Bittersweet victory for St. Anne’s Survivors

Sixty survivors of St. Anne’s Residential School took the federal government to court to gain access to documents to support their claims for compensation under the residential schools settlement agreement. On Jan. 14, the survivors won their battle.

An Ontario Superior Court ordered Canada to release documents from a five-year-long Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) investigation into the physical and sexual abuse of children at St. Anne’s.

The investigation took place in the 1990s and resulted in the convictions of several former employees. The school operated in Fort Albany, Ont. for more than 70 years.

“This is good for the survivors,” said Andrew Wesley, chair of the Fort Albany Residential School Survivors Association. “They can go ahead with their applications to the IAP [Independent Assessment Process] and they’ll be able to complete their story and get on their healing journey.”

The IAP is a claimant-centred out of court process for the resolution of claims of sexual abuse, serious physical abuse, and other wrongful acts suffered at Indian residential schools.
Abuses reported at St. Anne’s included children being forced to eat their own vomit and some as young as six strapped into an electric chair fashioned by the staff. Students were given electric shocks for such infractions as speaking their own language.

Wesley thinks this will also open the door on the issue of the children who went missing from St. Anne’s.

“I know of at least four who went missing and were never found,” Wesley said.

In his ruling, Justice Paul Perrell of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said, “Based on its unduly narrow interpretation of its obligations, Canada has not adequately complied with its disclosure obligations with respect to the St. Anne’s narrative.” Justice Perrell ordered Canada to hand over the documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Rex Knapaysweet, chief of Fort Albany First Nation, said the decision was an obvious win for the survivors.

“But it’s a bittersweet victory because we’ve had to watch them being re-victimized by the government. That’s tough to see.”

Knapaysweet’s own parents and grandparents attended St. Anne’s and “this issue is close to my heart,” he said. “The survivors were stripped of their childhood. How do you measure that in dollars? How much is that worth?”

The federal government is making reconciliation very hard, the chief said, and it’s hard to have any trust or confidence in them.
“They have been working so hard to protect ‘Canada’s dirty little secret’, to hide their dirt under the rug, but somebody’s got to be held accountable.”

People need to know what happened to the children at St. Anne’s, he said, “because we are constantly being told to get over it. We will in time, but in order to get over it, we have to go through the process and the federal government needs to be 100 per cent accountable.”

 “There are no short cuts to reconciliation,” Knapaysweet said.
Julian Falconer, legal counsel for the TRC, said this is a very important step towards creating reasonable compensation levels for the survivors. There are 7,000 OPP documents that are central to the claimant survivors, he said, “documenting the atrocities, the horrific activities” committed against the children at St. Anne’s.

“But it goes beyond that. We are protecting history. The mandate of the TRC is to document the utter tragedy that occurred in order to protect history. If it’s not protected, we are doomed to forget our mistakes. We have to make sure that the unspeakable and horrific abuses that occurred at St. Anne’s are never forgotten.”

The Jan. 14 decision is the second time in less than a year that the court has found that Canada has failed to comply with its obligations to produce documents for the TRC. In January 2013, Justice Stephen Goudge ordered production of documents housed in Library and Archives Canada. The TRC was required to bring the matter to the court because Canada refused to produce the documents.

“It’s a very positive step that the court intervened and protected the process” with respect to accessing the documents, said Falconer. What the federal government is doing, he said, “undercuts the process and the apology. You can’t say ‘I’m sorry’ and then continue to fail to carry out your broad responsibility as a perpetrator of abuse.”

Justice Perrell ordered Canada to pay the legal costs of the St. Anne’s survivors.