THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, September 20, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples met with videoconference this day at 6:45 p.m. [ET] to examine the federal government’s constitutional, treaty, political and legal responsibilities to First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples and any other subject concerning Indigenous Peoples.
Senator Brian Francis (Chair) in the chair.
[Editor’s note: Please note that this transcript may contain strong language and addresses sensitive matters that may be difficult to read.]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation and is now home to many other First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples from across Turtle Island. I am Mi’kmaw Senator Brian Francis from Epekwitk, also known as Prince Edward Island, and I am the Chair of the Committee on Indigenous Peoples.
Before we begin our meeting, I will ask committee members in attendance to introduce themselves by stating their name and province or territory.
Senator Arnot: David Arnot, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Martin: Yonah Martin, British Columbia.
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Banff National Park, Treaty 7 territory.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Mi’kma’ki, Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
Senator White: Judy White, Mi’kma’ki, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Audette: Kwe, Michèle Audette, [Innu-aimun spoken], Quebec.
The Chair: Thank you, senators. Today, we are continuing the series of briefings meant to inform and guide the future work of this committee.
Before I proceed, I want to note that the content of this meeting relates to Indian Residential Schools, which some may find distressing. There is support available for anyone requiring assistance at all times, free of charge, via the National Indian Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419, and Hope for Wellness at 1-855-242-3310 or at www.hopeforwellness.ca.
I want to remind you that further to testimony heard from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, last July, the Committee on Indigenous Peoples issued an interim report entitled Honouring the Children Who Never Came Home: Truth, Education and Reconciliation.
One of the recommendations made in this interim report included a commitment to hold a public meeting or public hearing with governments, churches, entities and others who continue to withhold records about residential schools and associated sites. During tonight’s meeting, we will continue to hear from these witnesses.
I would like to now introduce our first panel of witnesses: from the Government of the Northwest Territories, Garth Eggenberger, Chief Coroner, Coroner’s Office; from the Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario, Dr. Dirk Huyer, Chief Coroner for Ontario; and from the Quebec Bureau du coroner, Andrée Kronström, Coroner.
Wela’lin. Thank you all for joining us today.
Witnesses will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes, which will be followed by a question and answer session with senators. I invite Garth Eggenberger to give his opening remarks.
Garth Eggenberger, Chief Coroner, Coroner’s Office, Department of Justice, Government of the Northwest Territories: Good evening, committee members.
The Northwest Territories’ records for the residential school experience are stored in two distinct locations with some overlap. The N.W.T. coroner records from Confederation until 1967 are housed at the Government of Canada archives in Ottawa, Ontario. The Office of the Chief Coroner of the N.W.T. has not undertaken any research into the records at Library and Archives Canada regarding any coroner reports from 1867 to 1967. This research is beyond the capacity of our office.
The Office of the Chief Coroner holds the coroner case records from September 1967 onward. This coincides with when the Government of the N.W.T. was moved from Ottawa to Yellowknife. Some of the files, from 1954 to 1967, were also brought to the N.W.T. and are in our archives.
In 2013, at the request of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, the Office of the Chief Coroner of the N.W.T. undertook a review of all deaths of children from 0 to 18 years of age from 1955 to 1992 from the files held in our office. At the same time, a review of files held at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre for child deaths 0 to 18 years of age for the years 1957 to 1992 was completed. From these two reviews, there were 360 deaths of children identified. Of those deaths, five were deemed to be deaths of children attending a residential school or living in a federally operated school hostel.
We had provided the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with a spreadsheet detailing the deaths. After sending in the spreadsheet, there appears to be no further communication from the TRC.
In July of this year, we became aware of the website of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, or NCTR, and began comparing the names listed on the NCTR website for each of the residential schools and hostels in the N.W.T. to our coroner case files. We have identified one additional death of a child attending a residential school that should have been added to the spreadsheet we submitted to the TRC. Our office is in the process of comparing the names on the NCTR website to death registration statements for the N.W.T. for the period from 1967 to the present day. From the documentation on most of the cases we have reviewed, it is very unclear whether the person was attending a residential school.
Moving forward, it is very important that there be collaboration between the Office of the Chief Coroner of the N.W.T. and other parties that may have documentation with names of persons that attended a residential school in the N.W.T. and to provide those names to our office. Without ongoing collaboration, we will not be able to meet the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Call to Action 71, relating to the missing children and burial information.
This Call to Action reads:
We call upon all chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies that have not provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities to make these documents available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Thank you very much for your time. I am prepared for questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Eggenberger. I’ll invite Dr. Huyer to give his opening remarks.
Dirk Huyer, Chief Coroner for Ontario, Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario: Good evening, everybody. I’m Dirk Huyer. I’m here from the Province of Ontario. I acknowledge that I’m a settler on this land. I have spent many days and times visiting territories, nations and various communities across this great land that I understand to be called Turtle Island. I embrace those visits and those learnings, and I have lots more learning to do.
I’m honoured to be here with you tonight to talk about the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action as well as unmarked burials and give you an insight into where we are from an Ontario perspective.
In 2012, similar to Garth Eggenberger in the Northwest Territories, we worked to assist the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help identify missing children that had been sent to Indian residential schools and never returned home. We established a team, and what we did is develop a process of retrieving, evaluating and reviewing investigative case information from files that we were involved with.
We used what I would describe as a non-scientific method of name recognition and location recognition. It was not necessarily as inclusive as it could have been, because we were limited, clearly, because children may have had English names, and we would not have identified through that. However, what we did is we looked at many different files.
It is important to remember that the Chief Coroner of the Northwest Territories as well as ourselves and most across Canada are typically involved when somebody dies non-naturally from a violent situation — sudden and unexpected. We wouldn’t typically be involved from an infectious or natural disease process. As you likely know, many children in residential schools did die from infections, and those typically would not be reported to the offices of the chief coroners across Canada. That doesn’t mean it’s not important, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking at that. I’ll talk more about what we are doing in those circumstances.
So, our team shared the process with the NCTR. I believe either Garth Eggenberger taught us or we taught Garth. We did a very similar process of preparing a spreadsheet. We went back to the early 1900s to the best of our ability, looking in the archives and looking in our own files.
Very similarly to Garth, the team provided a spreadsheet of approximately 100 named individuals and many unidentified individuals who were brought forward because of the location of where the deceased were found. We still don’t know who some of those people are. They weren’t necessarily children. We were looking at everything possible.
I recently learned that while we provided the spreadsheet, which had a fair bit of information and the names and the files that we knew, we did not provide the files. Although it wasn’t me at the time, I think it was because we thought these were responsive names, and we were waiting to hear which files were to be sent.
Having said that, that’s a gap. That’s something that we own and recognize. We’re now bringing all those files in from our archives and our off-site storage. We are going to provide those to the NCTR in the way that makes the most sense, working together with the NCTR.
Similarly to what Garth was saying, we have also looked at the names listed by the NCTR. Sixteen of those are listed after 1964, which are the files in our control right now. Of those 16, 8 have been confirmed to be investigated by ourselves. We will provide those files, obviously, but we also recognize that not all of those were in that spreadsheet from before, illustrating the limitations of the work we did earlier.
All of the unidentified remains have also been brought forward to us. It’s part of a broader review that we’re doing of all unidentified remains over many years, which we’re bringing together with a focus on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and unmarked burials at residential schools. So we are looking at all the different unidentified persons to see if there is a relationship from a geographic perspective or other case information.
