In 2021, Canada was rocked by a discovery at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops: what appeared to be the remains of more than 200 Indigenous children. The story went viral globally and was reported by The New York Times and others as a mass grave. But to date, no remains have been exhumed. Our guest on the program today is a First Nation chief and a podcaster who has made a new, hour-long video breaking down the controversy. He says it’s time for the media to grapple with its reporting errors — and the fallout for the country.

Aaron Pete is Chief of the Chawathil First Nation, and host of the Nuanced podcast, formerly called Bigger Than Me. He’s also a guest host of this show.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

September is here and Lean Out is back with a new season of conversations with writers and thinkers from around the world. We could not think of a more important topic to kick off our fall season than the state of Canadian democracy. Our guest on the program today has written a new book that serves as a wake-up call — he says that while we observe the rituals of the democratic process, we have lost its spirit and its substance.

Andrew Coyne is a columnist for The Globe and Mail and a weekly panelist on CBC’s The National. His debut book is The Crisis of Canadian Democracy.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from April of 2025. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September!

For some time now, writers and thinkers outside this country have been asking me: What happened to Canada? Our guest on the program today has asked this question himself, in a new book that takes a deep dive into our decline.

Tristin Hopper is a columnist and reporter for The National Post, based in Victoria, B.C. His new book is Don’t Be Canada: How One Country Did Everything Wrong All At Once.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com