THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, October 25, 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.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on 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.
Honourable senators, to our witnesses and to those watching our meeting today, it is with deep regret that I convey to all of you the news that the Honourable Senator Ian Shugart passed away earlier today. There will be an opportunity to pay tribute at a later date but at this time I extend deepest sympathies on behalf of all senators and all associated with this meeting to his wife Linda, his son James, his daughters Robin and Heather and their entire family.
I would ask that we now hold a moment of silent tribute.
(Those present then stood in silent tribute.)
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. Let’s start on my left.
Senator Arnot: David Arnot. I’m a senator from Saskatchewan. I live in Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Hartling: Senator Hartling from Moncton, New Brunswick.
Senator Tannas: Scott Tannas from Alberta.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki.
[Translation]
Senator Audette: Michèle Audette, representing the De Salaberry senatorial division, in Quebec.
[English]
Senator D. Patterson: Dennis Patterson, Inuit, Nunavut.
The Chair: 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 Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419 and Hope for Wellness at 1-855-242-3310 or at www.hopeforwellness.ca.
Now I want to give some background about today. You may recall that last March, the Committee on Indigenous Peoples heard from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as NCTR, and the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools regarding their respective work honouring, amplifying and uncovering the truth about the residential school system and its painful and lasting impact. Based on this testimony, on July 19, the Committee on Indigenous Peoples issued an interim report titled Honouring the Children Who Never Came Home: Truth, Education and Reconciliation.
During tonight’s meeting, we will continue to hear from witnesses on this important topic.
I would now like to introduce our first panel of witnesses. From the Office of the Treaty Commissioner of Saskatchewan, Mary Musqua-Culbertson, Treaty Commissioner; from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, Raymond Frogner, Head of Archives; and as an individual, Anne Panasuk, former special advisor to support Families of Missing and Deceased Indigenous Children in Quebec, and she is currently working as an advisor for the Awacak Families Association. Wela’lin. Thank you for joining us today.
Witnesses will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes, which will be followed by a question and answer session with the senators.
I will now invite Treaty Commissioner Ms. Musqua-Culbertson to give her opening remarks.
Mary Musqua-Culbertson, Treaty Commissioner, Office of the Treaty Commissioner of Saskatchewan: Meegwetch.
My name is Mary Musqua-Culbertson. I am from Treaty 4 territory, and I am the Treaty Commissioner from the Office of the Treaty Commissioner in Saskatchewan. We are located on Treaty 6 territory. I am from the unceded and unsurrendered territory of Treaty 4 and I am Anishinabek.
Meegwetch for the opportunity to appear before this esteemed chamber and its members in respect to Indian residential school, or IRS, documents and the collection barriers that have been evidenced by our team at the Office of the Treaty Commissioner.
We officially built our library and archives in 2020. It was to assist First Nation communities with their research needs. We put in place an elders’ council with translators to protect this vital information collection. It is the first time this collection has been catalogued and made available to the public in a dedicated space where it will be housed and protected.
The collection began in 1989 with the first commissioner, Cliff Wright. Subsequently, there was a lot of oral history documented, collected by former commissioner, David M. Arnot, who is now an esteemed senator of these chambers.
The library and archives includes records of the treaty commissioners, as well as historical materials between the treaties and Crown and Indigenous nations. It is the only archives in Canada focused entirely on treaties between the Crown and Indigenous nations.
In the territories where Saskatchewan now sits, this includes treaties 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10. We have significant resources on Treaty 3, and the rest of the western numbered treaties along with pre- and post-Confederation treaties.
The archival research supporting First Nations oral history and archeology at four Indian residential schools in Saskatchewan is what I’m going to focus on during the next few minutes.
Traditional archives, such as Library and Archives Canada, are intimidating to many and results in an impenetrable roadblock that prohibits Indigenous people from researching their own communities.
For Indian residential school survivors, it is worse. The archival rules and regulations are a triggering experience, which leads to increased stress and frustration. It must be noted that it is not part of the core office of the Treaty Commissioner budget for this research or our archives. Currently, we are funded for this work by a grant in engagement with the Office of the Treaty Commissioner and the University of Saskatchewan. Our principal investigator is Dr. Wynona Wheeler, who is First Nations as well.
Our digitization technicians and researchers are all First Nations youth under the age of 30. We have trained and mentored over a dozen First Nations youth in the past four years to do the vital work of research.
The intention of this project is to document and collect the church records relating to the four Indian residential schools in the Prince Albert Catholic Diocese. This will support the ground‑penetrating radar and community oral history research that is currently in process at Thunderchild IRS at Delmas Saskatchewan, St. Anthony’s IRS which is on the Onion Lake Cree Nation, Beauval IRS — that site is on Lac La Plonge Reserve — and St. Michael’s IRS. This site is now held by the Beardy’s and Okemasis and the One Arrow Cree Nations.
Our initial research focused on the records of the St. Michael’s and Beauval schools, and it was soon clear that the collection of church records would be very difficult for community members. Our search for records started soon after the announcement of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves Kamloops, at Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation.
The Office of the Treaty Commissioner has assisted numerous research projects, including Indian Residential School archival research and come up against many barriers, including: Record Group 10 Indian Affairs Records, also referred to as RG10; Treaty annuity paylists genealogical research, and health research, including the tuberculosis sanitoriums. Many of these research projects have been frustrated by access restrictions. These result in immense delays waiting for clearance, as in the case with Library and Archives Canada Access to Information and Privacy, or ATIP requests, or completely restricted access in the case of church records restricted by the diocese. Health records protected by the Health Information Protection Act, or HIPA, are also restricted.
Research projects that have been frustrated by access issues: archival research to support ground penetrate radar, treaty annuity pay lists that could correlate two children at these schools. Pay lists after 1908 have been restricted by ATIP. We have been waiting for some requests for over two years. I am the Treaty Commissioner, and I cannot get treaty pay lists.
Early treaty signatories, archival research projects, Record Group 10 library, and Archival Archives Canada access code 32 restrictions.
The significance of our research and our work is emotionally challenging. Given that we are primarily First Nations and our research team, the only non-First Nations person is our director of archives, Dr. Sheldon Krasowski.
I ask many of our youth who are the researchers to give me their thoughts on what they have seen. Their experiences in having doors slammed in their face, so to speak, restrictions, barriers, seeing for themselves the blocks that have been put up by the Prince Albert Catholic Diocese has been traumatizing but it has been very informative.
For myself, it just reinforced what I had already known during my work as a lawyer in the Independent Assessment Process, also referred to as the IAP process, and as someone who grew up in a community where the residential schools are. You played on that playground. I am the daughter of a residential school survivor, and to put this burden on much of our communities is unfathomable. That’s where the burden lies, on the communities. If we don’t have help and assistance from organizations like ours and the many other organizations and people who are doing this work across the country, I can imagine there would be just zero access.
The destruction and withholding of records represents a loss of truth, stories, justice and reconciliation opportunities. We have an entire timeline that I will attach to our submission. It begins in June 2021 and goes all the way to today, with the barriers we have come up against, particularly in the Catholic school records.
Independent Special Interlocutor, Kimberly Murray, recommended that we sign an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, to gain access to their church records and that we could provide our records to them, so that there are no barriers.
In April of 2023, we went to Winnipeg. In May, we submitted our draft MOU. We received comments back in September. We hope to have our MOU in place before this coming new year.
In the timeline which we have attached, you will see all the barriers that have been put in place. No legitimate representation exists as a coordinated regional approach from Saskatchewan. One school is doing that; one group is doing this. Everyone is trying to rely on and talk to each other, but there is no coordinated regional approach.
I am troubled by the representation on records and committees. I fear that there are a lot of protectionists who will protect religious organizations, governments and government departments in order to advance, say, political agendas or their own agendas or, perhaps, being affected so deeply by colonization, they can’t see the bigger picture.
