Is the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, being advised about missing children and unmarked graves by the people who caused the problem in the first place?

Image from CBC

By Nina Green

Is the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, being advised about missing children and unmarked graves by the people who caused the problem in the first place?

Let's start with Kimberly Murray.

Kimberly Murray

For five years, from 2010-2015, Kimberly Renée Murray was Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which invented the myth that there are thousands of missing Indian Residential school children in Canada in the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials volume of its 2015 final report, for which Murray has claimed responsibility.

On 6 June 2022, Murray was appointed by Order in Council to a two-year term as special adviser to the Minister of Justice, to be known as 'Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools'.

Considering that it was the TRC itself which invented the myth of thousands of missing children during Murray's term as Executive Director, her appointment to perpetuate that myth as Special Interlocutor was inexplicable.

The appointment, and its extension for an additional six months, has continued to be inexplicable because during her five years as Executive Director of the TRC, and during the more than two years she has been a special adviser to the Minister of Justice and has issued two voluminous reports, Murray has not provided the name of a single verifiably-identified missing Indian residential school child, and in fact on 21 March 2023 Murray admitted to the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples that 'The children aren't missing'.

Murray is scheduled to deliver her final report to the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, at an expensive two-day National Gathering in Gatineau, Quebec on 29-30 October 2024.

The title of Murray's final report - The Release of an Indigenous-led Reparations Framework - reveals that, to distract attention from the fact that she has failed to produce the name of a single verifiably-identified missing Indian residential school child over the past 14 years - Murray has invented a new mandate for herself - reparations - a policy matter which her official mandate on the Government of Canada website gives her no authority to deal with.

The agenda for the National Gathering, available here, indicates that Murray has called on a large number of people to assist her in publicly pressuring the Minister of Justice to accept and implement her final report, including three women - Chief Rosanne Casimir, journalist Tanya Talaga, and Member of Parliament Leah Gazan, who, like Kimberly Murray herself, are responsible for causing the problem in the first place, and exacerbating it over the past three years.

Let's look at the role each of the three has played.

Chief Rosanne Casimir

On 27 May 2021, after having given advance notice to a wide array of government and other entities as well as to a select group of sympathetic journalists, including the Globe and Mail's Tanya Talaga, Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Kamloops Band sent out a media release in which she falsely claimed, based on nothing more than a verbal report from Dr Sarah Beaulieu, that the Band had discovered 'the remains of 215 children'. 

As pointed out in many recent news articles, the Kamloops Band had no proof that it had discovered anything at all, and should have said nothing until Dr Beaulieu had issued a written report (which she appears never to have done) and until the GPR results had been independently verified by excavation.

Instead of saying nothing until she could produce some verifiable evidence, Chief Casimir falsely claimed to have found 'the remains of 215 children', and then exacerbated the situation by moving an emergency resolution at the 6 July 2021 meeting of the Assembly of First Nations in which she falsely claimed the Kamloops Band had discovered a 'mass grave'.  Chief Casimir's resolution was eventually forwarded to the United Nations by then AFN Grand Chief RoseAnne Archibald, further destroying Canada's international reputation.

Now - more than three years later - Chief Casimir has finally admitted that the Kamloops Band found nothing.  On 18 May 2024, Casimir posted this announcement on the Band's website:

On May 27, 2021, it was with a heavy heart that Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc confirmed an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented by the Kamloops Indian Residential School. With the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light — the confirmation of 215 anomalies were detected.

Anomalies could be anything, including the 2000 linear feet of septic field trenches dug in the apple orchard in 1924.  Why would Chief Casimir now equate the finding of an old septic field with an 'unthinkable loss'?

And it is notable that although they have now retracted it, Chief Casimir and the Kamloops Band have never apologized for their original false claim which traumatized Indigenous communities across the country, destroyed Canada's international reputation, and has cost hard-working Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars in the speedy and injudicious settlement of lawsuits (including Diena Jules' Day Scholars lawsuit).

Tanya Talaga

How did Tanya Talaga contribute to the problem?

