC) that pretends to represent the Crown (taxpayers) is essentially in Stockholm Syndrome and their idea of justice is to ignore all other benefits accrued since treaties or contact and focus on legalisms of treaties to award settlements on grievance that no living taxpayer was responsible for but now financially liable.
No Canadian government has voiced the notion of ending apartheid and the closest they came in recent years was P. E. Trudeau and Chretien's White Paper which they buried. The notion of equality before the law is not something that the current parties are interested in.
The increasing expectation of collective Indian ownership of all Crown land and therefore all land (Illegitimately granted Crown land to become private land) if realized, is the extinguishment of Canada and the provinces and this is the absurdity pushed by many in provincial governments, academia, and the judiciary.
"Truth and Reconciliation" and Residential school mass murder allegation are side shows of apartheid reinforcement politically exploited to prolong any actual reform.
This was a necessary but not surprising read and I felt should have mentioned the need for smaller government.
There's actually a post on that topic coming soon.
Imagine the outrage if a government had the courage to suggest that in order to fund contingent liabilities and the extortion attributed to indigenous claims that they would have to suspend or significantly reduce funding of many social programs (EI, Equalization, Healthcare, etc). Or alternately have to significantly raise all forms of taxation. Nothing like a little dose of reality to get the tax paying publics attention. Plus the effects would be felt by everybody which would really serve to bring the message home.
I'm actually working on a data-based experiment that'll (hopefully) address some closely-related scenarios.
Great idea and I look forward to reading your findings. For far too long we have allowed governments to continue their profligate spending, bowing down to extortion from the indigenous victim industry, carrying huge amounts of debt and catering to the demands of climate change activists all the while failing to recognize that at some point we are all going to directly be affected in a manner which will threaten our individual economic well being and standard of life. People need to be shown how they personally are going to be hit with some rather nasty negative consequences. Until that realization becomes reality governments are not going to develop a spine and stand up for the majority who dutifully pay their taxes, work hard and try and feed their families.