Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

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212 • Truth & Reconciliation CommissionCall to Action23) We call upon all levels of government to:i. Increase the number of Aboriginal professionals working in the healthcarefield.ii. Ensure the retention of Aboriginal health-care providers inAboriginal communities.iii. Provide cultural competency training for all health-care professionals.Closing the gap in health outcomes will come about only as part of a comprehensivestrategy of change. To be more effective in improving health outcomes, non-Aboriginalmedical practitioners must develop a better understanding of the healthissues facing Canada’s Aboriginal peoples and of the legacy of residential schools.Call to Action24) We call upon medical and nursing schools in Canada to require all students totake a course dealing with Aboriginal health issues, including the history andlegacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights ofIndigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, and Indigenous teachings andpractices. This will require skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflictresolution, human rights, and anti-racism.JusticeResidential schools inflicted profound injustices on Aboriginal people. Aboriginalparents were forced, often under pressure from the police, to give up their childrento the schools. Children were taken far from their communities to live in frighteningcustodial institutions, which felt like prisons. The children who attended residentialschools were often treated as if they were offenders and were often victimized.This pattern of disproportionate imprisonment and victimization of Aboriginalpeople continues to this day. The continued failure of the justice system deniesAboriginal people the safety and opportunities that most Canadians take for granted.Redress to the racist and colonial views that inspired the schools, and effective andlong-term solutions to the crime problems that plague too many Aboriginal communities,call for increased use of Aboriginal justice, based on Aboriginal laws and healingpractices.To understand the full legacy of the harms of the schools, it is important to examinehow the Canadian legal system responded to residential school abuse. Relatively few
The legacy • 213prosecutions for abuse resulted from police investigations. In some cases, the federalgovernment actually compromised these investigations—and the independence ofthe Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp)—to defend its own position in civil casesbrought against it by residential school Survivors.RCMP independence compromisedIn late 1994, the rcmp established the E Division Task Force to investigate allegationsof abuse in British Columbia residential schools. There is evidence, however,that rcmp investigations into abuse were adversely influenced by the federal government’sstrategic interests in defending itself in the many civil lawsuits commenced byformer students. For example, the government demanded that the rcmp hand overits investigation files related to abuse at the Kuper Island school. Despite some initialobjections, the rcmp eventually did turn over the files. 118 This was done without dueregard for the privacy rights of the complainants in the case, and, in effect, gave thegovernment an advantage in defending itself. When the police force requested thereturn of these files, the government declined, and then further refused to disclosethe information it had received to the Survivors who had brought the civil lawsuits. 119Affidavits filed by rcmp officers suggest that the federal government’s interestin defending itself in civil litigation interfered with police investigations intocrimes committed at the residential schools. Although a judge eventually orderedthat Survivors should have the same access to rcmp criminal investigation materialregarding offences at the Kuper Island school as the government, the whole affairmeant Survivors could reasonably conclude that the rcmp was acting as an agent ofthe federal government, rather than as an impartial enforcer of the law. 120Call to Action25) We call upon the federal government to establish a written policy that reaffirmsthe independence of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate crimesin which the government has its own interest as a potential or real party incivil litigation.Unnecessary insistence on corroborationThe rcmp E Division Task Force final report notes that “a very common situationthat kept occurring over and over again” was that Crown counsel refused to prosecutewithout corroboration in the form of physical evidence. 121 This approach was based on
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Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

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