Quotulatiousness

October 1, 2026

“Motte and bailey” doesn’t work with this argument

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Yesterday was nominally “Truth and Reconciliation Day” in Canada, but the government and progressive activist groups are actively trying to suppress honest questions about the whole Residential Schools topic and threatening jail time to those who refuse to mouth the slogans:

This is an interesting thread, because he makes the motte and bailey explicit in a way they’re not usually careless enough to do.

No one denies that the residential schools were rough, that the kids who went there were probably kind of sad, and that some of them died, due to contagious disease mostly. That’s all very unfortunate but doesn’t amount to much more than “kids get homesick at boarding school, discipline back then was often severe by modern standards, and medicine was primitive especially in remote areas”. This is the motte and it isn’t all that impactful because none of it is all that different from conditions that white kids lived through at the time, particularly in remote areas.

But it was very specifically the claim of mass graves due to deliberate genocide that supercharged this issue back in 2021, with the implication that the residential schools were actually a cover for a policy of systematic extermination. At least I assume this is the charge, as they keep saying “genocide” and that’s what genocide is commonly understood to mean. This is the bailey.

The problem is that there is no evidence for mass graves. The few times that they’ve been investigated no bodies were found. At the Kamloops site they deliberately refuse to even dig, which strikes people as suspicious. So people ask questions. It’s only natural to want something more concrete than “because I said so” when you’re being accused of genocide.

So they then retreat to the motte of “well things were hard in the schools”, and okay, yes, they were, but that isn’t genocide. But the implication is that anyone asking for evidence in support of the genocide claim – anyone attacking the bailey – is engaging in “denialism” that the schools even existed or that conditions in the schools were often not ideal. Which literally no one does.

This entire debate comes down to one question. Is the Canadian government guilty of a deliberate, systematic policy of genocide? Did it set out to exterminate the First Nations via the mass murder of their children? That’s it, that’s the issue, that’s what we’re fighting about.

And there’s a very high bar of evidence for proving something like that. At a minimum, you need a whole lot of bones.

Got any bones out in that bailey?

Marc Emery argues that the reservation system was a mistake and it has permanently immiserated most First Nations people and enriched a tiny minority who capture most of the benefits for themselves:

We should have abolished reservations and this idea of tribal land. Each native should have been given land that stays in that person’s family in perpetuity, and then we should have been done.

Instead, tribal lands, reservations, the Rez, have been the worst places on Earth to have been a child or female.

Rape, incest, predation, neglect and child abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, abandonment, murder, violent assault, domestic violence; no child or youth was spared being witness to this grim experience in their tribal homes.

Statistics don’t lie. No one hates their women more than native men.

The residential schools were much safer.

That was one of the main reasons for residential schools and the 60’s Scoop, get the children away from the dangerous and predatory reserve life. Many mothers who sent their children to residential schools knew this.

This is the truth that must be reconciled. The Whites have paid their dues in triplicate. No more tribute, no more money, no more land.

The natives have to raise themselves up. Blaming the Whites is over. The children of today should not be tax slaves to a pay tens of billions of dollars in annual tributes to a culture that has been so barbaric to women, children, that had slaves, were in constant warfare before the establishment of Canada, that invented nothing, that received the benefits of every technological advance at no cost to these “indigenous” who gladly — eagerly — abandon their ancient traditions for every benefit of European/Canadian invention and wonder.

September 30, 2026

Undermining any attempt to discover truth and achieve any reconciliation

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The urge to uncover past wrongs in the Canadian government’s dealings with First Nations groups isn’t a bad thing … but the government’s unwillingness to require factual evidence in support of claims of past wrongs will do exactly the opposite of working toward cultural reconciliation:

Photo from Woke Watch Canada

Why is the federal government trying to prevent Canadians from learning the truth about Indian residential schools?

On 24 September 2026, six days before Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Rebecca Alty issued a statement about so-called ‘Residential Schools denialism’.

Alty claims so-called ‘Residential Schools denialism’ “spreads false information by denying or casting doubt on the history of Residential Schools and the lasting harm they caused”. She offers no examples, which strongly suggests she could not provide examples if pressed to do so. The federal government is thus using Canadian taxpayer funds to attack a straw man of its own creation.

In fact, the federal government has gone far beyond using Canadian taxpayer funds to attack the straw man it calls ‘Residential Schools denialism’. It has even entertained bills which would criminalize it.

    The federal government refuses to release residential school attendance records to the public which would disprove claims of missing children

In addition to using Canadian taxpayer money to attack so-called ‘Residential Schools denialism’ — a straw man of its own creation — and entertaining bills which would criminalize it, the federal government has actively prevented the truth about Canada’s Indian residential schools from coming out.

For years there have been tales of thousands of missing Indian residential school students. The federal government has allowed these baseless rumours to proliferate, despite the fact that not a single name of a missing Indian residential school student has ever been produced by anyone, including the federal government.

Moreover the federal government has allowed these baseless tales of missing Indian residential school students to proliferate while actively concealing from the Canadian public the attendance records in its possession which disprove them.

An example is the attendance records for the Kamloops Indian Residential School. A close examination of the quarterly returns for the Kamloops Indian Residential School from 1943-1952, which are available online, establishes that every student is accounted for during that decade.

