The Kamloops graves question Wab Kinew won't answer, and Ottawa wants to outlaw
On Orange Shirt Day, Manitoba's premier stood in a long-marked cemetery and offered five old newspaper clippings as proof. They answer none of the questions still hanging over Kamloops, and Ottawa would rather make those questions a crime.
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Article by Rebel News staff.
Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: Manitoba's premier stands in a cemetery marked for decades, holds up five newspaper clippings and declares the graves debate over. In Kamloops, the potential graves still have never been excavated. And Ottawa wants to make asking about them a crime.
On Orange Shirt Day, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew posted a video from the cemetery of the old Brandon Indian Residential School, the day after his government bought the campground that sits on the site. He cast skeptics as "bad people" and treated the marked ground as the end of the argument. "Some bad people today say, 'show me the graves,'" he said. "Right here. We shouldn't have to prove the truth over and over again. But we will."
Then he held up his proof: five newspaper clippings. They do not show what he thinks they show.
In 1896, a 16-year-old died of a lung hemorrhage after the school telephoned the doctor. Staff did all they could to relieve him. A boy with bronchitis was taken home to Norway House by the principal himself. Janet Tait, 14, was buried in the school cemetery, her funeral announced in the paper, a minister officiating. Joseph Thibault died of tuberculosis in a Winnipeg hospital. Ewart Fiddler, 17, was killed by lightning on a summer farm job.
Not one act of malice appears in those accounts. Every death was written down at the time. In 1901, tuberculosis killed one Canadian in eight, and one baby in seven died before its first birthday. Disease and accident, recorded in the papers of the day.
Nor were these graves ever hidden. Kinew's own press release says the Brandon graves were "commemorated in 1963 and formally marked in 1970." The premier went looking for proof of a secret and found a cemetery everyone already knew about.
Nobody ever said children did not die at residential schools. The live dispute is Kamloops. In May 2021, the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced it had confirmed the remains of 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Seven weeks later, that became 200 targets of interest. The band's own release said only excavation could settle the question. More than five years and more than $9.5 million in federal money later, those potential graves, now described as anomalies, have never been excavated. No forensic dig has tested the original claim.
That is the question skeptics are asking. Known, marked graves in Manitoba cannot answer it. Unmarked ground in British Columbia that has never been opened cannot be settled by documented deaths in a documented cemetery. Offering one as proof of the other is not a rebuttal. It is a political trick.
Kamloops was back in the news on Sunday, for the wrong reasons. Masked protesters hung a "Got bones?" banner over the Trans-Canada Highway. It was rude, gross and cruel to families who buried children. It also handed the criminalize-the-question lobby its best gift in years.
Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the banner within a day. In March, signs showing Jews as rats and long-nosed monsters appeared at Bathurst and Sheppard, the same corner where a journalist was arrested in November 2024 while covering a pro-Hamas rally. From the same office: silence. One condemnation came fast. The other never came.
Kinew called skeptics "bad people." Ottawa wants to go further. Bill C-254 would make "condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying" the residential school system a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. In June, senators tried to bolt the same offence onto the government's hate speech bill and lost by nine votes. This week, B.C. chiefs called for the Criminal Code to be rewritten. Ottawa already runs a $5-million program against "casting doubt," a phrase wide enough to chill reporting and campus debate alike.
On campus, the chill has already arrived. Yesterday at the University of Calgary, 82-year-old retired professor Tom Flanagan and Drea Humphrey of Rebel News sat at a Canadian Students for Free Speech debate table and invited argument. A student called them "white supremacists." A crowd chanted "get off campus." A masked man emptied a full bottle of water over them. That was the answer to an open invitation to debate. Not rebuttal. Intimidation.
What the premier left out still sits in the public record. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission itself found that "many students have positive memories" of the schools. A band asked for a school to be built. Canada has paid $3.23 billion on 38,276 abuse claims.
So what do you call a claim of 215 that became 200, that became "anomalies," that nobody will dig up, and that some would send people to prison for questioning?
GUEST: William Diaz, National Director for Canadian Students for Free Speech on the campus assault that took place yesterday at Calgary University.
COMMENTS
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John Williams commented 2026-10-01 00:52:11 -0400 FlagGreat analysis Ezra as always. I fear because of wokeism we sleep walk into always infantilizing indiginous people and that they get get used to making a living off of victimhood and the billions keep on flowing. I want nothing more than for them to be successul and hate seeing them to always resort to the woe is us victims. -
Paul Scofield commented 2026-09-30 23:02:50 -0400Excellent, Mr. Jatzeck. Well done!
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Allan Young commented 2026-09-30 20:56:48 -0400 FlagEzra speaks the truth, and presents it with as much possible respect for all concerned as is humanly possible. Good reporting and respectful.
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Bruce Atchison commented 2026-09-30 20:43:55 -0400 FlagWab Kinew is a wacko! He’s also a racist. Sure boarding schools, like the one I was exiled to, are horrid but there was no genecidal move by the government and churches. The goal was to prepare indigenous students to work in society.
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Bernhard Jatzeck commented 2026-09-30 20:33:03 -0400 Flag“He will lie, sir, with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool.”
William Shakespeare, “All’s Well That Ends Well”, Act 4, Scene III -
Matt Abrahams commented 2026-09-30 20:17:17 -0400 Flag“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” —Joseph Goebbels
