The Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University, has given up on monitoring the implementation of the 94 recommendations — Calls to Action — in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report. These recommendations are what...
Rodney Clifton
Should the Manitoba Government Only Support Childcare?
Late last August, Susan Prentice and Jesse Hajer claimed that childcare is “an austerity victim.” In short, they say that childcare had been inadequately funded by the PC government. With advice to the in-coming NDP government, they argue that spending more money on...
There Was Not One, But Three Pandemics
Book Review: CANARY in a COVID WORLD: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World – 3 of 3
There are no Indian Residential School Denialists, so Why Criminalize Them?
In a recent Canadian Press story, Kimberly Murray, the government’s special interlocutor on unmarked graves of missing Indigenous children from residential schools, is reported as saying: “We could … make it an offense to incite hate and promote hate against...
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Weaponizing the Law
The indictment of former U.S. president Donald Trump for crimes invented by his political opponents is the most egregious example yet seen of the weaponizing of the law. The United States is now full of examples. However, in Canada, we also see the law being...
“Looking At” Seizing Control Over Western Canada’s Natural Resources
OTTAWA, REGINA - Last week, two things happened that could have profound impacts on natural resources development in Saskatchewan. One is a hint the federal government might want to take control of natural resources away from the provinces, and the other is the...
Book Review – Nothing Less Than Great: Reforming Canada’s Universities, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021 by Harvey P. Weingarten
Personal experiences breed and nourish intellectual views. Harvey P. Weingarten tells his readers about the benefits he and his wider family received from Canadian universities. He evokes the past with a sense of gratitude, but turns to the present and the future with...
Indigenous Women and Canadian Institutions
As you read the title of this article, your mind probably flashes to a few negative media stories. Perhaps you think of a young Indigenous woman’s bad experience with a Winnipeg taxi driver. Or you think of Joyce Echaquan’s suffering and death in a Quebec hospital and...
Bill 64 is Dead, but Reform still Required
BILL 64 is dead. There is little doubt that many Manitobans were delighted when interim Premier Kelvin Goertzen tolled its death knell. Instead of dancing around the bill’s funeral pyre, government members need to seriously review the Manness/MacKinnon commission...
Was there a cultural genocide in Canada as claimed in the Truth and Reconciliation Report? Mass graves at residential schools? An interview with Professor Rodney Clifton, co-editor of “From Truth Comes Reconciliation: Assessing the Truth and Reconciliation...
Residential School Graves: Pursuing the Truth is of Utmost Importance
Over the last six weeks or so, popular newspapers in Canada and around the world have been filled with reports and commentaries on the discovery of 215 graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School and an increasing number of graves at other...
Don’t Slam the Door on Bill 64
Country singer Kenny Chesney’s lyric “Everybody want to go heaven, but nobody want to go now” is perhaps an apt metaphor for the current debate over Bill 64, the Education Modernization Act. Everybody knows that Manitoba students underperform academically, but when...
From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report
Dedicated to the thousands of people –both Indigenous and non-Indigenous — who were good and honourable servants to the children in Canada’s Indian residential school and hostels.
Bill 64 Won’t Destroy Public Education
Manitoba’s public education is about to undergo its biggest overhaul in more than 60 years. Bill 64, the Education Modernization Act, will see to that. Not surprisingly, this bill has attracted the ire of several unions, politicians and journalists. The Manitoba...
A Meaningful Job is the Only Way Forward for First Nations People
There is little doubt that the condition of Indigenous people is desperate in Canada, especially for those living in the 600 or so small isolated First Nations communities. Most Canadians know some facts about the quality of lives of the people in these communities,...