Skip to Content Subscribe Our Offers My Account Manage My Subscriptions FAQ Newsletters Canada Canadian True Crime Canadian Politics Health World Israel & Middle East Financial Post NP Comment Longreads Puzzmo Diversions Comics NP News Quiz New York Times Crossword Horoscopes Life Eating & Drinking Style Sponsored Play for Ontario Travel Travel Canada Travel USA Travel International Cruises Travel Essentials Culture Books Celebrity Movies Music Theatre Television Business Essentials Advice Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Buy Canadian Home Living Outdoor Living Tech Style & Beauty Kitchen & Dining Personal Care Entertainment & Hobbies Gift Guide Travel Guide Deals Savings National Post Store More Sports Hockey Baseball Basketball Football Soccer Golf Tennis Driving Vehicle Research Reviews News Gear Guide Obituaries Place an Obituary Place an In Memoriam Classifieds Place an Ad Celebrations Working Business Ads Archives Healthing Epaper Manage Print Subscription Profile Settings My Subscriptions Saved Articles My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ Newsletters Canada World Financial Post NP Comment Longreads Puzzmo Diversions Life Shopping Epaper Manage Print Subscription HomeNP CommentChristopher Dummitt: There’s nothing funny about ambushing RCMP veteransThe Northland Tales scandal reveals how “punching up” has become little more than taxpayer-funded bullyingLast updated 1 day ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.New CBC/APTN show, Northland Tales is an unscripted, half-hour comedy series where an Indigenous activist trio uses pranks as a form of social action, says columnist Chris Selley. Photo by Eric Wynne /StaffBy now, you probably know about the government-funded show Northland Tales, that misrepresented itself to get conservative figures like Frances Widdowson and Lindsay Shepherd to appear on tape. The producers pretended to admire the women’s work and claimed to want to highlight their voices, only to turn around and attack them on camera. There is also the not-incidental matter that almost nothing the unaired shows’ producers have allegedly done so far appears to be funny. But we are talking about CBC comedy in the 2020s, after all.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorThe most recent allegation, though, is the grimmest one yet: that the show reportedly invited up to five retired RCMP officers to a studio under the guise of honouring them for their service. But once they arrived at a Vancouver studio, everything changed. According to those accounts, the production team took away the veterans’ phones and put them in front of a TV audience. The premise of commemorating their service vanished. Instead, the retirees faced a Chinese-Cultural-Revolution-style struggle session in which they were made to answer for the alleged evils of the RCMP and its history.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThere is so much wrong with what happened here that it’s hard to know where to start.There is the small matter of vastly misconstruing the actual history of the RCMP — overlooking anything positive, focusing only on the negative and refusing to acknowledge any shade of grey. There are undoubtedly dark moments in the history of the RCMP and its predecessor, the North-West Mounted Police. But it’s also true that the NWMP was important in protecting Indigenous people on the prairies in the nineteenth century — from fending off American whisky traders to helping combat famine. The force’s history is not uncontroversial, and there is room for criticism. But who needs complexity and nuance in this all-very-funny (take our word for it) spoof-u-mentary?If inaccuracy is troublesome, the more worrisome problem is the premise underlying the whole shtick — that these individual veterans living in the 21st century should be blamed for the entire history of their institution. They were the scapegoats, the stand-ins for an entire organization.This is supposed to be the kind of thing Canadians don’t do in the twenty-first century: blame individuals for the group as a whole, or take the actions of one person and use that bad behaviour to castigate everyone like them. It’s a betrayal of liberal principles. We are inundated with advice to avoid stereotypes, to judge people based on their individual attributes.It would seem that for some people, this only goes for certain groups. If you’re a police veteran, or a conservative, all bets are off.This part of the show resurrected a kind of progressive blood libel. And why not? Jew-hatred seems to be making a comeback on the left and the right. So why not throw a few RCMP veterans into the mix and make them answer for — and be blamed for — whatever sins this production company behind a (remember) very funny TV show thinks the RCMP has committed?The details so far are sparse, but it seems that the officers targeted were those who dared to speak out against criticisms of the institution and claims about its intrinsically racist past. Perhaps they were like former RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, who in 2015, in the lead-up to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry, pointed out the inconvenient fact that, according to the available numbers at the time, roughly 70 per cent of the known offenders in solved cases were themselves Indigenous — a figure the inquiry would later dispute as not factually based, but one Paulson maintained reflected the data the RCMP had. This was not the kind of thing you were supposed to say back in 2015, and even less so today.The creators of this show can’t let this kind of thing stand. They are playing a game of ideological whack-a-mole, smacking down people who dare to speak inconvenient facts or espouse unpopular views.It’s ironic, because back in the 1990s, police forces and the Canadian government decided largely not to report crimes based on race. In the midst of controversies around things like Jamaican youth gangs, officials didn’t want the actions of a few bad individuals, splashed across newspaper headlines, to demean whole social groups.The same went, then and now, for admonitions not to use racial stereotypes. This is a liberal response to a clear social problem in a multicultural society: you don’t want racist group-think to categorize whole groups of people based on a stereotype, or to use the actions of one person to stand in for the whole.This liberal logic, though, doesn’t fit the priorities of those who want to bring race back into focus via talk of decolonization, reconciliation, race-based equity hiring and anti-racist training that puts race to the fore. In this context, we aren’t supposed to be race-neutral or colour-blind; we are meant to prioritize racial thinking, but only in the right way.The idea that this could be done without falling prey to old racist ways was always naïve at best. It’s premised on the notion that we could cordon off racial thinking just to help those we see as disadvantaged. It’s like asking for a superpower and promising you’ll only use it in one specific situation.Not surprisingly, once the power is unleashed — once you let some people prioritize racial thinking — the privileged few start to think they can use it in other ways too. We’re all human, after all. We all have natural in-group and out-group biases. If you tell people they can think in simplistic racial categories in one situation, they were always going to apply it in others.And that’s the dark heart of this not-very-funny comedy show. Other elements are worth pondering too — how on earth did this get past funders? What will it do to public trust in the CBC?But most important, I’d suggest, is the darker truth this reveals: the return of an illiberal blood libel to modern politics. If we’re not supposed to generalize from the individual to the group and back again, how come it was fine to do exactly that to these RCMP veterans?When activists — and too often our governments — call for decolonization and the need to radically rethink Canada, is this what they mean?National Post Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.