Reconciliation is a long road. It’s slowly, slowly moving, but when we face so many barriers when it comes to the graves of missing children, we are very disheartened. When you’re supposed to be a public servant, as we are in many of our roles — as am I — it makes you rethink your entire role in all of this. What power do you have? What power do you not have?
I have many pages of information. We will give you a formal submission. The Independent Special Interlocutor also writes three to five pages about our work and our barriers in her report. We support the work of the Independent Special Interlocutor. We uphold all of her recommendations. She has been a tremendous help to many of the schools and the projects that have been going on in our region. Whenever someone reaches out to us, the first person we call is our interlocutor. She is right there with the information, which makes me see the need for coordinated regional approaches and capacity.
Those are my submissions. Meegwetch, esteemed senators. I’ll leave time for questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Treaty Commissioner Musqua-Culbertson.
I now invite Mr. Frogner to give his opening remarks.
Raymond Frogner, Head of Archives, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation: [Indigenous language spoken.]
I’m speaking to you today from Treaty 4 territory in Regina, where I am working with Cadmus Delorme, of the Residential School Document Advisory Committee to acquire more records from the federal government.
I begin this brief presentation by observing that what we are achieving at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Archives, or NCTR, is unprecedented on an international level. There are no guidelines for what we hope to accomplish, that is to holistically document the history and legacy of one of the longest and most comprehensive social engineering projects in the history of Canada.
The memory resources of the NCTR Archives will continue to aid in the healing of Indigenous communities across Canada; to offer a knowledge and education resource for settler society to understand the history of Indian residential schools, or IRS; to acknowledge the rights and self-determination of Indigenous peoples; and, to make available a set of memory resources to promote the concept of reconciliation in both settler and Indigenous societies.
Reconciliation is about creating ongoing relationships. In this sense, these archives represent a public good. It’s continued development, with the ongoing guidance of Indigenous communities and the ongoing support of settler authorities, should be a project that will last for generations and a foundation for a new Canada, reimagined on the principles of dignity, respect and human rights, where Indigenous peoples are recognized as a foundational component of a new Canadian identity.
It is important to understand residential school records in context. Residential school records form part of the gradual and purposeful erosion of Indigenous knowledge and world views in the colonial era: the progressive loss of cognitive social bonds, community memory, cultural identities and normative natural laws that resulted from the overwhelming assertion of imperial sovereignty and uncompromising colonial settlement. The Canadian residential school program served as a solvent in this colonial program, dissolving community and family bonds and effacing the cultural identities of Indigenous children.
The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, the IRSSA, created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because Indigenous peoples demanded it. The 20th century opened with settler institutions of law, politics and governance implementing programs to entirely assimilate Indigenous communities from their originating homelands into settler societies. The 20th century closed with Indigenous societies as unique, collective-rights-bearing communities, living within the constitution of a colonial jurisdiction. Canada in fact enshrined this situation in section 35 of its repatriated Constitution in 1982.
Indigenous peoples in the closing decades of the 20th century moved gradually and fitfully towards a relationship of self-determination with settler authority. To put it another way, from reluctant rights recognition to rights acknowledgement, integration and management.
How should one view the NCTR’s role in promoting Indigenous self-determination? For a very long time, Indigenous peoples were defined by settler events and devices of settler law and governance: first contact, the Royal Proclamation, treaties, national legislation such as the Indian Act.
The NCTR Archives supports a redefined and rebalanced cognitive understanding of the relationship between settler and Indigenous societies. It gives acknowledgement to Indigenous knowledge models. It provides the means to not only move from recognition of Indigenous collective rights but to move towards a future of mutual and respectful reconciliation — a decolonized cognitive relationship across the colonial divide of these two sets of societies and their models of knowledge, to say, “I see you, I hear you, and I begin to understand.”
The TRC originally approached the documentation of the residential school system in a very juridical manner. Based on the IRSSA direction, the TRC’s model of an archival record and how it can be used was largely based on access and privacy legislation. Such an approach does not recognize the holistic knowledge models of Indigenous communities. As a result, today, the NCTR Archives holds approximately 4 million records, focused largely on the daily administration and operation of schools as directed through the Indian Act. One of the goals of this Senate committee is to understand and resolve access to federal government records currently not in the ownership and control of the NTCR and therefore not in the possession of Indigenous peoples.
My recommendation is to move out of this juridical perspective and start to search for the more expansive IRS experience. For this, I can see at least five fields of interest to document the IRS experience as it is not currently documented.
One, education: The TRC understandably focused on the experience of children who attended IRS. But to provide a resource to study the holistic experience of residential schools, it is important to document the administration, curriculum development and staffing of IRS. For example, profiles of teachers from religious orders and secular society would be a useful records resource.
Two, health care: Disease and pandemics were a well-known cause of the mortality rate at residential schools. The provision of health care was predominantly a provincial concern and often the records of prominent clinics and so-called Indian hospitals are scattered across municipal, provincial and academic repositories. But it should be possible to support a project to develop a thorough guide to the IRS records of health care.
Three, evangelical Protestantism and missionary Catholicism: Similar to curriculum development, more work should be done to bring together the planning, administration, staffing and resource provision of the evangelical and missionary projects of Protestant and Catholic orders.
Four, justice: There are currently a large number of records germane to the history of residential schools held up in court cases through the legal processes of discovery and deemed undertakings. It is understood that court proceedings prevent the release of these records, but it is not unreasonable to request a file list of these records and to acquire them when they are no longer restricted by court legislation and law.
Finally, records process: Large groups of records are held in semi-active disposition awaiting processing within government offices or at Library and Archives Canada, also known as LAC, or, potentially, for destruction. It should be possible to get a listing of these records sets while they are waiting for processing. At least we would know their location, their custodial history. Eventually, they could be acquired by the NCTR if they are relevant.
These are just a few ideas that will move the NCTR collection out of the juridical knowledge model and into an approach that supports the dynamic social memory of Indigenous communities as they relate to settler society. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Frogner.
I now invite Ms. Panasuk to give her opening remarks.
[Translation]
Anne Panasuk, Former Special Family Support Advisor, as an individual: Good evening. I’m honoured to be with you to talk about a very innovative piece of legislation in Quebec and how it has been applied. I will speak in French, if I may.
For two years, I was an advisor to the minister responsible for First Nations and Inuit relations in Quebec on the implementation of legislation concerning missing children. Now that it’s over, I’ve joined the Association des familles d’enfants disparus Awacak, which means “little beings of light.”
These aren’t children who disappeared from residential schools, but who disappeared after being admitted to a health care facility. There are a few cases of children who were in residential schools. The schools sent them to the hospital, but in the vast majority of cases, they were children who were sent for a medical evacuation to a hospital without the parents being able to accompany them. Parents completely lose track of their child. They don’t receive a death notice, don’t see the deceased child, don’t attend the burial and don’t know where the child was buried. So far, we’ve documented 174 cases of children, and we’ll very easily reach the 200 mark. Unfortunately, we think we’ll quite easily reach 300 children who have disappeared without anyone knowing what happened to them.
It was First Nations people who spoke out and insisted on legislation. Families came in large numbers to speak at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. They came to talk about their missing children. Thank you, Senator Audette. This was an important moment, because there was a special report for Quebec concerning an appeal to justice, appeal No. 20, which asked the Government of Quebec to give families all the information it had. An initial act was drafted, but Indigenous organizations weren’t happy with it. Second, Bill No. 79, An 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, which became an act that has existed for two years and that we are enforcing.
Since First Nations were involved from the outset, they accepted Bill No. 79, which was very innovative. The government — and I tip my hat to them — accepted my advice to involve the Association des familles d’enfants disparus Awacak from the get-go. Awacak goes to the communities to provide information about the act. Awacak receives power of attorney from the families to go ahead and obtain this information. Awacak is always in the loop. Within the government, a division has been created in the First Nations relations secretariat. The family support division conducts research with the various institutions. However, Awacak is always in the loop, which ensures transparency of the process and authenticity of the search. Families know what has been requested and what has been received. Nothing is hidden.
