'You cannot just raise the flags and replace it with nothing': AFN national chief

The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says there needs to be another symbolic gesture made to recognize the genocide of Indigenous children if Canada wants to raise its flag.

RoseAnne Archibald says ideas for such an expression will be discussed when the organization's executive meets this week, adding national Inuit and Metis leaders must also be involved.

Questions about what to do with the national flag have surfaced in the lead up to Remembrance Day, an occasion on which it has traditionally been lowered to half-mast as a tribute to soldiers who died while serving Canada.

The flags on the Peace Tower at Parliament Hill and other federal buildings have been flying at half-mast since late May, but The Royal Canadian Legion says it plans to raise the flag at Ottawa's National War Memorial on Nov. 11 before immediately lowering it to half-mast again.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requested the lowering of the national flags after the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc nation announced ground-penetrating radar detected what are believed to be the remains of 215 Indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.