(LifeSiteNews) — The government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has produced a video seemingly justifying the intentional burning of numerous churches across Canada since 2021.
In a video published January 9, CBC reporter Terry Reith investigated the recent church burnings across Canada, leaving viewers with the impression that the arson was justified considering the Catholic Church’s alleged crimes against Indigenous peoples through the now-defunct residential school system.
“All natives were forced to go to church, colonization, right,” Clarence Louie, long-time chief of the Osoyoos Indian Band told CBC on the way to St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in Osoyoo, British Columbia, which was burned down in 2021 following the discovery of 215 so-called “unmarked” graves in Kamloops, British Columbia.
“I’m pissed at the church. I got no respect for the church,” he added, asserting, “That cross has done so much damage, (…) caused so much grief, and killed so many people.”
Louie added that he was “forced” to go into the St. Gregory’s church as a child.
Recalling the night of the fire, Louie explained that he was not “teary-eyed,” but rather, he was “upset that some res punks did arson,” adding that the arsonists “didn’t ask for permission from the rest of the community.”
The CBC attributed the fires to the “discovery of potential unmarked graves” in 2021, neglecting to mention that excavations at the schools have failed to produce evidence of human remains, and that the entire narrative is based on soil disturbances picked up by ground-penetrating radar.
Despite this, Reith claimed the fires “stirred up long simmering anger and resentment with the Church particularly in the Indigenous Community.”
The CBC continued to suggest that the fires were justified, interviewing University of Alberta in Edmonton’s Paulina Johnson, who asserted the burnings were a way for the Indigenous to express themselves.
“I think for many Indigenous peoples it gives them a voice because for the longest time Canada hasn’t really actually acknowledged us,” she said.
“They’re much more than just arson,” Johnson added. “It’s a greater symbolic kind of narrative of Canada and Canada’s relationship to Indigenous peoples which is really lacking (…) because no one’s really addressing the truth of what Indigenous peoples are facing.”
According to the CBC report, 33 churches have been burned down since the misleading 2021 reports. However, according to a map created by independent media outlet True North, 44 churches have been burned, while 52 others have been vandalized.
Shifting the blame to the Catholic Church
In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the once-mandatory residential schools.
Despite the lack of evidence of any human remains, last year, Canada’s House of Commons under Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, declared that the residential school system was to be formally defined as a “genocide.
The CBC, which gets 70 percent of its operating budget via tax dollars from the federal government, along with Trudeau, have apparently chosen the Catholic Church as a scapegoat for the Canadian government’s residential school program – and have failed to clarify that much of what was reported about the schools and the Church, is to this day unproved.
Canada’s residential school system was a structure of boarding schools funded by the Canadian government that ran from the late 19th century until the last school closed in 1996.
Residential schools, while run by members of Catholic religious orders, were funded and created by the Canadian government. Evidence has revealed that many of the children tragically passed away as a result of unsanitary conditions due to the federal government, not the Catholic Church, failing to properly fund the system.
Additionally, the Department of Indian Affairs often refused to ship home the bodies of children who died at the government-mandated schools, meaning they were frequently buried on site.
Catholic author Michael O’Brien, who attended residential schools and gave testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, previously told LifeSiteNews that the chief underlying issue in the residential school saga was the institutional abuse of children by removing them from their families. But it was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), acting under the direction of the Canadian government, that forcibly removed Indigenous children from their parents’ homes to attend the schools. The RCMP also served as truant officers, hunting down children who ran away from the schools and returning them to the government-run institutions.
Many Indigenous children loved Catholic schools prior to residential school system
In the 17th century, Catholic nuns established the first schools for Aboriginal children in Upper Canada. The nuns received no compensation but freely and lovingly taught, washed, dressed, and fed the young Aboriginal students.
The schools were intended to educate and teach new skills to the Aboriginal children in order to develop a shared culture in the new country of Canada.
Female students at these schools expressed gratitude in letters recorded by the Jesuit Recollections. One student wrote, “[m]y good Mother, I am about to leave. I thank you for having taken such care of me, and for having taught me to serve God well. Do I thank you for a trifling matter? I shall never forget it.”
Unfortunately, instead of acknowledging the facts and accepting responsibility, Trudeau, the CBC, and the mainstream media apparatus more broadly continue to shift the blame on to the Catholic Church, and apparently even feel comfortable justifying criminal acts of arson that their own disinformation has inspired.