AFN chief defends role in residential school commission

The head of the Assembly of First Nations said Thursday he has a moral and legal responsibility to make sure the commission into Indian Residential School abuse fulfils its mandate.

Speaking at a fundraising event in Winnipeg, Phil Fontaine defended himself against critics who have accused him of political interference in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process.

"We've been accused of meddling, we've been accused of political interference, we've been accused of not caring about the survivors. Well, in fact all of that is wrong," the AFN's national chief said.

The commission suffered a major setback last week when its chairman, Justice Harry LaForme, resigned just six months into his mandate.

The commission's chief counsel, Owen Young, has said the judge quit last Monday because the other two commissioners favoured survivor testimony over reconciliation.

Commissioners Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Brewin Morley shared Fontaine's conviction that the commission should focus on telling survivors' stories, Young said.

He said: "In a nutshell, this isn't government interference, it's AFN interference," adding that tensions arising because of the two views "began to be reflected in everything between the commissioners."

As a survivor of the government-funded residential school system, Fontaine said he has every right to be involved in the commission's business.

"This has been a deliberate attack on the Assembly of First Nations and on me and my office and it's not gonna wash because it's not the truth. If you attack us the way we've been attacked, well, we'll fight back. We're gonna fight back," Fontaine said to a standing ovation.

Native leaders including Fontaine, as well as residential school survivors' groups, have previously called for Young's resignation as chief counsel to the commission. Young recently represented the Province of Ontario in a case against First Nations defendants.

There are others, however, who have raised concerns over political interference in commission business, including the national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, Patrick Brazeau.

"This commission was supposed to work independently from any national aboriginal political organizations and the federal government and so it's important that it continues its work, hopefully in the near future in exactly that vein for the benefit of the survivors themselves," Brazeau said Thursday.

Brazeau and Fontaine have both agreed a new commission chair must be found as soon as possible, although Brazeau said the existing commissioners also have to be replaced because their credibility has been tainted.

A proposal to revive the commission was put before federal government lawyers Wednesday, although no details have been released about how it may move the stalled process forward.

Another meeting to discuss the proposal, which was tabled by lawyers for First Nations groups, the churches that ran the schools and survivors, has been scheduled for next week.

About 150,000 aboriginal children attended Canada's 130 residential schools from the late 1800s to 1996, when the last school closed. About 80,000 former students are still alive, but an estimated five or six die every day.

The commission, which was established in June with the aim of completing its work in five years, is not charged with determining innocence or guilt but with creating a historical account of the residential schools, helping people to heal and encouraging reconciliation.