What does Bill No. 79 do? It unlocks medical and religious records. It requires institutions to hand over medical records not only to parents, but to any member of the child’s extended family who requests them. This normally overrides legislation on the protection of names in the ministries of health. Religious archives are those of religious congregations that sometimes ran hospitals. Think also of dioceses, parishes and cemeteries. All these institutions are compelled to provide the information requested by the family. The family makes a request and the search is done by Awacak and the family support branch. All the information is then given to the families.
Unfortunately, there are anonymous graves. Many children have been buried in communal plots, but in general, they can be traced. If it’s not through a medical file, it’s through information available from the Ministry of Health, the SP3 form.
Last September, you heard Coroner Kronström talk about exhumations, because the legislation makes it possible to support families with exhumation requests. The first two exhumations took place this summer, and Awacak was the applicant. The association works with a lawyer’s office, so Indigenous families are truly supported and don’t have to face all the judicial, legal, and legislative challenges. Awacak supports them and provides cultural safety, so that the process can be carried out in their own language, at their own pace and in their own way.
There are still a few things I wanted to talk about. In Quebec, there were very few so-called “Indian” hospitals, but there was a hospital run by the federal government, called the Immigration Hospital and also known as the Parc Savard Hospital, which was located in Quebec City. Many Inuit and First Nations people passed through there. At first, it was a facility for immigrants that then brought in Inuit and First Nations people with tuberculosis. We still haven’t found the archives of that institution. We don’t know where they are. There was a similar hospital in Caughnawaga — Kahnawake — and we don’t know where those archives are either.
I would also like to say, perhaps a little selfishly, that it would be important for every province and territory to have similar legislation. I say selfishly because there are children from other provinces who were admitted to a health facility in Quebec. We can find the information. This happened to a family in Manitoba. We received a request from Nunavut. However, in the case of Quebec children, First Nations children or Quebec Inuit who were sent to another province, such as Newfoundland for Innu children or Ontario for Cree or Anishinaabe children, we can’t trace that information, since Bill No. 79 applies only to Quebec institutions.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Panasuk. We’ll now move on to questions from senators. To help us keep on track and to ensure equity to all, each senator will have five minutes for a question‑and-answer exchange, and we’ll have a second round of questions, if time permits. I will invite Senator Arnot to ask the first question.
Senator Arnot: Thank you, Senator Francis. This question is for Treaty Commissioner Musqua-Culbertson. Thank you for the good work you have done in Saskatchewan and continue to do. Thank you for your patience and perseverance in the face of what I would call a litany of frustration with the non-compliance, truculent stonewalling, purposeful barriers being created against your work. Most Canadians, I believe, would be shocked and appalled if they knew what was happening in these circumstances. It seems to be incomprehensible conduct.
What conclusions should ordinary Canadians make knowing that this conduct is ongoing, knowing what you’re asking for and knowing that these records are fundamental to reconciliation?
Ms. Musqua-Culbertson: I think that, in general, Canadians can conclude there are still people responsible for sexual abuse and deaths who are still alive, out there and walking around within our institutions, in churches and in religious organizations. I do believe that religious organizations are there to protect religious organizations and the people within them.
One of the barriers we have faced was actually having one bishop on one day, Bishop Thévenot, announcing that he would release all archival records that the Prince Albert Diocese had, and it included the four residential schools in this study, the work that we are doing. Two days later, we contacted the diocese, but Bishop Thévenot had retired. In two days he had retired.
The new bishop, Stephen Hero, was appointed by the Prince Albert Catholic Diocese the next day. After numerous calls in June, when we did get to talk to them, the office manager emailed stating the Prince Albert Diocese never owned or operated any residential schools and they denied that Bishop Thévenot agreed to share documents in the diocesan archives; however, this was in the paper. He does state that some St. Michael’s documents were microfilmed by the Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists and are available in Regina. He also states that Prince Albert diocesan records are held at St. Paul University. In all our conclusions, there has not been one single record that has been located at St. Paul University.
My staff had to sign a 21-year non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. We were told that by the diocese when their lawyers and legal looked at it, but I can tell you as a lawyer who practised before, there is no way that this is a legal NDA — and it was for 21 years. Who specifically asks for a 21-year NDA? Who within their organization needs to die within those 21 years that is being protected? I’m very frank about this because this affects my life, my legacy, my children.
Another one of the barriers was, when we did get that information with the help of the former Saskatchewan human rights commissioner — Senator Arnot now, who had also been a treaty commissioner for the Province of Saskatchewan — and when we got permission from the archives, Bishop Hero called the archives while my staff were there and told them to stop allowing them to make copies. They were stopped in their tracks. Back to the negotiating table. This time, we had to call in the Federation of Sovereign Indian Nations, also known as FSIN, and the chief made the necessary comments and did what had to be done. We got access to the records.
Since then, we have tried to interact with some different parishes such as St. Paul’s, and we were told their records were at St. Boniface. That trip was cancelled three times. My staff ended up getting there. While getting there, the priest left in his vehicle with the records and went south. Since then, those records, we were told, were deposited at St. Boniface. From St. Boniface, we were then told that they were in Laval, Quebec. We got the complete full-circle runaround.
I was raised Catholic and baptized Catholic. My kokum was in a convent as a young girl being trained to be a nun. It is a very devout Catholic family. From a young age, knowing the stories at home and what was going on, I am not a devout Catholic. Even though I knew the truth from the Independent Access Process, clients whom we represented and the number of persons of interest who are named abusers in that process, I knew all too well the lengths to which religious organizations would go to hide records. However, seeing it on paper in front of you and having these experiences really reinforced that reality. It reinforced that I’ve had priests lie to me.
Senator Arnot: Treaty Commissioner Musqua-Culbertson, you don’t have to answer this right now because other people want to ask questions, and I’m sure you can do it in writing, but what do you want us to do to help you and future treaty commissioners to get at these records? If you want to think about that and then tell us what we can do to help you. This is an appalling story. It’s shocking to hear it. It’s disgusting.
Ms. Musqua-Culbertson: I’m one of two numbered treaty commissioners. I don’t believe my sister commissioner at the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba has an archive and they’re not doing the same work. However, our archives, as I said, is not funded at the core. We have gone to other places and through partnerships to access research money.
There needs to be a regional coordinated effort, I believe, in every single province and territory, and there isn’t. There needs to be a much more fulsome records committee to hit all areas because there are places that we don’t know about. I realize the committee they do have is very small. Considering the gravity, the number of schools and the discoveries that are being made, there always needs to be more funding and more capacity. The NCTR needs more capacity so they can do their job. Each region needs more capacity so there can be a regional coordinated effort.
When there are protectionists and barriers put in place, what laws need to change in order to access these things?
The Chair: Thank you for that, Treaty Commissioner Musqua-Culbertson.
Senator Coyle: Thank you, Treaty Commissioner Musqua-Culbertson, for being with us. It’s nice to see you in person. We’ve seen you on the screen before. I’m still reacting to what I’ve just heard from you. Not that I don’t believe you, I absolutely believe you, but it’s shocking what you’re sharing with us here.
I have a couple of questions. I’m trying to understand and maybe pull back the layers of the onion a little bit. You mentioned at the Catholic church and the Diocese of Prince Albert. We’ve had people representing the priests, whether they were Oblates or the different orders of priests or sisters who ran the schools, and the diocese are where the schools are located. We know there are two different kinds of records, as I understand it. There seems not to be a lot of cooperation among the dioceses and the various orders because they have different kinds of records among them.
Could you tease that out a little bit so I can understand? You’ve talked about the diocese. Is it also an issue in the relationship between the diocese and the orders of priests and brothers? Does that come into it at all?