We have a team we have brought together called the Residential School Death Investigation Team, which is made up of three officers and a civilian analyst. They all report to me as the Chief Coroner, but they are specifically assigned to our office. So they are looking at things from a coroner’s perspective, which is answering questions of who died, where they died, when they died, what the medical cause was and how. Also, we have added a sixth question of where they may have been buried. We’re looking at the record stance of those six questions.
This started in 2022, and all under our authority, not from a criminal perspective but from the coroner’s perspective of answering questions so that we can bring those answers to families, communities, nations and others.
As I say, their work includes all of the unidentified remains that have been seen. We have brought approximately 400 files since the early 1960s, to evaluate those, and we’re still in the process of gathering those, and then we’ll look for trends and analyses to see if we can sort through some identification.
We also work closely with the Independent Special Interlocutor. She has provided us advice. I was very humbled by the fact that she highlighted our work in her June 2023 report, in the “Emerging Practice” section. We do believe that we should run ahead and challenge the norm in our system and try to take opportunities to do things better and to learn.
Of the 433 students who are listed by the NCTR, our team has found the answers, through evaluation of publicly available records, for 136. We’re doing all of that work to be prepared. If communities wish to reach out to us and ask us questions, we will share those records and that information to help answer questions of which children may have attended and which children may have died, and to help to understand where they may be buried so that it will be of assistance to them, we hope.
We have also discovered approximately 79 additional deaths in Ontario residential schools of the 18 that were not listed by the NCTR, and we have most of those six questions answered as well.
All of these files are digitized. All of them are available for immediate sharing with survivors and with communities or whoever wishes.
Everything we do is community-driven. While we’re doing this work, we’re not going and doing it; we’re available. We have met with many different nations and many different organizations that are evaluating within each Ontario school. We provide our opportunity: that what we can do and what we will do. We believe that the Coroners Act of Ontario, the Western legislation, does provide us the opportunity to utilize our authority, if necessary, to seize records, to seize information, to answer our questions — not from a criminal perspective, but to answer our questions. So we meet with communities and share that information with them.
As I’m closing off, one example that we can talk about is St. Anne’s Indian Residential School, where we, again, using publicly available records, not necessarily doing any of the work — we were doing it to be ready for the community if they wished to ask us — for the 24 students listed, we also found 7 additional students who were not listed by the NCTR. All of those files were first shared with Fort Albany First Nation. We reached out to them and let them know we had found these. We have a relationship with that group. Not that we have been doing work, but we have met and talked. We shared those and then shared those with the NCTR as well.
We are proactively sharing. We recognize that we didn’t share those records before. That was an error on my part. We do believe that the records we are sharing now are truly responsive, and those that we didn’t share, we are evaluating and working together with NCTR and others to see.
We are honoured to have complete access to the NCTR database. That’s part of the source of the information that we use when we’re doing the evaluation. That was something that the NCTR and ourselves worked together on, with the legal authority that we have, to access that to be able to answer questions, again, to help others. We continue to strive, to find and provide answers for families and communities about the deaths of their loved ones that occurred in the Indian residential schools.
I welcome any questions you may have. Thank you for the opportunity.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Huyer. I will now invite Andrée Kronström to give her opening remarks.
[Translation]
Andrée Kronström, Coroner, Bureau du coroner: Good evening, everyone.
[Indigenous language spoken], for community members.
Tonight, I represent the Chief Coroner, primarily for my recent involvement in the exhumation of two young babies in the community of Pessamit.
Of course, I’ll make a presentation on the legislative framework and the pre-1986 regime. Since 1986, what can we provide in terms of records? We’re seeing a great opening in terms of the Secrétariat aux relations avec les Premières Nations et les Inuit, an organization created on the margins of the board of inquiry that led to the exhumation of two young babies.
You first need to know that coroners’ records in Quebec, as we know them today, were created thanks to the coming into force of the Act respecting the determination of the causes and circumstances of death in 1986.
Since November 1, 2022, the act has been called the Coroners Act. Under the 1986 act and the 2002 act, the Chief Coroner has custody of the records of the coroners; before that, there were no records. Under the pre-1986 regime, coroners’ records were kept in court registries throughout the province. These records have since been transferred to the Archives nationales du Québec, which is separate from the Coroner’s Office. These records, as I mentioned, are not under the authority of the Chief Coroner or the Coroner’s Office. These records have their own access regime.
We did some checking in preparation for the testimony I was going to give today, and it’s not possible for the Archives nationales du Québec to retrieve records relating to all Indigenous children who died in residential schools. It is necessary to know at least the name, date of death and some other information. We can see that Quebec faces a major challenge in obtaining the names of all the children involved — and here, I echo what my colleague mentioned earlier. We need to appeal to the population and the community to give us the names. Once that is done, as I’ll explain in a moment, we’ll be able to begin searches.
So, as of 1986, under the new act, the only residential school that was still in operation after the creation of the Coroner’s Office and records was the Pointe Bleue Residential School, located in Mashteuiatsh, which was open from 1960 to 1991.
We have searched in our records, but that didn’t help us identify any record relating to an Indigenous child who died at the Pointe Bleue Residential School. I’ll draw a parallel with what the Chief Coroner for Ontario said: If these deaths were totally natural, they were not reported to the coroner, since our focus is more on violent deaths.
On the other hand, if we were provided with children’s names, we could then forward documents related to child deaths that were reported to the coroner. Our reports and records are public, and the appendices that are appended to the coroner reports — pardon the redundancy — are available on request. We’ll be happy to provide them. Again, the challenge consists in getting names.
On a much more positive note, Quebec, in conjunction with the work on the board, adopted the Act to authorize the communication of personal information to the families of Indigenous children who went missing or died after being admitted to an institution. That act came into force in 2021.
This act helped create the Secrétariat aux relations avec les Premières Nations et les Inuit, known as the SRPNI.
This is an organization fully dedicated to supporting families. The good thing is that the SRPNI’s mission also includes deaths in residential schools. So, in the case of families whose children did not necessarily die in the institutional health care system, but who believe they died in a residential school, the SRPNI will be able to take care of them. The SRPNI coordinates searches and supports families.
A concrete example is that of two families from Pessamit that came forward because they hadn’t been able to open the coffin of their child who had died in hospital — they were three-month-old and six-month-old babies — and the families were worried about what had been buried, as they hadn’t seen their child.
At the end of August, after some six to eight months of intensive support where the SRPNI was able to gain privileged access to the civil registry and the Archives nationales du Québec, the SRPNI was able to reconstruct the documentary evidence and support the families in a petition to the Superior Court to exhume the bodies. With the Coroner’s Office, through me, we were able to exhume the children in late August. A formal identification has probably been made. All this, of course, was done through reconciliation work with the families.
The SRPNI also supported a Winnipeg family that wanted to find the grave of a family member — a child who had died at the age of 13 — whom they had been unable to support or identify the grave.
I’d like to add a small detail. The two Pessamit babies had been buried in 1970, so under the old Coroners Act.
This is what I had to share with you today. If you have any questions about the Secrétariat aux relations avec les Premières Nations et les Inuit, I can put you in touch with the people in charge. Thank you very much.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Kronström.
I’ll start by asking the first question for all three of you. On average, how long does it take you to respond to requests from Indigenous people or organizations related to deaths at residential schools and associated sites? What are the legal, financial and other barriers that lead to delays or denials? Is it a lack of personnel or, perhaps, cooperation with other departments or agencies in your jurisdictions?