The government also has quarterly returns and other attendance records for the remaining years of the existence of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, 1952-1977, which it has not released to the public. Their existence is attested to by the federal government itself in the school narrative it prepared for use in the Independent Assessment Process.

Quarterly returns were the basis on which the Department of Indian Affairs calculated the per capita grant which covered the operating costs of the school. School officials ensured they were meticulously accurate in order to obtain as large a grant as possible based on current student enrolment, and the Department of Indian Affairs likewise demanded that they be meticulously accurate to avoid the federal government overpaying the school.

It is thus of the greatest significance that on pp. 7-8 of the attached school narrative, the federal government provides a table of total attendance figures for the years of the Kamloops Indian Residential School’s existence. The figures given by the federal government for the years from 1952-1977 are not estimates. They are very precise numbers — 402, 424, 381, 390, for example — indicating that they are derived from attendance records in the federal government’s possession, and in fact the federal government’s heading on the table reads “most are September figures for each year and based on Quarterly Returns where possible“.

It is thus clear that if released by the federal government, the quarterly returns underlying the figures in this table would establish conclusively that not a single student from the Kamloops Indian Residential School went missing between the years 1952-1977, yet the federal government refuses to release these attendance records so that the Canadian public can learn the truth. Instead, the federal government allows the damaging and completely unfounded myth of thousands of missing Indian residential school students to proliferate, and even to be promulgated beyond Canada’s borders (as, for example, in the recent hearings of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal).

The federal government needs to release these attendance records, not just for the Kamloops Indian Residential School, but for all Indian residential schools in Canada, so that the Canadian public can learn the truth, i.e., that federal government records establish that not a single student is missing from an Indian residential school.

On X, Mr Bench points out that First Nations’ political representatives see literally no end to the need for reconciliation for generations yet to come:

Will reconciliation ever end?

According to Candice … NO.

Plan for this to continue for generations.

She says some people haven’t even started healing yet.

Her son will need healing.

Her future grandchildren will need healing.

And she admits:

“Don’t know how many generations it’s gonna take for us to heal, and healing is forever.”

So when does reconciliation end?

It doesn’t. So keep the funds flowing

If “healing is forever”, apparently there is no finish line.

L. Wayne Mathison speaks for an increasing number of Canadians here:

I’m sick and tired of being told that people generations from now will still need to “heal” from events they never personally experienced. My ancestors went through terrible things too. History is full of conquest, poverty, discrimination, war and displacement.

Remember the past. Teach it accurately. Deal with specific injustices that still exist. But at some point adults also have to build a life in the present.

I do not believe anyone should inherit permanent victimhood, and I do not believe anyone alive today should inherit permanent guilt.

Reconciliation without measurable goals, accountability or any conceivable end point stops looking like reconciliation to me, period.

Keep this up, and I am totally done with this.

September 20, 2026

What Caused the War of 1812?

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Real Time History
Published 17 Apr 2026

The War of 1812 broke out after a series of escalations between Great Britain and the still young United States. The impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy desperate to crew their ships in the ongoing war against Napoleon, the question if the US could trade with Britain and France at the same time and thus profit of the war, all came to a head after failed negotiations.
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July 7, 2026

The Democratic Socialists of America

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Cynical Publius sounds the warning about the impending takeover of the Democratic party by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA):

Logo of the Democratic Socialists of America

Since 2023, I have kept the same pinned post because I feel that post (the one discussing “my side of history”) is the most important sentiment I have ever posted on this platform.

For the short-term future, however, I am changing that pinned post to this one, because it is of such crucial importance to our nation’s survival.

Here goes.

The Democrat Party is in the process of being taken over by the Democrat Socialists of America (the “DSA”).

The DSA is an explicitly Marxist organization.

Marxism has impoverished more people and genocidally murdered more of humanity than all other ideologies ever to exist in human history combined.

It is a grotesque form of evil that is wholly incompatible with the Constitution of the United States of America.

Marxism in all its forms must be reviled and publicly treated with the same disdain with which intelligent adults view Naziism, pedophilia, serial murderers and cannibalism.

Do not back down. Each and every time you encounter Marxism in any of its forms, please call it out for the evil that it is. It is a rapidly metastasizing cancer that can only be defeated by public awareness.

Thank you.

Tom Knighton reacts to another self-identified Democratic Socialist’s criticisms of America:

… when I see someone like this, I have to think this should be automatically disqualifying for office.

    Pennsylvania state and socialist Chris Rabb, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, has joined the growing chorus of Democrats denouncing the founding documents and core institutions in the country on our 250th anniversary. The Democratic socialist is running unopposed for Congress and will almost certainly be a member of Congress after November.

    Rabb spoke at an event billed as “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth” at People’s Plaza on Independence Mall in Philadelphia.

    He denounced the country as based on “stolen land and stolen labor.” He lashed out at the Declaration of Independence:

    Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples … It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples. And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land & stolen labor.

Actually, I think the Declaration did provide independence to American Indians and black people. It just took way too long to be recognized.

Lincoln cites the concepts of the Declaration in the Gettysburg Address, and there’s little doubt that many of those who worked to end slavery did so because our nation was founded on the principle that all men were created equal.

