Truth and Reconciliation Commission
What is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?
The TRC was created as a result of the largest class action in Canadian history. When former students of Indian residential schools decided to settle out of court with the federal government and four national churches, the launch of a TRC was part of the terms of settlement. The former students wanted to ensure their stories were not lost by settling out of court. The commission’s mandate was to gather the written and oral history of residential schools and to work toward reconciliation between former students and the rest of Canada.
How much did the commission cost and where did the money come from?
The commission was paid for with money from the out-of-court settlement, which included contributions from churches and the federal government. The settlement agreement provided the TRC with a five-year mandate and a $60-million budget. The mandate was later extended for one additional year.
The Yellowhead Institute has issued a special report entitled Calls to Action Accountability:a 2021 Status Update on Reconciliation which is the third analysis of the Federal Government’s response to reconciliation.It has now been six years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released it’s six-volume Final Report, with 94 Calls to Action. The Yellowhead Institute examines Canada’s response and once again reports little has been done.
The report states that “Three Calls to Action were acted upon in the three weeks following the first revelations of children’s graves outside Residential Schools.
This is more movement on the Calls to Action in three weeks alone than in the last three years. “
Also from the Yellowhead report “...why did it take the profoundly disturbing revelations of thousands of unmarked graves being found on the grounds of residential schools across the country to see Canada begin to make reconciliation a priority? And what does it mean that the Calls to Action that Canada did complete were also arguably the easiest, most of the symbolic gestures we allude to as “low hanging fruit” in this year’s report?”
Yellowhead Institute is a First Nation-led research centre based in the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto, ON. It generates critical policy perspectives in support of First Nation jurisdiction. Visit yellowheadinstitute.org/trc to read the full report.
TRC 94 Calls to Action – Report Card 2021
Learn About the Missing Children
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) in 2007 started a project to identify and register missing children and unmarked burials. Due to limited funding, they could only begin this project as it was not part of their original mandate. They were able to identify 3,200 deaths of children who attended Indian Residential Schools but obtained verbal accounts from survivors of many more children that were missing or dead that were not recorded. Since the completion of the Commission’s work the official death toll is now 4,100 before the recent discoveries. There is still much more work that needs to completed.