MMIW: A Canadian Genocide?

I saw this article on the CBC and I just had to respond to it, because it’s such absolute garbage:

National inquiry calls murders and disappearances of Indigenous women a ‘Canadian genocide’

Excerpt:

The thousands of Indigenous women and girls who were murdered or disappeared across the country in recent decades are victims of a “Canadian genocide,” says the final report of the national inquiry created to probe the ongoing tragedy.

The report, obtained by CBC News and verified by sources, concludes that a genocide driven by the disproportionate level of violence faced by indigenous women and girls occurred in Canada through “state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.”

“We do know that thousands of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) have been lost to the Canadian genocide to date,” said the report, titled Reclaiming Power and Place.

This bullshit is easily debunked with basic statistics from Statistics Canada and Wikipedia.

Let’s start with death rates from homicide. The homicide death rate for indigenous females is 4.22/100K, compared to 0.75/100K for non-indigenous females. That’s 5.6 times higher. The homicide death rate for indigenous males is 13.4/100K, compared to 2.1/100K for non-indigenous males. That’s 6.4 times higher, and it’s about 3.2 times higher than the rate for indigenous females.

So, it’s true that indigenous people (in general) have higher rates of death from homicide. However, the rate is higher and the gap is bigger for males. If the murder rate for indigenous women is an important social issue, then surely the murder rate for indigenous men is a much bigger social issue, based on the numbers. But social issues are not based on numbers. They are based on emotions and propaganda.

As an aside, the murder rate has increased in the last few years. I expect that trend to continue.

Now let’s look at the accused rates for homicide. For indigenous females, the homicide accused rate is 4.33/100K, compared to 0.17/100K for non-indigenous females. That’s a whopping 25.5 times greater, and the total number killed was greater. For indigenous males, the homicide accused rate is 18.05/100K, compared to 1.69/100K for non-indigenous males. That’s 10.7 times higher.

Note that the number of accused is an underestimate of the actual number of offenders, because some murders do not result in a charge.

The higher homicide death rate for indigenous females is almost certainly due to the higher offending rates of indigenous people, both male and female.

Also, note that the accused rate for indigenous women was slightly higher than their homicide death rate. An indigenous woman is more likely to be accused of homicide than to be a victim of homicide! Compare that to non-indigenous women, who are 4.4 times less likely to be accused than to be a victim of homicide.

Based on the statistics, indigenous criminality is a bigger problem than indigenous victimhood. Indigenous people murder more than they are murdered, and that is true even for women. Indigenous women are more likely to murder than to be murdered. But it’s not politically correct to point that out, of course. Other races must always be portrayed as victims, not victimizers. Only whites can be portrayed as victimizers by the media.

Let’s look at life expectancy. The life expectancy for Indigenous females is roughly 78 years, compared to 83 years for non-indigenous females. That’s a difference of about 5 years. Most of that difference is not due to homicide. The life expectancy for indigenous males is roughly 73 years, compared to 79 years for non-indigenous males. That’s a difference of about 6 years. The difference in life expectancy between males and females in Canada is roughly 4 years.

If the difference in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous people is a social issue, then surely the difference in life expectancy between men and women is a bigger social issue, because it affects far more people. But that would be politically incorrect. If men have a problem, it is their own responsibility to solve. If women have a problem, it is the responsibility of men and society.

If there is a genocide of indigenous people in Canada, then surely their population must be declining. But the opposite is happening. The indigenous population of Canada is growing rapidly. It increased from 1.17 million in 2006 to 1.67 million in 2016, an increase of 43% in 10 years. It is growing as a share of the Canadian population, even with mass immigration.

Meanwhile, the white population of Canada is declining both in absolute size and as a percentage of the population, due to low fertility and mass immigration. Canada has below replacement fertility for the population as a whole.

It is absurd to claim that indigenous people are undergoing a genocide, considering that their population is growing rapidly. If there is a genocide going on, it’s the genocide (by low fertility and high immigration) of the white population. I don’t think “genocide” is the best way to describe the decline of the white population, but it makes more sense applied to whites than to indigenous people.

Sources

Homicide in Canada, 2017

Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, 2016 Census

Life expectancy

Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, 2006 Census

Wikipedia article on the demographics of Canada

Population of whites in Canada

Note: For life expectancy I used the number for “First Nations”, as that is the largest percentage of the indigenous population and it is in between the numbers for Métis and Inuit. Inuit have significantly lower life expectancy, but are also a small percentage of the indigenous population so it shouldn’t skew the number much.