The Sleeping Giant Awakens by David B. MacDonald

Author:David B. MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Statements and Documents

Statement-gathering, whether public or private, was a key aspect of the commission’s work. It collected some seven thousand statements, mostly from Survivors, but also from former teachers and administrative staff. It also collected approximately five million records, all of which were eventually housed at the NCTR at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. As McMahon has discussed, from the outset, the commission encountered serious problems acquiring the documents it needed about the operations of the schools. It also had difficulty accessing information from government departments. The auditor general reminded the federal government in her 2013 report that it had “an obligation to provide all relevant documents to and for the use of the Commission.”33

In addition to withholding ADR, CEP, and IAP documents, the federal government put up barriers to aiding the TRC in collecting documents. There were constant battles over the interpretation of “relevant” documents. Library and Archives Canada claimed in 2011 that it had created some thirty “roadmaps” outlining where, in thirty government departments, information about the IRS system could be found. It estimated at that time that the number of relevant documents would represent twenty kilometres, or roughly 69,000 file boxes, and would take ten years and $40 million to properly digitize. Eventually, the government came up with $20 million for document collection, to be added to the commission’s initial $6 million budget.34 NCTR director Ry Moran recalls, “While some entities complied willingly, document production would prove to be one of the most challenging elements of the commission’s mandate, seeing the TRC in court on five separate occasions for a variety of document collection issues.”35

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