As Canadians know, the repercussions of Chief Casimir's false claims concerning 'the remains of 215 children' and a 'mass grave' were immense in terms of trauma to Indigenous communities, irreparable damage to Canada's international reputation, the burning and vandalization of churches, and the financial burden on taxpayers.  Could all this have been stopped within a few days of the Kamloops Band's media release?

Yes, Chief Casimir's false claims could have been stopped within a few days of her media release had it not been for interference by the Globe and Mail's Tanya Talaga.

For reasons which are difficult to fathom, in her new book, The Knowing, Talaga herself reveals the specifics of her interference in the RCMP investigation into the false claim by the Kamloops Band.

In Chapter Two, Talaga openly admits that when her Globe and Mail editor informed her that the Prime Minister's Office, the RCMP and the Globe and Mail's Parliament Hill Bureau were starting to question the false claim by the Kamloops Band, Talaga phoned Murray Sinclair, former Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which, as noted above, was responsible for the myth of thousands of missing Indian residential school children.  Sinclair castigated the RCMP investigation to a Parliamentary Committee later that day, 3 June 2021.  A few hours after Sinclair's comments, the Kamloops RCMP's Media Relations Officer shared with inquiring reporters a statement from Staff Sergeant Bill Wallace indicating that the RCMP investigation had been turned over to the Kamloops Band.  This had the effect of giving the Band the authority to investigate its own false claim that it had found 'the remains of 215 children' and a 'mass grave', with the predictable result that the investigation has been completely stalled for more than three years.

Leah Gazan

Leah Gazan is also scheduled to speak at the 29-30 October National Gathering at which Kimberly Murray will release her final report to the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani.

How did Leah Gazan contribute to the problem?

On 27 October 2023, Leah Gazan, the NDP Member for Winnipeg Centre, tarred Canada with genocide by introducing a motion which Parliament ignominiously passed in 43 seconds:

Mr. Speaker, in the last session I put forward a unanimous consent motion recognizing that what happened in residential schools was an act of genocide. I was shocked when members of the House chose not to support my motion, confirming that residential school denial is still a reality.

We need to do better. We need to find a way forward that honours the truth about what happened in this country, especially in light of Pope Francis's acknowledgement that what took place in residential schools was in fact genocide.

I will rise again today to seek unanimous consent for the following motion: That in the opinion of the House, this government must recognize what happened in Canada's Indian residential schools as genocide, as acknowledged by Pope Francis and in accordance with article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

This time, I hope members of this House will not cut me off as a way to hide the truth, and will instead stop residential school denialism so that the experience of survivors is finally honoured. Only then will we achieve justice and demonstrate that we are truly committed to reconciliation.

The only proof Leah Gazan offered to Parliament in support of her claim that a genocide had occurred in Canada was an off the cuff statement made by the Pope on a flight back to Rome.

Leah Gazan has now doubled down on the false genocide claim by introducing a private member's bill, Bill C-413, which would amend the Criminal Code to make it a criminal offence for ordinary Canadians to question her assertions.

Gazan's attempt to use the Criminal Code to silence anyone who questions her assertions is particularly egregious in view of the unfounded claim Gazan made on 30 September 2024 via a flyer to her constituents, as well as in an online statement and an Instagram posting:

Today I lift up survivors who have sacrificed so much by sharing their stories in order for people across Canada to know the truth about residential schools.

For more than 150 years, over one hundred and fifty thousand children were kidnapped from their families and communities and placed in residential schools; many never returned home.

Kidnapping is a criminal offence, and Leah Gazan's statement that 150,000 children were kidnapped is patently untrue, but if Gazan is successful in having her private member's bill passed, any Canadian who questions her assertion will face criminal prosecution.

Canadians might well ask: Why is Leah Gazan so fixated on residential schools and genocide?

Is it because Gazan had relatives who had bad experiences at residential schools?

No, it's not that.  The only person among her direct ancestors known to have ever attended a residential school was her great-grandfather, John LeCaine (1890-1964), who attended with his sister, Alice LeCaine (1888-1976).  Both John LeCaine and his sister attended voluntarily, since at the time attendance was not compulsory, and spaces at residential schools had to be applied for by the children's parents.  Both profited from their residential school attendance, which enabled them to live successful lives.

