April 16, 2025
Nearly ten years after the publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)’s final report, Canada’s federal government continues to fight Indigenous groups from across the country seeking access to records surrounding residential schools. For this continued denial of access, it has been resoundingly selected as the 2024 recipient of the federal Code of Silence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy.
“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission painstakingly documented the horrific abuses of colonial power perpetrated against generations of Indigenous peoples,” said Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ).
“Despite the TRC’s findings of a ‘cultural genocide’ being committed against Indigenous peoples, the federal government continues to expend considerable efforts that prevent communities from accessing valuable documents that attest to the details of this truth. It’s shameful.”
As noted in a November 2024 report by the Toronto Star, there have been calls for decades for governments and churches to turn over all residential school records. Despite being one of the report’s Calls to Action, survivors and their families continue to fight for access to documents that could explain what happened to family members.
Last year, Canada’s Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard told a Senate committee that “we need good government leaders that believe in open government and provide guidance and clear objectives within their department” in order to expedite the release of records.
“It comes from the top,” Maynard said at the committee meeting. “If the leaders [believe] in openness and transparency, more proactive disclosure done on their website, we shouldn’t need to have information [requests]. Access to information requests should be the last resort for obtaining information.”
“The federal government has the moral obligation to ensure all records are made available in order to ensure truth, justice, and redress,” said Jolly. “The legacy of the residential school system is a systemic scar on our country’s history that continues to go unhealed.”
In addition to the continued stonewalling on the release of residential school records, this year’s Code of Silence jury also agreed to bestow a dishonourable mention to Canada’s top three federal political parties.
As explained by the Hill Times, the federal Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic parties each appealed a landmark decision issued by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gordon Weatherhill which said federal political parties are subject to B.C.’s privacy laws.
As noted in a press release from B.C. FIPA, federal political parties have to comply with the Canada Elections Act, but are excluded from all other federal privacy laws. As such, without the application of provincial privacy law, parties have few restrictions on what they can do with the personal information of voters.
“Modern politics is powered by data,” Jolly said. “But in 2025, Canadians are largely in the dark about what data parties collect in order to fundraise, campaign and/or target them in their pursuit of political power.”
The Code of Silence Awards are presented annually by the CAJ, the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University (CFE), and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). The awards call public attention to government or publicly-funded agencies that work hard to hide information to which the public has a right to under access to information legislation.
Last year, Canada’s Department of National Defence was recognized as the federal Code of Silence winner for taking three years to respond to an access request about the cost of a controversial program to build new Canadian warships.
The remaining 2024 Code of Silence Awards will be handed out bi-weekly. This year’s winner in the provincial category will be announced on April 30.
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