RECORDS WERE DESTROYED
Some ’60s Scoop survivors seeking their share of a compensation settlement are being told the province can’t find their documents.
A ’60s Scoop survivor seeking documents from the Ministry of Social Services relating to their apprehension was denied access because the documents had been “destroyed,” a new review report from Saskatchewan’s Information and Privacy Commissioner reveals.
The individual applied to the ministry in May 2018 to obtain court orders and placement documents created between 1954 and 1970, but the ministry told the applicant that after an “extensive” search, it could not locate any paper files with the applicant’s name on it, privacy commissioner Ron Kruzeniski wrote in the report, issued Monday.
The ministry told the applicant staff searched computerized records and found a file had existed for several years in Regina, but was destroyed. The ministry told the applicant, who isn’t named in the report, that record management practices changed in the 1980s and records prior to this were not kept in accordance with “extended retention schedules.”
The applicant is a registered class-action plaintiff of the ’60s Scoop settlement. In order to claim a portion of the compensation approved by the Supreme Court for children who were status Indian, Inuit or eligible to have status and were wrongfully removed from their families and communities by child welfare services, the registered plaintiffs have to demonstrate they were adopted or made permanent wards, Kruzeniski wrote. These “destroyed” records would demonstrate the applicant was a permanent ward, he added.
The applicant asked Kruzeniski to look into the extent to which the ministry looked for the records.
“The Applicant was confused and concerned when told there were no records because a sibling was able to obtain similar records dating back to the 1970s,” the privacy commissioner wrote.
He recommended the ministry conduct a new search and provide the applicant with information after concluding the ministry’s search had not been adequate in the absence of information from the ministry about its original search.
The Ministry of Social Services said in an emailed statement Friday that over the past two years it has received 2,000 personal requests from individuals affected by the ’60s Scoop seeking access to records that pertain to them.
Of the 2,000 personal requests, the ministry was able to provide the records nearly 84 per cent of the time, according to the ministry. For the remaining 16 per cent of requests, it couldn’t locate a file.
The ministry said this could be due to the fact that based on the time frame, services weren’t provided by the ministry or “files related to services of a short term nature were destroyed according to approved retention schedules.”
The ministry said it would not be able to locate a file if services were provided by another province.
The Sixties Scoop Indigenous Society of Saskatchewan (SSISS), a grassroots organization that provides support and shares information with survivors, has heard from numerous individuals that they were told by the ministry that no files exist.
Betty Ann Adam, a former Starphoenix reporter, is the cochair of SSISS. The organization started to hear about missing files when it conducted sharing circles with survivors in co-operation with the Saskatchewan government in 2018, she said. When it submitted a report to the government that year, it asked for a task force to look into the missing files. The SSISS met with Saskatchewan government officials last summer and raised the issue.
Adam said SSISS was told about the government’s schedule for destruction of records; the only child welfare records that were kept were those of permanent wards
There’s no way for children to have kept track on their own where they lived, when and with whom.
or the children who were adopted, she said. Therefore, if the ministry can’t find a file for someone who was in foster care, that means they were not a permanent ward, she added.
“There’s no way to appeal it or argue it, it would appear, because when children were in foster homes, they were children, they were being moved often from one home to another. There’s no way for children to have kept track on their own where they lived, when and with whom.”
Adam, who has written about her own experience as a ’60s Scoop survivor, was able to obtain her own records and records for her two sisters.
This past Christmas, Adam was in contact with several survivors. Some had families of their own, but their children didn’t know any aunts, uncles, grandparents or cousins. The survivors did not know or were not connected to siblings or extended family and were without their support.
“Many ’60s Scoop people walk alone. Those files would have provided at least some information about their hidden past,” she said.
“And the fact the government destroyed those records, for the convenience of space ... that they weren’t considered important, it’s really disrespectful, it’s insulting. It minimizes the trauma the government itself inflicted upon us. It minimizes the importance of what was done to us. It’s a shameful example of the government’s disregard for the importance of Indigenous families.”