Please, please, please Danielle Smith... WAKE UP!

Leighton Grey's speech, Sept 14, 2026 in Sylvan Lake, starting at the 7:38 minute mark:

"What am I going to talk about tonight? I am going to talk about something I call mass deception and the true meaning of reconciliation. We hear a lot about truth and reconciliation, but the story we are being given by the government in Ottawa is, in my view, one that promotes lies and division rather than truth and reconciliation. A free and independent Alberta offers us the opportunity to achieve genuine truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. I am going to get into this subject and hopefully persuade you that this is possible.

This is a painful and politically charged subject, but it is deeply important to the future of our province. It concerns the meaning of truth, the danger of public deception, and whether what we now call reconciliation is actually reconciling anyone or anything at all.

We start with May 2021, when we were told that the remains of 215 Indigenous children had been discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. That announcement travelled around the world almost instantly and became one of the defining Canadian stories of our time. Flags were lowered, statues came down, and churches were burned—more than 600 since 2018 alone. Political leaders expressed shame and sorrow. The country was told that this was a moment of reckoning.

Five years later, we are still entitled to ask basic questions that have not been answered: What exactly was found? What was proven? What was merely alleged? How did a story about possible unmarked burial sites become, in the public mind, a story about confirmed mass graves and genocide?

Those questions are not acts of cruelty. They are not denial, and they are not attacks on survivors. They are ordinary questions that a serious country must ask when a claim of enormous moral and historical consequence is placed before the public.

The residential school system did exist. I told you that my grandmother and her brothers and sisters attended one. Children died in those institutions, families suffered, and church and state records confirm thousands of deaths over many decades. None of that should be dismissed or minimized. I am not here to do that. But acknowledging those realities does not require us to accept every claim made in their name, especially when those claims are presented as established fact before the evidence has even been tested.

As a lawyer, this distinction matters, and it should matter to you too. A country or province that confuses allegation with proof cannot do justice. If we treat skepticism as hatred, we cannot pursue truth. A province or country that builds reconciliation on fear, accusation, and symbolic gestures may discover that it has not reconciled anything at all.

The Kamloops announcement was initially described by Indigenous leaders with more caution than many headlines suggested. Chief Rosanne Casimir herself stated that the site was not a mass grave, but rather unmarked burial sites that were, to their knowledge, undocumented. That is careful language. It recognizes uncertainty and leaves room for investigation.

Yet that careful language was quickly overtaken by a much more explosive public narrative. Many Canadians came to believe that a mass grave had been discovered at Kamloops. I am sure that is what many of you would believe based on news reports. Polling has suggested that a large majority of good people accept that understanding as true.

In other words, the story that settled into public consciousness was not simply that ground-penetrating radar had identified anomalies requiring further investigation. The story became that murdered children had been found in mass graves. That transformation did not happen by accident. It happened through repetition, sensational reporting, political amplification, and the willingness of public figures to speak with certainty where certainty did not exist.

We are seeing the same kind of propaganda campaign right now, are we not, with the “elbows up” people? The other day, when I was doing an interview—maybe some of you saw it—people drove by in cars and on motorcycles screaming, “Traitor! Loser! Drop dead!” No.

We have seen how quickly public discussion can become policed. People who asked for evidence were accused of denialism. People who questioned the language of mass graves were treated as though they were denying residential schools altogether. A proposal even emerged to criminalize so-called residential-school denialism in a manner comparable to Holocaust denial. That was almost put in our Criminal Code.

That should alarm every Canadian and every Albertan who cares about free inquiry. If the state or the government can criminalize questions about a contested historical claim, then truth is no longer being pursued. It is being managed and enforced. Enforced truth is not truth at all.

One of the most troubling features of the story is the role of the RCMP. When the Kamloops announcement was made, reports about police involvement were confusing and contradictory. Some reports suggested that a major investigation was underway. Others suggested that the RCMP had merely opened a file and would play only a supporting role. But behind the scenes there were questions about what the RCMP already knew and what previous investigations had already concluded.

I am going to tell you something that you have probably never heard unless you follow my show. Between 1995 and 2003, the RCMP in British Columbia investigated allegations involving multiple schools, including Kamloops. The final report was not released at that time. In fact, the RCMP have never released it. If it had been released, I dare say the public conversation in this country would have unfolded very differently, because that report showed no proof whatsoever that any of these things happened at Kamloops Residential School.

The only way we know about that report—which was in-depth and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce—is because of the internet and people who are able to find things they are not supposed to find. The central question is simple: if authorities possessed information that bore directly on these claims, why was it not made public when the country was being asked to accept those claims as national truth? Why did no one clearly state what had already been investigated, what had already been found, and what remained unproven?

We deserve clarity. Instead, we received ambiguity, symbolism, moral pressure, and guilt.

That symbolism was most visible in the appointment and public role of Mary Simon as Governor General. You will recall that her appointment came shortly after the Kamloops announcement and was framed as a moment of national reconciliation. She had a significant public career and a serious résumé. But the public meaning attached to her appointment was overwhelmingly symbolic: Canada would answer a moment of national shame by making the Crown visibly Indigenous.

