Features

April 29, 2008

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The International Center for Transitional Justice welcomes the Canadian government's appointment on Monday of Justice Harry LaForme as chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that will examine the legacy of forced cultural assimilation of Aboriginal children and other human rights violations.

The commission, scheduled to formally begin work on June 1, is an important part of the landmark settlement by churches and government in 2006 with survivors of the country's "residential school" system. For more than 100 years, beginning in the late nineteenth century, authorities forcibly separated Aboriginal children, including First Nations, Métis and Inuit, from their families and placed them in church- and state-run institutions that sought to remake the children's cultural identity. The schools punished cultural expression and subjected children to widespread patterns of psychological, sexual and other abuse.

In 2006, the government agreed to pay more than 2 billion Canadian dollars to compensate the estimated 80,000 survivors and, with the churches, take other steps to address the legacy of the residential schools. These include a contribution to healing and commemoration efforts and the establishment of the "truth and reconciliation commission" to allow former residents and others across Canada to share their experiences and contribute to the critical review of this devastating chapter of Canadian history.

Reparation payments have been underway since 2007, but the appointment of commissioners was delayed, threatening to undermine trust in this important new body. The commission's two other members are expected to be appointed by June 1. The Canadian government has indicated it will issue a formal apology on this subject as the commission's work begins under a five-year mandate.

Justice LaForme, 61, is a Mississauga Indian and a member of the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation in southern Ontario. In 2004, he was appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeals. He was the first Aboriginal person to be appointed to an appellate court in Canada.

The ICTJ recognizes that the truth commission faces an enormous challenge to demonstrate its independence as it actively engages survivors, their organizations and society at large. The commission must reveal the intergenerational legacy experienced in Aboriginal communities and point the way for bridging the chasm of discrimination and marginalization that separates Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians.

Seeking healing through recovering the truth and understanding the full impact of the residential school policies is no simple task, as prior truth commission experiences in the region and around the world illustrate. Yet it is also a challenge full of possibility, in which acknowledgment of the dignity and rights of victims, survivors, their culture and communities, if taken up seriously by Canadian government and society, can constitute a form of reparation that has a lasting impact as important as financial compensation.