CANADA
Toronto Star
By: Tim Alamenciak News reporter, Published on Tue Jul 15 2014
The claims of 38,000 residential school survivors could be headed for a vault instead of an incinerator depending on the direction of a judge.
On the second day of arguments over the potential destruction of documents detailing abuse at residential schools, Julian Falconer, the lawyer representing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, proposed an alternative to eradication — locking the documents away for 30 years and then transferring them to Library and Archives Canada.
“You’re guaranteeing the claimants that no one can access their information for three decades and you’re not putting yourself in that irreversible position the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is worried about,” said Falconer. “The minute you destroy this portion of history, you alter the ability for generations to come to remind people what was done to these individuals.”
Under the commission’s proposal, survivors would have the option of voluntarily sending their files to the National Research Centre, an archive set up at the University of Manitoba. Falconer also said the commission would accept a 50-year seal on the records if 30 years was deemed to be too short.
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