It’s not conjecture, either. It’s a scientific fact! A bunch of studies have been done on this, and they’re a lot of fun to read, although possibly not for conservatives.

The conservative disdain for differences goes back to the cradle, no less. One celebrated American study found that whiny, insecure kids — you know, the ones who thought (accurately) that all of their classmates hated them, and were continually complaining (inaccurately) about how everyone was mean to them — tended to be conservatives.

The study, which was published in something called The Journal of Research Into Personality, tracked a bunch of Berkeley, Calif.-area kids going back to the 1960s. Two married Berkeley psychology professors, Jack and Jeanne Block, studied more than 100 nursery school kids, relying upon the insights of the teachers who knew them the best.

The Blocks weren’t interested in political orientation, just personality traits. The three- and four-year-olds were rated according to how they behaved, and the Blocks carefully maintained and weighed the data. The kids were surveyed at regular intervals — at ages 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 18, 23 and, finally, 32. What they found validated the suspicions of every tax-raising, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, left-wing freak show type — like me — had.

Families, children, living in tents and plywood shacks. No running water, no electricity, buckets serving as toilets. Sickness, despair, disease. Mould coating the walls of homes, and winter setting in.

The 1,800 Cree who reside in the remote northern Ontario community are Canadians, but their reserve doesn’t look much like Canada. It looks like something out of medieval times, when life was brutish and short. It shames all of us, in every part of Canada, that children live in conditions like that.

Over the years, I have advised many native bands. I have worked in communities almost as bad as Attawapiskat found in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I have advised successive governments — Jean Chretien’s, Paul Martin’s and Stephen Harper’s — about dealing with problems which are quite similar to Attawapiskat.

As the father to an aboriginal daughter, I was so proud to do that work, but I cannot tell you that I ever succeeded in what I tried to do.