Former, current ministers won’t say who dropped residential school case against Catholic Church – By Jason Warick (CBC News) / December 19, 2021
Advocates decry ‘conspiracy of silence,’ say survivors deserve immediate answers
In the fall of 2015, someone in the federal government decided to drop a multimillion-dollar residential school compensation case against Catholic Church groups.
CBC News recently reached out to more than a dozen current or former ministers and senior bureaucrats. No one would say who gave the order, although several admit they likely have relevant information and documents that they refuse to share.
That includes both current Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller and Bernard Valcourt, who served as minister of aboriginal affairs and northern development in the Conservative government from February 2013 until his defeat in the October 2015 federal election, won by the Liberals.
Miller’s director of communications, Renelle Arsenault, wrote in an email that a document requested by CBC News would not be provided because “it’s secret.” When asked to elaborate, she did not respond. Miller declined repeated interview requests.
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