Muffling a lawyer's book that looked at the entitlements of Indigenous peoples

The 2019 piece posted below and written by celebrated editorial writer Barbara Kay highlights the censorship directed against Peter Best, a retired lawyer who lives in Sudbury, Ontario. Best is the author of There Is No Difference- An Argument for the Abolition of the Reserve System, which has been endorsed by retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice Jack Major. 

Best rightly believes the Indian Act is a benign form of apartheid, and advocates for the integration model of equal citizenship for all, hardly a controversial idea, let alone a racially outrageous one, for most Canadians.

Because of this “controversial” — read “unwoke” — theme, the bookstore Chapters speciously cancelled Best's book signing, saying the event would compromise giving customers “a joyful and positive experience.” This is a phony claim because the same bookstore openly peddles hundreds of books full of sadness, rage, pornography, and violence.

According to Kay:

Few and far between are disinterested scholars of Canada’s Aboriginal history who have the tough hide and principled will to publicly depart from the approved Indigenous “nation-to-nation” narrative that keeps the guilt and money flowing, but perpetuates a dysfunctional status quo on many reserves. Most of the dissenters are university academics. But Best is simply an intelligent man with a passion for his subject, a deep impatience with political correctness, and unremitting determination to weather whatever storms afflict him as he shepherds his views to a public market.

To read more of Barbara Kay’s intelligent and engaging discussion of this controversy, please continue reading on the other side of the paywall.