Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

The mandate of IRSSA required the TRC to gather testimonies from the residential school's survivors.^[19] The testimonies were claimed to be necessary in order for the mandate to create a historical record of the legacy and impacts of the residential schools.^[19] The historical record was also important in educating the public on "the truth of what happened" in Canada. The records of the testimonies and documents of the residential schools are open to the public in a National Research Centre.^[19]

Between 2008 and 2014 the TRC gathered what is estimated to be around 7000 testimonies from the survivors,^[20] most from those who had attended the schools after the 1940s.^[21] The testimonies were gathered in both public and private settings, such as community hearings, sharing circles, Commissioners Sharing Panels, etc.^[19] The Commissioners Panels often brought large audiences, drawing hundreds of audience members and reporters with testimonies regularly being recorded and posted online. During the public testimonies, survivors detailed their experiences surrounding the residential schools.^[22] These regularly consisted of memories of being stripped of their language and culture^[23] as well as experiences of abuse, sexual assault and malnutrition.^[22]

The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was named in a similar fashion to the commission by the same name in South Africa in 1996 and was similar in function to that of Chile in 1990.^[24] In this context, reconciliation refers to the act of restoring a once harmonious relationship.^[25] The commission came under criticism for using the term in their name, however, as it implies that there was once a harmonious relationship between settlers and Indigenous Peoples that is being restored, while that relationship may never have existed in Canada.^[26]:35 The use of reconciliation thereby perpetuates such myth by continuing to deny "the existence of pre-contact Aboriginal sovereignty."^[26]:35

Justice Harry S. Laforme of the Ontario Court of Appeal was named to chair the commission. He resigned on October 20, 2008, citing insubordination by the two other commissioners, Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Brewin Morley. Laforme said they wanted to focus primarily on uncovering and documenting truth while he wanted to also have an emphasis on reconciliation between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians. In addition: "The two commissioners are unprepared to accept that the structure of the commission requires that the commission's course is to be charted and its objectives are to be shaped ultimately through the authority and leadership of its chair."^[27] Although Dumont-Smith and Morley denied the charge and initially stayed on,^[28] both resigned in January 2009.

On June 10, 2009, Murray Sinclair was appointed to replace Laforme as chairperson of the TRC. Marie Wilson, a senior executive with the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and Wilton Littlechild, former Conservative Member of Parliament and Alberta regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations, were appointed to replace commissioners Dumont-Smith and Morley.^[29]

Sandy White Hawk, a Sicangu Lakota adoptee from the Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota Honorary Witness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools in Canada.^[30]

The TRC contributed to not only educating the public about the reality of the residential schools, but also led to creating organizations such as the Missing Children Project. Over the course of the residential schools, thousands of children died as a result of diseases, suicide, malnutrition, etc.^[4] In 1917, the death rates stopped from being documented by the Department of Indian Affairs.^[4] The Missing Children Project is an organization that is dedicated to identifying the children who died during their time at the residential schools.^[4] The documentation is done through intensive research as well as analyzing the different conditions the students were facing.^[4]

The Legacy section of the calls to action focused on redressing the harms resulting from the Indian residential schools (IRS), the proposed actions are identified in the following sub-categories:

1. Child welfare: Residential schools often served as foster homes rather than educational settings. According to a 1953 survey, 4,313 children of 10,112 residential school children were described as either orphans or originated from broken homes.^[32] The sole residential school in Canada's Atlantic Provinces, in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, was one such school, taking in children whom child welfare agencies believed to be at risk. There is an ongoing legacy of state intervention in Indigenous children lives via the child welfare system. By 2011, 3.6 percent of all First Nations children under the age of 14 were in foster care, compared to 0.3 percent for non-lndigenous children.^[33] In 2012, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child voiced concern on Canada's removal of Indigenous children from their families as a 'first resort'.^[34]
2. Education: Due to limited funds, a shortage of trained teachers, and an emphasis on manual labour, many students in the IRS system did not progress beyond a rudimentary education. When residential schools were phased out, Indigenous youth enrolled in provincial schools dropped out in large numbers. The education focused calls to action are to address the current school completion rates and the income gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. In addition, the calls to actions request the elimination of the ongoing discrepancy in funding of Indigenous education.
3. Language and Culture: Children in residential schools were not allowed to speak their native languages or practice their culture. According to UNESCO, 36 percent of Canada's Indigenous languages are listed as being critically endangered.^[35] The calls to action request increased funding for educating children in Indigenous languages and also request that post-secondary institutions provide degrees and diplomas in Indigenous languages.
4. Health: Healthcare for IRS students varied considerably between schools and between different decades. After the 1940s, health facilities and health care workers became more prevalent. Some schools had a nurse on staff and an infirmary, with doctors who paid visits. Testimony before the TRC reveals that a great many children were subjected to sexual and physical abuse while attending a residential school. It is often claimed that the effects of the trauma have been passed on to the children of those students. The calls to action in this connection connect the poor healthcare provided at residential school to the current gap in health outcomes for Indigenous people in Canada.
5. Justice: When the Canadian legal system was tasked with investigating abuse claims, few prosecutions resulted from police investigations. In many cases, the federal government and the RCMP compromised the investigations. Given the statutes of limitations, many acts of abuse have gone unpunished because the children did not have the means or possess the knowledge to seek justice for their abuses. The calls to action around justice seek to extend the statutes of limitations and to reaffirm the independence of the RCMP. They also speak to the need to develop culturally appropriate justice systems.

