Residential school records might not arrive in time
Federal delay frustrates panel director
OTTAWA — The federal government, after months of delay, is hiring a firm to sort through millions of documents at Library and Archives Canada so they can be passed on to the commission probing the aboriginal residential school saga.
But the executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Kimberly Murray, said Tuesday she is worried the records will trickle in and arrive too late to be used for the commission’s report.
That multi-volume report is being written and will be released by June 2015, but must be finished months before then so it can be translated and edited.
“They know we have to do all that,” a frustrated Murray said of the government. “They know it takes a year to do all that.”
Also, she fears the government has decided to limit the scope of material it will search in government archives, potentially overlooking some key material. The TRC’s mandate says its work must include compiling a complete “historical record of the residential schools’ system and legacy.”
But the government appears to be adopting a more narrow approach, saying it will hire a company to dig out documents pertaining to “the operation and funding of the schools.”
Former prime minister Paul Martin said Tuesday the government’s approach is unacceptable.
“At a time when the nation as a whole is coming to grips with what happened in residential schools, for the government to say that they are essentially going to continue to mask the history that we are entitled to know is just wrong.”
But the government says it is working with the commission so it can achieve its “important mandate.”
“Our government remains committed to achieving a fair and lasting resolution to the legacy of Indian Residential Schools,” said Erica Meekes, a spokeswoman for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt. “That is why the prime minister made a historic apology on behalf of all Canadians in 2008 and why we have disclosed over 4.2 million documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”
The new concerns are being expressed after the government posted a “request for proposal” last week seeking bids from companies that want the contract at the archives. The research is expected to cost $14 million.
The commission was established to learn the truth of the decades-long saga, such as piecing together the role played by the federal government — including former cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats.
Between the 1870s and 1996, about 150,000 aboriginal children were pulled from their homes by the federal government and sent to the church-run schools, where many suffered physical and sexual abuse.