On Sunday June 27, 2021, Senator Murray Sinclair - a former senator, one of the country’s first Indigenous judges, and Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2009 to 2015 - told the Guardian newspaper the following: 

"...the 'undiscovered truths' of the schools are probably far more devastating than many Canadians realize – including the deliberate killing of children by school staff and the likelihood that such crimes were covered up.

Senator Sinclair called for a powerful investigative body, free of government interference, and with the power to subpoena witnesses.

“We need to know who died, we need to know how they died, we need to know who was responsible for their deaths or for their care at the time that they died,” said Sinclair, a member of the Peguis First Nation. “We need to know why the families weren’t informed. And we need to know where the children are buried.”

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide. But the TRC "was prevented from investigating allegations of criminality and efforts to obtain key church and government records were frustrated."

“We want there to be an independent investigation to actually go into their archives and see what can be found. And I think that we will be astonished at what their records reveal to us.”