This is the kind of thing that really irritates me about the government in Ottawa and the way it treats Indigenous peoples. The question is not whether symbolism has value. It can. Our flag is a symbol that is important. Symbols can express solidarity, mark sorrow, and point toward repair. But symbolism becomes dangerous when it substitutes for truth. It becomes dangerous when it discourages inquiry. It becomes dangerous when it permits public officials to affirm contested claims with the authority of the state, which we habitually trust.

When a governor general speaks, she does not speak as an ordinary commentator. She speaks with vice-regal weight. When she describes unproven claims as “subtle atrocities,” which she did, she places the seal of the Crown on a particular interpretation. When she characterizes scrutiny as denialism, she makes inquiry look like bigotry.

That is not reconciliation. That is political advocacy dressed in constitutional ceremony. When the language later quietly changes, as it did, and the strongest claims disappear from official speeches without apology or correction, the damage remains. We are living with it now. The public heard the accusation and absorbed the moral lesson, but the public never received the retraction.

This is why the meaning of reconciliation matters so much, especially for Alberta and what we are trying to do here. If reconciliation means permanent accusation, it will always fail. If it means symbolic capitulation—taking a knee, as Justin Trudeau did—it will fail. If it means one side must remain forever guilty and the other forever aggrieved and forever victims, it will fail. If it requires silence in the face of questionable claims, it will most certainly fail.

True reconciliation, I think we can all agree, starts with truth. That is what the report is titled: Truth and Reconciliation. Reconciliation requires truth. It also requires humility. It requires the courage to listen to painful testimony, but also the courage to test claims. It requires compassion for those who suffer, but fairness to those accused. It requires a shared commitment to reality.

As a Christian—and for all Christians—reconciliation has an even deeper meaning. This is the understanding that I think we need to adopt if we are serious about reconciliation and truth. It is not merely a political settlement or a public-relations exercise like the one the federal government has been selling to us. Christian reconciliation is the restoration of a broken relationship. It is the bringing of harmony out of estrangement. It is what God does through Christ, not because the guilty have earned restoration, but because grace has been extended.

In that model, reconciliation is not achieved by humiliation, endless accusation, or demanding that people confess to claims they do not believe are true. It begins with truth, repentance where repentance is required, forgiveness where forgiveness is offered, and a genuine desire to restore relationship.

That is the kind of reconciliation our country and province need. We do not need land acknowledgements recited without conviction, symbolic appointments used as moral theatre, criminal prohibitions against unpopular questions, or reparations used as a substitute for relationship. We need honest speech, careful history, mutual respect, and a willingness to hear more than one story about the past.

My own family history reminds me why this matters. I told you about my grandmother, a Nakota woman who spent much of her childhood at the Brandon Indian Residential School. She lived to the age of 98. She credited that school with educating her, teaching her Christian morals, and helping train her for nursing work.

Her experience does not erase the suffering of others. I am not saying that. But neither should the suffering of others erase her experience. That is the point. A truthful national memory must be large enough to contain complexity and nuance. It must be able to say that some suffered terribly, some were educated, some were harmed, some were helped, and many lives cannot be reduced to a single political narrative. If reconciliation requires us to flatten history into one approved story, then it is not reconciliation. It is propaganda.

So, where do we go from here? This is why I am speaking to you in the context of Alberta independence: we can do this better. We can do all of this better. We can actually do truth and reconciliation.

Not the way Ottawa has done it since 1867. Not with a statute that creates a special category of human being called an Indian. Whatever that is. I know what it is: a human being, flesh, blood, and bone, just like you and just like me.

First, we must recover the distinction between sympathy and certainty. We can show compassion without pretending that every claim is proven. Second, we must insist that public institutions tell the truth clearly and completely. If investigations exist, release them. If claims are not proven, say so. If language has been exaggerated, correct it.

Third, we must reject the criminalization of historical inquiry. The answer to error is evidence, not persecution. The answer to falsehood is truth, not censorship like the government in Ottawa is imposing on us.

Finally, we must redefine reconciliation as restoration rather than accusation. If reconciliation is real, it must make us neighbours again. It must permit us to speak honestly, disagree respectfully, correct mistakes, forgive wrongs, and move toward a future not built on resentment.

We do not need mass deception. We have had far too much of that in this country. We need moral courage. That means citizens like you who are willing to care for Indigenous peoples without surrendering reason. It means leaders who understand that compassion and evidence are not enemies. It means reconciliation grounded in truth rather than theatre.

If we can recover that, perhaps the word “reconciliation” can still mean what it ought to mean: not guilt without end, not accusation without proof, not silence enforced by law, but the restoration of relationship through truth, grace, and honest understanding.

That is what an independent, free, and prosperous Alberta can offer Indigenous Albertans. Could there possibly be a better offer than that?

I want to close by sharing something I wrote that represents my unifying vision for Albertans—whether you are Indigenous, Black, white, purple, yellow, it does not matter. I call it the Albertan’s Creed.

“I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon. I seek opportunity to develop whatever talents God gave me, and not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole—that is welfare. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia—Carney’s utopia, Carney’s new world order. I will not trade freedom for beneficence or my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any earthly master, nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage as an Albertan to stand erect, proud and unafraid, to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say: ‘This, with God’s help, I have done.’”

That is what it means to me to be an Albertan. Thank you.