Pallister's speech was vague & offensive

Did Brian Pallister get a bad rap? The premier of Manitoba has fallen into a curious bout of difficulty after making some gooey prepared remarks in the wake of Canada Day, when statues of Queens Victoria and Elizabeth II were toppled on the province's legislature grounds. Pallister didn't like the vandalism very much, which puts him on the same side as 80 or 90 per cent of Canadians; but if he said something prejudiced or ahistorical, the condemnation he received is still well justified.

Since giving his little talk he has repeatedly urged journalists and voters to read his remarks as he gave them and judge him on that basis. This was seen by some as “doubling down.” But the problem with his remarks, it should not surprise you to hear, wasn't that they contained any frank racism, even if the opposition leader used that word.

Frankly, there isn't much solid content to Pallister's comments at all. He spoke in general terms of a preference for living with our heritage rather than literally tearing it down. “The people who came here to this country, before it was a country and since, didn't come here to destroy anything; they came here to build,” Pallister said. This was taken to be praise for adventuring European colonists.

Pallister's defence, offered later, was that his reference to “people who came here to this country” was intended to include Aboriginals, and that he never used either of the words “colonists” or “Europeans.” A prosecutor accusing Pallister could point out that when he was challenged on the allegedly constructive nature of Canada's past, he talked about two literal colonies, the Icelanders of the Interlake area and the Selkirk Settlement.

Anyway, Pallister concluded with a long rap about how Canada, whatever its undeniable past faults, is now a land of personal freedom, opportunity, and enterprise. He calls the country a giant “construction project.” He used the renewal of the residential schools scandal as an awkward launching point for some Conservative-style bootstraps talk:

“In the dialogue about residential schools, these discoveries — not new discoveries, but new to many Canadians, most certainly — has created an awareness and I think a greater willingness to pursue equality of opportunity for all Canadians than has existed before, and in the springboard that we hope is coming post-pandemic, greater opportunities for things like skills development and for jobs and careers for all Canadians.”

With its mangled grammar and infernal parentheticals, it doesn't look as good on the page as the premier perhaps thought it might. But this is a “read the room” offence, which is not to suggest it isn't a severe example of one. Politicians can be properly condemned for creating the wrong mood. If Pallister wanted to condemn vandalism, it ought not to have taken an extended precis of the history of Canada to do that. If, on the other hand, he wanted to present a mural-sized image of Canada as a construction project, the bones its foundation sits upon ought to be treated with proper regard, and not made an occasion for a jobs speech.

But if Pallister's offence was vague, the critiques offered of his speech weren't any better in terms of specificity. When Pallister's Indigenous affairs minister quit cabinet, the reactions mostly took the form “Well, sure, how could she go on working for someone like that?”

What's more interesting is the pickle that Eileen Clarke's replacement landed himself in within, perhaps, minutes of taking on the portfolio. Alan Lagimodiere was given a turn in the media dunk tank for saying that the creators of residential schools “really thought that they were doing the right thing.” We now disapprove of their culturally insensitive and austere methods, he said, but “the residential school system was designed to take Indigenous children and give them the skills and abilities they would need to fit into society as it moved forward.”

Pallister's problematic words were mostly half-decipherable wind, but Lagimodiere's are different: they in fact state a flat factual truth, despite the horrified reaction. The architects and operators of the residential schools did think they were doing the right thing. They did see themselves as imparting essential knowledge to Aboriginal kids, and considered that they were “moving” First Nations “forward” progressively — moving them forward, that is, as a race, through a necessary exercise in mass coercion and cruelty. When bureaucrats expressed the intention of “killing the Indian in the child,” they thought this was an entirely appropriate thing to do on behalf of the future posterity of those “Indians.”

Lagimodiere's words only sound like an excuse for residential schools if you don't realize that the “good” homogenizing intentions, along with a particular idea of progress, were a necessary, integral part of the crime. It's a mistake to think genocide can't be committed without a Hitler. Someone just needs to have a clear idea of the one right way of life, and the passion to force others onto this path. Those who resist will become enemies of the good ipso facto. (Granted, the more “other” they are, the worse this ends up.)

Conservatives who are home-schooling their kids, or looking askance at a government vaccine just because it's from a government, shouldn't really have any trouble understanding this. They are guided by a proper suspicion of the modernist state — and it's the same suspicion Aboriginal Canadians get with their birth certificate — however misapplied or ill-considered any given application of it might be.

PEOPLE WHO CAME HERE TO (CANADA) ... DIDN'T COME HERE TO DESTROY.

Premier Brian Pallister