GIESBRECHT: Okay to fly the flag after all, CBC decides... no apology, though!

CBC is telling Canadians to joyfully celebrate Canada Day 2024 This stands in stark contrast to how they were telling Canadians to celebrate — or rather, how not to celebrate — Canada Day 2021. Canadians were told in 2021 that they must be ashamed of their past, and our “dark history” as evidenced by the “remains” of 215 children who had been “discovered” at Kamloops.In fact, CBC even asked if Canada Day 2021 should be cancelled outright. The message was gloom and doom. Canadians should be ashamed. The federal government and Catholic Church had committed unspeakable crimes.Except, none of this was true.It should be recalled that Canada Day 2021 immediately followed the alleged “discovery” of the “remains” of 215 indigenous children who had been students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. According to that story the people in charge of the Catholic school, namely nuns and priests, were somehow responsible for the deaths of 215 of their students. According to the story the nuns and priests had then buried their victims in secrecy, with the forced help of children “as young as six”. We now know that the claim was false. No “human remains”, “graves” or “bodies” were found. Only “soil disturbances” or “anomalies” were found. The stories that had circulated in the community about evil priests and nuns appear to be the kind of ghost stories children tell to scare each other. A bit of investigation would have made it clear that these stories should never have been believed. The Chief of the Kamloops band, who had initially made the false claim about “remains” of children being found admitted — three years later — that no remains were found. Only soil anomalies. We now know that those anomalies are most likely from previous excavations that had been done on the grounds of the school. We also know that the Kamloops band collected $8,000,000 from the federal government, based on their false claim. We don’t know how that money was spent.In short, we now know that the entire Kamloops claim — known internationally as the “Kamloops Graves Hoax” — was false from the start. Journalist Jon Kay describes the whole sordid episode here. No evidence of mass graves or genocide in residential schools.But that’s not how CBC reported the story. Without doing any of the basic fact-checking or investigation that such an enormous story demands, CBC largely repeated the false narrative. And when copycat claims of “thousands of missing indigenous children” inevitably followed after the Trudeau government promised $320,000,000 to any indigenous community that chose to make similar claims, CBC feverishly reported every finding of a grave in a community cemetery, as if it was proof of some monstrous crime.CBC now seems quite happy to forget their advice to Canadians on Canada Day in 2021 — namely to do the opposite of celebrating, and instead to be terribly ashamed of those 215 indigenous children, who were supposedly killed by the nuns and priests running the Kamloops Indian Residential School — and then secretly buried by those evil people with the forced help of children “as young as six”. CBC led the way in their emotional — and false — reporting of those foul deeds, without doing even a scintilla of fact-checking to make sure the story was true. Here is a reminder of how they told Canadians to repent and feel ashamed on Canada Day 2021. So, we now know that the lurid story about those 215 children is not true. The same Kamloops Indian band that told Canadians that the “remains of 215 indigenous children” had been found have now admitted that no “remains” were found — only “soil anomalies”.And we also now know that the same CBC that didn’t bother to do even basic investigative journalism about the “remains” claim seems to be quite happy to forget their gloom and doom” reporting on Canada Day 2021, and now tells Canadians to go out and have a good time. No apology is offered for their incompetent reporting of the Kamloops claim.The damage that this false Kamloops claim, and all of the other baseless claims about secretly buried children that followed, have done is incalculable. Canada’s international reputation has been badly damaged, and observers wander if Canadians have somehow taken leave of our senses in how we reacted so irrationally to such a laughably false claim about murderous priests and nuns. We have CBC to thank for much of this damage. Their failure to do even elementary fact-checking and investigation was a major reason why a childishly false claim turned into a national moral panic. And now, CBC wants Canadians to simply forget that miserable Canada Day of 2021, and their part in making it that way.Some of us will not forget. .This is what the Western Standard is up againstThe Trudeau government is funding lies and propaganda by directly subsidizing the mainstream media. They do this to entrench the powerful Eastern, woke and corrupt interests that dominate the political, social and economic institutions in Canada. Federal authorities are constantly trying to censor us and stop us from publishing the stories that they don’t want you to read. Ottawa may weaponize our taxes and police against us, but we’ve got a powerful ally on our side.You. Free men, and free women. We need you to stand with us and become a member of the Western Standard. Here’s what you will get for your membership:Unlimited access to all articles from the Western Standard, Alberta Report, West Coast Standard, and Saskatchewan Standard, with no paywall. Our daily newsletter delivered to your inbox. .Access to exclusive Member-only WS events.Keep the West’s leading independent media voice strong and free.If you can, please support us with a monthly or annual membership. It takes just a moment to set up, and you will be making a big impact on keeping one the last independent media outlets in Canada free from Ottawa’s corrupting influence.

GIESBRECHT: Okay to fly the flag after all, CBC decides... no apology, though!

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