Ms. Musqua-Culbertson: Thank you. In our experience, it does seem like these dioceses are not talking to each other or the parishes. I believe there’s definitely a capacity issue. They’re probably afraid, because there are still people who are walking around. We’re still hearing about people being charged. I can’t really speak to what they’re doing internally, but I believe there is a communication disconnect.
If Bishop Hero had alerted all the other bishops or dioceses and said the treaty commission is working with four communities and four schools, do you have this, this and this? It’s simple communication. Perhaps they don’t know how to communicate, but there needs to be some accountability, I believe, from their religious entities at the top. By that, I mean whatever the top is. We need a flowchart to understand what a diocese is, what a parish is, who the Oblates were and who answers to whom. I believe there’s a lot of miscommunication, but I can’t really speak factually about it.
Senator Coyle: Have you, anybody you have worked with or the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation — Mr. Frogner — have either of you had contact with the national organization, which is the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops? The bishop at the diocese level at the Catholic church, but then there’s a national organization of all the bishops. As I understand it, they must be communicating on a national basis on these things. Have you had that contact? And if not, has Mr. Frogner had that?
Ms. Musqua-Culbertson: I can’t speak to Mr. Frogner or the NCTR, but from our office, we have written a letter to that conference. I don’t believe there was any communication back.
Senator Coyle: Mr. Frogner, could you answer?
Mr. Frogner: Yes. At the NCTR about a year and a half ago, we signed an agreement with the Oblate order to make the NCTR the principle repository for all the records of the Oblates that are relevant to residential schools.
Since then, we discovered that we need to also sign a particular agreement for personnel files. We are at the final strokes for the personnel files draft of a memorandum of agreement that will open up the personnel files of the Oblate Order.
We have worked quite closely with St. Boniface and the historical society there, recognizing that the diocese and the records of many of the Oblate Order in Western Canada are at St. Boniface. We literally hired a researcher from the NCTR to work there while he was doing his master’s degree. He has produced a report that he is about to defend as his master’s thesis. We have identified over 600 priests that had served as teachers in schools across Canada. This is all on the cusp of being released. We also have a draft of a St. Boniface memorandum of agreement to hope their records.
Part of our issue is we literally had to hire a researcher at the NCTR to go into St. Boniface’s holdings and sift through their files in order to tell them which ones are actually relevant to residential schools.
They have been holding these records for decades. It was in 1991 that the Oblates made a promise to open up their records in a formal declaration in northern Alberta. Now, here we are, funding researchers to go into St. Boniface and go through the Keewatin-LePas records and the archdiocese records of Winnipeg to find all these records that Treaty Commissioner Musqua-Culbertson needs to find. The same goes for the Deschâtelets archives in eastern Canada, in Quebec, where Ms. Panasuk has worked closely. Again, we funded and are currently funding researchers to go into their archives, go through their records and tell them what records they have — that they have been holding for decades — and tell them which ones are relevant to residential schools.
We all know the Catholic church did not pay the compensation they originally signed to pay off for the IRSSA. Here we are not only paying researchers to go into those institutions, those archives and find the records, but also being asked to pay for the digitization of those records because they aren’t digitized.
The NCTR is already saddled with the enormous weight of trying to keep the records we do have available. I just got a $6 million grant from CFI, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, to redesign our digital architecture so we can handle this enormous wave of records that will be coming to us.
Now here we are, finding ourselves funding these archives to digitize and research their records to help them become available so that we can then acquire them and make them available for researchers. Our frustration is real and this is happening at a snail’s pace.
Part of the problem with the hierarchy of records is the sacramental records of the Oblates are scattered across parishes, archdioceses and various levels of the hierarchy in the Catholic church. The sacramental records document births, deaths and marriages, as you know. Those would be the fundamental documentation of the deaths of children in Western Canada where Oblates ran churches.
It took me a year to find out where the sacramental files were for Tk’emlúps, the first of the revelations of unmarked burial sites. When I did find them, they weren’t at the Vancouver archdiocese where everyone told me they would be kept. They were at a local parish in Kamloops. When I finally did get a file listing from the Kamloops parish, it didn’t include the burial records. It included births and marriages.
To their credit in southern Alberta, we are told that a group of archivists from Catholic-related archives have gotten together and are currently putting together a guide book for sacramental files there. We need something like Ms. Panasuk talked about in Quebec, namely, a piece of legislation that actually recognizes that these are records of the federal government’s concern, and fundamentally of Indigenous peoples’ concern.
The Blackwater v. Plint decision of 2005 declared the churches had vicarious liability for the crimes that occurred at the churches. They are responsible for producing these records. We shouldn’t be funding researchers to go into their archives, digitize their records, find them and then set up a transfer process whereby they can then become available to Indigenous communities. I think that legislation in Quebec is a good model for the rest of the country to consider.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Coyle.
Senator Hartling: First, I want to acknowledge the difficult and frustrating situation that you’re experiencing. Without the resources, the money, it’s one barrier after another. And then there’s double oppression, first of being abused in residential schools and then now. It seems like another abuse of double oppression.
You’re so courageous tonight. I appreciate that courage, but something needs to happen.
You started to point out about who can help. Can we help? Are there other people that can help? Has the bill that you’re talking about in Quebec ever been thought about or initiated here? Is it something that might happen that would help? Who else and what else, perhaps a bill, could help to move things along?
It seems like you have all the right ideas, but you certainly need some more support. If someone would like to answer, I’ll let you answer. Thank you.
Ms. Panasuk: Can I say something about it?
The Chair: Yes.
[Translation]
Ms. Panasuk: I think we need to force institutions to hand over documents. We can’t expect institutions to be kind enough or to have the time to hand over the information. They just have to be forced to provide it. I think we need legislation to compel the institutions to hand over information.
In Quebec, the legislation stipulates that families request information for a child. We don’t ask for the entire archive. Every time we request information, whether it’s from a hospital, a diocese or a parish, we get it. The diocese, the parish or cemetery gives us the information for the family. They have to do it, whether they like it or not. I think it should be done everywhere.
[English]
The Chair: Any other witnesses like to comment?
Mr. Frogner: Going forward, as I mentioned, we do have these agreements now with the Oblates. We fully expect to get these records within the next year or so. But as I said, these were originally promised in 1991 under the original apologies put out by the various religious orders. Until they are received, there is still some doubt.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Frogner.
Ms. Musqua-Culbertson: Thank you. I no longer believe in optimism with these churches or religious organizations. When it comes to the documents, persons of interest, also known as POIs, were named in the IAP process. That IRSSA agreement, which was horrible to begin with, was not supposed to be litigious. As a lawyer in that process, however, I can tell you that it was very litigious and on the side of Canada. Persons of interest were named in those records, but those records are also set for destruction unless survivors specifically ask. How can you go and re-traumatize people when some of them are gone? Then they have to speak about these things. Maybe the first time they actually said it out loud was in their own hearing.
So you have these vast lists of POIs. Where is that database? Could that be a database? Persons of interest are still protected. Those are persons of interest, or people named as abusers. Where are those POI records?
A lot of the oral history has disappeared, yet it was stated in hearing records about what people saw and what they heard. In our community, it was a common thing that you couldn’t believe people outside did not know what a residential school was. When I went to university, when I went to law school, I could not believe it. When I worked for the federal government, I wore a blue uniform in CSC. I was a CS1, 2 and drug interdiction. Every officer I worked with up until 2012, a lot of them had not heard about residential schools. That’s a big problem.
Yes, we’re working on education in this country, but there must be more. In the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act action plan, there is talk about an ombudperson’s office of Indigenous rights. That stuff has to move. These are all bills or laws that have been put in place that have come through these chambers, but where are they? We need those mechanisms in place. There needs to be consequences.
