Viewers are rushed down a hospital hallway to a sight of anguish in the Leena Minifie co-produced documentary The Good Canadian.
Leena Minifie is the new Indigenous Filmmaker in Residence at KPU.
In this opening scene, social workers have arrived with an empty car seat to take a First Nations baby away. Screaming and crying on the hospital floor, a mother desperately clutches her newborn. But police forcibly remove the infant, prompting viewers to question what Canadians are really standing on guard for when singing "O Canada."
Minifie, a Vancouver-based director and producer, is now bringing her talents to Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) as an Indigenous Filmmaker in Residence in the Faculty of Arts. Throughout the 2026 spring semester, Minifie will lend her expertise and knowledge to students and the wider university community, while working on her own film and writing projects.
"I am looking forward to getting to know Kwantlen Polytechnic University better the students, the faculty, to be able to join conversations and to see what is on the young minds of today because there's lots happening in the world," says Minifie, a Gitxaala Nation and British filmmaker, journalist and storyteller.
The Good Canadian premiered last fall on APTN and CBC, becoming the third most viewed program on CBC Gem within a month of its launch. The film takes viewers behind the curtain and into the corridors of systemic inequity, from the Indian Act to residential schools, to modern-day family separation.
"This is a gigantic big-idea film about how this country came to be, how it's still operating and the effect of all these non-indigenous folks who work in sectors across Indigenous lives. We don't get to hear about that very often at all. We never get to talk to non-Indigenous people about Indigenous lives, especially when they have agency," says Minifie.
"We're hearing a lot of genocide denying as well. So this film counteracts a lot of misinformation, specifically malicious news information that the deaths and massive abuse in residential schools never even happened, and that we have nothing to complain about."
Minifie is the founder of Stories First, a B.C. film production company that tells stories with Indigenous voices. Her work as a producer has garnered numerous accolades, including five Leo awards and the 2025 Kevin Tierney Emerging Producer Indiescreen Award from the Canadian Media Producers Association. She is also a journalist, having worked at CBC Radio One and APTN National News.
