CANADA
The Globe and Mail
GLORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, May 25, 2017
The federal government and the centre created to preserve the memory of Canada’s residential schools are asking the Supreme Court to rule that the intimate and heart-wrenching tales of abuse recounted by survivors in closed-door compensation hearings should be preserved in national archives.
They urged the top court on Thursday to overturn the Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that documents related to the hearings held under the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) should be maintained for 15 years and then destroyed unless the claimants explicitly agree that the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) in Winnipeg should have them.
Justice Department lawyers argued that federal privacy, access and archive legislation demands the documents be saved.
And a lawyer for the NCTR told the court that reconciliation requires knowledge, not the destruction of the past. The documents of the IAP “provide a unique window into the horrors of the residential schools and Canada’s efforts to come to grips with those horrors,” Joanna Birenbaum said.
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