$321M for Canada residential school survivors

Canian government is committing $321 million in new funding for programs to help Indigeus communities search burial sites at former residential schools and to support survivors and ir communities.

Justice Minister David Lametti speaking at a virtual news conference Tuesday, said he will appoint a special interlocutor to work with Indigeus communities and government to propose changes to federal laws, policies and practices that are related to unmarked graves at residential schools.

Lametti says Cana currently does t have necessary legal tools needed to deal with complex issues presented by findings of unmarked graves.

In dition, Crown-Indigeus Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett says $83 million will be ded to an existing $27-million program to fund searches of burial sites and commemorate children who died at residential schools.

She says government will create a national visory committee, me up of archeology, forensic, pathology, and mental health experts, to vise Indigeus communities and government about work to find and identify children.

Indigeus Services Minister Marc Miller said government will spend $107 million on programs to provide essential mental health, culture and emotional services to support healing from intergenerational trauma.

He says government will provide $100 million over two years to help Indigeus communities man residential school buildings, wher those plans include demolition, rehabilitation or construction of new facilities.

Several Indigeus communities have anunced since spring that hundreds of unmarked graves have been located at sites of former residential schools.

In June, Lower Kootenay Band in British Columbia said a search using ground-penetrating rar h found what are believed to be 182 human remains at a site close to a former residential school in Cranbrook.

Cowessess First Nation earlier said that ground-penetrating rar detected 751 unmarked graves at former Marieval Indian Residential School east of Regina, Sask., a few weeks after finding of what are believed to be remains of 215 children in Kamloops, B.C.

Squamish Nation in Vancouver area was set to make an anuncement on Tuesday about former St. Paul's Indian Residential School.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is widely expected to call an election soon and his government's record on Indigeus reconciliation is set to be a major issue.

RoseAnne Archibald, National Chief of Assembly of First Nations reacting to today's anuncement "is a long overdue step in ackwledging devastating harm that se institutions have h and continue to have on generations, many generations of our people."