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TORONTO — The Conservative government has acted in bad faith and may be in contempt of court by hiding information related to horrific abuse at an Indian residential school, an opposition MP and a lawyer say.

The stonewalling, they say, flies squarely in the face of government’s legal obligations under a lawsuit settlement that saw Prime Minister Stephen Harper make an historic apology to First Nations for the residential school system.

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“I’m astounded as to why the federal government in 2013 would find it convenient to stand on the side of the pedophiles and sadists who brutalized these children,” New Democrat MP Charlie Angus told The Canadian Press.

“These aren’t allegations. This was a massive police investigation with evidence and court transcripts.”

At issue are records related to St. Anne’s residential school in Fort Albany, Ont., which operated from 1904 to 1976.

An extensive Ontario Provincial Police investigation in the 1990s involving interviews with more than 700 people uncovered severe abuse that included use of an “electric chair” and ill children forced to eat their own vomit.