G-009 conventionDeclaration detailLevel http://ica-atom.org/doc/RS-2#5.4 corporateBody National Research and Analysis Directorate conventionDeclaration NRA conventionDeclaration 2006-present The NRA operated out of two main offices, Vancouver and Ottawa. The Vancouver office prepared documents and performed research for court and all parties in litigation. It worked on claims located in BC, Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, and Alberta. The Ottawa office handled other regions and addressed federal matters. The NRA was a research office under the department of the IRSRC located within AANDC. The principal activity of the NRA was to research records for residential school litigation and to make records available for all parties for claims settlement. More broadly, the NRA maintained its research using records management principles for purposes defined under the IRSRC’s National Resolution Framework. The IRSRC implemented the National Resolution Framework as a comprehensive strategy to address RS claims and support Survivors in resolving their residential school claims. This included, when applicable, information useful to the short-lived federal program titled Alternative Dispute Resolution. The IRSRC detailed its responsibilities in its 2003 Annual Report. The NRA played a vital role in several of these departmental activities: * Resolve claims in a timely fashion, through litigation and other methods of dispute resolution that are compassionate for claimants; * Work with the Department of Justice which represents the Government of Canada in the litigation process where this process has been chosen by claimants; * Work with former residential school Survivors, their families and communities in support of projects that promote healing and reconciliation; * Work with federal government departments, Provincial and territorial governments, Indigenous peoples and organizations, churches involved in running residential schools and other interested groups. The principal activity of the NRA was to research records for residential school litigation and to make records available for all parties for claims settlement. More broadly, the NRA maintained its research using records management principles for purposes defined under the IRSRC’s National Resolution Framework. The IRSRC implemented the National Resolution Framework as a comprehensive strategy to address RS claims and support Survivors in resolving their residential school claims. This included, when applicable, information useful to the short-lived federal program titled Alternative Dispute Resolution. The IRSRC detailed its responsibilities in its 2003 Annual Report. The NRA played a vital role in several of these departmental activities: * Resolve claims in a timely fashion, through litigation and other methods of dispute resolution that are compassionate for claimants; * Work with the Department of Justice which represents the Government of Canada in the litigation process where this process has been chosen by claimants; * Work with former residential school Survivors, their families and communities in support of projects that promote healing and reconciliation; * Work with federal government departments, Provincial and territorial governments, Indigenous peoples and organizations, churches involved in running residential schools and other interested groups. The NRA functioned in the department of IRSRC, a department of the AANDC, formerly Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). The IRSRC was declared a Department under the Public Service Employment Act. The formal title was Order Designating the Office of Indian Residential Schools Resolution of Canada as a Department and the Executive Director and Deputy Head as the Deputy Head for Purposes of that Act. (P.C. 2001-996 June 4, 2001). The mission of IRSRC was to reconcile the relationship between residential school Survivors and the federal government.

The federal government created the National Research and Analysis Directorate (NRA) to deliver research for the rising wave of Indigenous civil litigation in the 1990s. Five significant court decisions in the mid-1990s made possible Indigenous civil claims for residential school traumas. This released a groundswell of Indigenous legal activism. In 1996, residential school Survivors filed the first several hundred individual civil litigation claims for trauma. The same year the final report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples recommended comprehensive treatment of the legacy of residential schools. By 1998 courts had ruled on the first residential school civil case: Blackwater v. Plint. The same year witnessed over 1,000 residential school litigation claims. Also in this year, the federal government released Gathering Strength – Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan. The plan was the federal government’s four-point response to the rising activism on residential school issues. The pillars of Gathering Strength included apology, healing, developed litigation responses, and alternative dispute resolution. By 2000, there were more than 6,000 Survivors’ civil claims. On June 4, 2001, Ottawa transferred political responsibility for the civil residential school cases to the newly created Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada (IRSRC). IRSRC operated in the ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC). It was designed to centralize resources for the coordination of all residential schools activities on behalf of the government.