[Translation]
Ms. Kronström: Thank you. If we take the example of the exhumation of the two babies, these are two babies who died in institutions, but if we draw a parallel with children who died in residential schools, the same work could be done.
So the main problem is identifying children. Once the identity of a child who potentially died in a residential school is confirmed, it will be much faster because, without that, we don’t have access to our records.
The work is done in conjunction with the SRPNI. That body is responsible for getting all the other players involved: the Coroner’s Office, the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale, the civil registry and the Archives nationales du Québec. So, all the other government organizations are really mobilized by the SRPNI.
As far as time frames are concerned, the SRPNI has staff, a core of people who are completely dedicated to supporting families. If we take the example of the two babies, we’re talking about an eight-month period between the opening of the file with proceedings before the Superior Court and the exhumation. It was very comforting for the families to attend the exhumation, to be there and to have psychological support. What’s more, everything was also done according to Indigenous rituals.
[English]
Dr. Huyer: Thank you.
The timing would really depend on a number of factors, primarily how long ago the death may have occurred and then whatever details were available, such as the name of the young person and the location where the young person may have died. The more details there are, the quicker we can do it.
We have various approaches through our own files, through the archive files, through the NCTR files, and we have access to a number of different ones.
When you ask about the legal challenges, the Coroners Act in Ontario has been interpreted to have authority to obtain the records, which overcomes the legal challenges, but there are legal challenges for community members and for those who are doing research in communities, because they don’t have easy access or access to many of the different files, so there is limitation.
My understanding of the Quebec legislation is that it is a reasonable assistance to that. We don’t have that in Ontario, but we do believe that our act — well, our act is providing us that authority. So we offer that to the communities if, in fact, they have challenges getting records.
I think that’s the answer to the question. I don’t know if I covered all of the questions.
The Chair: That’s great. Thank you.
Mr. Eggenberger, do you have anything to add?
Mr. Eggenberger: Yes, I think I would answer in two parts: The records from 1967 and onward, that would be a fairly easy process. They could get it within a day or two, depending on where it is. We could definitely know if we have the record or not right away, and then we can get it and share it with the family. That’s not a problem.
It’s more problematic with the stuff before 1967 because we’d have to coordinate with the archives in Ottawa and try and do that. We haven’t attempted that process, so I’m not sure what it is, and that’s where I see a major problem for the people in residential schools in the Northwest Territories. Because of the numbers that we looked at on the NCTR website, there was a large number of people there for whom we just don’t have the records. So that would be it.
That’s all. Thanks.
The Chair: Thank you for that. We’ll go to my deputy chair now.
Senator Arnot: Thank you, witnesses. I would like to really understand better what Ms. Kronström is talking about and the authority that the Quebec service has to compel and release more information to families about the deaths of their children to family members and relations where institutions have a connection.
And I’m really wondering — and I think maybe Dr. Huyer has answered it somewhat — but it seems to me to be a very progressive tool that’s in the Quebec legislation to be able to authorize the communication of personal information to families of Indigenous children. I’m not sure it is in other Coroners Acts, and I’m not sure it is as fulsome if you do have that. It seems to me it’s a tool that should be available to you if it isn’t, because it seems to me it would be very helpful to families who are grieving and searching for closure.
First, Ms. Kronström, can you amplify how that works and how you have used it? Do you feel that’s an important mechanism in reconciliation? And the same comment from Dr. Huyer and Mr. Eggenberger, please.
[Translation]
Ms. Kronström: I will explain. I had provided your clerk with the enabling legislation for the Act to authorize the communication of personal information to the families of Indigenous children who went missing or died after being admitted to an institution. This is really a separate act from the Coroners Act. This act creates a secretariat, so a separate entity, which brings together the various stakeholders, including the Coroner’s Office, the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale, the Archives nationales du Québec and the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux, if there is a need for psychological support.
So they’re the ones who are in touch with the families, who have developed special ties and who support them, who help them collect all these documents to ultimately provide answers if the families want to proceed with an exhumation to confirm the identity of a loved one or find out if it is indeed their loved one who is buried somewhere. This is precisely what led to the exhumation of the two young babies rather quickly.
It’s really a creation. Based on discussions with the Secrétariat aux relations avec les Premières Nations et les Inuit and the directorate responsible for family support — and this is hearsay — this apparently does not exist in the other provinces. It would be a fairly flexible tool that would make it possible to reconcile the difficulty coroners have in accessing their records, which are often regimes in which it’s not always easy to extract data.... Keywords need to be used, and the main keyword currently is the child’s name. This may be a recommendation we could make to invigorate the process and create a potentially faster movement to help Indigenous families.
[English]
Senator Arnot: I would like to hear the others comment on that. It seems to me that it’s something that is unique and could be very helpful to provinces and territories.
Dr. Huyer: It could be. I don’t know enough details. I need to read the legislation, but in Ontario we feel confident that the Coroners Act provides us that authority for all children who died within residential schools. We believe that because we believe that there have been a number of questions about the circumstances of their deaths which warrant investigation when they are brought to our attention. We didn’t recognize that historically many years ago, but we do now.
We also believe that it is within the public interest to understand the circumstances. Because even if somebody died from an infection, there may have been other reasons — the fact that they were living in a setting that had cohabitation and may have allowed infection to spread, for example. We do believe that it’s within our legislative authority to obtain the records. That’s what we have done in Ontario.
Having said that, there are many communities and nations that aren’t necessarily going to want to work with us because we are a government organization, and I recognize that there would be potential distrust of us and our organization. Hopefully, we reduce that distrust, but I can recognize that. So having a legislation or a mechanism that allows families, communities and those working with them to obtain the records on their own, without having to utilize our authority and come through us, is something that would be a reasonable consideration in my mind.
Senator Arnot: Thank you for that.
Mr. Eggenberger: I’m not sure if I read or heard the question correctly. I think you seem to be asking whether or not we would be able to share our records with the families of a deceased person. In the Northwest Territories, we regularly share — no matter what the case — the coroner’s report and the autopsy report with the next of kin. That could be extended for the residential schools. I could certainly extend that to the extended family and be able to do that.
The rest of the file the coroner’s office generates, the family could certainly look at that. However, our third-party documentation in the file we won’t share by sending it out to them. But if they are able to attend our office, we will certainly let them look over it. Then they can use that knowledge to request access to information on different organizations so that they will do it, and we are quite prepared to help them, to guide them through the process. Ultimately, I do have discretion under our access to information act to make some stuff, but it’s on a case-by-case basis.
Senator Arnot: All right. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Audette: [Innu-aimun spoken]
I’ll ask my questions in French, if I may. Thank you very much, Coroner Kronström. It’s really the families who participated or dared to speak the truth during the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This makes Quebec the only place where there will be a law — a law that, unfortunately, has a life span of 10 years, with about seven years remaining.
We see that it’s possible to access hospitals, records, religious communities, coroners’ offices and so on to obtain information.
I know there are other coroners in Ontario, the Northwest Territories and Quebec, too. When I was commissioner of the inquiry, I noticed that “baby Audette” — this is a fictitious name, since I’m not allowed to reveal real names — had been entered in a space. We don’t have the full names, or the children weren’t baptized. I don’t know how you could help us make recommendations or work toward that.
