Loose talk and frustration has commission on the defensive

Editor’s comment: Please be aware that some of the language in this article could be offensive to some readers.

An interview by the new director for research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) with his university newspaper has prompted an apology from commission chair Murray Sinclair.

In a March 22 interview granted by John Milloy, who also serves as history professor with Trent University, Milloy told the Trent Arthur that “the churches are not being cooperative at all” when it comes to the TRC accessing documentation.

In January, Milloy was appointed as director of the Research, Historical Records, and Report Preparation for the TRC and as such is tasked with gathering documentation from the churches and federal government.

“We were very surprised by (Milloy’s) comments. It was not anticipated,” said Henriette Thompson, principal clerk with the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Thompson was one of four representatives from the TRC’s partner churches, which also include the United, Anglican and Catholic churches, to receive Sinclair’s letter of apology.

In the interview, Milloy stated, “You go to the big meetings where all of the church reps are and they go on about how important this is; then you go to the archivists and you hear, ‘it’s private, piss off,’ or you hear, ‘they haven’t given us any money.’”

Sinclair said in his letter, “The TRC has enjoyed an open, accountable and productive relationship with all of our Settlement Agreement partners, and we expect that will continue to be the case.”

Thompson said she is willing to attribute Milloy’s comments to more “generalized frustration” with the large scope of the TRC and the timeliness Milloy has to set up the research centre and gather documentation.
“There’s a lot of work to be done in a short period of time,” she said.

In his letter of apology, Sinclair also attributed Milloy’s comments to pressure.

“Prof. Milloy is, as we all are, under tremendous pressure to produce comprehensive results within constraints that can be overwhelming. The Trent article, I am assured, is an example of one’s impatience winning over one’s passion to ‘get the job done.’”

Thompson said the churches have moved beyond Milloy’s comments already. Following the official opening of the TRC office in Winnipeg, Thompson and her counterparts met with TRC members over two days and “we had very constructive, positive meetings. All parties committed to an honest discussion of Prof. Milloy’s article. We practiced our own truth telling and reconciliation among our partners.”

Issues of documentation collection are “being worked through,” said TRC Executive Director Tom McMahon. But the TRC is being tight-lipped about those issues.
“Anything under discussion between those parties is really not something we’re prepared to speak publicly about right now,” said Rod Carleton, TRC communication director.

Many of the issues that are on the table are more protocol issues, said Thompson.

The TRC is requesting more and varied documentation than what the churches needed to provide the federal government with at the time of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement.

“There’s really no disagreement around the principle of document production at all. We all agree that we need to, want to, provide these documentations. Sometimes the technical details just take some time to be clarified and understood and agreed to by all the parities and we moved some distance on that (at closed-door meetings held April 7 and 8),” said Thompson.

She added a working group had been created to focus on legal and technical issues.

Among the technical issues is the method of data collection, in identifying, sorting and classifying the documents.

Among the legal issues are where the responsibility for the documents ends with the churches and begins with the TRC; federal privacy legislation; and corporate issues.
Thompson said her “lack of expertise” would not allow her to speak on whether legal issues also included further civil or criminal action that could be taken by school survivors based on the new documentation. She did note that the work being undertaken by the TRC would support Common Experience Payments and the Independent Assessment Process, both providing money to residential school survivors.

In his interview with the Trent Arthur, Milloy said, “They’re afraid of lawsuits under the Charter of Rights, for example. The Catholics are especially wary. They might say, ‘If we give you the documents, John, and they’re the diary of priest so-and-so and this opens him up to liability’– because he was buggering boys in the basement and that sort of thing–‘and he sues us (the church) we’re in all sorts of trouble.’ This is the reason they weren’t giving us the documents in the first place, because the documents prove they were not treating children in the way they should have been treated. They’re just scared shitless.”

In response to Milloy’s comments, Pierre Baribeau, lawyer for the Catholic entities, told the Globe and Mail on April 6, that the Catholic Church was still waiting for the TRC to produce a clear policy for how documents can be released. He noted the TRC could expect to get 99 per cent of the documents it wants from the Catholic archives.

Said Baribeau, “The TRC does not have a free fishing expedition. We are bound by the law. The law does not allow us to deliver documents which are pertaining to individuals who are named in some documents. We’re trying to find a way to protect ourselves because the law does not allow us [to disclose], unless we have the consent of the individual… Whether they are or are not related to allegations is not the subject matter [of the discussions].”