If there are no consequences for religious organizations, for churches, for government agencies, for officials, then that behaviour continues. There must be some sort of consequence. When we talk about supporting the work of the Special Interlocutor, there is denialism there. I was shocked when I went down this black web hole of denialists actually showing up with shovels to disprove this. There needs to be more effort. There needs to be more public effort. It needs to be legislated and there needs to be consequences. If there are no consequences, then why would anyone care?
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Musqua-Culbertson.
Senator D. Patterson: Thank you for your disturbing testimony. Ms. Musqua-Culbertson, Mr. Frogner and Ms. Panasuk, you have managed to get access to some records with great difficulty, all of you. I know it’s very incomplete.
Ms. Musqua-Culbertson, you said it would be very difficult for Indigenous peoples to see these records. This was in the era before the internet, before the digital world. I’m assuming these are all handwritten records. Could each of you give me an idea of how detailed these records are?
This may be an inappropriate comparison, but I know after the Second World War when we looked at the holocaust, we found that the Nazis were very meticulous about the records they kept of the horror of the holocaust. Are the records you have seen as detailed as I can imagine regarding the stories that we’re so concerned about investigating? What were those records like?
Ms. Musqua-Culbertson: The church records that we received were all in French; so subsequently, we have had to hire translators, and we had to go find money to hire translators, or you have one of your friends who is fluent in French come and sit there — and who is a lawyer as well who understands NDAs — and go over and try to translate. So there has been that barrier.
But, from what we have gone through and that you can understand, there is no explicit information about deaths, sexual abuse. These were kept by the religious entity’s employees themselves. They won’t write, “Today I killed this child because I beat him too hard for speaking his language. Then we buried him by the river.” We’re not going to find those.
But, those narratives lie within some of the school narratives. There were admissions made during the IAP process, which I believe are accessible through the NCTR, such as that it was known from 1981 through 1982 that there were two priests or staff members who worked at this particular school who regularly — I will save that language because this is public — took part in severe abuse of, say, five specific boys or of the boys in this dorm from this date to this date. This is the information in school admissions. That’s very vital, but I don’t believe we will find that. You will find indicators in church records of admissions of deaths, and baptisms that would confirm the presence of children or young people, or not.
Of course, you come across a lot of barriers with the French translation and even finding them, but we have seen a lot of pictures, and when we did attend one of the St. Michael’s Indian Residential School survivors committee meetings, we brought our researchers so they would know these are First Nations people doing the research. We’re creating our own researchers. There is no way I wanted to walk in there with a group full of non-First Nations academics.
We told them this information is sacred and it’s safe with us. We’re going to look after these young people who are doing this research because this is also very trying to them.
People who were there passing these documents around would say things like, “This is my grandmother. That must have been her little brother she used to talk about.” That’s really important to people. They didn’t even know where those records were at that time. We told them this is where your records are. This is where they went. This is a community, so we cannot expect our community to be able to do this work at all. Some are pretty capable, and have been very organized and very strategic, and there are many others who are just not there yet.
Specifically I think about the work going on at Beauval, and the two ladies who were in charge of that project. Them coming to have briefings with us about what was going to be announced and these are how many infant graves and can you help us speak to this.
I believe a lot of information will never be uncovered, but I don’t think the ones that are sitting there in places and spaces need to stay hidden. It’s all our responsibility in this lifetime while we’re here to make sure we are doing that work to uncover them.
Senator D. Patterson: I did hope to hear from Mr. Frogner and Ms. Panasuk briefly, Mr. Chair, if that’s possible. Same question.
The Chair: Yes.
Mr. Frogner: The records of the residential schools don’t size up to the Nazi records in terms of thoroughness. It wasn’t until the 1930s that the Indian Act actually legislated that a death of a child must be formally reported on by the principal of the school. Even at that time, we found by the 1940s there were still schools in Western Canada that weren’t following that rule and formally reporting on the deaths.
Of the 141 schools that were part of the IRSSA — in the end we added on a couple — there was not a single school with a complete set of admission records, discharge records or quarterly returns. This is partly because the quality of recordkeeping was dismal, to put it lightly.
There is an article in the journal Archivaria — I reviewed the article — that will come out next week which documents the period between 1937 and 1947 when millions of records were destroyed for the purposes of recycling or being reused in the war effort. This was at a time when Indian Affairs was actually called an Indian Affairs bureau. It was underfunded to point where it had a bureau status and didn’t have the resources to maintain a records management program on a national basis for all these schools. For example, they had a subject index which they used in Ottawa to index the records that were coming in from residential schools; but in the field, none of the schools were using the same index.
The level of disorganization within the system, the amount of loss and the amount of destruction of records, has created gaps in every school. There is inconsistencies as well as gaps in the records that make it impossible to find.
I can’t even find the records of my mother who went to Shaftesbury Mission in northern Alberta. I am supposed to be the head of archives for NCTR. There are a lot of inconsistencies and problems with the records. For that reason, as I said in my presentation, we need to move away from this juridical idea of records responding to the Indian Act decrees and expand into the idea of studying the concept of education as it was designed to eliminate the identity of Indigenous peoples through educating their children.
I think that broader perspective brings in church records, which I think, as I said before, are fundamentally of concern, a federal government concern and, basically, an Indigenous concern. That is where I think we’ll find more of a comprehensive idea of the experience of residential schools rather than the juridical pursuit for each individual death register, which will never be complete. It’s just not possible.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Frogner. We have to move on. Ms. Panasuk, do you have anything to add?
[Translation]
Ms. Panasuk: Of course, for us, since these are children who have normally died in a hospital, it’s inconsistent.
Some children disappeared in the 1940s, others in the 1950s. For the vast majority of requests we’ve received, the children died in the 1960s, 1970s, and even the early 1980s.
When it was a sanatorium run by a religious community in the 1940s, the records were quite incomplete. It’s also important to note that hospitals have retention schedules; they aren’t required to keep everything when someone dies, but normally, they have to keep a summary sheet. In general, the cause of death is recorded, and the document is signed by a doctor.
At the Ministry of Health, we have also found a form that exists for everyone living in Quebec, indicating the cause of death, with the doctor’s signature, to whom the body was released, and where the child was buried.
When we ask dioceses, parishes and cemeteries for documents concerning burial certificates, we generally get them, meaning that these certificates exist. There are a few unfortunate cases where the child is buried outside the cemetery and the burial certificate can’t be found, but in general, they do exist, and the certificates are issued by the various dioceses, parishes or cemeteries, depending on the year in question. Are we talking about the 1950s or the 1980s?
As long as cemeteries have been run by secular, rather than religious societies, there is usually some basic information for parents so that they can grieve their child, knowing what the child died of and where the child is buried, and go and pay their respects. Sometimes it’s a communal plot where an exhumation request can be made. If the plot is known — as you heard from Coroner Kronström — then it’s possible to bring the child back to their community.
So when forced, they will look, but the whole process is still inconsistent, because the further back you go, the greater the risk that the documents have been destroyed, since it was legal to destroy them. I asked for a moratorium on this so-called “retention schedule,” which I call the “destruction schedule.” I asked for a moratorium on this to prevent hospitals that haven’t yet destroyed the documents from keeping them with them.
Sometimes you’ll find all the diagnoses and care that the child received. Sometimes you’ll even find photos, but again, this is inconsistent.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you.
I’m going to ask Mr. Frogner a quick question. Mr. Frogner, if you could provide your answer in writing to the clerk, that would be great, but I’ll ask the question now.
Can you provide greater details about what you think the Rome archives have with respect to personnel files and other related files to residential schools? What type of access did you have to these files? If you could provide that to me in writing, Mr. Frogner, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Frogner: If I could add, too, I wrote a 45-page report on my visit to the administrative archives of the Oblates in Rome. I’ll include that in my report.
The Chair: Thank you, I appreciate that very much.
[Translation]
Senator Audette: I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone for making this individual and collective healing possible.