You have a responsibility in your provinces and territories. What would be some recommendations we could make that would ensure that we work together or that would result in a specific agreement for families who are searching? Before the act was adopted in Quebec, for 40 years, families in Quebec wanted to know why their baby had died and what caused their death. This law has meant that today, we can find answers to our questions. How can we work together?
You seem sympathetic to the cause. If you and I are no longer there, and neither is the sympathy, how will we be able to legislate together and make sure the laws are upheld so families get answers?
[English]
The Chair: Who would like to take a crack at answering that question? Dr. Huyer?
Dr. Huyer: Sure, I can start. Thank you for the question.
First and foremost, by committing to work together is how we can work together, how we can start working together. That’s what we’ve been doing in Ontario and it sounds like in Quebec and in the Northwest Territories, given what we’re hearing. When we learn from each other, we think about what will be the most effective way. Working with the communities in Ontario, we have heard there are situations where they can’t get records, and we said, “We’ll get them for you.” That’s what we’re doing: We’re looking at what is available right now to work within the legislative authorities, and we are responsive to families.
Just a small point to the deputy chair: Our records are totally releasable. There is no hesitation in us sharing with families. Anything that we have, we’ll share, and anything we get, we won’t share the record necessarily, but we’ll share the information that’s relative to their child.
So that is not a challenge at all. It’s getting the records, and not so much us. As things go forward, we want the families and communities to be able to have access not going through us. I think the legislation is similar. Again, providing that ability for families to have access under certain circumstances would be a logical way to go.
[Translation]
Ms. Kronström: I’m going to reiterate a principle that’s very important here, that of the legislative framework. As Senator Audette mentioned, Quebec, precisely because of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has a legislative framework that has created an entity — the Secrétariat aux relations avec les Premières Nations et les Inuit — entirely dedicated to reconciliation, to answer families’ questions and help them in their quest for truth.
All the people who are part of this secretariat, and especially the management responsible for supporting families, are very close to the culture. They have developed close ties. After that, it’s the secretariat that brings together the different agencies or departments to contribute to their files and support them. Sometimes this is very difficult. The fact that the children weren’t baptized is an additional challenge, as they were often not buried in cemeteries.
I believe that, in the case of the two babies, we used a ground‑penetrating radar before the exhumations. We bring in experts, we’re creative and we work together. As with anything, it takes a conductor, someone to breathe life into the project. The secretariat is in the best position. That’s why we were able to carry out two exhumations in a very short time.
Senator Audette: Just 30 seconds, Madam Coroner. These are calls for justice 20 and 21 from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls — the Kepek report. This is not the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I say that with love. Thank you.
Ms. Kronström: Yes, absolutely; thank you. It’s important to put the debate in context. You’ve done very well. I was on a verbal roll. I think this model should be imported into other provinces.
[English]
The Chair: Mr. Eggenberger, do you have anything to add?
Mr. Eggenberger: I echo our colleagues from Quebec and Ontario that cooperation is key here. One particular issue we face nowadays is that the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and, to some extent, Yukon send some of our people south for medical treatment. If they die in the other jurisdiction, then we have a hard time accessing the records in that jurisdiction. That introduces a big impediment into what has happened.
I haven’t looked at any of the files before 1967 because I don’t have access to them, but I suspect the same thing was happening before. I know that from 1967 on, we were regularly sending people to Edmonton as well as to Manitoba and Ontario for treatment. In terms of a lot of those things, we have to not only look at our own residential schools but also see whether or not people came from other places.
The website I referred to earlier is a good place for us to start looking at these names and seeing whether there are people coming from other jurisdictions. Certainly, I would appreciate other jurisdictions sharing that information with mine. So I think the biggest thing is cooperation. Hopefully, that answers your question.
Senator Coyle: I think that perhaps our last witness started to answer a question about cross-jurisdictional issues.
You mentioned people who would have been in residential schools perhaps being sent somewhere else to be cared for medically. For instance, my brother-in-law is from James Bay and Northern Quebec. He went to three different residential schools, including at least one in Ontario, in Moose Factory.
How does that work currently between the jurisdictions? Is it the place of death where the record is held? If so, is that then shared with the jurisdiction from which the person originates?
If people could answer that question, I would like to hear about that.
Dr. Huyer: Death is a provincial and territorial jurisdiction. The vital statistics, as well as the death investigation system, whether it be a medical examiner or coroner, is provincial and territorial. That’s where the final death information would be.
The journey before that would need to be evaluated to the extent that each individual family wished. Right now, we’re focusing on the death information to provide information as to where the children are. That’s our initial focus.
If families wish to have further investigation, then we would take that as necessary. We have good cooperation and collaboration with our colleagues in the death investigation system across Canada, so I think we could figure out a mechanism. Again, legislatively it would potentially be a challenge, but I think it could be done in a way that would be collaborative across Canada, though not necessarily easily done.
Senator Coyle: That’s very helpful. Of the cases you’re currently dealing with, are any of the families out of province?
Dr. Huyer: I don’t know. Again, we’re looking specifically at the young people who died in Ontario and we haven’t gone backwards.
Senator Coyle: Thank you.
Senator Martin: Some of my questions have been answered.
Mr. Eggenberger spoke about not having access to the archives of Canada and some of the limitations. I’m assuming that in part it’s financial resources that you’re talking about. Do you have such limitations as well in Ontario?
And for Quebec, I was curious whether there are such limitations because of funding or human resources.
Dr. Huyer: The answer is always that we can always have more resources. Ours are not sent to the Canadian archives but are maintained in the Archives of Ontario. We have a relationship with our chief archivist in Ontario. John Roberts and his team are very proactive in terms of providing access. We’re not struggling with that access as far as legal provisions go. It would depend on the search parameters we are following.
Senator Martin: And in Quebec?
[Translation]
Ms. Kronström: I was just about to follow up. As I said in my presentation, it’s not a question of funding, but of legal regime. Our coroner’s records have only existed since 1986. Before that, under the old legislation, records were kept in court registries, and then all these records, which became old documents, were filed with the Archives nationals du Québec. So, the documents have not been destroyed, but the Archives nationales du Québec may have old coroner reports.
However, the issue is the keyword that enables us to start the search. We absolutely need a child’s name. To tie this back to the previous question, this is why the SRPNI was able to help a family from Winnipeg, so from another province, that had asked it to find a 13-year-old girl who had died in an institution and had been buried in Quebec.
The documents exist, but the challenge really lies in finding a name and other details in order to begin the search.
[English]
Senator Martin: And how do you handle privacy concerns when dealing with historical records?
Dr. Huyer: We deal with privacy records every day. Every tragedy that happens in Ontario, current and in the past, is something that is private. We’re very vigilant and diligent on that. We have significant protections in place. If there is a family request related to the information, the family is entitled to that information. We have a process that would release it. The Coroners Act provides us the authority to share with families. As our Northwest Territories colleague said, freedom of information would support some of that sharing as well. We would protect it to those who are entitled to the information. We have lots of protections in place for that.
The Chair: I will ask a follow-up question to what Senator Coyle and Senator Audette raised earlier. If you want to provide the answer in writing, that’s fine in the interest of time.
In your opinion, should there be a national body that allows coroners and other bodies with relevant records across all jurisdictions to work together to help Indigenous families get answers about their children? Would such a body help expedite the processing of requests as well as the transfer of records?