The Reconciliation section of the calls to action were focused on creating better relations between the federal and provincial governments of Canada and Indigenous nations, with an emphasis on creating a reconciled relationship. The proposed actions are identified in the following sub-categories:

1. Canadian governments and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People
2. Royal proclamation and covenant of reconciliation
3. Settlement agreement parties and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
4. Equity for Aboriginal people in the legal system
5. National council for reconciliation
6. Professional development and training for public servants
7. Church apologies and reconciliation
8. Education for reconciliation
9. Youth programs
10. Museums and archives
11. Missing children and burial information
12. National centre for truth and reconciliation
13. Commemoration
14. Media and reconciliation
15. Sports and reconciliation
16. Business and reconciliation
17. Newcomers to Canada

The degree of implementation has been assessed differently by observers. Two of the most prominent asessements are conducted by the Yellowhead Institute at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The government also conducted their own assessment.

The same week the Final Report was released, two retired professors from the University of Manitoba published a scathing criticism titled "Truth and Reconciliation report tells a 'skewed and partial story' of residential schools".^[106] Hymie Rubenstein, a retired professor of anthropology^[107] and Rodney A. Clifton, former residential school employee in the 1960s,^[108] co-penned an editorial questioning the truthfulness of the Report. In it, they held that, while the residential school program had been harmful to many students, the commission had shown "indifference to robust evidence gathering, comparative or contextual data, and cause-effect relationships," which resulted in the commission's report telling "a skewed and partial story".^[109]

According to Rubenstein and Clifton, the Truth and Reconciliation Report did not compare its findings with rates and causes of mortality among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children attending public schools. Rubenstein and Clifton noted that the report also failed to consider Indian residential schools were typically located in rural areas far from hospitals, making treatment more difficult to acquire. They describe it as "bad research".^[110]

In an essay defending John A. Macdonald from the claim of having committed genocide, Patrice Dutil, a professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), claimed that the commission was "yet another very expensive prise de conscience designed to keep the light on a painful aspect of the Canadian experience", and that the volumes on residential schools "barely pretends to be an academic document."^[111] He went on to claim that "The study makes no attempt to put things in perspective, to show how practices evolved or to compare the Canadian experience with that of other countries. It is, rather, a blunt catalogue of findings typical of Royal Commissions, providing a long list of mini-studies of various phenomena with scarcely an academic veneer."

In March 2017, Lynn Beyak, a Conservative member of the SenateStanding Committee of Aboriginal Peoples, voiced disapproval of the final TRC report, claiming that it had omitted an "abundance of good" that she thought was present in the schools.^[112][113] Her comments were widely criticized, including by Minister of Indigenous and Northern AffairsCarolyn Bennett and leader of the New Democratic PartyTom Mulcair, though some Conservative senators claimed her opinions were an expression of free speech.^[114] The Anglican Church also raised concerns, stating in a release co-signed by bishops Fred Hiltz and Mark MacDonald: "There was nothing good about children going missing and no report being filed. There was nothing good about burying children in unmarked graves far from their ancestral homes."^[115][116] In response, the Conservative Party leadership removed Beyak from the Senate committee underscoring that her comments did not align with the views of the party.^[114]

Conservative Commentator Helen Andrews writing in The American Conservative criticized the process:

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a major tactical error on Harper's part. It invited testimony from survivors and then let that testimony stand unquestioned...this resulted in a document that was essentially oral history but which was treated upon publication as an unquestionable record of the facts endorsed by the federal government. Everything about the way the commission gathered its testimony was structured to encourage atrocity tales: witnesses testified in public, with audiences that sometimes booed positive statements; boxes of tissues were placed on seats and attendees told their used tissues would be collected and burned in a "sacred fire"; financial compensation was greater for those who could credibly claim to have suffered abuse, so alleging bad treatment could be the difference between getting $25,000 or $125,000.^[117]