CANADA
The Globe and Mail
GLORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Jan. 14 2014
A judge has ordered the federal government to provide survivors of one of the country’s most notorious aboriginal residential schools with thousands of documents created by police during a multiyear investigation into physical and sexual abuse at the institution.
In a strongly worded ruling Tuesday, Justice Paul Perell of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, said Canada must hand over all Ontario Provincial Police documents in its possession related to the investigation at the St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont. and must search out and disclose those it does not have.
“Based on its unduly narrow interpretation of its obligations, Canada has not adequately complied with its disclosure obligations with respect to the St. Anne’s narrative,” Justice Perell wrote in his ruling. He also ordered the federal government to pay the legal costs of the roughly 60 school survivors who took the government to court to obtain the documents that could support their claims for compensation.
Fay Brunning, the lawyer who represented the former students, said the ruling is a huge victory for her clients. “They had to go to this school, starting at age five or six, for up to eight years of their life and they lost their childhood innocence,” Ms. Brunning said.
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