The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal is expected to issue its final judgement Wednesday after the human rights panel held public hearings held in May in Montreal.
In a preliminary conclusion, a panel of seven judges said Canada had historically adopted a series of policies like the residential school system, forced sterilization of Indigenous women, among others that it deemed were crimes against humanity with genocidal intent.
“The atrocities visited on the bodies and spirits of children in the schools, on young women in the hospitals; the thousands of known deaths of children in segregated hospitals, in the schools, the unmarked graves and the ashes of babies in furnaces – are the physical manifestation of a genocidal colonialism which, above all, valued, coveted and seized Indigenous lands, territories and resources,” the panel said.
The judgment also says Canada has failed to meet its responsibilities laid out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015.
The international opinion court was created in 1979 to investigate crimes against humanity and human rights violations.
The week-long hearings were organized in May in Montreal by the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal to address allegations that Canada committed crimes against humanity and genocide through residential schools and other institutions.
The PPT said it hoped the federal government would acknowledge the findings of the international tribunal and enforce its recommendations.
The tribunal also demanded the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) records to be kept. Under a 2017 Supreme Court of Canada ruling, IAP records containing the testimonies of nearly 40,000 residential school survivors are scheduled to be permanently destroyed in September 2027.
“The idea that Canada wants to destroy those is ridiculous because you are erasing our history,” Na’kuset, executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, said at the time. “It’ll just be like swept under the rug and that is completely inappropriate and insulting.”
The tribunal is set to hand down its full judgment Wednesday, on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The annual Every Child Matters March to honour children taken forcibly into the residential school system, the survivors and families is also being in Montreal. The event’s organizers said this year’s event carried a “renewed sense of urgency and purpose” with the tribunal’s verdict expected.
— With files from The Canadian Press
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