Dr. Huyer: I’ll start. I would say, in principle, the answer is yes, but I think it does go down into the details of how and where it would happen. So I think it’s important that it wouldn’t set up a bureaucratic challenge to then have a number of things that have to be jumped through to get those records. But I think, in principle, the answer is yes.
Mr. Eggenberger: Thank you. As Dirk has said, I’m in agreement in principle. The devil is in the details, and getting it all worked out — all the different privacy issues — would be the problem. Thank you.
The Chair: Ms. Kronström, do you have anything to add?
[Translation]
Ms. Kronström: My suggestion is similar to the one I made earlier. Before thinking about a national organization, perhaps we should look to provincial organizations, such as the SRPNI, to try to gather as much provincial information as possible. Perhaps we don’t need to set up an organization, but simply conclude agreements for the flow of information. This would perhaps be a more flexible procedure; it would make it possible not to weigh down the process by creating another organization, as my colleagues mentioned earlier.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Greenwood: In these records, the older records that you have seen and even the current records, are the communities identified to which these people belonged?
Dr. Huyer: No, and that’s a significant challenge. These are the death records. They typically don’t have the community in all of them. They have where the death occurred, so then we would go back to the records from the schools and then work backwards from that approach. There are some that do, but not routinely.
Senator Greenwood: Thank you.
The Chair: I thank everyone for testifying. If you have anything further in writing that you would like to submit, certainly feel free to do so to our clerk, Andrea Mugny, within a week. She will be happy to receive any testimony.
The time for this panel is now complete. I wish to again thank all our witnesses for joining us today.
We welcome our second panel of witnesses. From the Royal BC Museum, we have Jodi Giesbrecht, Vice President of Archives, Collections and Research; and Emma Wright, Director of Archives. And from Société historique de Saint-Boniface, we welcome Janet La France, Executive Director, and Julie Reid, Head Archivist. Thank you all for joining us today.
Our witnesses will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the senators. I invite Jodi Giesbrecht to give her opening remarks.
Jodi Giesbrecht, Vice President, Archives, Collections and Research, Royal BC Museum: Honourable senators, witnesses and guests, my name is Jodi Giesbrecht and I am the Vice President of Archives, Collections and Research at the Royal British Columbia Museum. I’m joined tonight by my colleague Emma Wright, who is Director of Archives.
We’re grateful to be speaking to you this evening from the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives, which is situated on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen peoples, who are known today as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.
The Royal BC Museum stewards the records of two Catholic congregations involved in running Indian residential schools in British Columbia: the records of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of St. Ann. We hold these records with great responsibility, honouring the truth and legacy of residential schools in this province.
The Royal BC Museum signed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in April 2022. We committed to providing “copies of unrestricted surrogate digital Residential School records and accompanying metadata” to NCTR, with the first priority being the digital transfer of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and Sisters of St. Ann records.
The Oblates of Mary Immaculate donated their records to the Royal BC Museum in 2019. Of 74 linear metres of records, 19 linear metres relates directly to residential schools which have been prioritized for digitization and transferred to NCTR.
As of July 2023, all textual records have been described and are publicly available on the BC Archives’ collections database. Digitization has been made possible through funding from B.C.’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation and the University of British Columbia’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre.
To date, approximately 36% of the records have been digitized and 78% digitization has been completed on the major series in this collection. This amounts to more than 37,000 pages or 3,366 gigabytes. We anticipate transferring the first series to NCTR — actually, we are in progress on this.
The Sisters of St. Ann and the Royal BC Museum reached a new commitment in 2022 to expedite a 2012 agreement to transfer their records, originally slated for 2027. The records were legally acquired by the Royal BC Museum in June 2023.
Of 210 linear metres, approximately 4 metres of records relates to residential schools and is prioritized for digitization and transfer to NCTR. Processing and description of these records began immediately after the transfer.
While the NCTR received copies of Sisters of St. Ann records when it was founded in 2015, the Royal BC Museum is now digitizing the original records to NCTR’s preservation and access standards. We will transfer digital copies to NCTR. Funding of this digitization effort is similarly through the province of B.C. and the University of British Columbia.
We have digitized approximately 13% of relevant records, which is approximately 4,000 pages or 381 gigabytes. We are currently in the process of transferring the first series to NCTR. In sum, the total number of documents that we have scanned and digitized to date is 27,110.
To serve communities, the Royal BC Museum ensures records are available, even while they are in the process of being digitized; this is an essential service to community, but it does impact our timeline and our resources.
To better facilitate access to these records, we have secured funding for two digitization technicians for one year. We are looking for additional funding opportunities to accelerate digitization and transfer.
The BC Archives also provides onsite access to records, publishes online descriptions of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate records and detailed finding aids and research guides. We also waive reproduction fees for Indigenous clients.
We have also been conducting outreach to the public on how they can better access these records. We have developed disclosure agreement MOUs directly with a number of B.C. nations so that we can share requested digitized records.
It is a vital part of our provincial government’s mandate to improve access to residential school records and our commitment to adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Royal BC Museum is working together in partnership with government agencies to ensure NCTR receives information as quickly as possible and that communities are provided the supports and information they need and deserve.
We continue to listen to and be led by communities, survivors and their families, and we acknowledge that access to information is central to truth and reconciliation. The Royal BC Museum strongly supports the Senate’s recommendations in the Honouring the Children Who Never Came Home: Truth, Education and Reconciliation report. We recognize the need for adequate, predictable, stable and long-term funding so that the NCTR can fulfill its mandate. Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Janet La France, Executive Director, Société historique de Saint-Boniface: Tansi. Good evening.
I’d like to begin by thanking the Senate committee for inviting me to speak today.
My name is Janet La France; I’m a Métis from Red River, registered with the Manitoba Métis Federation. I’m also executive director of the Centre du patrimoine, a non-profit francophone community archive managed by the Société historique de Saint-Boniface and located in the heart of Treaty 1 territory.
Our mission is the preservation and promotion of francophone and Métis heritage in Western Canada, and Manitoba in particular. We are governed by a volunteer board of directors, and have a staff of five permanent employees and three to four students in the summer. We can count on the help of 37 community volunteers who assist us at all levels within the organization.
Our annual budget is approximately $700,000, nearly half of which is self-generated in collaboration with community partners. Our operational funding from the provincial and federal governments has not increased in nearly 25 years.
The Centre du patrimoine is not an institution linked to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, nor is it a religious institution, although about a quarter of the archival documents we house come from French-speaking religious congregations. I say “we house” because the Oblate documents in our vaults do not belong to the Société historique de Saint-Boniface. They have not been donated, and we do not control access to them. Instead, these documents are stored at the Centre du patrimoine, where they are preserved according to archival standards and are accessible according to restrictions imposed by the Oblates themselves.
In accepting these archives, we had understood that all relevant documents had been copied and provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and then to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and that this task was ultimately the responsibility of the owner of the documents. This had been the case for all the other religious congregations that had kept their documents in our vaults. So it was a surprise to learn that some relevant Oblate files had not been transferred to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and that some of these documents may be in our custody.
Since then, our team has experienced an incredible flood of requests for access to residential school records. As a result, we have made a Herculean effort to inventory, identify and make all these documents accessible to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and to survivors.
We have reoriented our programming to prioritize projects focused on Indigenous communities and residential schools.
We have implemented protocols to better welcome Indigenous researchers to the centre. We have created glossaries, subject headings and bilingual descriptions to facilitate access. It must be said that the majority of our documents are in French.
We have applied for funding to digitize photos, recordings and documents related to residential schools and Indigenous communities. We have contacted Indigenous communities directly to inform them of the existence of documents in our vaults that may relate to their missing families and loved ones.
We partnered with the Oblates and the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to identify all relevant documents that had not yet been transferred, digitize them, describe them and send them as high-resolution digital copies.
We have devoted considerable time and resources to processing a collection of documents that do not belong to us, and we have done so because we believe that survivors deserve answers.
The Oblate documents in our vaults measure 183 linear metres, 122 of which remain partially or entirely unprocessed. Residential school documents may be scattered throughout the collection, making it necessary to process the entire collection. In fact, 122 linear metres of textual documents laid vertically one after the other represents the length of a standard baseball field. Without increased funding and human resources to undertake this task full time, this process could take decades.
Once again, we were surprised to see our name published in the committee’s recent report. Neither our staff nor our board of directors were contacted by a representative of the committee when the report was being researched and written. No one contacted us to ask about the status of the archives in question, who owned them or how they could be accessed, or to check on progress in this area.
At the Société historique de Saint-Boniface, we understand the important role archives play as evidence, evidence that reveals the truth, provides answers and brings a sense of justice to survivors and their families. We have worked tirelessly on this task over the past three years, and we intend to continue to do so. Unfortunately, the lack of financial support only delays justice for these communities that have already waited far too long.
Marsee. Meegwetch. Thank you.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. La France. We will now open the floor to questions from senators.
Are you getting any funding or other resources from Catholic entities to complete this work?
Ms. La France: Yes, we are receiving some funds from the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to pay the wages of a digitization technician. She has already digitized Codex Historicus maps, plans and anything that was obviously related to residential schools. She is transferring them to the NCTR. They are paying that wage.
Part of the issue is that we have this joint partnership with the NCTR. The NCTR pays a student to cross-check the inventories, so that we’re not duplicating work that has already been done. The process of counter-verifying the inventories is what’s actually delaying the process of digitization.
The Chair: How many more archivists do you think you would need to expedite the process?
Ms. La France: We need all of them, really. I think we would need at least a couple of full-time archivists on the task. As I said in my declaration, there are 122 linear metres of records that are untreated. We don’t know how much of that exactly relates to residential schools, but that processing has to be done. Then we would love to digitize all of these things and transfer them to the NCTR.
The Chair: Ms. Giesbrecht, comments?
Ms. Giesbrecht: My colleague Emma will take this one.
Emma Wright, Director of Archives, Royal BC Museum: For us in B.C., both religious organizations whose records we steward gave us funding for an archivist position to process those records. I would say that the conversation about funding is ongoing, as we indicated in our statement. We had to seek funding elsewhere within B.C., as you heard in our statement, to fund the digitization of the records, but similar to my colleague who has already spoken, if you give us more funding, we could get this done so much quicker. Those are the conversations that we are having.
We’re lucky enough that, yes, we have been able to source funding for two different archivists working on each collection and then additional positions to digitize.
I would say that one of the challenges, however, is that the usual practice for an archive when you take in records from private organizations or individuals is that those records will have restricted access up until the point that you’ve described them and potentially digitized them as well. But because of the nature of this information, we’ve been ensuring that we are responding to communities and providing access at the same time as processing. All of that work, in terms of helping find or share information with people, takes archivists and staff time away from actually processing and getting the records to the NCTR. That itself is a challenge, as indicated. If you can give us more resources, it would just really help.
The Chair: Thank you for that.
Senator Arnot: I say to all the witnesses from the two organizations: You are doing Herculean work, obviously.
I want to try to put this in perspective, if I can. There are 183 linear metres in Société historique de Saint-Boniface, and I guess you were surprised that you are warehousing these, and then, all of a sudden, people wanted the information.
Here are three questions for each of you. How long do you believe it would take to digitize these records if you had the resources to do it properly, professionally and competently? I believe you probably don’t have the ability to pre-filter some of this material. Are you sensing that anything will be held back from any records from the NCTR? When I talk about pre‑filtering, I’m actually talking about categorizing as the work is digitized. Digitizing it is one thing, but to actually know the content, keywords, categories, et cetera could advance the cause for the archivists who will presumably read and understand and translate all these materials.
Would you be open to using machine learning tools to actually help do that, because I believe that could advance the cause and shorten the time to process these records? I’m just putting that forward, and then I really want to know if you have the resources to do this right. Do you know what it would cost to do it in a way that each of your organizations would feel it was completely professional and responsible? Without the funds, you probably can’t meet a high standard, the highest standard you would like to meet.
So that’s my question, and if you don’t know the answer now, could you provide it later? Because I think it’s really important. You need the support to do the work the way you feel you want to do it, and you don’t have that now. How much is it going to cost?
Ms. La France: I can go ahead again, if you want. There are a couple questions that I will leave to my archivist, Julie Reid, to jump in on. The question about how much the cost would be, I don’t have the answer right now, but I could get together with my archivists. I have two. One of them did do some work for the TRC. She is with us now as a digital archivist, so she takes care of that end of doing the transfer to NCTR and making sure that quality control is in place for the digital records and the resolution. So I could get back to you on that.
As far as being open to using machine learning tools, certainly, and we do a bit of that already. We invite a lot of Indigenous community groups that are doing research on their communities and their experience with residential schools and missing children to come to our archive. We pull all of the documents that we can for their access. We invite them to digitize the records themselves if they want. Part of the challenge is that most of the records are written in French and in cursive. When they are typed in French, you can actually use Google Lens. You can photograph the document, and Google Lens will read it to you in a different language orally. That’s one way we can deal with typed documents. However, for the cursive documents in French, I haven’t seen good results with machine learning yet. There may be a better program out there that could do the job, but we haven’t been made aware of it.
As for any records being held back, as far as the Oblates’ collection goes in our vaults, the Oblates dropped all restrictions on all residential school content except for the personnel files. The personnel files themselves have been digitized and will be transferred to NCTR, where survivors will have to access that through NCTR instead of us. In the meantime, we do give access to all records apart from personnel files.
I would like to pass the questions of how long it would take to digitize and the ability to pre-filter records to Julie, if possible.
Julie Reid, Head Archivist, Société historique de Saint-Boniface: For how long, that’s a really difficult question to answer because out of the 122 metres, there might be only 10% of those records that have anything regarding residential schools. The biggest challenge for us at the start is just to identify the collections or the parts of the collection that need to be processed more quickly. We have already identified some. As well as the general Oblate collection for the province of Manitoba, we also have some records from individual Oblates. So for those records, we have already pretty much identified which ones we should do first. Because of that, I know pretty much how many metres of that we have to do. We could figure out a time period for those, and we are hoping to start this project shortly.
However, for the general Oblates of the province of Manitoba, that’s a big challenge because there might be documents scattered here and there. For example, in the financial part of the records, we know there might be some registers that have some information about certain communities or certain residential schools associated to them that could be useful, or land records, like land transfer records that might be useful. Again, it will be small pieces throughout the records that will have to be identified before we can scan them.
And we can’t scan until they have been processed, because we need to be able to give them file numbers. We can’t just scan a bunch of records and send them to the NCTR, because then they are not findable again because they haven’t been processed.
We can try to come up with numbers for you by the lists that we have, preliminary lists, depending on the series we have, but I can’t give you an exact number just like that.
Ms. Wright: Speaking for B.C.’s experience, similar to what you just heard, I would say that we could definitely take this away and figure out costs and how long. In terms of looking at the current resources that we have, with the two digitization technicians, we already figured out that if we could maintain those current resources, we would have digitized and be able to transfer all of the current prioritized residential school records to NCTR by May 2025. One of the things that we are now looking at is if there are different ways of digitizing records and having some conversations with Library and Archives Canada about how they are doing digitization on a larger scale with the day school records and what we could learn from their experience and implement here in B.C.
Similarly, with some other government agencies in B.C., I know they already potentially have the facilities in place to do digitization on a large scale. So we’re looking at other options as to what would be possible to accelerate this process. But, yes, we can take that away and provide more information for the committee.
In terms of information held back, we have exactly the same agreement with the Oblates when they donated their records as was previously mentioned. We are digitizing everything to share with the NCTR, and then the Oblates have an agreement with the NCTR about, as mentioned, personnel files. Other than that, the deeds of gift that we have for both religious congregation records reference B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, or FIPPA, in terms of how personal information in the records is dealt with. The provisions of B.C.’s FIPPA would apply.
Finally, on the note of machine learning, we would very much welcome anything in that. It’s something that we haven’t yet really explored in the BC Archives here, but we’re very open to implementing any technology that would speed up this process or assist with information and getting information to survivors and their families.
Senator Arnot: Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: I have a couple of questions. Hopefully, there can be quick answers. My first question is for Ms. Giesbrecht. When you speak to the funding you have received — I think you said from Oblates for two archivists — how long is that funding committed for? Will it stop at some point?
Ms. Wright: I can take this one. The Oblates funded an archivist position to process all the textual records, which completed this July, but I anticipate we will be having a further conversation with them about the remaining materials, which are audiovisual records, that remain unprocessed.
With the Sisters of St. Ann, they have funded an archivist position right up until this institution is moving to a new site around 2026. So there is an archivist position they have committed to funding up until that time.
Senator Sorensen: Also to our B.C. witnesses, there was a CBC article in 2022 saying that some of the content dates back as far as 1858 and therefore may be too delicate to handle. Is that still a fair comment? Is there a solution for that?
Ms. Wright: I’m not aware of that article, but please send it on. Obviously, with all the records within the archives’ custody, we have to be mindful of conservation treatment. That is part of what we do when we’re processing the records. But there are many records in our custody where treatment might be required, but then you would still, if you could, possibly digitize the records. That’s why you need potentially different technologies.
Senator Sorensen: It sounds optimistic that there is potentially a way to do it.
With these witnesses and then our previous witnesses, we talked about records being transferred to NCTR. What happens then? The NCTR must be getting records from all kinds of different sources. Are they ready to be read or do they have another whole process with everything coming into their organization?
Ms. Wright: That obviously needs to be discussed with the NCTR. Both the archives here on this call are trying to process the records hopefully before we share them with the NCTR. That way, we can also share those record descriptions with them. That’s certainly our intent at the moment when we are about to transfer the Sisters of St. Ann records. We are trying to share as much as we can of the descriptive metadata with them as well so there is not a replication of archivists in one institution describing records and digitizing them and then the same thing happening at the NCTR. This is why we use the same archival online descriptive catalogue at the Royal BC Museum and Archives as the NCTR do, so there’s an opportunity to potentially upload and share those full descriptions. They can just upload them to their own catalogue, so we’ve saved them time.
Yes, my understanding is that they are receiving lots of digital accessions and they have to go through and describe those themselves.
Senator Sorensen: This question is for Ms. La France. We have heard that the Métis people were excluded from federal settlements and apologies related to their experiences in residential schools. To what extent do you think the lack of access to records impacted that exclusion? Do you or do you think other organizations have any records that may influence future reconciliation and restitution efforts for the Métis people?
Ms. La France: There is definitely a barrier to access and getting that knowledge out of the records because of language and because of all sorts of things. One project that I did recently had to do with an industrial school. It wasn’t actually counted in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement because it was from 1890 to 1905. It was the St. Boniface Industrial School. When I looked into the St. Boniface Industrial School, I actually used 13 different archival sources to piece together a list of 300 students who attended there. We discovered 80 children who had died at the school or shortly after leaving it, and only 3 of those children were actually on the NCTR’s Memorial Register. About 140 of the children — I forget the exact numbers, but almost 40% of the children in that school — were Métis. They weren’t enrolled in treaty; they weren’t associated to any kind of band or reserve. They were simply identified as Métis and from a community like St. François Xavier or St. Laurent or wherever.
I think there is definitely some oversight with the Métis experience in residential schools. It’s interesting enough that the Métis children seem to be less well documented because they are not enrolled in treaty. It’s harder to attach a community to them as well, whereas with the children who were in treaty, you can usually find some sort of reference to their place of birth, sometimes next of kin, sometimes the band number or reserve that they are associated to.
Another source that would be really helpful to go through is hospital records. We had the hospital register for the St. Boniface Hospital up until 1894. Those hospital records tell you so much information about the patients: who is treating them, where their place of residence is when they are in the hospital, the cause of death and their ethnic origin. It’s quite a messy web of things to kind of cull through, but the information is there. It’s just kind of scattered.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much. I’m just amazed. I want to thank our witnesses not only for what you have presented here today but also for this incredible work. It takes such skill and dedication, and what you are doing is so important. I want to just acknowledge that.
Many of my questions have been answered. This may seem like a simple question — and I probably should know the answer — but once all of these records are digitized, organized, transferred, you will maintain your own copies of them also. Do both of your institutions intend to continue to provide service to individuals and communities once the NCTR has them and they can also provide that? Will you continue to do that locally? If so, how will you sustain that aspect of your ongoing work?
Ms. La France: Yes, I think the plan would be to continue to provide access to communities. I think it’s exceptionally important work.
The other thing is that we are a community archive. We’re very open and friendly. We have protocols in place to allow for smudging, we do an orientation in the archives and behind‑the‑scenes tours, and we have a couple of archivists who will help groups navigate the records. There is enough demand that the NCTR can’t answer everybody at this moment.
Also, the NCTR is an institution. It’s in a school, and that also creates a barrier to people wanting to go there. That’s me speaking from a Métis perspective, but if I were looking for records and I had to go back into an educational institution in order to access them, I think that would probably be a bit triggering. That’s another challenge with archives in general, namely that we do have researchers who need to step away from the materials, who need that crisis line or who need a space for spiritual cleansing and renewal.
So, yes, we will continue to give access. The plan is to really advocate to the governments for accrued operational funding so that it can become part of our operational practice to continue to give those services.
Ms. Reid: With the increased number of visitors we have had from First Nations since Kamloops, we have formed a lot of relationships with communities, which we didn’t have before. We had a few before, but it has increased quite a bit. One of the things that we’d love to continue to do, besides offering them the access to all the records, is a return too. So many of the photos, for example, are not fully identified. Most of the time, the religious staff or the adults are identified. Once in a while, a family might be identified in some of the community photos, but in the residential school photos, it’s just groups of children with no identification. Once in a while, we have survivors who come in and they recognize themselves and family members. We are trying to get this sharing of information to go both ways, not just us giving them the documents but also them giving us back.
As soon as things are identified, we can add that to our database online for the photos. They can see the photos online, and the more information there is, the more searchable the photos are and the more accessible they are by more people. That’s all I wanted to add.
