Residential schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission struggling to establish independence
The AFN's emergency resolution unanimously passed by the Chiefs-in-Assembly in July directs the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to remove lawyer Owen Young from the commission due to his statement to the court in the KI-6 sentencing hearing. Mr. Young, acting on behalf of the Ontario government, asked the court to assign a large enough fine on the KI leadership "to make it hurt". (see CBC.ca story below)
During Mr. LaForme's presentation to the chiefs at their AFN assembly, he said the commission was still working out the details on how the commission will function independent of the government.
Independence an issue, LaForme says - Government wants Truth and Reconciliation Commission secretariat to report to Indian Affairs
By Jesse Ferreras - July 28, 2008
The federal government is challenging the independence of Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), its chair said in an interview with Pique.
Speaking from Quebec City last week, Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Harry LaForme said the commission’s independence is being challenged by the federal government’s decision to have its secretariat, or administrative arm, function as a government department. This creates the potential for inappropriate interference with the commission’s work, LaForme said, because it has been established as part of a class action settlement agreement to which the federal government is a party.
“We want to be as accountable for the funds as anybody should be, but the question then became, who is actually responsible for such things as hiring and firing within the commission?” LaForme told Pique. “The government of Canada thought it was, so that caused a problem and we’ve been sorting through that.”
The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, which came into force on May 10, 2006, is the largest class action settlement in Canadian history. In addition to providing payouts to residential school survivors, the agreement established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that will acknowledge the “injustices and harms experienced by Aboriginal people” in residential schools.
The commission will allow survivors to come forward and share their experiences through truth-sharing and statement-taking. Those stories will thereafter be recorded in a national archive as a way of putting the residential school legacy into Canadian history.
Part 6 of the TRC’s mandate, which is embedded in the settlement agreement, states that the secretariat shall be subject to the “direction and control of the Commissioners.” But that can’t happen if the secretariat is being asked to report to the government, according to LaForme.
“We just want to make certain that the administration arm, the people that are responsible for providing our travel accommodations, all those other things, our office spaces and all that, is equally under the control (of the commissioners),” he said, stressing that all three commissioners overseeing the TRC are “absolutely independent.”
These issues come despite Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl’s assurances to Pique in a May interview that the commission would be the “master of its own destiny.”
This isn’t the first time that an independent commission has drawn allegations of government interference.
In 1997, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien laid a final reporting deadline on the Somalia Commission, a public inquiry into the death of Shidane Arone, a Somali teenager, at the hans of Canadian forces during a UN peacekeeping mission.
The government ordered the inquiry to wrap up its work by the end of June 1997, far earlier than the deadline commissioners requested in order to fully investigate the allegations. They did not even get the time to investigate the events surrounding the murder within the time frame they were given.
As for the TRC, LaForme, who was introduced as chair in April, said it is making good progress, but he still hasn’t figured out when, or in what form the hearings will take place. He stressed that survivors are not being asked to deliver testimony, but to relate stories about their experiences in residential schools.
He also said the hearings are likely to take on different forms at different events across the country.
“We’re just going to go and find the best way, the best atmosphere, and under the best conditions that survivors themselves want to come forward and tell their stories,” he said, adding that the legitimacy of survivors’ stories is no longer in doubt after the federal government delivered a formal apology for the residential school legacy on June 11.
LaForme expects that seven national events will take place over the first two and a half years of the commission’s five-year mandate. The final two and a half years will be used to come up with recommendations for further action by the government on the residential school file, as well as establish an archive or educational facility.
“There has to be a permanent structure of an archive or something along those lines at the end of it that does some honour to the educational component to that history,” he said.
Chief Gibby Jacob of the Squamish Nation, however, isn’t sure what purpose the TRC will serve after the federal government offered its formal apology.
“Knowing most of my elders, I don’t think there’s going to be a big rush to go there,” he said. “If you were sexually abused each and every day, or you're deaf in one ear and can hardly hear in the other because of the punishment you took in school, would you be willing to go and talk about that to a bunch of people you don't know?”
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Truth and Reconciliation Commission lawyer must quit: native leaders
July 30, 2008
Native leaders and residential school survivors' groups are calling for the resignation of a lawyer hired as chief counsel by the federal government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The Assembly of First Nations, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and the National Residential Schools Survivors Society all say Owen Young, who recently represented the province of Ontario in a case against native defendants, is a bad choice.
"I have a saying, you can't suck and blow at the same time," said Mike Cachagee, president of the National Residential School Survivors' Society.
"You can't call from the rooftops about crime and punishment, and then say we're gonna talk about truth and reconciliation after the fact."
Young represented the Province of Ontario in March in a case against native people opposing mineral exploration. During their sentencing he urged the judge to impose "a financial penalty that hurts."
Two weeks ago, the Assembly of First Nations unanimously passed a resolution urging the commission to re-consider its choice of chief counsel.
Commission head Justice Harry LaForme has defended his decision to hire Young as his legal counsel, saying the lawyer's comments are unfairly being taken out of context, and that Young has defended aboriginal people for much of his career.
"I would simply say trust my judgment and wait for the results of what we do as a commission because I thought long and hard about the right person for this job and I believed it was Owen Young," LaForme said.
Young could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
While some say they have respect for LaForme, the leaders maintain that Young must be let go in order to protect the commission's mandate.
"When I think of all the counsel that was available in Canada, [LaForme] could have found someone else that was less contentious," Cachagee said.
'High hopes'
Some native leaders say they hope Young will tender his resignation before LaForme has to make a decision on the matter.
"A lot of people, I think, have high hopes, especially those survivors who have waited a long time to tell their story," said Alvin Fiddler, the deputy grand chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents 49 First Nations groups in Ontario.
"If he's an honourable man, and by all accounts he is, then he'll do the right thing and step down from the commission."
LaForme said he's waiting for a formal request from the AFN before deciding how to handle the issue.
The Canadian government formally established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in June as part of the court-approved Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement negotiated by legal counsel for former students, legal counsel for the churches, the government of Canada, the Assembly of First Nations and other aboriginal organizations.
The purpose of the commission is not to determine guilt or innocence, but to create a historical account of the residential schools and encourage reconciliation between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians