Federal Government Prepared to Release Millions of Records on Residential Schools

Vancouver Sun
December 3, 2012

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/national/Federal+government+prepared+release+millions+records/7645467/story.html

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan.

The federal government will release millions of files documenting the abuse suffered by aboriginal children who attended Canada’s Indian residential schools, Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan said Monday.

His statement comes as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission prepares to take the government to court on Dec. 20 to gain access to the files.

Although the government has released 937,000 documents to the commission, millions of records are still sitting in archives across the country. The commission says it wants the remaining files in order to fulfil its mandate of recording the controversial and tragic history of Canada’s residential school system.

In a lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of Ontario, Toronto lawyer Julian Falconer states the commission has encountered “serious difficulties” in obtaining the enormous amount of paperwork it requires.

By withholding millions of records, the government is reneging on its promise to create a national residential school research centre, according to Falconer. In a statement Monday, he dubbed the court case a battle over “control of history.”

“The Commission is taking this step very reluctantly and with a sense that it has been left with no alternative,” Falconer said. “Put simply, a ‘half loaf’ in the form of one million documents isn’t going to do it.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created following Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2008 apology to the survivors of Indian Residential Schools. The commission has travelled across Canada, meeting with survivors’ groups, recording their harrowing stories and providing them with appropriate counselling.

Historians say that during the 150 years Canada and various churches ran the residential schools system, their explicit goal was to assimilate aboriginals. About 140,000 aboriginal children were removed from their homes and placed in residential schools, where they were isolated from their culture, their language and — in the worst cases — subjected to sexual and physical abuse.

By gathering millions of government files and survivors’ accounts, the commission hopes to table a comprehensive report on the effect of residential schools by July 2014. But representatives of the commission say it will be impossible for them to meet their mandate in time and within the $60-million budget without improved co-operation from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.

“Years of mounting frustration over access to government records has forced the (commission) … to turn to the courts for help,” said Jean Crowder, the NDP’s aboriginal affairs critic. “Who is holding up these documents?”

The millions of remaining documents will now be available by late June 2013, according to a spokesperson for Duncan.

“This is a court-supervised process, it involves the churches, all of the other stakeholders and it involves 22 other governmental departments,” Jan O’Driscoll said. “We remain committed to bringing closure to the legacy of residential schools.”

Under the Residential School Settlement Agreement, the Conservatives have awarded hundreds of millions in payouts to residential school survivors who suffered abuse and maltreatment. An estimated 20,000 abuse claims have yet to be heard by the courts.

“It’s a dark, painful part of our history that we need to preserve, that we need to learn from,” said Joe Norris, executive director of the Indian Residential School Survivor Society. “It left thousands feeling worthless, suicidal and unable to ever really re-adapt to life after residential school.”

When Norris was seven, police forcefully removed him from his grandparents’ custody and brought him to a boarding school on Vancouver Island. To this day, he has trouble speaking of the decade he spent as a ward of the federal government.

“There’s 150 years of history that needs to be fleshed out in those documents,” he said. “What we have now is not enough, this needs to be (comprehensive).”