The National Research and Analysis Directorate (NRA) operated within IRSRC to assemble evidence for this increasing civil litigation. As the defendant in residential school civil litigation cases, Ottawa was responsible to produce documents related to each claim. The NRA was responsible to locate, identify, review and copy all relevant files. The NRA researched active and semi-active AANDC files and archival files sent to Library and Archives. AANDC files could include records from other federal government departments was well as RCMP files. The research plans the NRA developed were in response to specific claims and therefore concerned specific schools. Because the claims covered daily life at residential schools, research covered most topics of operation and administration. In 2006, the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement brought new research roles for the NRA: Common Experience Claims (CEP) and Independent Assessment Process (IAP) claims. This research focused on post 1920 records; students before that date were not expected to be alive on May 30, 2005. CEP/IAP research expanded beyond AANDC files to include other federal government department files, religious archives, municipal and community organization archives.

The NRA used CT Summation, a legal information database program to enter, sort and store the research information. To organize the information the NRA staff collected, they adopted the Canadian Judicial Council “National Model Practice Direction for the use of Technology in Civil Litigation. Before the IRSSA agreement, the NRA compiled over 80 databases to address the ongoing claims. To manage the different requirements of the IRSSA, and in particular to handle CEP claims, the databases were amalgamated by 2007.

The National Documents Collections records were designed to address civil litigation. Apart from specific cases, the database NRA titles includes: Church Collections assembled from litigation and IRSSA research; and School Specific Collections; District Collections. The NRA also created records sets referred to as the National Policy Collections. A list of National Policy Collections includes: Aboriginal Education Document Collection; National Health Collection; Treasure Board Collection; Privy Council Collection; Incident Report Collections; Regional Collections; District Collections (Alberta only); School-Specific Collections and Church Collections.

The government began to disclose its two databases to the TRC in April 2010. It submitted its documents in a series of “waves.” It sent the records to the TRC on CDs. The NRA disclosed all the information it held on residential schools held in the CT Summation database save for three categories: records deemed not relevant to RS history; documents subject to third party waivers; and documents subject to solicitor-client or litigation privilege. The NRA sent its disclosures to the TRC main office in Winnipeg where they were loaded onto servers. In October 2010, NCTR staff were given access to the records. The first disclosure records set was the National Policy Collection produced for the purpose of civil litigation. They were sent in April 2010 and numbered 38,311 documents. The next set was Crown Collections Produced in Litigation consisting of 180,997 documents. They were sent in two sets, December 2010 and June 2011. The next set was Specific Requests and Priorities from the TRC. They were sent in three sets: July, August and September 2011. The topics in this deposit included, Northwest Territories and Nunavut Records; Shubenacadie School Records; and RS records related to deaths of students, quarterly returns, and general school plans. These sets totaled 69,067. The next set was AANC/INAC records and LAC records. These were sent in September 2011 and February 2012. They totaled 501,283. The next set was documents from religious entities. They were sent in four sets: December 2011, January 2012, April 2012, and June/July 2012. They totaled 71,347. The next transfer was described as Missing Image Sets. These are descriptions of records without the image of the records. These records were collected from all the above sets. They total 74,951 documents. The seventh set was Non-Crown/Non-Denominational records. These were sourced from private collections, provincial and other public archives, community groups and individuals. They number 1,787 documents. The final set is records which were recently identified for disclosure as the TRC continued its investigations. The two sources were the Summation Database and recently discovered records as the NRA continued its work. The NCTR has ingested these records sets into the NCTR Archives has a federal government records series. Archivists have worked to apply consistent archival descriptions to these approximately 1.2 million records. Once ordered, as the bureaucratic record of residential schools, this collection will enable researchers to theorize oppression and its application in the context of the RS program. It will provide Indigenous people an opportunity to repossess their identities in a respectful public archival forum. The NRA records acknowledge and describe the overlapping multiplicity of rights, provenance and the diverse meanings embodied in the archival document.

National Research and Analysis Directorate (NRA) 2006-01-01 2012-12-31

2006-2012