ICTJ in the News

October 30, 2008

Residential schools panel struggles to find new chair

The Globe and Mail

By Joe Friesen

When Harry LaForme was named chair of Canada's residential schools truth and reconciliation commission, Marlene Brant Castellano thought her work was done.

She took the long list of candidates and the short list, and all her notes, and threw them in the bin, confident that Mr. Justice LaForme, a unanimous choice of the selection committee co-chaired by Dr. Brant Castellano and Thomas Berger, would lead a successful commission.

Now that the commission is on the brink of collapse after Judge LaForme's acrimonious resignation last week, that list may have to be resurrected as the parties to the residential schools settlement try to find a way to get the process back on track.

"There are a lot of people feeling pretty blue this week," Dr. Brant Castellano said. "How do you go forward from here? I don't want to suggest I know the right way out of the current mess, but it is certainly daunting to think about restoring the commission to an effective role. "It will be extremely difficult to insert a third person [as commission chair]."

Lawyers for the parties met for four hours in Toronto yesterday in an attempt to hammer out a process for selecting a new chair. Pierre Baribeau, lawyer for the Roman Catholic entities, said the tone was constructive and the parties agreed to meet again next week.

A source close to the commission process said one of the principal questions is whether commissioners Jane Brewin Morley and Claudette Dumont-Smith should be replaced.

They were partly blamed in Judge LaForme's resignation letter for the breakdown of the commission, for reasons ranging from their refusal to accept the leadership of the chair to their attempts to govern by majority rule.

The two commissioners denied those charges in interviews last week, and said they intend to stay on. Mr. Baribeau would not say whether their future was discussed at yesterday's meeting.

Ontario's Anishinabek Nation, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, and the National Residential Schools Survivors' Society have called on the commissioners to resign.

If both women do intend to stay on, it may make it difficult to find a replacement willing to work with them, given Judge LaForme's accusation that they had lost his confidence and betrayed his trust.

"There are few people who can credibly replace Justice LaForme. None of them would take the job if the other two commissioners stay in place. You'd have to be crazy to step into the remnants of such a dysfunctional situation," said the commission insider.

One issue at the heart of the commission's collapse was the interference of interested parties, including the government and the Assembly of First Nations, and a struggle over whether to emphasize truth gathering rather than reconciliation.

Eduardo Gonzalez, who works at New York's International Centre for Transitional Justice, a group that provides advice on truth and reconciliation processes, said such disputes are common. The important thing is that Canada, which has been praised internationally for launching the commission, not allow the disputes to obscure a worthy objective, he said.

"The right balance between truth and reconciliation, the right balance between objectivity and sympathy, those are philosophical discussions that are very common in truth commissions," Mr. Gonzalez said.

"This is an issue of delicate balance. Yes, there needs to be a sense of fairness in the work of a truth commission. You can't go around making frivolous accusations. On the other hand, since this is mainly a moral and psychological enterprise, you cannot hinder it by imposing unnecessary legalism.

"The truth commission is building a moral narrative that will unify Canadians."

Who will replace Judge LaForme remains a matter of speculation. Sixteen candidates were interviewed last year, and some of them were judges, Dr. Brant Castellano said, although she wouldn't reveal any names.

She said she thought the commission chair need not be a judge, but there would be a strong preference for an aboriginal candidate.

How to rebuild

Lawyers for the government of Canada, the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit, churches and other groups involved in the residential school settlement met in Toronto yesterday in an attempt to find a way to rebuild the truth and reconciliation commission.

A joint draft proposal put forward by lawyers for the churches, the AFN and the Inuit suggested a mechanism for selecting a new commission chair to replace Judge Harry LaForme.

That process would take advantage of the work already done by the selection committee that chose Judge LaForme. It sorted through 300 nominations, narrowed it down to 50 prospects, and interviewed 16 candidates.

Some of those candidates may now be approached to step into the chair's role, if the parties can agree on a new selection process. Their lawyers will meet again next week.

"Residential schools panel struggles to find new chair" originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.