It should have been a given, granted, and I have no problem with anyone taking issue with the imperfect application of that concept, because that’s legitimate. The thing is, we fought an entire war to end slavery once and for all. As many as 750,000 Americans lost their lives in that war, and it was ultimately worth it to end that particular scourge.

Yet I find it disgusting that while socialists like Rabb will cite that imperfect application of natural rights as an evil, they completely ignore the blood price this country paid to end that scourge.

[…]

How can someone like this want to serve a nation they despise? He’s not really looking to make it better; he’s looking to destroy the nation it is in favor of something it was never meant to be. It’s not about improving it. It’s about overturning it.

I’m still flabbergasted that “Democratic Socialism” is taking hold as strongly as it has, especially considering socialism’s track record in the 20th Century, and while I believe Rabb has the right to say whatever retarded thing he wants, I also believe the voters of this country should see that kind of rhetoric as disqualifying for public office.

Yes, that includes the Democrats.

Unfortunately, they nominated him, and he’s far from the only DSA nutball who has won their primary this election cycle.

Remember, boys and girls: You can vote yourself into socialism, but you’ll have to shoot your way out.

Andrew Sullivan is also concerned with the DSA consuming the rest of the Democratic party:

I’d say the DSA is to the Democrats in the 2020s what the John Birch Society was to the GOP in the 1950s. But the Dems won’t expel or cauterize them, so dozens of DSA candidates are surging to victory this year, from Colorado to New York State, with a big boost from Mayor Mamdani and Hasan Piker.

The DSA backs Hamas terrorism, the Maduro regime in Venezuela, and the Castro tyranny in Cuba. Its new platform — to be voted on next month — supports “scrapping the U.S. Senate, ‘abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state’, defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and ‘replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress’.”

Jon Chait has a good rundown of the the group’s darker undercurrents. Last year, they amended their founding documents to allow members of communist cells to join. The DSA “Red Star Caucus” brags:

    We in Red Star are communists who believe that DSA is the most effective place to serve the socialist movement … We call on all communists in the United States to join us in the democratic struggle within DSA … as we continue to improve the democratic structures of DSA, and as communists contest for and win hegemony within the organization, we continue to move toward a revolutionary horizon.

When Donald Trump calls someone a commie, it’s a good rule to ignore him. This time, he’s right. Lenin-fan Darializa Avila Chevalier showed up to a pro-Hamas rally on October 8, as bodies still lay on the ground at a music festival — yes, that’s how deep the Israel-hatred runs. She supports abolishing all prisons, police, and national borders. Her now-deleted Twitter discourse is a 2020 fever dream: “Yes, literally, abolish the border”, “Seize the means of production”, “ALL PIGS EVERYWHERE ARE HARAM”. She also converted to Islam. Check out her answer to the simple question, “What should happen to somebody who has killed somebody else?” It’ll take a while.

Claire Valdez, another primary winner, pledges to abolish ICE and nationalize the airline industry. Melat Kiros, who defeated a staunch progressive in Denver, is more rooted in opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and “genocide” in Gaza. She refused to condemn as antisemitic the fatal firebombing of a solidarity walk for Israeli hostages. It was merely “anti-Zionist.” Israel is increasingly the dominant fixation among the activist left — just ask Scott Wiener.

After this wave of extremism, you might expect some Democratic pushback. And some came: a new group of 13 House Dems signed a “Promise to America”, rejecting socialism. “We disagree with MAGA. We disagree with socialists”, Congressman Tom Suozzi said. “We don’t want this extremism. We want mainstream.” But 13 signatures are not much against a growing and organized machine. And the pressure more broadly is on the critics: “You are creating the antagonistic dynamic that we do not need”, AOC said. “These are two young, talented, intelligent women that got elected against all odds, against millions of dollars. Perhaps there is something we can learn from them.” There is: communism.

July 1, 2026

Scholarship replaced by elitist gatekeeping and bad faith

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It is possible — in fact, essential — to discover and disseminate the facts about Indian Residential Schools. Repeating the unproven (and to many, deeply discredited) narrative and denouncing those seeking the facts as “denialists” has nothing to do with scholarship but it’s very much in line with gatekeeping:

Kamloops Indian Residential School, 1930.
Photo from Archives Deschâtelets-NDC, Richelieu via Wikimedia Commons.

Let’s be honest about what is happening in this video.

This is not academic debate. It is a character attack dressed up as scholarship.

Dr. Travis Hay’s presentation at Mount Royal University, uploaded by Frances Widdowson under the title “Bad Faith: Residential School Denialism and the Academy”, is deeply disappointing. I expected a serious lecture. I expected evidence, argument, and a careful dismantling of claims he believes are wrong.

Instead, what we get is a bad faith lecture.

So yes, Bad Faith is a good title. Just not for the reason Hay thinks.

The real bad faith is pretending to defend scholarship while avoiding the hard work of open debate.

Hay spends much of the lecture drawing a line between “good faith” and “bad faith” criticism. But his standard for good faith appears to be simple: you may disagree only inside the boundaries of the approved framework. You can quibble over details. You can adjust the margins. You can offer polite corrections.

