Adrian Humphreys, National Post Published:
On Monday morning, when the three commissioners gather for the first time in an Ottawa office to begin their monumental five-year task of leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into aboriginal abuse in the residential school system, Canada will take its historical place alongside such tarnished regimes as South Africa, Chile, El Salvador and Sierra Leone.
As the first democratic, Western government to host such an emotionally laden and politically charged forum - a name and a process that is as acclaimed for its positive therapeutic value as it is criticized for assuaging guilt without punishment - there is much hope for constructive change and fear of colossal disappointment.
There are questions of appropriateness and outcome; of scope and purpose; of who is getting the truth and who will be reconciled.
As the commission begins its work, critics are already asking victims to boycott it, calling it a "sham" and a "whitewash."
Questions also come from the man named to lead the commission, Justice Harry LaForme, an
"The commissioners don't even know each other yet so the first little while is going to be taken up with planning our strategy... deciding how we are going to proceed and how it is we are going to attack these issues, in terms of our format," said Justice LaForme.
One thing he does not question, however, is the commission's importance.
Justice LaForme sees it as nothing less that the best chance for significant progress in mending the deteriorating relationship between natives and the rest of Canada, not just over the harm and heartbreak of residential schools but on the daily flashpoints of native activism, land claims and blockades.
"We know the truth in a broad, general sense. Nobody can deny that this happened," said Justice LaForme. "So what we are really looking for now is what are the details of that truth? And what is the breadth and width of it? That's the truth component.
"From the reconciliation component, maybe – and hopefully – comes a better understanding of this fractured relationship that aboriginal people and the rest of
"If we can get to the point where we have a better and healthier understanding and an element of truth to why this relationship exists then people will understand these tensions better and what underlies them."
Such talk, however, aggravates an already aggravated activist.
"To think that we can somehow engineer reconciliation when we are not even doing the most basic things we should be doing towards native people, like treating them like they are equal citizens," said Kevin Annett, a former
"The problem is, a lot of the people I work with on the ground, the survivors, are not asking about reconciliation. They are asking: When are we going to get our day in court? When are the people responsible going be brought to justice? And from the looks of it, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is not set up to do that."
Clearly, the challenge for Justice LaForme and fellow commissioners Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Brewin Morley will be more than just strategy and format.
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Since before its inception as a nation,
Schooling, Frank Oliver, the minister of Indian affairs said in 1908, would "elevate the Indian from his condition of savagery" and "make him a self-supporting member of the state, and eventually a citizen in good standing."
Education was not seen as a passive force, however, and industrial schools were created, run by various Christian denomination churches. The schools would become full-time boarding schools because keeping the children away from their reserves and their family would, it was hoped, strip them of their Indian culture. Or, in the language of the day, it was necessary to keep them "within the circle of civilized conditions" and away from the "influence of the wigwam."
By 1920, attendance at residential schools was compulsory for all aboriginal children between the ages of 7 to 15 years and priests, Indian agents and police were forcibly removing children from families and shipping them off to a school.
If the establishment of the schools sprang from some sense of mission to better or brighten the future prospects of young Indians, Inuit and Métis, the reality soon became a grim and even deadly experience for students.
"The removal of children from their homes and the denial of their identity through attacks on their language and spiritual beliefs were cruel," says the 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. "But these practices were compounded by the too frequent lack of basic care - the failure to provide adequate food, clothing, medical services and a healthful environment, and the failure to ensure that the children were safe from teachers and staff who abused them physically, sexually and emotionally."
The schools ran for decades, with the last federally run residential school, the Gordon Residential School in Saskatchewan, not closing until 1996, years after troubling stories of abuse from former students became known.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) stems from a legal settlement of a class-action lawsuit by victims of the residential schools. Two years ago this month, the largest class action settlement in Canadian history was announced.
All parties - aboriginal groups, churches that ran the schools and the federal government that enacted the policy - approved the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Along with cash payments to individual victims, a planned apology from the government, $100 million in funding towards healing initiatives and $20 million for a commemoration and memorial program, the settlement agreement ordered $60 million in government money for the TRC.
The TRC's work is designed to last longer than the payments.
"We know that compensating victims of this kind of experience is, by itself, insufficient, but we also know that this is the best that courts generally do. The justice system just isn't equipped to take it beyond that," said Justice LaForme.
The wide-ranging settlement agreement was, however, incorporated by the courts into its final judgment on the lawsuit. That last step was an important one with potential ramifications that were largely overlooked at the time.
Justice LaForme, with his keen legal eye, quietly understands its implications.
"The commission was not simply created by an agreement between the parties. There was an agreement amongst the parties put in place but it was made the subject of a court order.
"That court order says the parties will cooperate fully and participate fully," he said.
While Justice LaForme hesitates to draw attention to the stick that potentially allows him wield, he accepts it. He agrees he cannot rule out seeking subpoenas or embarking on contempt of court proceeding against uncooperative parties based on that court order.
"At this stage, we presume that everybody that is a party to this agreement will honour the terms of the court judgment, the terms of the agreement, that says they will cooperate fully.
"It is important - very important - to know that people who suggest there is no teeth to this commission miss the point that it is pursuant to a court order."
Similarly, Chuck Strahl, Minister of Indian Affairs, has said the TRC "does not absolve people" of further criminal responsibility.
That mélange of court order, all-party consent and government sanction give the Canadian TRC a unique feel on the world stage.
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The term Truth and Reconciliation Commission came to prominence in
"The beauty of a TRC is being able to isolate a timeframe and look at a series of events and to frame it around massive human rights violates and the role of government or particular players," said Karen Murphy, director of international programs for Facing History and Ourselves, a U.S.-based nonprofit group.
"What you are doing in
She said international scholars are watching to see how a TRC works in a stable Western democracy rather than one held in throes of regime change.
Still, Dr. Murphy wonders if the TRC name has become too loaded.
"In a way I wish the word [reconciliation] wasn't there. It should be a truth commission with the hope that one day it will move towards reconciliation," she said, dismissing the notion that the two concepts "are attached together - as if when you get one you get the other."
Mr. Arnett likewise dismisses the name: "Truth and Reconciliation? I think it is a really presumptuous kind of title."
"There is a real sense of discouragement because the attitude is they got away with this and now we're going to have a nice forum where they pretend to be concerned while nothing really changes on the ground," said Mr. Arnett.
If the commission's name aggravates Mr. Arnett, then suggesting to Justice LaForme – a member of the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation in
After a moment, he spoke.
"I will simply say to the critics: Wait for the results. Wait and see how the process unfolds. Wait and see whether we assert our independence, whether we do this with the respect and completeness everybody expects of it and wait and see what we come up with at the end. Then you can tell. Nobody knows at the front end."
Not even the commission.