Commentary:
An outstanding yet frightening piece was written by Jim McMurtry for a prominent Canadian journal detailing his dismissal by the Abbotsford, British Columbia, school district for the “sin” of telling the truth to his students.
The original charges against McMurtry have just been arbitrarily modified and upgraded, why I’m now re-posting this essay.
On August 3, 2023, counsel for the British Columbia Commissioner For Teacher Regulation sent McMurtry’s lawyer a publicly available Consent Resolution Agreement (CRA). Among other things, the draft CRA posted below as a PDF demanded he admit to professional misconduct and accept the cancellation of his teaching certificate.
Among the other assertions in the CRA are that McMurtry claimed mortality rates for Indian Residential Schools were comparable to other schools. According to McMurtry, he said no such thing.
The original allegation was that he said deaths at the Kamloops schools and/or the so-called “graves” “discovered” beside the school using the crude technique called ground positioning radar were no proof that any children had been murdered.
The charge that McMurtry questioned the murder accusation then evolved to a charge that the deaths, if there were any, represented by mere soil anomalies, were not due to unnatural causes.
Overall, this is outrageous treatment of a teacher who had an unblemished record in the public school system for over four decades, won two teaching awards, was a principal of a junior college as well as a college instructor.
This CRA is surely a wicked attempt to intimidate McMurtry while his arbitration is still in progress.
Mcmurtry,_James_Consent_Resolution_Agr_V1_L133948_01,_02_&_03
After perusing the above PDF document, please also watch this short video from McMurtry showing how the resurrection of old charges already disposed of and brand new ones never revealed are an assault on natural justice and legal practice in his dismissal and ongoing arbitration.
The Real Indigenous Issues Newsletter sponsors IRSRG.ca. This article was originally published in that newsletter and has been republished with the author’s permission.
Read more from Hymie Rubenstein here.