Ms. Panasuk, I understand that your term has come to an end and that you’re no longer a special advisor, but you remain an advisor in our hearts, and that’s for life.
If a bill is passed, do you think that positions such as that of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites, Kimberly Murray — it could be another person, like you — should be associated with this legislation throughout its lifetime?
Ms. Panasuk: I don’t know if it’s necessary for the life of the legislation, but certainly when it first comes into force.
It’s in a government’s DNA to want to run everything, but I think we have to ensure that the legislation is implemented in a way that respects the rhythm of Indigenous associations and the rhythm of their languages, while ensuring transparency. Indigenous communities need to be sure that they get all the information, because the challenge of trust is great. How can we expect a family that has lost a child in a non-Indigenous institution to trust a non-Indigenous law, whether it be in Quebec or elsewhere, and officials — no matter how extraordinary — to give them all the information? We need to make sure that Indigenous families and communities are certain of this process.
On this side, we have to shake up the government, if you’ll pardon the expression; we have to force it. As the minister said to me, it was an “earthquake” for the Government of Quebec, which agreed to work with an Indigenous non-profit organization, at its own pace and in its own language. That was quite something.
So we have to put all that in place and make sure it’s all there. Do we have to be there for the entire life of the legislation? The Quebec legislation is designed for 10 years, with the possibility of extension. What reassures me, even though I’m no longer there, is that there’s a follow-up committee for the legislation, essentially made up of the main Indigenous organizations that have sent a representative, such as the Quebec Native Women, the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec-Labrador and the Regroupement des centres d’amitié autochtones du Québec.
The main Indigenous organizations are there, as are the representatives of the opposition. I thought it was extremely important for them to be there, because if we need to make a legislative change, if we need another helping hand from the government, I wanted all parties to know what was being done and for the opposition not to stand in the way for partisan reasons.
A follow-up committee is continuing the work and is there to make recommendations, so that families are served as well as possible.
Senator Audette: Thank you very much.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you.
The time for this panel is complete. I wish to thank again all of our witnesses for joining us today, and thank you for your leadership on this sacred work. If you wish to make any subsequent submissions, please submit them by email to our clerk within one week.
I would now like to introduce our next witness. From the Residential School Documents Advisory Committee, Cadmus Delorme, Chairperson. Thank you for joining us today. Mr. Delorme will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the senators.
Cadmus Delorme, Chairperson, Residential School Documents Advisory Committee: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, to everybody. I’m coming to you from the Treaty 4 territory. Tansi. Hello.
I just wrapped up our second gathering today of our Indian Residential School Documents Advisory Committee. We hosted our meeting at the First Nations University of Canada in the Treaty 4 Saskatchewan area.
In March 2020, the former Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations was given approval from the cabinet to create this committee. I joined it in February 2023, to be exact. At that time, I met with the staff internally in government and with the minister to understand the role, and I accepted at that time the position of chair for this committee.
This committee’s mandate is to do the scoping, identify and develop a process to give a recommendation report to the minister on how to transition documents out of government to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Our mandate took off at the beginning. We started off internally finalizing members. The members of this committee are the following: Senior management of the 13 stakeholder departments, Indigenous community members, including living witnessing and survivors, elders, research experts, a representative from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, a representative from the special interlocutor and myself, the chair. I am an independent chair. I am not a government official.
In the spring, we started off with a scoping exercise. We went through three external companies outside government to help and also internally in government. We did a scoping exercise asking the 13 departments to provide us with a quantity of documents that may be within their departments that relate to the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, with 140 residential schools identified in there.
At that time, we received approximately 23 million documents identified in the first scoping exercise. We are still assessing, but many of these documents are duplicate, meaning that some of them are the same documents identified in different departments.
As we move forward, we had our first official meeting in June 2023 in Gatineau, Quebec. Our team came together. In that meeting, we focused on the relationship and understanding our mandate. In the two days we met together, we were visited by the then Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations at the time and set out our mandate.
In the meeting we just finished today, we went over the definition of what an Indian residential school document is. We also assessed the departments and agencies that go with those departments, which we identified as many as 46 of them, including the agencies. With that, the committee had a very good and thorough understanding.
One of the things we have to understand is that there are two world views in how we address this. The western Canadian bureaucratic government definition and world view of documents are different than what a living witness or a research team outside of government may identify as a document.
This is the first of its kind in government. We are an internal committee addressing internal government documents. We’re not a commission. We’re not going across the country asking living witnesses or research teams. This is an internal government process. Once we fulfill this, our mandate for the first two years is to finalize the scoping exercises. We are about to potentially do a second scoping exercise. This impacts the budget, costs and time.
Once we finish our scoping exercise, we want to make sure that we develop a methodology on how to collect, manage and share these documents with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
We will be giving a report to request approval for the methodology and costs within the department and to the Minister of Indigenous Services Canada, who we are mandated by.
The last two years, which will take us to March 2027, would be to manage the documents and transition and share them with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Thank you very much for giving me time. I look forward to a potential conversation or questions in the role of the Indian Residential School Documents Advisory Committee and myself as chair.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Delorme. We will now move on to questions from senators. To help keep us on time and to ensure equity to all, each senator will have five minutes for a question and answer exchange. If we have time for round two, we will go to round two. I will now invite Senator Arnot to start the questioning.
Senator Arnot: Thank you, Mr. Delorme, for coming today. Nice to see you. Thank you for accepting this very important mandate. I’m really interested to explore this clash of two cultures that you’ve identified. It might be deeper than that.
We just heard from witnesses about purposeful and intentional protection of individuals who have committed indictable offences, so you need to bridge those gaps. You have identified that. I think you’re well qualified to do that by the way. You have a foot in both camps. You communicate well, certainly to the non-Aboriginal world, I can attest.
What do you think our committee should be doing to help you be successful in your work? What needs to be done to make sure that your recommendations are actually implemented? Is there anything we can do about that? There’s a concern that you can work hard for a long time and make valid, solid recommendations, but there’s nothing guaranteeing that they may be implemented. Could you speak to those issues, please?
Mr. Delorme: Thank you, senator. It’s good to see you as well, virtually at this time.
The departments have different means of records. I’m going to give you a couple of examples before I answer your question. I’ll keep it very brief.
We are looking for patterns in our definition. In terms of the Department of Public Services and Procurement Canada, when you ask them to search for Indian residential school documents within their history, they don’t come up with the same definition if you asked Indian Affairs, or today we call it Indigenous Services Canada. It’s the patterns that we’re looking for.
How can you help in this? I’m going to use the Department of Justice as an example. We have certain documents that we cannot transition in the next two years plus because of legal obligation cases that are currently in the courts. For example, Indian hospitals are a really tough one right now because the duty of care to the Department of Justice is to protect the interests of Canada. That’s not a bad thing. That’s just the Western Canadian role that they have to play. But in order to find out if a child got tuberculosis and was transitioned out of an Indian residential school to an Indian hospital, which may have resulted in the worst-case scenario — an unmarked grave — we need those documents. The research teams need those documents.
The committee that you sit on, it would be really good to understand the grey areas of these documents. With the black and white ones, I have a prediction that we are going to transition half of these 23 million documents in the next two years because they’re black and white. It’s the other half that is grey that is tied up because of duty of care to certain departments.
There are other examples, senator, but I just wanted to give you the Department of Justice example.
Senator Tannas: Thanks for being here, Mr. Delorme. For my own edification and for the record — thank you for taking this role on, as Senator Arnot said — what did you do before this?
Mr. Delorme: Thank you. I’m smiling because I was a little busy before this as well. I was an elected First Nation chief from 2016 to 2023 of the Cowessess First Nation. Before that, I was doing other things, but for the last seven years, I was a chief. When I accepted this role, I was still the current chief, with the understanding that I was probably going to run again for another term. Choosing this chair did not make my decision not to run as chief, but in April 2023, I decided not to rerun. I’ve been politically free — as you can probably see less stress on my face — for the last seven months.
