University of Calgary students are calling on the school for answers after a controversial on-campus debate.
Social media posts have surfaced from Sept. 29, when a national student-led organization set up a debate table in the Science Theatres area, posing the question of whether the residential school system should be considered a genocide.
The organization, Canadian Students for Free Speech, describes itself as a “movement defending open debate, viewpoint diversity, and free expression on Canadian campuses,” according to its website, which also serves as a place to report censorship.
Tom Flanagan, a current political science master’s instructor at UCalgary who has been employed by the school as a professor for decades, and journalist Drea Humphrey were the featured debaters, according to an Instagram post by the organization promoting the event.
Flanagan said in an email statement that he had no role in organizing the debate and had not met anyone from the group before the event, only that he responded to the invitation to serve as a panellist alongside Humphrey.
He confirmed that the event was intentionally held just one day before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a federal holiday observed to remember and spread awareness of the residential school system and its impact.
“I believe truth has to precede reconciliation,” said Flanagan.
“Real reconciliation cannot be based on distortion of history.”
He said that, a couple of hours into the event, bystanders disrupted the conversation, with one of them pouring water on him and Humphrey. Flanagan said the individual was allegedly charged and asked that the school take additional disciplinary measures.
UCalgary did not confirm or deny this or provide LWC with a statement before the deadline, instead referring communication to an earlier article published by the Calgary Herald, which quoted vice-provost Verity Turnpin denouncing the incident and rhetoric.
“It was both deeply hurtful and harmful,” she said.
“As a member of the senior administrative team who was present at the event, directly saw the impact and experienced the impact, I wanted to just say that we stand with our Indigenous community.”
Debate’s intention was to ‘clarify the history of the schools,’ says professor
Flanagan said he was motivated to attend the event as a debater because of the “misinformation” spread about residential schools.
He said the goal of the debate was to give attendees an opportunity to openly discuss the history with “knowledgeable” people, and that, with the pair having researched and written “extensively” on the topic, their being the debaters was fitting.
Humphrey, a reporter and bureau chief at Rebel News, most recently announced that the far-right outlet was selling clothing items ahead of Orange Shirt Day, namely reading “Still no Proof” and “Buried Truth.”
Flanagan, a member of the Indian Residential School Research Group, created in 2022 in “response to poor standards of research and reporting on the residential school system,” has also co-authored two books on the subject.
The first, titled Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us, was published in 2023 as a direct follow-up to the 2021 findings of mass graves at a former residential school site in Kamloops, B.C.
Both this book and its 2025 sequel, Dead Wrong, argue that people accepted the announcement of the 215 unmarked burials without contest, and offer a series of essays that “analyze and critique the false narrative,” according to a synopsis Flanagan wrote for the Fraser Institute.
“Our book demonstrated that all the major elements of the Kamloops narrative are either false or highly exaggerated,” his summary continued.
“No unmarked graves have been discovered at Kamloops or elsewhere — not one.”
Students defend known history, call debate ‘despicable’
In 2021, the Government of Canada and the Canadian Human Rights Commission allocated funding to investigate the unmarked graves, which were identified using ground-penetrating radar that spring. The investigation remains ongoing.
The excavation came just before the federal government unanimously recognized the residential school system as genocide in 2022, building on the 2015 contribution of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC).
Even before this, the TRC concluded this in its analysis, declaring that residential schools were “a systemic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages,” a purpose they characterized as “cultural genocide.”
The church-run schools opened in 1831 with the intention to separate Indigenous children from their families and culture — an objective further mandated by the Indian Act in 1920. By the time the last school closed in the late 1990s, an estimated 150,000 children had attended.
Community members and current and former students have taken to the comments to defend this known history and decry the UCalgary event, particularly because it happened just before the federal holiday and because Flanagan was involved as a faculty member.
“We have classes that fight to educate people on what has happened and why we need to apologize and repent for what has been done,” one comment read.
“Why are you hell-bent on rehashing history? Enough hurt has been done.”
Another comment from a UCalgary alum wrote that “this is despicable,” demanding that the school should offer an “apology and a clear explanation on how you will prevent this from happening again.”
