OTTAWA—Between 2007-08, hearings began for survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. The Independent Assessment Process (IAP) held hearings or heard testimony from survivors, and sometimes there were hearings in every single city and town, in every single province, every day for weeks on end. 

The IAP was set up as part of the class-action suit, over 38,000 survivors applied, and almost 90 per cent gave testimony in a hearing along with other records and evidence, according to the IAP’s website.  

There was supposed to be a process that the IAP gave the survivors informed choice if their record would be confidential, or shared with the National Centre Truth and Reconciliation for safekeeping. From a safety and trauma lens, confidentiality is important. Allegedly, there has been a process for survivors to elect to have their records moved to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation—because this does not seem to be well-known by survivors. It is not clear if there was an option that anonymized records could be kept.  

In 2017, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation led a court case to demand the records be turned over to them for safekeeping. This makes sense as this is the organization which has the credibility and trust of Indigenous Peoples. Even the Government of Canada agreed. But guess who didn’t want the records to be kept safely? The Catholic Church. One might wonder what it has to hide? 

One doesn’t need to wonder.  

Lawyers for some survivors also opposed any option but the destruction of the files. So, the courts agreed that the records be destroyed in 2027. Now there’s a petition to oppose this action, and even survivors are speaking out against the destruction of these records. It’s not known how many survivors. Some say they never knew that they could have their records moved to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. 

Herein lies the problem: Why was there never an option to anonymize the records? Hindsight is 20/20, but today we have a significant problem.  

These records contain the facts and evidence of the stolen children, abuse, and probably deaths in government-sanctioned, church-run residential schools. In a time of rising residential school denialism, this is the evidence. There will be no other significant body of evidence about the abuses of children. These records cannot be destroyed. This country is too fresh into its realization of what it did to Indigenous Peoples, and if the records are destroyed, Canada will too easily morph back into a refusal to admit the evil.  

United States President Donald Trump and the billionaire club of child abusers are doing everything they can to hide the evidence of their wrongdoing. If they had their way, the Epstein files would be destroyed.  


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We have the technology and the ability to ensure every survivor who is still living can make an informed choice on how their file is moved to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, with their name either included or anonymized. The centre has the expertise to put in place policies on who and how records can be accessed.  But the centre must have all the records and is entrusted to protect them, as they have been doing for years now. They are a proven entity, a trusted entity, an essential piece of the conscience of Canada.  

This is the Catholic Church’s version of the Epstein files. These records must not be destroyed. We must not allow a coverup of such magnitude. The parallels in these attempts to hide history and crimes against children are eery. 

Rose LeMay is Tlingit from the West Coast and the CEO of the Indigenous Reconciliation Group. She writes twice a month about Indigenous inclusion and reconciliation. In Tlingit worldview, the stories are the knowledge system, sometimes told through myth and sometimes contradicting the myths told by others. But always with at least some truth.

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