Posted on
December 08, 2012 by
itccs
by Kevin D. Annett
Canada's version of the Punch and Judy Show granted us some more comic relief this past week.
On December 4, the self-appointed "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" (TRC, or Travelling Road Charade) announced that it planned to sue the federal government to get them to release Indian residential school documents.
That's a neat trick, you know: one branch of the government suing another. It's sort of like when the puppet Punch argues and fight with the other puppet Judy up on stage, beguiling the audience to think that there are two separate personalities in conflict when in reality a puppet master is manipulating both of them.
So let's pull back the stage and props, and look at what's actually happening.
Two points, first of all:
1. The TRC was established by the Prime Minister's Office and is funded and directed by Ottawa and the very churches that are being "investigated" by the TRC – like when a serial killer appoints his own judge and jury.
2. TRC officers have no power or authority to subpoena or demand any document or evidence, from anybody, including their government paymasters. That's right in their mandate, section two.
Such a gross example of criminals investigating themselves would never have been allowed in the first place, under any legitimate and fair system of law and government. But hey, this is Canada. The foxes not only guard the chicken house, but they also convince themselves that they`re just trying to help all those poor unfortunate birds.
Even with years of earnest showmanship and millions of dollars worth of the cheap duplicity that Canada is so renowned for, the TRC has been digging itself into a quagmire that is inevitable when a lie as big as theirs needs to be maintained.
For one thing, a lot of aboriginal survivors of Canada`s Christian death camps genuinely expect the TRC to do what it claims to be doing, and that is conduct a genuine inquiry into the more than 50,000 children who died in them.
Of course, the opposite is happening, as countless TRC participants have described: the TRC is systematically ignoring evidence of mass graves of these kids, suppressing evidence, and silencing any survivor who accuses the churches of genocide.
That's the Commission's purpose, after all: to exonerate the guilty and keep the witnesses censored, controlled and cowed. It's what the guilty do.
Nevertheless, one day there will have to be a public accounting of what exactly the rotund TRC Commissioners did for five years and what they spent $68 million on, besides sumptuous smorgasbords and ritzy conferences where few survivors actually spoke. And that day is fast approaching: by May 2013, the final report of the TRC's years of verbiage and posturing is expected to be issued.
So what would you do if you were Murray ("Eats Many Muffins") Sinclair, the chair of the TRC, when he's asked to explain what exactly they've unearthed after five years?
Simple: you create a big, distracting smokescreen by shifting the blame onto someone else.
Murray may be in a panic, or have shitty advisers, since who he's blaming for the TRC's failure happens to also be the very people who pay him: the government of Canada, who he claims has "concealed" crucial evidence from him!
Well, no shit, Sherlock. That's what you agreed to, remember?
Now at first blush, that whole scenario looks pretty stupid. But don't forget, it's all part of the Punch and Judy Show. Murray isn't really taking a whack at the other puppet on stage. That's all just for our entertainment and befuddlement.
It's all so familiar. Back in 2002, a similar stage-managed melodrama was concocted to exonerate the Canadian churches for their residential school atrocities. Here's how it worked:
One day, the Anglican Church announced to the media, without providing any proof, that they were "going bankrupt" because of all the lawsuits being brought against them by all those nasty survivors of Christian electric cattle prods. The corporate media dutifully repeated the church's claim to mass audiences, generating a public hysteria, at least among church goers. And then, equally dutifully, the Canadian government announced within a few days that, in response, it (meaning you, the taxpayers) would shoulder the main financial burden for residential school legal settlements.
Damn, that Punch and Judy arrangement really works, eh? The crooks get off the hook and the rest of us pay for it all!
And so while a lot of earnest internet-focused Canadians are scurrying around this week and falling for this latest ruse by demanding that the government produce those unnamed documents upon which the fate of the TRC apparently rests, Murray Sinclair and Stephen Harper are quietly arranging a repeat of the 2002 Big Fix that led to the indemnification of the churches for their unspeakable crimes against children.
The latest Fix and its oh-so-typical Maple Leaf scenario will run something like this:
Ottawa will agree to release previously-concealed documents that are "crucial" to the TRC, without actually letting anyone see the material, naturally – any more than we've ever been allowed to see any of the nebulous reports of murders and burials that the TRC refer to, now and then.
A grateful Murray Sinclair will then announce he's satisfied with Ottawa's gesture and that, consequently, the TRC will refrain from its planned "lawsuit" and will need more time to prepare its final report. An extension will once again be granted. More money will be heaped on the TRC and all the lawyers, more fog generated, more postponement and distraction.
Finally, sometime during the spring of 2013 it will be announced that a second round of TRC investigations is needed to get to the real heart of that "sad chapter in Canadian history". More delay and obfuscation. And by then, most of us simply won't care anymore, assuming that we do now.
The only other alternative to this scenario for Murray and the crew, of course, is simply to lie to us about everything in the form of yet another word-heavy but content-less "official report" that points no fingers for mass murder, and holds nobody liable, especially not the churches. That of course has already been arranged.
Last Monday, I sat with some of the few surviving residential school survivors in Vancouver's downtown east side. Of the more than fifty survivors who helped occupy churches and lead protests about the missing children only four years ago, there are not even ten of them who are still alive today.
I pointed that out to Frank, who saw three of his brothers and a sister die at the United Church "school" in Port Alberni. He just shrugged.
"That's the game plan" he remarked.
We all know the score. The only issue is, how long will we allow the Big Fix to carry on?
Being Canadians, probably indefinitely.
