The Commission provides opportunities to give statements in a number of different ways. These include:
- at public Sharing Circles at national and community events
- at Commission hearings at scheduled locations across the country, including National Events
- at private statement-gathering sessions where only a trained statement gatherer and health worker are present.
At Sharing Circles and Commission hearings, statements are made in a public setting. People who make their statement in a private setting can choose from two levels of privacy protection. The first option ensures full privacy according to the standards of the federal Privacy Act. The second option allows the statement provider to waive certain rights to privacy in the interests of having their experiences known to, and shared with, the greater public.
People who waive those rights are giving consent to the Commission and to the National Research Centre to use their statement for public education purposes or to disclose their statement to third parties for public education purposes in a respectful and dignified manner (such as for third-party documentary films). The Commission and National Research Centre have the authority to decide whether to provide such access.
These options are explained carefully to the statement provider before a private statement-gathering session. To date, over half the statement providers have chosen to have their statements recorded for public education purposes.
The Commission also ensures that all digital information is transmitted and protected carefully during trips in and out of the field.
The Commission has made it a high priority to gather statements from the elderly or ill, as well as from particularly vulnerable and marginalized former students who are at risk. It has undertaken a number of innovative measures, including a day-long event facilitated by Métis Calgary Family Services at the downtown branch of the Calgary Public Library that focused on collecting statements from homeless individuals. Projects designed to reach those survivors in jails also are underway.
By the end of June 2011, the Commission had collected 1157 individual statements. An additional 649 statements had been given in Sharing Circles and at public hearings. One hundred and fifteen material and artistic submissions had been received. The Commission now has in place both the mechanisms and process to ensure it is able to meet its statement-gathering goals. Regional liaisons play a role in coordinating and organizing a series of specific and targeted visits to communities across the country. Future Commission National Events and the community hearings held in conjunction with those events will continue to play a significant role in statement gathering. Private statement-gathering options and Sharing Circles will be extended to communities and individuals in ever-increasing numbers in the coming year, with advance notice circulated to communities well before the planned visits.
Document Collection
The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement commits the parties to the Agreement to providing the Commission with all relevant documents in their possession or control. This is to be done subject to the legislated privacy interests of an individual, and in compliance with privacy and access-to-information legislation. Exceptions are to be made in cases where solicitor-client privilege applies.
In keeping with that Agreement, documents from the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) established by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, existing resolved litigation, and federal government dispute-resolution processes (all processes dealing with claims of abuse at the schools) are being sought by the Commission, to become part of the documents collected.
In February 2011, the Commission retained a consulting firm to assist in collecting all relevant documents from church and government holdings. The Commission is in the process of developing a fully functional and secure database, a team of historical researchers to review and audit the holdings of the various parties to the Settlement Agreement, and the technical resources to digitize the entire collection.
Each of the three main activities in document collection—developing the database, the digitization, and research—are extremely complex projects. The database will provide the Commission with state-of-the-art backup and secure storage, while delivering sophisticated search-and-report functions, and multi-media capacity. Researchers will identify, review, provide meta-data tagging, and report on all relevant documents. Digitization will involve the electronic conversion of material that currently exists in a host of formats, including photographs, glass-plate negatives, film, video, onionskin paper, cut-sheet paper, and microfilm.
This effort will involve the records of at least eighty-eight church archives and as many as thirty or more government institutions. In addition, the creation of a full record also would require the collection of relevant records held by organizations and individuals other than Canada and the churches, such as museums, provincial and university archives, and cultural and Aboriginal research centres.
