Ottawa’s $2M contact for unmarked graves report lacks ‘transparency’: official – National | 24CA News

A particular appointee for unmarked graves says a federal determination to contract a global group to interact with Indigenous communities on the difficulty lacks transparency and dangers inflicting hurt.

Kimberly Murray says she raised considerations straight with Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller on his division’s determination to spend $2 million to rent the International Commission on Missing Persons.

Based in The Hague, the group focuses on figuring out the stays of these killed or have gone lacking in main conflicts and disasters, together with in Canada after the 2013 Lac-Megantic rail catastrophe.

Miller’s workplace says the group will undertake a “cross-country outreach campaign” with Indigenous communities trying to hear choices to assist establish or repatriate the attainable stays of kids who have been compelled to attend residential faculties.

Following their engagement providers, which the minister’s workplace says can be performed by way of the assistance of
“local Indigenous facilitators,” the fee should present its recommendation to authorities in a report.

2:36Here’s how cash from a $2.8B class motion residential faculty settlement can be used

But Murray, who was appointed final yr to function an unbiased particular interlocutor on unmarked graves, says she is anxious with the shortage of session performed with Indigenous management earlier than Ottawa inked the contract.

“There’s no transparency,” she mentioned in a latest interview.

She says she is fearful in regards to the fee’s lack of expertise working with residential faculty survivors and why the federal government is searching for one other report on the matter when Murray’s workplace was already set as much as present it with recommendation.

“They’ve created Indigenous-led processes, but at the same time, it’s almost like they need a shadow report from a non-Indigenous entity for it to have any kind of credibility.”

“And they’re doing it sort of behind closed doors.”

A spokeswoman for Miller’s workplace mentioned late Thursday that “agreements and documents will be shared when appropriate to do so, with input from all parties.”

&copy 2023 The Canadian Press