Survivors’ Secretariat is devastated by the news that funding for searches at former residential schools’ across the country will be capped at $500,000 a year for their research and fieldwork, an 86 per cent cut from their annual operating budget in previous years.
Laura Arndt, Secretariat Lead, says over the past two years, the organization have spent $2.2 million in research and have been able to identify many things about the Mohawk Institute, a residential school in Brantford, including the names of about 5,800 former students.
Arndt says if the decision to cap funding remains she believes it would make Canada the “biggest denialist” because they would be denying organizations like the Secretariat just as they are getting to answers of the history of Indian Residential Schools in Canada.
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada spokesperson Jennifer Cooper said the changes to the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund were made “to take a sustainable approach that provides funding to as many community-led applications as possible.”