So is Leah Gazan perhaps fixated on residential schools and genocide because of her status Indian ancestry?

No, it isn't that either.  Leah Gazan's claim to status Indian ancestry is very tenuous.  Her Jewish father, Albert Gazan, emigrated to Canada from the Netherlands, while her mother, Marjorie LeCaine, was the daughter of Adeline LeCaine and a Chinese father whose name is unknown.

Gazan's only claim to status Indian ancestry is thus through her maternal grandmother Adeline LeCaine, the daughter of the aforementioned John LeCaine (1890-1964) by an unknown mother.  According to Sarah Carter, John LeCaine was the son of a white North West Mounted Police officer, William Edward Archibald LeCain (1859-1915), who had also fathered John LeCaine's sister, Alice (1888-1976).  Strangely, John LeCaine's birth was not registered by his mother until 1935, when he was 45 years old.  However from birth he took his white father's surname, and the LeCaine name has continued in the family ever since.

Carter cites her source as John LeCaine himself, who, like other Canadian settlers of the day, had his own homestead, and in a letter dated 25 January 1914 inquired of the Department of the Interior in Ottawa about obtaining homesteads for his two half-brothers.  Carter writes: 

By 1914 requests were frequent enough that a Department of the Interior “ruling” was filed on the question of whether Indians could homestead. This was in answer to a letter by John Lecaine, a Lakota of Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan (whose father was a North West Mounted Policeman), as to whether his two half-brothers, “Indians,” were eligible for homestead rights.

See Carter, Sarah, 'Erasing and Replacing' in Place and Replace, University of Manitoba, 2013, pp. 14-39.

Leah Gazan's claim that Canadians committed genocide is thus doubly ironic since almost all her direct ancestors would have been perpetrators of genocide since they were white, one was a North West Mounted Police officer, and her great-grandfather was a settler with a homestead.

Albert Gazan (left). Marilyn Fontaine (right). From the Winnipeg Free Press July 1982

Moreover Leah Gazan's father, Albert Gazan, worked in the child welfare system which cared for Indigenous children whose parents either couldn't or wouldn't care for them.  An article in the Winnipeg Free Press dated 29 July 1982 has a photo of Albert Gazan, Family Services Director with the Children's Aid Society of Winnipeg, 'engaged in heated discussion' with Indigenous activist Marilyn Fontaine at the start of a three-day native conference in which the provincial government was 'accused of "dehumanizing" native families through placement of Indian children in foster homes' (see attachment).  Leah Gazan's father was thus an integral part of the system Leah Gazan calls genocide.

To return to the 29-30 October National Gathering in Gatineau at which Kimberly Murray will present her final report to the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, assisted by Chief Rosanne Casimir, Tanya Talaga and Leah Gazan, all four of these privileged women are part of an Indigenous elite which clearly does not represent status Indians living difficult lives on remote reserves plagued with a myriad of intractable social and economic problems.

Kimberly Murray, Chief Casimir, Tanya Talaga and Jeanette Jules. Photo from Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc (tkemlups.ca)

To underscore that point, we here see three of them - Kimberly Murray, Chief Casimir, and Tanya Talaga - posing for photographs in September at the Toronto International Film Festival (along with Jeanette Jules, whose sister Diena Jules instigated the GPR search which led to Chief Casimir's false claims that 'the remains of 215 children' and a 'mass grave' had been found).

The only thing that has brought these four privileged women together in life is a myth they have created about missing and murdered children and unmarked graves and secret burials, and that has turned them into minor celebrities who show up at events attended by other celebrities.

That makes a mockery of any pretence of objectivity on their part when they present Kimberly Murray's final report to the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, on 29-30 October 2024.  The claim that there are thousands of missing and murdered children clandestinely buried in unmarked graves across Canada is simply not true, and the Minister of Justice has an obligation to reject it. 

The price of reconciliation cannot be that Canadians are forced to believe a lie.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Is Kimberly Murray planning to recommend Canadian taxpayers pay billions in reparations?

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