Ottawa has been ordered to begin disclosing long-withheld records tied to the Kamloops residential school grave claims after the federal Crown-Indigenous Relations department was found to have violated access-to-information law by stonewalling requests for more than a year.Blacklock's Reporter says Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard ruled that the department led by Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty unlawfully delayed and improperly attempted to seal documents related to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation’s 2021 announcement of 215 purported graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The department has been given 36 days to start releasing files.“The department must respond to the request without further delay,” Maynard wrote, rejecting Ottawa’s effort to classify all records as confidential information.The Kamloops First Nation announced in May 2021 that ground-penetrating radar had detected what it said were 215 graves in an orchard near the former school. No skeletal remains have been excavated or recovered. Despite that, the First Nation received $12.1 million in federal funding earmarked for the “exhumation of remains” and forensic DNA testing.As a condition of that funding, the First Nation was required to submit regular Activity Progress Reports to the federal government. .On December 15, Alty’s department attempted to block release of all such reports sought by Blacklock’s Reporter, arguing they were confidential.A second Blacklock’s request remains active, seeking all Activity Progress Reports connected to the Tk’emlups Indian Residential School Survivor Project or any related “missing children” program funded by the department. In that case, the Information Commissioner noted that “in total 576 pages of relevant records were received.”The department argued it was too overworked to process the file, claiming it “did not have sufficient capacity to start the analysis” even after a full year. Maynard dismissed the explanation outright.“I find the time taken by the department to advance the processing of this request unacceptable,” she wrote. “Nothing in the Access To Information Act allows the department to delay processing requests due to limited staff or other competing priorities.”.“Any additional time that is taken to respond to this request is another day by which the complainant’s rights of access are being denied,” Maynard added. “This lack of responsiveness is in clear contravention of the department’s obligations under the Act and undermines the credibility of the access system.”Despite the national and international attention generated by the Kamloops claims, no parliamentary committee has conducted a formal investigation. Then–prime minister Justin Trudeau ordered the Peace Tower flag lowered for five months and visited the site, saying he was there to pay his respects to the graves.At the time, Trudeau said Canadians were confronting a grim reality after what he described as the discovery of 215 indigenous children buried near the school, arguing the issue was not merely historical but part of the country’s present.