Ms. Giesbrecht: In terms of the Royal BC Museum and Archives, we completely agree with everything that our colleagues in Winnipeg have shared in terms of what the NCTR is capable of, what gaps are left and where people might feel comfortable.
From our perspective, we’re focusing our efforts on these two major transfers to NCTR, but we’re aware that there are a lot of other records throughout the archives that are relevant. This is kind of a really big first step, but it’s ongoing, and we know it will be for the foreseeable future as we continue to uncover and discover more and more records that are relevant and as we work to address things like the under-description of Métis in archival records. There is so much work to be done in terms of all areas of archival practice and access in addition to digitization.
I guess I would also say that BC Archives is a bit unique in terms of the integration with the Royal BC Museum, so access to records is part of a broader institutional approach that also involves things like repatriation, which is a key priority for us, community engagement and all of these things, whether it’s access to records or repatriation. We know that this is our work for the future, and it’s not a box that we’re checking.
Senator Martin: My colleague Senator Coyle really articulated what I was feeling and thinking, which is the important work you are doing and the fact that we talk about linear metres, but what is on the page is information about a child, a human being, and how sensitive the information is that you are dealing with. I just want to thank you as well for the incredible work you are doing in this very sort of niche area, but it is so important to bridge.
When you said you want to continue to give access, sometimes we could have all the information and programs, but I’m curious about how much the communities, the families are aware of where to go for such information. It would be quite daunting, I would think. I’m a British Columbian, but I have never personally accessed the archives and I don’t know where I would begin.
I hope there is continual proactive communication and relationship building and that families and communities are aware of what they can access. This is more of a comment, but thank you for your work.
My one quick question is to the Royal BC Museum. In your 2021 news release, you mentioned an accelerated timeline to transfer the complete Sisters of St. Ann archives to the BC Archives by 2025 rather than 2027. I think you mentioned you have digitized approximately 13%, so I’m wondering if you are on track to meet your accelerated timeline.
Ms. Wright: I think probably what was meant by “accelerated timeline” in that statement was that originally the Sisters of St. Ann had agreed to transfer their records to the Royal BC Museum in 2027. We came to a new agreement with the sisters to transfer the records now. They were transferred this year to the Royal BC Museum stewardship, and now we have been able to really get properly started with the digitization effort. As we said, we’ve completed 13% to date on those records that were identified as first priority, and, yes, I would say that we’re on track — as long as we can continue to maintain the same funding and resources that we currently have.
Senator Martin: That’s good to hear because I can only imagine what volume you’re dealing with.
My question, going back to the access piece — I think Ms. La France talked about the relationship building that you have done in that the communities and families are aware of the work that you do — is this something that you do actively, namely, inform communities and families that you are available? I would imagine that organizations like yours exist in other provinces across Canada.
Ms. La France: Yes, we do actively reach out to communities and to families. We do have a tendency to publish online, on our social media and that sort of thing, that we have these records and these are the communities we have them for. Sometimes we share photos and ask, “Do you come from this community? If you do, we have materials on your community.”
We had a project last year that was funded by The Winnipeg Foundation to digitize photos of Indigenous communities and to then reach out to those communities and let them know we had material on their communities and possibly their families and the schools that are close to those communities. So that was done. I think our digital archivist contacted about 18 different communities that were represented in our archival documents.
The same archivist actually went to the “Truth Telling Gathering” that was hosted by Keeseekoose First Nation this past weekend. She did a presentation there to let people know — it was a survivors’ group — about the resources that are available and the kind of materials we have, the communities that we have them for and how to access them. Julie can elaborate a little more on this because she has also created guides for people that she sends out.
Ms. Reid: People are finding us somehow because we do get a lot of requests through the reference service that we have here, and then I think it’s word of mouth because we are getting a lot of communities, mostly from Saskatchewan in the last couple of years. I think they are talking to each other and they’ve let each other know that we’re here.
We are hoping that we get more groups from Manitoba and northwestern Ontario to come in because we have a lot of documents for that area of Canada as well.
We encourage any of them to let other people know that we exist. As Janet said, our digital archivist is present at different kinds of meetings and reunions. She knows a lot of people. She has a lot of personal contacts with First Nations communities, so that has helped us a lot as well. She often knows people who might know other people, so it’s just a better way to contact.
But, yes, if there were a way for us to contact more people, we would be very open to that so more people know that we’re here and how we can help.
As Janet mentioned, the biggest access problem that we have is that since most of our records are in French, that is a bit of a block to access. But in Saskatchewan, for example, they have gotten help from the University of Regina to translate documents. We encourage organizations to help or First Nations to find ways to translate these documents. If we could get more technical help with that, that would be wonderful because it’s a big challenge for us.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Martin. As a follow-up to Senator Martin’s question in terms of funding, could you comment on what percentage of funding you get from government, Church and others? You can provide that in writing if you don’t have that this evening.
Ms. La France: If my memory serves me well, we get about 13% of our funding from the province, about 30% of our funding from the federal government, and the rest is from donors and self-generated revenues that we have through partnerships. One of our most major partnerships is with the Manitoba Métis Federation. We have been providing them genealogical services for people in search of their Métis citizenship card since 2004. They are a really strong partner of ours.
We also get money from independent foundations like The Winnipeg Foundation or the Thomas Sill Foundation. There are several projects throughout the year that are done with other government funding or private funding.
We do have an endowment fund, which generates probably about 15% of our revenues, and a lot of that comes from donations as well from religious institutions.
The Chair: Thanks.
Ms. Wright: For us, I think we would definitely have to take that away and figure that out for you. With the projects and the work on the residential school records, it was certainly the first time in my time working at this institution that we had started to receive funding from other sources, including other government agencies. Regardless, we can take that away and provide it to the committee.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Greenwood: First of all, I want to add my gratitude for the work you do and how important it is to many families, so hiy hiy to you all for your work in this area.
I have a minor question about the Oblate records. My home is Treaty 6 territory in Alberta. I know there are Oblate records there, but I’m assuming that B.C. has B.C. Oblate records, and Manitoba has Manitoba Oblate records. Am I correct in that? So there would be a different group in different provinces that would be doing the kind of work that you are doing? Am I correct in understanding that? Okay, thank you.
I want to go back to a question that was asked earlier. The NCTR has a process, I would assume, for accepting records and its own standards or how they process them. Is there any coordination? Are you following the same language they are in their records in B.C. and in Manitoba? Otherwise, it’s like double work, right? I’m trying to get my head around the implementation of that. Can you comment about that at all?
Ms. La France: I can take a shot at that.
That’s why we have that student position with the NCTR. They provide us a student who goes through the inventories, compares all the documents, identifies what may be of interest and should be digitized and transferred, and then they do the description work and all the metadata associated with that record before we digitize it and transfer it. That way, when the digital image comes through of the record itself, the description and everything they need for their database would have been done by that student.
It is extremely slow going, though. We had a student all summer from them. Again, we need a bilingual student because our records are in French. We had a student all summer, and I think he only got through 500 records. It’s the tip of the iceberg.
Senator Greenwood: Also, both of you talked about funding. If anybody were to advocate, they could advocate federally, provincially and privately, as I understand it, yes? Thank you.
The Chair: The time for this panel is now complete. I wish to again thank all of our witnesses for joining us today. I also ask them that if there are any questions that they have yet to answer, please submit responses via email to the clerk by the end of the month. That brings us to the end of our meeting today.
(The committee adjourned.)