Senator Tannas: I’ve heard it said that you’re a recovering politician. In any event, thank you for taking this important work on.
I wondered, it sounds to me like getting the 23 million documents appropriately vetted and the right ones, the important ones, the ones that should go to NCTR, is going to take many years. I have two questions.
Number one, do you have any sense that there is any department of government that is being less than fully cooperative?
Number two, do you have any concern, as we approach the next election and there’s a potential different era that we’re entering, I think. You can see it in the polls and so on. In society, there’s a different era coming. Do you have any sense that your work could get interrupted, lost or spiked? Or do you think it’s on a permanent track, that political interference wouldn’t be there; it would be part of a normal action the government would take, regardless of who was in charge or what the future circumstances could be? I appreciate that may be sensitive. I guess I’m just looking to see if you have a concern on either of those, to flag them with us.
Mr. Delorme: Thank you very much for your question. Being a politician for seven years and understanding the two world views, understanding government — I’ve never been a government official, but I understand government quite well in my journey working with many great governments during my tenure.
I’m going to answer your second question first. My main concern is the budget. We are 100% internal in government in this transition. We are preparing our next budget. This current cabinet understands the reason to do this. I find they do. I’ve talked with ministers about this, never with the Prime Minister, but I have talked to him in the past about other things. Every one of them gets it. They say yes, this is necessary.
If that cabinet changes, it may change the budget. In order to fulfill this on behalf of each of you, the Senate and every House representative, our budget is vital. We’re not asking for a lot, but scoping exercises are not easy. When you’re talking about 23 million documents, it’s not a simple search.
In order to answer your first question, I just wanted to explain — and I’m going to take one minute here; I know my time is limited — why this is so important. When I was Chief of Cowessess First Nation, we had the Marieval Residential School research ongoing. If anyone recalls the 751 ground-penetrating radar, that was the nation I was chief of.
When we started our research, we went to the Catholic church archives. When we got there, they were all in disarray, in boxes, dusty, no digital, all physical. Then we went to the RG10 files, which were simple Indian agent briefing notes and stuff like that. We went to the NCTR and got that.
Finally, I told the minister of the day, Minister Miller, why can’t we get all of our documents in government from all of the departments? I think that eventually led to this committee. I don’t find any of the departments saying, no. I’ll name them off quickly: CIRNAC, Agriculture Canada, Department of Justice, Health Canada, ISC, Treasury Board, RCMP, Employment and Social Development Canada, Library and Archives, National Film Board, Parks Canada, Privy Council and Public Service and Procurement. They’re at the table with us.
Senator, I find that the challenge is the duty of care. They’re still trying to understand the purpose of why they would want to protect Canada’s interests before living witness interests. This committee is so unique; we have living witnesses on the committee, and they’ll educate department representatives. At today’s meeting — I’ll conclude with this — we did a round table when we were done. The departments spoke and said, “I see it now.” That was the common response. “The first meeting I didn’t understand this; now I see it.”
It is about relationship and tone setting. As of this moment, I don’t see resistance. As Indigenous people, we just get tired of having to explain why. We’re tired of that. We just want to say how fast we can go to do this, and I think we’re getting there.
Senator Tannas: Thank you, sir.
The Chair: Mr. Delorme, I have a question for you. Ryan Shackleton, the Chief Executive Officer, Know History, mentioned that the federal government could give researchers working on behalf of Indigenous people departmental researcher status, which would allow them to access all their files without having to go through ATIP, which can take at least a year in some cases. Would you agree with this suggestion? Would it help to expedite the identification and transfer of records?
Mr. Delorme: Thank you for that question. I’m a politician, so I’m going to answer it indirectly rather than directly, and I’m going to take a minute and a half.
The Chair: I’m a former politician, too, a former chief, so I understand where you’re coming from.
Mr. Delorme: It’s an old habit. I find what we’re doing very front heavy. What I mean by that is the committee is identifying the 23 million documents with the scoping exercise, then we’re asking each department to do another search. The majority of these departments, and who I’m mandated with, run it off the corner of our desks, so nobody is actually mandated full time to do this. Within Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, there are a few higher-up employees who are doing this for up to 50% of their time.
We are getting some good external companies to do the scoping, and they did it in the 2010 era as well, so it’s not their first time. I find it is very front heavy, meaning that we’re not offloading it to minimize. To have people to come in and go through some of these files — because once we go through these files, I believe there will be a lot of patterns to help us get to 2027.
I would welcome it, chair, but at the same time, I find that the western Canadian world view mindset of this is that we tend to protect our duty of care to just the collective, and we don’t want to find any wrongs or any mistakes. What if someone took a picture of it and posted it publicly or shared it in the wrong conversation? I think there’s always that risk. I signed confidentiality to the government when I did this, so I’m privy to it. I know we have the means to do that. It’s just making sure we do it in the right way.
The Chair: I’d like to ask a supplementary question as well. I’m wondering if you can expand further on the criteria the committee is using to determine the relevancy of records held by the federal government. Is their work limited to residential schools, or does it include associated institutions like day schools, hospitals, sanitariums, et cetera?
Mr. Delorme: Thank you very much. We are mandated by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. I say, “goal posts.” When I’m in a meeting, I say that our goal posts are the 140 identified residential schools. But in this approach, we can identify on the sidelines other things that are going on, because there will probably be other mandates similar to what we’re doing, so let’s make sure we identify those.
We do have some living witnesses on the committee and research experts who will explain. What about the Métis? There are certain Inuit and certain schools that are not identified. We make sure we respect that as well. But our main mandate is the 140 identified residential schools.
When it comes to the research style and mechanism, the first scoping exercise was completed before our first official meeting. The definition was very strong in the patterns of Indian residential schools. If you have any documents relating to Indian residential schools — and there were other words used, such as if we’re asking the right questions when approaching the patterns.
After our two meetings with the collective, we’ve now adjusted our definition and we’ve adjusted to patterns. Patterns can be, do you have anything in your department that relates to education and Indigenous people during the time era? We’re trying to not just use “Indian residential schools,” we’re trying to use different names.
Another example is things like sports teams. I’m going to use something that could be triggering and I know there’s help here, but coffins. We’re trying to find patterns. These are recommendations from living witnesses. We’re trying to broaden our definition so that when we do the second scoping exercise, we can get even more details. There may be more than 23 million in our second scoping exercise.
The thing we remind ourselves is not to leave anything off the table, because we don’t want another one of these committees in 15 years; let’s get it right this time.
The Chair: Thank you very much for that.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much to our witness, Mr. Delorme. This is really important work you’re doing. It looks like we’ve got the right guy in the chair position. I’m very impressed with the approach that you’re taking.
I’m a curious about the timeline. Did I understand that the goal currently is to be in a position to share the records, once they are whittled down and you see how much is there that will actually be useful, with the NCTR by 2027? That’s my first question. Is that what you were saying?
Mr. Delorme: That’s correct.
Senator Coyle: Okay. Could you tell me what the basis of that timeline is? Why 2027? Why not 2026 or 2025? Could you fill us in as to why?
Mr. Delorme: Thank you for the question. To make sure I bring my role in here, I was brought in February 2023 and this timeline was already set. I’m not saying I disagree with it. I believe it’s doable.
These are the phases. The first two years were to complete all the scoping exercises, to develop a methodology to collect, manage and share the documents, and put a cost on that methodology. We’re probably 30% there in the first two years. We’re about a year in. I’ll round up to a year. We still have a year to report the request approval for the methodology. That’s our first two-year mandate. The next two years is how to manage the documents and share them with the NCTR.
