Murray Harbour council is the latest governing body to weaponize codes of conduct against officials who try to speak the truth

Nearly three years ago, many Canadians were horrified to learn of the apparent discovery of a “mass grave” containing 215 children’s bodies outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The news prompted protesters to topple statues of Sir John A. Macdonald and Queen Victoria. Churches burned to the ground. Cities cancelled Canada Day celebrations so that people could mourn. The Maple Leaf was lowered to half-mast in Ottawa and Parliament declared Sept. 30 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

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Yet, a municipal councillor in Prince Edward Island is now facing sanctions and possible removal from council for trying to set the record straight.

As Terry Glavin laid out in the National Post in 2022, aspects of the residential school system were shameful, but reports of “mass graves” printed in publications like the New York Times were not backed up. Glavin traced the frenzy to a news release from Chief Rosanne Casimir that said 215 children’s bodies had been located using ground-penetrating radar. It’s more likely they were lying in unmarked graves: ground-penetrating radar is inexact, and death by disease was a tragic but frequent fate during much of the school’s century of operation. There is to this day scant evidence for the image many Canadians had in their minds of murderous nuns and priests tossing bodies in a mass grave.

John Robertson, a municipal councillor in Murray Harbour, P.E.I. (pop. 282), wanted to set the........

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