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	Residential-School Hearings Must Go Ahead The Gazette October 23, 2008 http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=1558854b-5453-4506-bb45-09818d58c94e The Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a good idea when it was set up, and it is a good idea still. If the three commissioners cannot themselves reconcile their problems well enough to accomplish the goals set out for them, then they should get out of the way and let somebody else handle this. Harry LaForme, an Ontario appeals court justice and a member of the Mississauga First Nation, resigned this week as chairman of the commission, saying the other two - Claudette Dumont-Smith, member of a Quebec first nation and a health expert, and Jane Brewin Morley, a B.C. lawyer - "have come to show disrespect for me, personally and as chair." If so, then Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl should move quickly to find three new commissioners who can make this work, and not only because the TRC is part of a court-approved agreement, reached 13 months ago, in the legal aftermath of the residential schools tragedy. The other reason is that such commissions have proved their worth. After a longstanding abuse, such as apartheid in South Africa, the process of societal healing goes much more smoothly when wrongs are admitted and hurts can be discussed, in an atmosphere of sadness rather than anger. Such a process for catharsis is exactly appropriate to help close the book on Canada's too-often-abusive residential schools for native children. This Commission's mandate (www.trc-cvr.ca) runs to 10 dense pages, and is written in terms only a bureaucrat could love. (Among the nine responsibilities we find, for example, "to evaluate commemorative proposals in line with the Commemoration Policy Directive.") But the heart of the TRC's work will be to hold public hearings at which victims of the schools can tell their stories, and at which anyone feeling the shame of having been an abuser can also come forward and speak. These aren't court hearings, may be quite informal, and will be documented for posterity. Handled well, a process like this one can be a powerful tool for moving ahead after a systemic wrong. That's what makes the dispute that has paralyzed this Commission such a sad waste. The real losers here are not the commissioners, who come away looking only a little foolish. The real losers are those who were enmeshed in a poisoned system, who are still waiting to tell their stories and begin to hope to lay these ghosts to rest.
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