Survivors' Secretariat denied funding to continue search for missing children, unmarked graves

WARNING: This story contains details of experiences at residential schools.

An organization leading efforts to investigate Canada's oldest and longest-running residential school fear they've been denied federal funding as punishment for criticizing the Liberal government, putting their search for missing children and unmarked burials in jeopardy.

Laura Arndt, lead at the Survivors' Secretariat, a non-profit investigating the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ont., warned in December that her organization was in dire financial straits, verging on total shutdown, while awaiting a funding decision.

That decision, a denial, eventually landed in Arndt's email inbox at 12:16 a.m. on Jan. 23, 2025, she says, noting it's an odd time for the Canadian government to send out an official communiqué, particularly to trauma-bearing survivors.

The email contained a letter that was digitally signed just six hours earlier, yet was dated Dec. 20, 2024: the day after CBC Indigenous reported on the situation. And stranger still, the letter explained, as far Canada is concerned the secretariat isn't financially pinched at all. Rather, it has $4.2 million in "unspent funds."

"The saddest part of it is, I actually read the email at 12:16 in the morning because my phone woke me up," Arndt said.

"And I couldn't sleep because all I kept thinking about was: How am I going to explain this to the survivors when I don't even understand what I'm being told?"

Puzzled, noting her own audits contradict Canada's accounting, she wrote back on Feb. 4. She's still awaiting answers.

Between 2021-22 and 2023-24, the secretariat received about $10.3 million from the $320-million Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund.

Dubbed the Mush Hole for its malnourishing food, the Mohawk Institute was run by the Anglican Church and federal government from 1828 to 1970, taking children mainly from nearby Six Nations of the Grand River. The secretariat has documented 101 deaths there.

A review of relevant financial records and correspondence shows Canada and the secretariat roughly agree on the group's revenues, but not expenses. Canada says the group has spent $6.1 million over three years, while the secretariat's audits record $8.5 million in spending.

Arndt said they had a surplus of $2.5 million to start this fiscal year, which Ottawa previously let them carry forward, not $4.2 million. Since the fiscal year is now almost done, they've used the carryover, leaving them with no unspent cash, she said.

The records suggest Canada may be refusing to recognize some of the secretariat's expenditures as legitimate, or "eligible" under the program's conditions, setting the stage for a possible clawback.

Roberta Hill, a Mohawk Institute survivor, Six Nations member and secretariat board member, feels Canada is implicitly accusing them of misusing money.