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...
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...
Rodney Clifton, Brian Giesbrecht and Frances Widdowson discuss the Kamloops Cemetery controversy. Moderated by Paul Viminitz. Saturday, July 10, 2021 Over the last few months, hundreds of unmarked graves of people connected to residential schools have been...
The Canadian Dream is increasingly being realized in smaller areas For decades, Canadians moved to the larger cities (census metropolitan areas, or CMAs) with their economic opportunities. The latest estimates indicate that CMAs have 72 per cent of the nation’s...
When the Premiers were first called to a sit-down lunch to talk about healthcare with Prime Minister Trudeau, there was plenty of talk about the potential for systemic change, innovation and accountability. It seemed that Canadians and their leaders were finally on...
In a recent op-ed (Winnipeg Free Press, May 2, A7), my colleague from the Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba, John Wiens, argued that Bill 35, The Education Administration Amendment Act, goes too far. He claims that “it begins to look like just one...
The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was styled after the South African Commission which was the first commission ever established to sort through claims and counter-claims in an attempt to get at the Truth. The South African TRC was established in 1996 by...
Everyone knows that Canada is in trouble. Like other countries, this country has been racked by various waves of COVID-19 for almost two years. But COVID-19 is not the most troubling issue. Let me explain. Remember at the beginning of the pandemic, we didn’t expect...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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,...
Many parents are frustrated by the limited educational choices their children have right now. For example, a recent article in the Calgary Herald (Ferguson, “Parents regretting in-person classes with no options to go online”), suggests that parents are concerned...