But if you challenge the premise itself, suddenly you are no longer mistaken. You are morally defective. You are a “denialist”, a “grievance merchant”, or some broken person who must be pushed outside respectable academic life.

That is not scholarship. That is gatekeeping.

None of this requires minimizing the real harm done by residential schools. It simply means historical claims should be open to examination. Evidence should be tested. Terms should be defined. Numbers should be scrutinized. Arguments should be answered.

Instead, Hay leans heavily on moral outrage, personal denunciation, and guilt by association. Rather than carefully taking apart Widdowson’s arguments, he drags in old controversies involving other people, uses emotional anecdotes, and builds a mood where the audience is being told what to feel before they are allowed to think.

The most revealing part is the conclusion. Hay says people like Widdowson do not belong in the academy. In other words, the answer to uncomfortable academic work is not better evidence, better reasoning, or open debate. It is expulsion.

That should bother everyone.

A university that cannot tolerate dissent is not protecting knowledge. It is protecting doctrine.

If Widdowson is wrong, prove it. Debate her. Bring the evidence. Take her claims apart in public. That is what serious scholars are supposed to do.

But when the response is censorship, exclusion, and personal insult, it starts to look less like confidence and more like fear.

I came away from viewing this lecture disappointed. Not because Hay disagrees with Widdowson. Disagreement is the whole point of academic life. I was disappointed because the lecture showed so little faith in the public’s ability to hear competing arguments and judge the evidence for themselves.

This lecture does not prove that Widdowson’s arguments are wrong. It proves that parts of the academy no longer know how to handle a serious challenge without reaching for moral panic and professional exile.

June 17, 2026

Canada’s new civic religion, with the “land acknowledgement” as the daily rite

Filed under: Cancon, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

L. Wayne Mathison shows how cultural boundaries changed radically over relatively short periods of time in what is now Manitoba, rather discrediting the fairy tale we tell our children about pre-contact First Nations living in peace and harmony:

Canada’s institutional obsession with land acknowledgements and historical guilt has officially jumped the shark.

Every university lecture, corporate meeting, school event, and government memo now seems to begin with the same rehearsed confession about whose land we are supposedly standing on. It has become a civic ritual, complete with liturgy, original sin, and mandatory public piety.

Strip away the administrative sermonizing and the whole thing rests on a very shaky version of history.

We are expected to pretend pre-contact North America was a peaceful, static, eco-friendly paradise where distinct peoples lived in permanent harmony until Europeans arrived and ruined everything.

That is not history. That is mythology.

Worse, it is patronizing. It strips Indigenous peoples of their full humanity by pretending they were somehow immune to the normal forces that shaped every other society on earth: ambition, conflict, trade, migration, alliance, conquest, revenge, and expansion.

The actual history of this continent was not a postcard. It was dynamic, complex, and often brutal.

The Haudenosaunee expansion during the Beaver Wars reshaped huge parts of what is now Southern Ontario. The Huron-Wendat, Neutral, and Erie peoples were devastated, displaced, or absorbed through war and political domination.

On the plains, the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Iron Confederacy, and others fought long struggles over territory, trade, horses, resources, and survival. Peoples moved. Borders shifted. Alliances formed and collapsed. Some groups conquered. Some retreated. Some disappeared into larger political orders.

History did not begin when Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence.

This land was already a theatre of power, movement, conflict, diplomacy, and displacement long before Europeans arrived.

The modern Canadian narrative treats European colonisation as a unique cosmic crime, as if conquest and territorial displacement were invented in 1492. They were not. Europeans arrived as a technologically dominant global power and did what powerful groups had done across human history, including on this continent.

That does not make the suffering harmless. It does not erase broken treaties, residential schools, forced relocations, or government abuse. Those things happened, and they matter.

But a serious country cannot build its future on a childish version of the past.

Every habitable part of the world has been taken, lost, fought over, inherited, traded, defended, and taken again. The people Europeans encountered were not frozen in moral perfection. They were human beings living inside history, not outside it.

The guilt industry does not repair the past. It often paralyzes the present.

Canada cannot move forward by treating itself as a permanent crime scene or by dividing citizens into inherited moral categories of “settler” and “Indigenous”.

We can tell the truth about cruelty, conquest, broken promises, and injustice without pretending history had a correct stopping point right before European ships appeared.

A mature country does not need ritual guilt.

It needs honesty, equal citizenship, legal clarity, and the courage to build a future instead of endlessly prosecuting the past.

June 5, 2026

Canada’s AI “strategy”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’m at the point where I honestly can’t tell whether this is parody or actual Canadian government policy:

AI in Canada lost before it even got started.

They literally are trying to get AI to give a Land acknowledgement before any session.

Here are 6 statements that show how Canada already blew AI like we all knew it would.

1. “The Government of Canada commits to applying Gender-Based Analysis Plus in a meaningful way across policy design, skills development, innovation, and governance to ensure that AI reflects our values, protects those most impacted, and leads to outcomes that are safe, inclusive, and beneficial for all Canadians.”

2. “Canadian AI must support, reflect, and project Canadian culture, which includes our customs, our history, and our heritage. Canadian voices, languages, communities, and knowledge must also be represented in how AI systems are designed, built, and used.”

