Steven Cooper and Alan Regel have confirmed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will deliver an apology to residential school survivors in Labrador.
That’s according to a press release from Cooper and Regal, the lawyers representing Labrador’s residential school survivors.
The apology will be for the government’s role in the conduct of the residential schools operated in Newfoundland and Labrador after the province joined Confederation in 1949.
Survivors have been told that the Prime Minister will deliver his apology in Labrador.
Cooper said, “Throughout the last decade representing survivors in Newfoundland and Labrador, I have heard how important an apology will be, validating their own experiences in the residential schools in this province.”
Then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper had issued an apology in 2008, but had left out the residential school survivors from Labrador.
Survivor Toby Obed notes: “The apology in 2008 made it seem like we didn’t exist and that we didn’t suffer in the same way that our fellow survivors across the nation suffered. We suffered as much as anyone and an apology, to me and other survivors, will go a long way towards our healing. Maybe I can finally put that tortured inner child to rest.”
Details of the time and location of the apology will be announced when they become available.