Nigel Biggar: Residential schools were no 'atrocity.' Just look at the evidence

“There is...no firm evidence that Indigenous kids died in the schools in excessive numbers from culpable negligence. And there is no evidence at all of mass murder.

And yet, in what amounts to a national scandal, the “atrocity” tale prevails. Why? One reason is that positive witness from former pupils has been suppressed, while negative testimony has been solicited. Miller observes that, even back in the 1990s, a sensation-seeking media had an appetite only for stories of abuse. And while the body of the TRC’s 2015 report contains a lot of positive testimony, its summary volume permits it only a brief appearance, before dismissing it with the observation that “survivors” found it distressing to hear. This imbalance of testimony has surely been exacerbated by the subsequent compensation system that offered significant sums of money to any former pupil claiming to have suffered abuse, without subjecting the claims to much or any kind of testing.

Beyond that, blame for the tyranny of a false public orthodoxy about the residential schools rests with representatives of the TRC and academics, who know full well that the data is being misrepresented and yet have failed to offer any correction. It lies with journalists and editors who have declined to ask questions. It lies with politicians who have tied their careers to the mendacious narrative. And, most of all, it lies with those who have — shockingly — persecuted skeptics and critics to the point of destroying their reputations and careers, even (like NDP MP Leah Gazan) pressing for the totalitarian criminalization of “denialism.”

Nonetheless, the truth is wrestling its way inexorably to the surface. The past four years have seen three books appear, each of which dismantles the “atrocity” fabrication: Rodney Clifton and Mark DeWolf’s “From Truth Comes Reconciliation” (2021), Chris Champion and Tom Flanagan’s “Grave Error” (2023) and my own, “Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning” (2023)...”

Key quote from: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/nigel-biggar-residential-schools-were-no-atrocity-just-look-at-the-evidence#comments-area

Nigel Biggar is Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas, chairman of the Free Speech Union (U.K.) and author of "Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.