CANADA
CBC News
By Karina Roman, CBC News
A group of aboriginal residential school survivors was in Ontario Superior Court Wednesday asking a judge to force the federal government to search for documents the former residents believe will help corroborate their claims of abuse.
The nine former students attended Bishop Horden residential school in Moose Factory, Ont. in the 1960s. They have pursued claims through the independent assessment process, the system set up under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement for former students to seek compensation for abuse.
Under the arrangement, the federal government is obliged to provide information about the former residential school, the people that worked there and any charges or convictions on record.
But in documents filed in court, the claimants say the government’s disclosure does not mention what these former students say they witnessed: namely, that some of the supervisors at Bishop Horden were arrested by police and some supervisors were fired.
They believe there must be documents, perhaps within the RCMP, to back up their recollections.
“To the adjudicator and [Department of Justice] counsel appearing at the IAP hearing, and even to the claimant’s counsel, with no documents coming forward about police involvement, it looks like a huge mistake or lie by that applicant,” the claimant documents say.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.