Justice Harry LaForme resigns from the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Head of commission into Indian residential schools resigns
THE CANADIAN PRESS - October 20, 2008
TORONTO - The head of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called it quits.
The Canadian Press has learned Justice Harry LaForme resigned from the panel, which is tasked with documenting the experiences of residential school survivors.
LaForme, who was appointed chairman of the commission in April, is a justice with the Ontario Court of Appeal.
In a letter to Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl, LaForme says the commission is on the verge of paralysis because the panel's two commissioners do not accept his authority and leadership.
Over the summer, LaForme expressed concerns that political or bureaucratic interference could compromise the commission, and at the time he said those concerns were delaying the panel's startup.
For much of the last century, about 150,000 aboriginal students attended 130 church-run schools, where many were abused physically, sexually and emotionally.
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Native commission head quits, citing 'incurable problem'
Norma Greenaway, Canwest News Service - October 20, 2008
OTTAWA - The head of a $60-million commission into the bitter legacy of Canada's residential schools has quit, citing "incurable problems" with respect to his two commissioners that, he says, threaten to paralyze the process and doom it to failure.
Justice Harry LaForme, the aboriginal judge appointed to head the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission, announced his departure as chairman on Monday in a news release that suggested he was engaged in an internal power struggle that the government subsequently said a court-appointed mediator had been unable to resolve.
"The current unique situation of the TRC is that the two commissioners have made it clear that their majority rule would not be grounded in commission independence but would be shaped by the influence by some of the parties and their political representatives," LaForme said in his statement. He said he would not be available to the media to elaborate on the charge of political interference at this time.
The two commissioners are Claudette Dumont-Smith, a native health specialist and a member of the First Nations Algonquin community Kitigan Zibi, near Maniwaki, Que., and Jane Brewin Morley, a lawyer and former child and youth officer in British Columbia. The TRC did not return calls.
A spokesman for Chuck Strahl, minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, called LaForme's decision disappointing, but made it clear that problems within the commission did not come as a surprise.
"Unfortunately, a court-appointed mediator was not able to reconcile the differences between the chair and the two commissioners," spokesman Ted Yeomans said in a statement.
LaForme, who was appointed in April, had indicated some unhappiness as early as last July, saying he was worried about possible government interference in the commission's work because it set up an administrative secretariat for the commission as a government department.
In his resignation letter to Strahl, LaForme said, "At the heart of it is an incurable problem. The two commissioners are unprepared to accept that the structure of the commission requires that the TRC's course is to be charted and its objectives are to be shaped ultimately through the authority and leadership of its chair."
LaForme, a judge of the Ontario Court of Appeal, said the commission is "on the verge of paralysis" because the two commissioners have "repeatedly and openly" rejected the proposition that the chair was to shape the commission's course and chose to "compete for control" by insisting the commission be run on the basis of simple majority rule.
LaForme said the commissioners and their supporters see the TRC as "primarily a truth commission," leaving much of the work of reconciliation to another day. LaForme said uncovering and recording the truths about the Indian residential schools' legacy is but a part of "the greater whole of reconciliation."
The commission was established June 1 as part of a $2-billion class-action settlement stemming from the government-funded, church-run residential schools where many students were abused physically and emotionally.
The commission is charged with preparing over five years a comprehensive historical record of what occurred, as opposed to assigning blame and gathering evidence for criminal prosecution.
Strahl's spokesman said that because the the commission flows from a court-ordered settlement of the residential school issue, the courts will now review LaForme's decision.
The courts collectively involved in approving the settlement were the Quebec Superior Court, the Superior Court of Justice for Ontario, the Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench, the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the Nunavut Court of Justice, the Supreme Court of the Yukon and the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories.