Environment committee  It's a very important question. The commission was many things, but at its heart what it did was give a microphone to survivors of the residential schools. We gave the microphone to 7,000 survivors across the country. That's how many statements we recorded. It was the largest en

Environment committee  We have to understand the difference between preservation and commemoration. We absolutely have to commemorate every single residential school in this country. That needs to be a national initiative. In terms of preservation, we have not preserved every single residential schoo

Environment committee  That's a good question. I don't really know if there is a difference between the two. Consider for example children who have disappeared. That's going to take quite a long time, in order to properly honour that project. That's not a one-year project. It's going to require a lot

Environment committee  I might just, in opening, say a couple of things about that. I think in regard to the school cemeteries and the missing children work, I believe that there will be individuals who see the value in doing that work and want to participate and want to lend a helping hand. I think we

Environment committee  That's an excellent question. I think there is a really strong opportunity for a four-way partnership on this, with individuals, businesses, and provincial and federal agencies coming together to ensure...and obviously, indigenous peoples and governments coming together to preser

Environment committee  Yes, you heard me correctly. Two examples come to mind immediately. I referenced the St. Michael's Indian Residential School at Alert Bay. That school stood over that community in a very dominating way for many years. It was rundown and it was derelict. It became a bit of a safet

Environment committee  I think what's really important to recognize is that the relationship between communities and the residential schools is very complex and it's going to change between communities. In the example of the St. Michael's school, it's not for me to say whether that was a right or wrong

Environment committee  Good morning. Thank you for having me here. This is an exceptionally important conversation that we're going to have here, and not only in regard to heritage. What I will be presenting strikes at the very heart of our national identity: what we choose to remember, what we choose

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm pleased to say that last week we assembled a group of the researchers from all of the stages of the TRC's Missing Children Project here in Ottawa for an intensive one-day session on what needs to happen next. There are three significant parts of the project we see as necessa

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't have the exact number at hand, but it's over 3,000 children. To be honest, we have a lot of work to do still in uncovering and reviewing the records. By virtue of how the records came into the centre, and the massive onslaught and the timing around when these records sho

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That information exists in certain instances. The TRC, in its initial missing children report, did indicate the nature of death and the reasons for death, but it doesn't exist in all cases. We also find that we don't necessarily have the names of the students in all cases. We hav

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I did make some remarks in my opening statement about some preliminary work we're doing in this field to get some of the monitoring work off the ground. Of course, as we work through the start-up phase, we have a lot of responsibility on our plate. This is an area we want to grow

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We feel we're fully able to undertake that. We're in the redesign of the NCTR's web presence right now. You will see in the near future an initial review of the calls to action and the monitoring effort of the calls to action. In regard to what that will take, it certainly will

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  They had an initial base that was funded by Steven Spielberg, so they tapped into some really big Hollywood money for this, which gave them a really significant head start. It was one of the things that we talked about at the TRC. Where is our Hollywood north in all of this? I d

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We are really operating in the public realm, so we have a direct and vested responsibility to provide this information back to survivors as part of a sincere gesture of reconciliation that really shouldn't or can't have a cost associated with it. We have to remember that indigen