3. “support Indigenous self-determination over how AI is built and used in Indigenous contexts, and build domestic capacity to address the specific harms Indigenous Peoples face”.

4. “promote the world’s first AI equity-based national standard on accessible AI to drive inclusive and accessible AI and remove accessibility barriers from AI systems, and ensure Canadian AI reflects the Accessible Canada Act principles.”

5. Repeated framing around “disproportionate exposure and impacts of AI harms to equity-seeking groups” and the need to “address the systemic barriers experienced by racialized communities, persons living with disabilities, and others who too often fall on the wrong side of the digital divide”.

6. “Canada will support and amplify Indigenous-led AI initiatives that reinforce cultural expression and linguistic vitality in Canada and around the world, building on existing efforts …”

May 30, 2026

Unlike Canada, Sweden can have a sensible, rational public discussion on indigenous issues

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Yeah, I know. I’m just as shocked as you are, but Warren Mirko and Laurisa Dohm have the receipts:

“Swedish flag” by JSolomon is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

Something happened in Sweden recently that would be nearly unthinkable in Canada.

There was a substantive public discourse about the tension between Indigenous rights, the broader public interest, and the state’s jurisdiction, in prominent newspapers and on television.

Ebba Busch, Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, stood at a press conference in Luleå and argued that reindeer herding should no longer be classified as a riksintresse, a formal national interest designation that grants legal protection in land-use planning. She proposed that reindeer stocks should be cut and subsidies re-allocated to other cultural programs in order to ease tensions between competing land-use interests in northern Sweden. Her reasoning: reindeer herding affects very large areas of Sweden’s land mass but carries limited economic significance.

The response was immediate. Indigenous Sámi groups called it election propaganda. The chairman of Girjas Sámi village published a rebuttal arguing that Sámi rights to hunt and fish are grounded in ancient tradition, and that her party’s framing mischaracterizes those rights as economic interest rather than constitutionally recognized Indigenous rights. The Swedish public broadcaster’s own reporter called the debate “a hornet’s nest“.

And yet the debate actually took place. On the nightly news, no less.

Deputy Prime Minister Busch made a substantive argument about how she thinks the state should weigh competing interests in its northern regions, with her reasoning stated plainly, and Sámi leaders answered in kind. That is democratic governance.

Canada’s political class has spent decades avoiding exactly this kind of clarity and honest intellectual engagement. It has been sacrificed at the altar of conflict avoidance and by the acceptance of canned platitudes carefully crafted to say precisely nothing at all.

Sweden ranks fourth in the world on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, with a near perfect score of 9.4/10 for political culture. It also takes Indigenous rights seriously, having established an independent truth commission in 2020 to study historical abuses against the Sámi.

And yet Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld the government’s decision in June 2024 to grant an iron ore mining concession at Kallak in northern Lapland, despite contentious opposition and legal arguments that insufficient consultation had violated Sámi’s rights to free, prior, and informed consent. Now, its Deputy Prime Minister is arguing publicly that the state must regain clearer authority to make decisions across its entire territory, and that the interests of reindeer herding cannot be allowed to dominate and block decision making processes as they do today.

Sadly, Canada does not seem to take lessons from more mature nations. Or any lessons, really. Our politicians are so afraid of “third rail” issues and controversy that they avoid any hint of actually addressing real problems in favour of performative announcements, repeated endlessly with no attempt to actually perform actions.

May 12, 2026

Indian Pudding – America’s Forgotten Dessert

Filed under: Food, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 18 Nov 2025

Rather unattractive, but delicious, molasses and cornmeal baked pudding with whipped cream

City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1829

Indian pudding, a perfect marriage of new world and old world cooking, resulted from British colonists making familiar foods with the ingredients that were available to them in America. Without access to wheat flour, they used cornmeal to make their beloved boiled puddings, and by the time this recipe came around in 1829, there were baked versions as well.

While an admittedly unattractive dish, it is absolutely delicious. The molasses really comes through, but it has none of the bitterness, leaving an almost caramelly flavor.

This dish has fallen out of favor and can usually only be found in New England, but I think it should make a comeback. If you’re planning on serving it for Thanksgiving (which I plan on doing), then I recommend presenting it dressed up with whipped cream to make it, if not pretty, then more palatable-looking.
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May 8, 2026

National Indigenous History Month in Ontario schools

Filed under: Cancon, Education, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Igor Stravinsky outlines what Ontario schools will be focusing on this June instead of in addition to the normal provincial school curriculum:

Image from the Senate of Canada via Woke Watch Canada

50+ years ago, public schools in Ontario started the day with Bible readings and a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Critical Theory, the philosophical and pedagogical approach in force these days in schools is the new religion. It is based on the (unproven) premise that society is rife with power structures, inequalities, and oppression, and asserts that education is inherently political rather than neutral. “Marginalized” students (non-Whites, especially males, plus Whites who are not heterosexual or able-bodied) are to be “centered”. This supposedly promotes “Social Justice”, which is basically the absurd and asinine idea that every aspect of society should be represented by all conceivable identity groups in proportion to their numbers in the general population. It is equality of outcome, not opportunity.

