CANADA
Metro
By: Kristy Kirkup The Canadian Press Published on Thu May 25 2017
OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada is set to hold a hearing today on the federal government’s appeal of a decision that allows personal records from survivors of residential schools to be destroyed after 15 years unless individuals decide otherwise.
Ottawa argues it controls the documents and that they are subject to legislation pertaining to access to information, archiving and privacy.
“To ensure that the history of what happened at the residential schools is not forgotten or lost on future generations, the documentary record must be preserved,” the attorney general argued in her factum to the court.
The government also argues that the use of the court’s “inherent jurisdiction” to order the wholesale destruction of the records “fails to respect the intentions”of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, which settled the largest class action in Canadian history.
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