I just wanted to give you the black and white; now I’ll give you my opinion about it. I get the opportunity and honour of speaking to research committees. We’ve identified 16 unmarked graves from ground radar research so far in this country. We have 140 residential schools, so we’re on this journey for a while. There’s going to be more. I’ve talked with, at a minimum, eight of them. When talking with them, their mandate from living witnesses — we’re talking about baby boomers. They’re not getting any younger, and they want results and action now. That’s why this isn’t just about September 30 or June 21, celebrating certain times. This is every day, one day at a time. We need to transition these documents in a timely, professional manner using our duty of care to the government. In a timely, professional, good governance manner. That’s our mandate.
Second, survivors were treated in the worst way. Now we’re telling them that their documents and the history of how we documented their journey is in disarray in all different places and we can’t even find search engines? We’re disappointing living witnesses again.
That’s why I believe this mandate will balance both. It will hold our feet to the fire as a government. I’m independent, but I have to say, I’m a family member of the government doing this. It holds our feet to the fire to do this right. At the same time, it gives us the breathing room to make sure we don’t rush it.
I would leave it at that, to answer your question. I’m going to bring in budget again. It is dependent on the budget, and we’re budgeted for next year. I’m optimistic we will get funded for what we’re asking again in next year’s budget.
Senator Coyle: I have just a brief supplemental. Would a boost in budget help accelerate?
Mr. Delorme: To answer your question, the biggest expense right now is two things. The first thing is the scoping exercise. A prior committee member asked a question about what if we used research experts to help. We’re very front-loaded right now, meaning it goes from committee to departments. Are we just going to give them all to the NCTR? How does the NCTR want them? Do they want them all digitized?
I will give you an example. The Department of Public Services and Procurement Canada, they got warehouses of boxes, like they are not digitized yet. How do we understand what is in there?
I believe the cost will be very heavy in the scoping exercise. It’s going to be like a rocket going into the sky. We’re going to burn a lot of our budget just getting to orbit on this one. Once we get to orbit, I think the transition should be easier.
The two big costs are the scoping exercise, to make sure we don’t miss a rock to look under. Second, how does the NCTR want these? We must be respectable as a government, we can’t just hand them over. We must understand how they want them. Those are my two answers.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Coyle.
Senator Arnot: Mr. Delorme, what is the budget you’re operating on now? You’re saying there is a geometric progression you can probably anticipate. What kind of a budget do you need in succeeding years to be successful? I know you can’t be accurate, but give us a flavour of what numbers you’re working with now, where you think this is going to go.
Mr. Delorme: Thank you.
Senator Arnot: This follows Senator Coyle’s question, because if we can say something about the budget in our report, making sure that you’re fully funded to the extent required to be successful, maybe that’s something we can do to help.
Mr. Delorme: As the chair, I am helping with the budget as well. At this time, I don’t want to throw out numbers that I know will be absolutely wrong. Right now, we did get our budget approved, but I apologize, senator. I am not going to throw out a number because I will discredit the team.
We are working on our next budget, but I would always come to you with the truth. I just don’t want to throw out a number. It would take me three minutes to whistle through my notes to find that. I just don’t want to waste our time on that. I hope that’s a respectable response, but budget is important.
Senator Arnot: It sounds like a political response. Just kidding. That’s fine. I just wanted to know the order, what is expected for you to be successful.
Mr. Delorme: Yes, well said. I hope I can get you an answer in the future. I would not feel comfortable answering that at this moment.
The Chair: I was just going to mention that you can provide it to the clerk. Any other questions?
Senator D. Patterson: Thank you very much for your testimony. I know you have heard the previous witnesses talking about these challenges that you have described so well.
You didn’t mention this, but we heard Ms. Panasuk from Quebec talking about the legislation that was put in place by the province of Quebec. She said it had been very helpful and she recommended that it be adopted in other provinces and territories, if I recall her testimony correctly.
That comment made me wonder whether you have given any thought about whether there is a legislative solution to these challenges? Senator Tannas asked about your possible concerns about governments changing. Is there a way of maybe helping this kind of work to endure more sustainably through legislation? Have you ever thought of that?
Mr. Delorme: Thank you very much.
Senator D. Patterson: May I ask?
Mr. Delorme: That is a great question. I know policy quite well. I got my Masters in Public Administration from a school of public policy. I have been reading some policies.
The challenge I find with this one — to answer your question in a story and to answer in black and white — is we’re talking about historical documents, number one. We’re talking about documents from the late 1800s to 1996.
The legislation in Quebec — which Raymond Frogner explained — this policy to me in a prior discussion — would probably secure the framework for what we’re doing, but we got an order-in-council mandate to do this. The only way to change our mandate is to get another order-in-council not to do this, which is up to the government’s mandate of the day.
We’re a four-year mandate. We’re not really ongoing for years. Hopefully, if everything works out and everything falls into place, by the time we create policy or legislation to do something like this, I think we would almost be done on time. I just know how policy has to go through its vetting processes.
If we’re going to do this for outside the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and include those as well, and this and all other related documents to any — if I use lack of words — colonization that kind of put Indigenous people in the state we’re in today, I would just find it good in the long term, but I would find it challenging in the short term to try to capture everything because I think we would get frustrated in the details of it.
I want to give you an example of where the challenges fall within policies. How do you capture the following in a policy? During World War II, documents were destroyed in government for the simple fact of — there is an article coming out about this if it’s not out already — that there was a lack of paper in this world. They had to use and recycle paper.
The first documents that the government of the day destroyed were related to Indians, so we have a gap in our history within government of documents related to Indian residential schools due to the fact that we have a whole gap of destroyed documents.
Second, who is the rights holder of these documents when we release them? It would be tough to identify the audience in the policy, because we transition them to the NCTR. If anybody is asking why the NCTR, why not somewhere else? They have the best institution in this country that is Indigenous run, which has an Indigenous board and an Indigenous executive. They are a not-for-profit. They are not mandated to any other institution. They are independent. They are on the University of Manitoba grounds which they fall within some legislation.
I’ll give an example. If Williams Lake wanted these documents out of the NCTR that we’re going to pass forward, there has to be MOUs and so forth, but is it the family individual that has a right to those documents? Probably, I would yes to that. Is it the chief and council? I don’t think so. Is it the Williams Lake research team? That’s a grey area. We don’t know.
To your question, policy would be really tough. I would look more into the Quebec mandate to see what their purpose is. If their purpose is working, it may work in our purpose.
Senator D. Patterson: Thank you very much for that thoughtful comment.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Patterson. Mr. Delorme, I’ll go to you for the last question.
We heard from the coroner of the N.W.T. that some records related to their territory are held in Ottawa at Library and Archives Canada. As a result, they are unable to answer questions about what happened to Indigenous children before a certain period. Are you aware of this situation? Are these records the ones you are looking for?
Mr. Delorme: Thank you. Right now we’re looking at a macro perspective. To answer your kind of micro-perspective question about are those the documents; yes, they are. And the big question, the big answer, is yes, we are aware.
If this school was within the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the 140, we don’t want to leave a rock unturned in that perspective. Right now, our hope and our goal is to throw everything on the table. That is, to throw it at every department and get the best patterns of search engines in every department. From there, we have to start to go through them and understand how they work.
As the chair, I don’t think I can ever look at all the documents. I look forward to seeing the patterns and the categories of transitioning them. To answer your question, if it’s within our goal posts, then absolutely. If it’s just outside our goal posts, say a residential school not identified in the settlement agreement, or maybe an Indian hospital or something that is there indirectly, we want to make sure we put those on the list so that if another one ever comes forward outside the settlement agreement, they will have a wheel already turning rather than starting fresh.
The Chair: Okay. Thank you very much for that, Mr. Delorme.
With that, the time for this panel is complete. I wish to thank our witnesses who appeared today for their very powerful testimony. I also remind you that if you wish to make subsequent submissions, please submit them by email to our clerk within the week. That brings us to end of our meeting today.
(The committee adjourned.)