Ottawa to Release Long-sought St. Anne’s Residential School Documents
By Jesse Winter
Under threat of a lawsuit, the federal government has started releasing thousands of long-sought internal documents that could explain why it withheld police records of horrific abuse from survivors of the notorious St. Anne’s residential school. Survivors of the school in Fort Albany, Ont., say they were the victims of appalling treatment including sexual abuse, being shocked by an electrified chair and being forced to eat their own vomit. The Ontario Provincial Police investigated the abuses in the 1990s, conducting interviews with more than 700 survivors and creating thousands of records about the abuse. Five former employees at the church-run school were convicted. But when survivors of the school — like one woman referred to in court documents as K-10106 — applied for compensation under the residential school’s settlement process, those critical police records were withheld even though the government was duty-bound to provide them. In the case of K-10106, her sexual abuse claim was rejected by the court. The reams of police records could have vindicated her. “What happened at St. Anne’s is a horror story,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay). “The justice officials had thousands of pages of police evidence outlining the perpetrators, the torture, the rapes, and they lied and suppressed that.” The police records themselves were eventually ordered released in 2014 by Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Perell. K-10106’s claim was upheld on appeal, but Angus wanted to know how such a failure of the justice system could have happened in the first place, and what the minister at the time knew about it. In 2013 his office filed access to information requests seeking media responses, briefing notes and advice to then-minister Peter MacKay about the missing St. Anne’s police records. “What was it about St. Anne’s residential school and the crimes committed there that the justice department would go so far towards denying the truth and interfering with the rights of survivors?” Angus said. “Hopefully these documents will begin to reveal that.” What followed was a four-year battle with the justice department’s access to information gatekeepers as the government sought to keep the briefing notes and advice secret. Angus’s office said that under McKay, the department said it would begin processing the request but that it would need an 800-day delay to compile and vet all 72,000 requested briefing notes, advice and other documents according to the Access to Information Act. When the Liberals took over government in 2015, the justice department refused to disclose any of the briefing notes or advice at all, saying their release could violate a 2014 court order protecting information related to residential school settlement cases, called the Independent Assessment Process. “As the definition of ‘IAP Documents’ as stated in the order is quite broad, the access to information office will not take the risk of being found in contempt of Justice Perell’s order,” wrote a justice department access to information advisor in an email from March 2016 shared with the Star. Angus says he wasn’t after actual IAP documents at all, just the government briefing notes, memos and media responses showing what political advice the department gave the minister about the case and any information about why the police records were withheld in the first place. Angus’s office appealed to the federal information commissioner, who earlier this year ordered the government to begin releasing the documents or face a lawsuit. The department agreed, and settled on a schedule of interim releases as the mountain of briefing notes, media responses and advice is processed. The first deadline was March 16, 2017. It has until March 2018 to finish releasing all the documents. Justice department spokesman Ian McLeod confirmed the department is working to vet and release everything on schedule. It is also awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on Perell’s 2014 decision that should help clarify exactly what constitutes an Independent Assessment Process document. “Until the case is heard and a decision rendered, there remains uncertainty regarding the application of the Access to Information Act to IAP records,” McLeod told the Star. Meanwhile the information commissioner’s office is keeping its investigation file open. “This will enable us to go to court faster if Justice Canada falls behind schedule in its processing of the requests,” an investigator with the information commissioner’s office wrote in an email to Angus’s office and shared with the Star. Angus’s office confirmed it received the first batch of briefing notes, advice and other documents Thursday. While he’s pleased the information has finally begun to flow, Angus said he’s skeptical of the government’s behaviour throughout the four-year ordeal. “There’s absolutely no way one could look at this issue of St. Anne’s residential school and write it off to just a broken access to information system,” Angus said. “The fact that we had to threaten court action with Canada’s justice department to find out who provided the political advice to the minister . . . speaks to something profoundly wrong in the justice department and the St. Anne’s residential school case,” he said.
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