What was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada?

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was the federal commission that documented the history and ongoing impacts of Canada's Indian residential school system and provided the basis for federal-provincial-Indigenous reconciliation efforts. The TRC operated from 2008 to 2015, was chaired by the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair (the first Indigenous judge appointed in Manitoba), and concluded its work with a six-volume final report and 94 Calls to Action issued on December 15, 2015.

The TRC was established under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history, approved by the courts in 2007. The Settlement Agreement was negotiated between the Government of Canada, the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Roman Catholic Church and other church entities that had operated residential schools, and counsel for survivors. It included a Common Experience Payment to all surviving former students (about $10,000 plus $3,000 per additional year of attendance), an Independent Assessment Process for compensation for serious abuse, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, commemoration funding, and the TRC.

The TRC heard testimony from more than 6,750 residential school survivors across the country between 2010 and 2014 in seven national events and many community hearings. The Commission documented the operation of about 139 federally administered residential schools that operated between the 1870s and 1996, attended by an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children. The Commission found that the schools were a deliberate tool of cultural genocide aimed at assimilating Indigenous children, and documented widespread physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse, as well as inadequate food, healthcare, and education.

The 94 Calls to Action address every level of Canadian society: federal, provincial, and territorial governments, churches, courts, the legal profession, the medical profession, the media, business, sports, education, and ordinary Canadians. Specific Calls include the federal United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act of 2021 (Calls 43 and 44), the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Call 41), reform of child welfare (Calls 1 to 5, leading to An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Metis children, youth and families of 2019), the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30 (Call 80, established as a federal statutory holiday in 2021 by Bill C-5), and renewed Crown-Indigenous relations frameworks. Annual progress reports are tracked by the Yellowhead Institute and the Canadian Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg.