On September 3, 2026, a final report was released by independent publishing investigators in Newfoundland/Labrador (NL). It found that a massive 418 page “strategic plan” produced by the Ministry of Education to guide the 10 year strategy of the ministry to restructure the education system of the province was seriously flawed. Several hundred fake conclusions using fake references and fake evidence populated the document that cost the province $750,000, and took 18 months to complete. It is titled ambitiously “The Education Accord.” The Accord called on the government to prioritize inclusivity and civic engagement, stating that the entire educational system be brought under the mandate of producing “a healthy society,” and positioned itself to be the pill that cure all ills. Except for one big problem. The research, the evidence, the conclusions and the methods recommended were based on hundreds of academic references and educational movies and resources that didn’t even exist. They were made up; the conclusions pointed to with blinding confidence were based on fiction.
It took the meticulousness of a researcher at Radio-Canada to spot 15 non-existent citations. Once queried, the defenses were raised high. From stonewalling to minimization, the main authors of the document and the Department of Education attempted to call the initial errors discovered “minimal errors that needed to be updated.” Then 350 references were found to be false. The investigators said curtly, “It’s worse than we expected.” That is an understatement. Still, the Ministry of Education in NL isn’t backing down. Instead, it is choosing the “scrub” the document of false references, but retain the conclusions and recommendations. That doesn’t sound like a very wise option.
The entire incident reminds us of what we do with our Bible. Jesus calls the Bible the very thing that sanctifies from the world’s influences (John 17:17). David calls the Word “a lamp to our feet and a light to our path” (Psalm 119:105), and Paul calls the Word of God the Sword of the Spirit of God (Ephesians 6:17). The difficulty comes when we don’t take time to examine what the Word of God says. How easily we live and act spiritually without meticulously trying to figure out what God say. I was invited to a fairly large church not long ago where the preacher stood up and preached a thirty-minute sermon without referring to Scripture. After the service, I approached the minister and asked, “Sir, what passage were you preaching from?” He flashed a look at me that made me take a step back. “We don’t do that here,” he said. “I preach what it means, not what it says.” Today, we might be aghast at the “Education Accord” of the NL government. Tomorrow, we might do the same thing with the Bible as they did with the error-ridden bibliography. Listen to the words of Paul, “Present yourself approved to God, a workman that isn’t afraid [ashamed], rightly dividing the Word of God” (2 Timothy 2:15). Read the Word. Study it diligently. Know what it says, not just what you think it means.
