Records of residential school abuses can one day be destroyed: court

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada says records of abuse of former residential school students can eventually be destroyed.

The 7-0 high court ruling Friday brings clarity to an issue that pitted the privacy of victims against the importance of documenting a dark chapter in Canada’s relations with Indigenous Peoples.

For over a century, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were required to attend residential schools, primarily run by religious institutions and funded by the federal government. Students were not allowed to use their languages or cultural practices.

Students provided accounts of physical, sexual and emotional abuse as part of an independent assessment process to provide compensation — a program that flowed from a major 2006 settlement agreement aimed at ensuring a lasting resolution of the residential schools legacy.

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that said the sensitive material collected for the independent assessments should be destroyed after 15 years.

In its reasons for the decision, the Supreme Court said the negotiators of the settlement agreement intended the assessment process to be a confidential and private one, and that claimants and alleged perpetrators relied on these confidentiality assurances.

Under the process, claimants disclosed personal information, including a first-person narrative outlining his or her request for compensation. Applications were then forwarded to the federal government and the church organization that operated the school.

If the claim was not settled at this stage, it proceeded to a hearing before an adjudicator.

The Assembly of First Nations had told the Supreme Court that overturning the lower court decision would allow another breach of trust on the very same vulnerable people who were abused at residential schools as young children.

A lower court had said while the material should be destroyed after 15 years, individuals could agree to have their stories preserved at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg.