Commission on residential schools may seek extension
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s historic apology on aboriginal residential schools could lose its “significance” if his own government doesn’t fulfil its legal duty to produce records documenting the century-long saga, says the head of a commission into the matter.
In an interview Friday with Postmedia News, Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, revealed his group has told the government it might need to seek a court-ordered extension to its mandate, which expires July 1, 2014.
The reason is that the commission has not had full access to the millions of relevant records in federal archives because the government did not co-operate with earlier requests to hand over the files.
Sinclair said it’s critical that Canadians learn the full truth behind the residential schools tragedy.
“This has to do with the government’s place in the history of this country and the relationship of aboriginal people historically,” he said.
“Discovering things from history that we didn’t know is a very important part of any society’s function. That’s why we have museums and courses in school that talk about history. So that everybody would grow up knowing where they came from.”
The residential schools saga, which scarred the lives of thousands of aboriginal children and their families, has become one of Canada’s greatest untold stories.
Over many decades, 150,000 aboriginal children were sent by the federal government to church-run schools, where many faced physical and sexual abuse.
A lawsuit against the federal government and churches resulted in a settlement which included payments to those affected and the creation in 2008 of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Its job was to hold public hearings so people could tell their stories, to collect records and establish a national research centre.
At the time, Harper issued a heartfelt apology to aboriginals in the House of Commons for the residential schools.
“It was something that many people had not expected to hear in the course of their lifetime,” said Sinclair.
“The significance of it cannot be lost upon the prime minister. He knows the impact of what he was doing. And we believe that it had impact for him. We believe that at a personal level, it was a very important thing that he did.”