Residential school abuse reported to department while Jean Chrétien was minister, records show

While Jean Chrétien was minister of Indian affairs, his federal department received several reports — including one addressed directly to him — of mistreatment and physical abuse of children at residential schools, government records show.

Chrétien, Canada's prime minister from 1993 to 2003, told a popular Radio-Canada talk show on Sunday that he never heard about abuse at residential schools while he was minister of what was then called the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development from 1968 to 1974.

A cursory look at the historical record reveals that while Chrétien was minister, his department received at least four reports outlining allegations of abuse and mistreatment of children at St. Anne's Indian Residential School, which operated in the Fort Albany First Nation, along Ontario's James Bay coast.

The department also received reports of abuse from other residential schools during his tenure, including two from one that sat about 130 kilometres north of his hometown of Shawinigan, Que., records show.

"It's a terrible, terrible thing, when you get that old, you are still consumed in all those lies and there is no shame at all in what you've done to other people in the country," said northern Ontario residential school survivor Mike Cachagee, a member of the Chapleau Cree First Nation who attended three schools.

"It's sad, it just shows you that whole aspect of colonialism and how entrenched it is."

During his appearance on Radio-Canada's Tout le monde en parle, Chrétien, 87, said none of his officials ever told him about abuse at residential schools.

"This problem was never mentioned when I was minister. Never," he said.

Yet Chrétien's officials were fielding reports of abuse during his tenure at Indian Affairs at a time when the failure of the residential school system was widely and publicly discussed.

Under Chrétien's tenure, the federal government began taking over direct operations of the institutions in 1969 from the churches that ran most of the schools in the system since its inception.

One letter, dated Dec. 28, 1968, was addressed to Chrétien and handwritten by a teacher who taught at Catholic-run St. Anne's residential school.

The letter outlined concerns over how the institution was run.

"The main complaint we had centred around the attitude of the people at the mission toward the [Indigenous] people, which I would to say is prejudicial," said the letter, obtained under the Access to Information Act by NDP MP Charlie Angus, who represents the northern Ontario riding of Timmins—James Bay.

No record has yet surfaced of a reply.