As Indigenous people rank high on the pyramid of oppression, every day is a day of Indigenous recognition in most public schools in Ontario. Students are asked to stand quietly every morning to hear the Indigenous Land Acknowledgement, which is the same text day after day, just like the Lord’s Prayer used to be. But June is special. It is National Indigenous History Month.

During June, students can expect to get hit with an extra large dose of affirmation of their original social justice sin. If you can’t trace your ancestry back to a person who lived here before first contact between Europeans and Indigenous people, then you are a “settler colonist”. This technically means anyone, but of course the main targets of the social justice warriors are European descended people. Just immigrated from Poland last week? Start groveling. You’re White, and that’s that.

The themes of the month are really the same as the ones presented to students all year, just more intensively: Prior to contact with Europeans, Indigenous people lived in peace and harmony with each other and lived sustainably and in sync with nature. Settler ways are depicted as based on greed and a reckless plundering of the lands, along with utter disregard for the wise ways of living of the Indigenous people, who were to be forcibly assimilated into Western ways.

Of course, students in our schools should be learning about the history of Indigenous people, just as they should be learning about the conditions in which so many Indigenous people struggle and suffer today. But that is not the objective of Indigenous History Month or any of the other long list of Annual Indigenous Days of Significance. This year, National Indigenous Peoples day, June 21st, falls on Fathers Day. Luckily, it is a Sunday, so schools won’t be able to erase that. Social Justice warriors hate Fathers Day even more than Mothers Day. If there is one thing they can’t stand, it’s the nuclear family.

Also this year, the fifth anniversary of the false claim by the Kamloops Indian Band that the remains of 215 murdered residential school children had been confirmed in the apple orchard outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (May 27) will have just passed. Even the band itself now admits, on their website, that all that was discovered was soil “anomalies”. The technician who performed the ground penetrating radar survey told them there were 200 targets of interest and only excavations could confirm burials (she initially identified 215 but reduced that to 200 when she discovered, after the fact, the part of her survey area had already been excavated and no one had found any bodies there). Of course, even if you found burials, you would need forensic work to determine the identity of the bodies and the cause of death. The band has been paid over 12 million dollars to do that work but they haven’t done anything.

April 15, 2026

MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ is “a case study in progressive linguistic self-sabotage”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Quillette, Jonathan Kay highlights how NDP politician Leah Gazan’s freshly coined replacement for our already over-long initialism for other-than-cis-gendered individuals has been a boon to online commentators and comedians across the internet:

While the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was announced in 2015, its final report wasn’t published until mid-2019. The three-and-a-half year period in between overlapped with Justin Trudeau’s manic campaign to replace the idea of biological “women” in public discourse with faddish gender-inclusive terms that describe female-identified men. The initialism he eventually came up with is “2SLGBTQI+” (whose “2S” component signifies a special — albeit ill-defined — “two-spirited” LGBT category that Indigenous people can opt into).

And so, channelling the state-of-the-art in Canadian gender jargon, the Inquiry’s commissioners duly expanded references to Indigenous “women” by addition of the words “… and 2SLGBTQQIA people” — i.e. Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual.

The term “2SLGBTQQIA” appears in the final report 1,197 times. Agglomerating that with the original “MMIWG” mandate yields “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA”.

Detail from page 229 of The Final Report Of The National Inquiry Into Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women And Girls.

If this unbreakable wi-fi code sounds familiar, it’s because a Canadian MP named Leah Gazan just became an international laughingstock for using it at a televised 8 April news conference. (Indeed, she lengthened it even further by adding a plus sign to the end — suggesting that yet more letters, numbers, and/or symbols are on their way.) This unintentional comedy routine was made all the more meme-worthy by the casual, deadpan, en passant way the sixteen-character term rolled off Gazan’s tongue, as if it were a set of ASCII characters that ordinary Canadians ran together all the time in normal day-to-day discussions.

As some Canadians (including me) tried to explain on social media, “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” is not a commonly used term outside of activist circles. I also let people know that Gazan is not a Canadian government representative (as was being claimed), but rather a member of a small and increasingly radicalised hard-left federal party known as the New Democrats.

But by then, no one was in the mood for such nuances. Elon Musk‘s three-word tweet on the subject — “Canada is cooked” — has, as of this writing, garnered more than half a million likes and 77 million views. Thanks to Gazan, millions of people around the world now believe that ordinary Canadians talk in this ridiculous fashion. We don’t.

Gazan told CBC News that the whole episode only goes to show that “bigots are offended by my positions around equality”. A more useful lesson she might take away from this experience is that the use of cultish ideological jargon can turn discussion of even the most serious issue into a farce. This is especially true when terms such as “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” (or “menstruators”, or “uterus-havers”, or “people with a vagina”) are used to soothe the sensitivities of men who demand the right to be called women.

April 10, 2026

“MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Another Canadian interest group decided that their already oversized abbreviation needed to be super-sized. Jonathan Kay provides some useful context for those not familiar with Canadian domestic politics:

Canadian here, with four (count em) points of clarification on the “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” thing, which has now escaped its absurdist Canadian genderwang containment chamber, and gone viral internationally:

1) the speaker here is @LeahGazan, a fringe minor-party politician. She’s not in the government. She regularly calls for dumb things, such as criminalizing anyone who dares talk candidly about the 2021-era unmarked-graves social panic. CBC types treat her as a serious person because she’s indigenous and because she always talks in the tear-drenched idiom of white-settler colonial evilness. But she’s not.

2) MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ is a mashup of two acronyms (each unique to Canada). Her decision to run them together is hilarious, which is why this has gone viral, but it’s not a common practice, even in rarefied leftist circles.

3) MMIWG refers to “Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls”. The problem of violence against indigenous women is a real and tragic issue. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, a bunch of activists produced a ridiculous report on the subject that called it a “continuing” (!!!) “genocide”, and demanded that we all call it that. The whole movement collapsed when it was pointed out that something like 80% of the indigenous women who are killed are killed by indigenous men, which is very much off-message from the whole white colonial G-word thing. But the acronym still gets name-dropped when people are indicting Canada for all its infinitely genocidey genociding of everybody

4) “2SLGBTQetcetc…” Americans always ask me what “2S” stands for. It stands for “2 spirited,” a term that white academics popularized 50 years ago to give expression to their mystical reveries about sacred indigenous elf-people living in some precolonial eden-like genderwang Nirvana where everyone has three penises and five vaginas. No one is allowed to ask what the term even means, but our government made it official policy to use ridiculous words like this under Trudeau, so we’re stuck with it. Basically, if you’re an indigenous guy who likes to wear eyeliner, or an indigenous woman with blue hair and sensible shoes, you call yourself “2 spirited” on your govt grant applications. No one is even allowed to ask whether it’s a gender identity or a sexual orientation. It apparently exists in some exalted state that defies this kind of rigid colonial typology, or something like that.

Back in 2022, I read a whole report about how to teach two spirited concepts to Canadian students, and it turned out that even the authors of the report admitted they had no idea what the term meant. I wrote about it for @Quillette: https://quillette.com/blog/2022/10/0

March 25, 2026

UNDRIP’s malign power in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) has been adopted into law by the provincial government in British Columbia and the federal government. In BC, voters were assured that this was a purely symbolic act to advance reconciliation with First Nations groups in the province. But that was deliberate misdirection and lies:

During the debate on DRIPA [BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act] in the legislature in late 2019, government ministers of the day waxed lyrical that DRIPA and UNDRIP created no new rights, had no legal force, did not apply to private land, and did not provide a veto. Those assurances were used to justify passing DRIPA, which resulted in the B.C. Opposition unanimously supporting the legislation. It turns out that the government’s assessment and promises were neither correct in substance nor valid legally.

Much has been written lately about DRIPA, some of it wrong. Prior to the B.C. Court of Appeal decision in Gitxaala, some DRIPA defenders insisted it was merely a “process” piece of legislation that bound the government to an arguably undemocratic joint government and Indigenous leadership arrangement, set out in section 3, to evaluate every B.C. statute for conformity with the 46 Articles of UNDRIP and then amend statutes as deemed necessary to create that conformity.

DRIPA itself, though arguably highly undemocratic and perhaps unconstitutional, is not the real problem in this province. The real problem is that DRIPA has been effectively employed as a “smokescreen” by the B.C. NDP and certain of its allies, while the government, secretly and with no explicit public mandate, imposes the Articles of UNDRIP throughout B.C. as a fundamental matter of policy, as though they have the force of law.

Let’s be clear, this is a devious political manoeuvre, much of which is not underpinned in law by DRIPA or, more importantly, by Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence at all.

Notwithstanding statements made to the legislature in 2019 to get DRIPA passed, the NDP government immediately chose to implement a policy approach to UNDRIP throughout B.C. under which UNDRIP Articles would be applied by the government and the public service as though they were, in fact, the law in this province, notwithstanding the fact that they are inconsistent in many respects with Canadian constitutional law.

In the wake of recent court decisions, there is no indication that the government’s policy approach has changed or that the Premier is thinking about backing away from it, even though there is now much greater public scrutiny of what the government has really been up to since 2019.

The Eby government claims to be upset that UNDRIP is now being applied by the courts as the law in B.C., which it knows will create utter chaos. What has upset it more, however, is that the courts have usurped the NDP government’s desire to quietly and secretly implement UNDRIP everywhere in the province as a matter of policy, a policy that they would like to be viewed as law but without being legally enforceable by judges.

This amounts to a policy of subterfuge by a government that has shown an inclination towards deception on matters concerning First Nations. It appears that a law is not a law unless the B.C. government says it is a law, but some laws, like DRIPA, can be used as a false “front” to allow the covert implementation of a complex UN-based policy that is clearly unfit for the Canadian context, with no one being the wiser.

In the National Post, Warren Mirko explains the murky theory that allows “indigenous ways of knowing” to be taken more seriously than science, history, and legal procedure:

Canada is rapidly abandoning a principle that has shaped western democracies since the Enlightenment: the idea that no person or group has privileged access to sacred or divine knowledge unavailable to everyone else.

Now, this principle is being threatened by Canada’s increasing embrace of “Indigenous Knowledge” — whereby knowledge is treated as collectively owned and restricted by ancestry rather than something open to examination and shared across society.

The governments of British Columbia and Canada — both of which have formally adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) — endorse “Indigenous Knowledge” as inherited, rooted in ancestral relationships to the land, and encompassing spiritual, cultural and metaphysical dimensions passed down through generations.

Remarkably, the defining quality to possess this knowledge is not study, training, time spent on the land, or lived experience by any individual alive today. Instead, it’s lineage itself.

That’s a paradigm shift. When knowledge is said to be possessed by birth rather than learned, its universality is replaced with mysticism and its value diminished.

This comes with real-world consequences: ancestry-based considerations are reshaping how public land and resources are managed on Canadians’ behalf.

In British Columbia, newly proposed changes to hunting and wildlife regulations are described as being informed by “the best available science and Indigenous Knowledge“. In practice, this means “Indigenous Knowledge” is being used to design a regulatory regime that falls almost entirely on non-Indigenous users. That’s because Indigenous harvesting rights are recognized under Section 35 of the Constitution, not bound by the same hunting seasons, bag limits, gear restrictions, or limited-entry systems that apply to the broader public.

The growing influence of this genetically transmitted, ancestry-qualified knowledge extends to matters of public safety and economic security, like nuclear regulation: “Indigenous ways of knowing and the Indigenous cultural context enhance the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s understanding of the potential impacts of nuclear projects and strengthen the rigour of project reviews and regulatory oversight”, says the government of Canada website.

Governments championing the principles of UNDRIP insist that “Indigenous Knowledge” can be combined with “Western” science to produce better public policy. But this is a contradiction. Knowledge cannot at once be exclusive and universal.

March 7, 2026

“Canadians were told there were 215 graves”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, John Rustad expresses his anger at the federal government’s apparent connivance in concealing information from Canadians in the not-really-an-investigation into the alleged mass graves at a former Residential School in British Columbia:

Canadians were told there were 215 graves.

The country lowered the national flag for months. Churches were burned. International headlines declared the discovery of mass graves at a former residential school. The federal government responded by allocating $12.1 million in taxpayer funding specifically to support investigation and exhumation work to verify those claims.

Now we learn that no remains have been exhumed.

At the same time, the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has released the activity reports tied to that funding, but every meaningful detail has been redacted. The reports describing what work was carried out, what investigations were conducted, and how public money was spent have been blacked out and labelled confidential.

That is unacceptable.

When the federal government spends millions of your taxpayer dollars to investigate a claim that shook the entire country, Canadians have a right to transparency. They have a right to know what work was performed, what evidence was found, and how their money was used.

This is not about denying history. It is not about attacking Indigenous communities. It is about basic public accountability.

If the government funded an investigation, the public deserves to see the results of that investigation.

Let me be clear: The records should be released in full. The spending should be explained clearly.

Canadians deserve the truth about what was done with their money. And if that money was not spent for the purpose it was granted for, then the public deserves accountability, including repayment of those funds.

March 3, 2026

New name for Vancouver incoming in 3 … 2 … 1…

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Canadian federal government is not eager to share the details of a new agreement they’ve signed with the Musqueam First Nation that apparently cedes most of the city of Vancouver to the band, casting the property rights of two million people into legal limbo:

The Liberal government is refusing to publicly release an agreement with the Musqueam Indian Band that recognizes Aboriginal title over a vast area of British Columbia, including Metro Vancouver and surrounding areas, potentially affecting nearly two million people.

Buried in a seemingly mundane fisheries announcement put out on February 20th, the acknowledgement could radically undermine property rights in one of Canada’s largest and most populated metropolitan regions.

On February 20, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada issued a news release with little fanfare titled “Musqueam and Canada Sign Historic Agreements Recognizing Rights, Stewardship and Fisheries”.

The news release reads: Canada “recognizes that Musqueam has Aboriginal rights including title within their traditional territory and establishes a framework for incremental implementation of rights and nation-to-nation relations with Canada”.

That phrase “including title” refers to Aboriginal title. Under Canadian constitutional law, Aboriginal title is a contentious but increasingly recognized property interest, affirmed by recent court rulings, including the controversial Cowichan decision. Courts have recognized Aboriginal title as a prior and senior right to land that critics say threatens fee simple title or traditional private property ownership in Canada.

The Musqueam Indian Band’s traditional territory encompasses virtually all of Metro Vancouver, including Vancouver, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, New Westminster, parts of Delta and Surrey and other regions.

Based on 2021 census and other data, that territory is home to an estimated 1.8 million British Columbians.

The federal government has now formally recognized in writing Musqueam Indian Band’s Aboriginal title over that territory, yet Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada refuses to make the agreement public.

The February 20 announcement specifically refers to the “šxʷq̓ʷal̕təl̕tən Rights Recognition Agreement”, described as recognizing Musqueam’s Aboriginal rights, “including title” and establishing a framework for implementation.

Musqueam Chief Wayne Sparrow emphasized the Aboriginal title component directly in the release:

    Our Musqueam community celebrates these historic agreements as a step forward in our path to Reconciliation. In signing these agreements, the Government of Canada is acknowledging Musqueam’s Aboriginal title and rights to our traditional territory and recognizing our expertise in both marine management and fisheries management.

But when Juno News requested a copy of the agreement from Crown-Indigenous Relations, the department’s media relations spokesperson Eric Head confirmed receipt of the request and then cut communication altogether, even when pressed to ask if the agreement would be made public.

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