OTTAWA—The NDP says the federal aboriginal affairs department has deliberately stymied efforts to produce thousands of police and court documents that could bolster abuse claims made by dozens of former students who attended the notorious St. Anne’s residential school in northern Ontario.

NDP MP Charlie Angus wrote this month to federal minister Bernard Valcourt to demand Ottawa act swiftly and order a trove of documents be gathered and released to lawyers acting for the aging survivors of alleged physical and sexual abuse.

He said most shocking are allegations made by a number of claimants to the OPP regarding a “homemade electric chair” used to inflict punishment on children or for the “entertainment” of workers.

“If police evidence exists that corroborates claims that supervisors tortured children in a homemade electric chair, this evidence should be known to adjudicators and survivors,” wrote Angus.

Andrea Richer, a spokeswoman for Valcourt, said the government takes Angus's complaints seriously.

“Addressing abuse such as this is one of the reasons that the (assessment) process was set up,” Richer said. “We will continue to ensure that the department is fulfilling its obligations.”

Angus represents the riding which encompasses the James Bay communities that sent hundreds of children to board at the former Catholic residential school in Fort Albany between 1904 and 1976. They are still reeling from the intergenerational effects of that experience.

According to Ottawa lawyer Fay Brunning, who acts for about 80 of the survivors, a five-year OPP investigation into former St. Anne’s workers and supervisors produced 992 statements from 750 witnesses and ultimately led to a handful of criminal trials and convictions in 1999, when the investigation closed.

Charges against many others were dropped because either the suspects had died or the evidence was not deemed strong enough for a criminal prosecution. But Brunning said the statements and documents seized through warrants executed by the OPP at the time could nevertheless be crucial to allowing claimants to get a measure of justice today.

Angus and Brunning say the police statements and court transcripts constitute a “large body of evidence” that should be available to the independent adjudicators trying to assess individual abuse claims. They say it is up to Ottawa to request much of the material, now in the hands of the OPP and the Attorney General of Ontario.

The material “could play a huge role in corroborating the testimony of the former students of St. Anne’s,” wrote Angus.

Without the information, he said, many are left to try to prove their allegations by memory or medical records of the time, which hospitals in the region are finding difficult to retrieve and copy for release.

Brunning told the Star that she and two other lawyers working with James Bay residents only learned about the OPP investigation and trials last year.

Since then, she has been able to retrieve documents related to only three individuals through Freedom of Information requests. She has repeatedly sought help from the federal aboriginal affairs department, only to learn last week that it has had many transcripts since 2003, when civil lawsuits related to residential schools were filed.

Brunning said Ottawa is in “breach” of its duty to collect and share with the claimants any material regarding abuse under terms of the class-action settlement reached with the federal government and the churches involved in the residential school system.

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Five years ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the damaging legacy of residential schools and promised to make things right, says Angus.

With a file from The Canadian Press

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