The Office of the Special Interlocutor (OSI) has released its historical report (Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience: Unmarked Burials and Mass Graves of Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children in Canada). While OSI states that “the primary purpose of this Report...
Michael Melanson
The Sean Carleton Show
Last January I attended a webinar featuring settler historian Dr. Sean Carleton on “How to Recognize and Confront Residential School Denialism.” Carleton has been leading the vanguard in spotting this distinctly Canadian menace. The webinar began, of course, with the...
Budget 2024 as the Eve of 1984 in Canada
The Federal Government released its Budget 2024 last week. In addition to hailing a 181% increase in spending on Indigenous priorities since 2016, “Budget 2024 also proposes to provide $5 million over three years, starting in 2025-26, to Crown-Indigenous Relations and...
Shooting the Messenger with Blanks
In a recent Winnipeg Free Press column, Niigaan Sinclair argues that some people are exploiting mistakes in reportage on the claims of missing children at former Indian Residential Schools (IRS).In fact, Sinclair claims: “By pointing out mistakes in media coverage,...
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Canadian Property Rights Index 2023
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
Fighting Crime With Socialist Utopianism
In a recent op-ed in the Winnipeg Free Press, associate professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg, Kelly Gorkof, an associate professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg, argued that the traditional idea of fighting crime is...
‘A Children’s Way’ – Cancelling Bishop Grandin
Winnipeg City Hall recently proclaimed that Bishop Grandin Boulevard, Bishop Grandin Trail, and Grandin Street will be renamed, respectively, Abinojii Mikanah (Ojibway for 'A Children's Way'), Awisasak Meskanow (Cree for 'A Children's Way'), and Taapeewin Way (Michif...
Mulcair and the Canadian Malaise
For anyone who remembers Thomas Mulcair as a serious person and a honourable Member of Parliament, that memory was just cashed in for pennies on the dollar. In a commentary written for CTV News, Mulcair applauded “two women of character (who) have put their indelible...
Genocide For Dummies
On Oct. 27, 2022 my MP, Leah Gazan (NDP), presented a motion in the House of Commons to have the Indian Residential Schools recognized as a genocide (a real genocide and not just the rhetorical one of culture). Coincidentally, on that same day, the Dorchester Review...
The Wilderness Ghetto; the Dream of Aboriginal Sovereignty and the Nightmare of Remote Reserves
On Oct. 20th, the remote reserve of Red Sucker Lake in Northern Manitoba declared a state of emergency “after a teenage boy died by suicide earlier in the week, a man killed himself last month and several other people in the community have attempted to take their own...
Farmers as Enemies of the State – The Black Art of Wedge Politics
Never underestimate the value of a good enemy are words political operatives live by. The core objective of wedge politics is to create a visible opponent, entice them to an angry response, and then vilify them as the barbarians who are going to destroy the country. ...
Why Frances Widdowson Matters
Frances Widdowson probably isn't someone most Canadians recognize. I'm here to tell you why they should. In terms of Canada's intellectual culture, Frances Widdowson matters because she is a classic and prolific academic. In a time when demagoguery easily flourishes,...