Is Kimberly Murray planning to recommend Canadian taxpayers pay billions in reparations?

Special Interlocutor refuses to stick to mandate

Kimberley Murray - Image from APTN News

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By Nina Green

Kimberly Murray has just wasted $10 million dollars of Canadian taxpayers' hard-earned money with the blessing of two successive Ministers of Justice, David Lametti and Arif Virani.

By June 2022 - after five years as Executive Director at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and a one-year stint as Executive Lead at the Survivors' Secretariat looking for allegedly missing children - Kimberly Renée Murray had failed to produce the name of a single verifiably-missing residential school child.

Despite this abysmal record of six years looking for the name of a verifiably missing child without being able to find one, Kimberly Murray was appointed by Order in Council as a federal civil servant under the Public Service Employment Act as special adviser to the Minister of Justice at a salary in the range of $228,900 - $268,200 to continue her fruitless search:

Appointment of KIMBERLY RENÉE MURRAY of Toronto, Ontario, to be special adviser to the Minister of Justice, to be known as Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools, to hold office during pleasure for a term of two years, effective June 13, 2022.

Her Excellency the Governor General in Council, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, under paragraph 127.1(1)(c) of the Public Service Employment Act, appoints Kimberly Renée Murray of Toronto, Ontario, to be special adviser to the Minister of Justice, to be known as Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools, to hold office during pleasure for a term of two years, and fixes her remuneration and certain conditions of employment as set out in the annexed schedule, which salary is within the range ($228,900 - $268,200), effective June 13, 2022.

During the two years of her mandate, while going through her $10 million dollar budget (and according to one of her interviews, knowingly exceeding Treasury Board guidelines), Kimberly Murray failed in her primary mission - i.e., to produce the name of at least one verifiably-missing child.

Despite this spectacular failure, and her admission to the Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples on 21 March 2023 that there are no missing children, the current Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, re-appointed Kimberly Murray for a further six months by Order in Council on 28 May 2024, this time at a salary in the range of $254,000 - $297,800.

Last summer, near the end of her original mandate, Kimberly Murray produced a second interim report entitled Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience.  On 3 July 2024, the CBC reported that Arif Virani was holding Murray's report at arms-length, and refusing to comment on it.

A spokesperson for Justice Minister Arif Virani responded to an interview request with a statement.

"We will take the time to give proper consideration to the Special Interlocutor's recommendations as we await her final report expected this fall," wrote spokesperson Chantalle Aubertin.

The CBC also reported that Murray sees herself as a successor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, doing what she considers the TRC failed to do:

In an interview, Murray said the report is meant as a companion to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report on missing children and unmarked burials. The difference is that the interlocutor's report reproduces evidence like historical records and images.

It is obvious that considering herself a successor to the TRC is entirely outside Murray's mandate, and impermissible under the court-approved 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.  In the Settlement Agreement, under which Canadian taxpayers paid out billions of dollars, the TRC's mandate was limited to five years, and there was no provision for a successor, nor any intention that the TRC was ever to have a successor.

Thus, that the Minister of Justice has allowed Murray to breach the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement so that Murray can do what she considers the TRC failed to do is a scandal, particularly since as a federal civil servant Murray has undermined her employer by accusing the federal government in her report of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of human rights for which she says the federal government could be prosecuted:

The history of residential school burial sites is evidence of crimes against humanity that could in theory be prosecuted, the special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked burials says. Kimberly Murray, a federally appointed official tasked with recommending a new framework for the treatment of these sites, outlines the conclusion in a report released Wednesday.

In her report Murray further accuses the federal government of deliberately desecrating the burials of Indigenous children, and government officials of actively participating in that desecration - all without providing an iota of proof.  According to the CBC:

[Murray's] historical review says government policies prioritized saving money over the humane treatment of the children who died, their families and communities.

"Government and church officials made decisions and created policies that led to the deliberate desecration of the burial sites of Indigenous children. At times, these officials even actively participated in these desecrations," the report says. . . .

"This is meant to be an evidentiary piece of the genocide and the crimes against humanity that supplements, complements and supports what the survivors have been saying for decades," [Murray] said.

While liberally throwing around the terms 'genocide', 'crimes against humanity' and 'violations of human rights' for 256 pages, Murray fails to provide any evidence for these allegations apart from her own dark interpretation of every effort Canada and Canadians made to provide status Indian and other Indigenous children with education and health care.  Instead, her report is filled with numerous errors, deliberate omission of relevant facts, and shoddy scholarship.  Space permits only one example.  On pp. 209-210, Murray provides a transcript of a letter for which she gives two different dates (c.1898, and January 1906); has the name of the principal wrong ('Russ' instead of 'Naessens'); says V.F. Davin died at Dunbow school when historical records establish he died at the hospital on the Blood Reserve; has his name wrong (he was Nicholas V. Davin, not V.F. Davin); states that the letter 'requests death certificates for several children' when it only requests a death certificate for one child; and says many children were apprehended and taken to Dunbow, when compulsory residential school attendance only came into effect in 1920 and the school closed in 1922, so attendance at Dunbow was voluntary for almost its entire existence.

In fact, apart from Appendix A, Murray has little to say in her 256-page report about the subject of her mandate - Indian residential schools - but instead bulks out her report with lengthy discussions of topics outside her mandate - homes for unwed mothers, facilities for juvenile delinquents, private care facilities for children with disabilities, TB hospitals, and the like, accusing all these institutions of racist and colonial attitudes.  (Parenthetically, one has to wonder what Murray thinks of her Irish mother's side of the family; were they guilty of racism and colonialism?)

In fact, in her entire 256-page report one would be hard put to find a single positive comment by Murray about the tireless and expensive efforts made by Canada and Canadians to provide education, health care, and other services to Indigenous children.

So what is all this in aid of?  What is the purpose of the dark picture Murray paints of her fellow Canadians' efforts over decades and centuries to educate and provide health care and other services for Indigenous children?  What is the purpose of Murray's repeated allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, human rights violations, colonialism and racism?

A clue is provided in the title of Kimberly Murray's upcoming final report to be released on October 29th:

National Gathering on Unmarked Burials - The Release of an Indigenous-led Reparations Framework

Was Kimberly Murray's interim report, Sites of Truth Sites of Conscience, with its total denigration of Canada and Canadians, and its unsupported allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, human rights violations, colonialism and racism, purposely designed to make Canadians feel so guilty and ashamed that they would agree to pay billions of dollars in reparations in addition to the billions they have already paid out under the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, Diena Jules' Day Scholars' settlement, Garry McLean's Federal Indian Day Schools settlement, and others?

Is Murray's report, Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience, a lead-up to a recommendation in her final report that Canadian taxpayers pay billions in reparations?

And not only pay billions in reparations, but under a framework which is Indigenous-led, so that all decisions about what Canadian taxpayers have to pay in reparations are made by unelected persons from Indigenous communities?

The answer appears to be 'Yes'.

Is this within her mandate?

No.

Will the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, let her do it?

That remains to be seen.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Is it true that Leah Gazan's family was impacted by residential schools? Also checkout Nina’s website Indian Residential School Records

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