Mandatory Documents

About IAP IAP Application Admission Documents Hearings Future care plan Negotiated settlements The Adjudicator’s decision Review of decisions Claimants guide

Mandatory documents are documents that will help support your claim, such as medical, education, corrections, and income records. In most cases, a claim cannot be scheduled for a hearing until the claimant has obtained these documents and submitted them to the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat (IRSAS). Almost all claims require mandatory documents of some sort.

Collecting your mandatory documents can be time consuming. Sometimes they can be collected within six months, but it is not uncommon for the process to take a year or more.

Your mandatory documents and the Government of Canada’s completed research are given to the Secretariat to prepare your case’s evidentiary package. The evidentiary package:

  • helps everyone better understand the claim
  • ensures that all the parties have access to the same documents about the claim
  • is used as a basis for questioning by the adjudicator during the hearing

The Secretariat aims to send the evidentiary package to the parties at least five weeks before the hearing date.

As with all claimants who apply to the IAP, you will need certain documents at the hearing to support your claim.

The documents you will need are based on the level you selected in your application for consequential harms and loss of opportunity.

Before the hearing, your job is only to identify where to get these documents. You are not expected to gather and pay for these documents on your own. If you have a lawyer, your lawyer will take care of this. If you do not have a lawyer, your Claimant Support Officer will be responsible for this task.

If certain mandatory documents don’t apply to your situation, you, or your lawyer if you have one, will have to complete a form explaining why.

Why are these documents necessary?

The documents listed below will help support your claim. They will not prove the abuse happened, but they will help prove that your life was made more difficult because of the abuse that happened at a residential school.

For example, if your application states that your time at a residential school caused you to become drug or alcohol dependent in later years, your treatment records will help prove that particular harm. As another example, if your application said that your residential school experience caused you to attempt suicide several times, the records from the hospitals or clinics where you were treated will help prove that particular harm.

If, on your application, you selected levels 1 or 2 for consequential harms, no supporting documents are required.

If, on your application, you selected levels 3, 4, or 5 for consequential harms, the following documents must be collected:

  • treatment records relevant to the harms claimed – This includes clinical, hospital, medical or other treatment records. This does not include records of counseling while pursuing a claim.
  • workers’ compensation records, if a claim involves a physical injury – for example, you may have stated that you suffer back problems as a result of abuse at the residential school. This injury may have stayed with you throughout your career and caused you to miss work on one or more occasions and you collected workers’ compensation benefits.
  • corrections records that relate to injuries or harms – if you were incarcerated in a federal or provincial/territorial prison, you may have had counseling and medical issues related to your residential school experience.

If, on your application, you selected level 1 for loss of opportunity, no supporting documents are required.

If, on your application, you selected level 2, the following supporting documents must be collected:

  • workers’ compensation records, if your claim involves a physical injury
  • income tax records, or if they’re not available, Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan records
  • high school, college and/or university records that are not records from the residential school itself

If, on your application, you selected levels 3, 4, or 5 for loss of opportunity, the following documents must be collected:

  • workers’ compensation records, if your claim involves a physical injury
  • income tax records, or if they’re not available, Employment/Unemployment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan records
  • treatment records relevant to the injury/condition that caused the opportunity loss – this includes clinical, hospital, medical or other treatment records but does not include records of counseling while pursuing a claim

For example, if you were diagnosed as bipolar as a result of your residential school experience, this may have affected your ability to remain in a certain job for long or may have prevented you from ever finding a job.

  • high school, university and/or college records that are not records from the residential school itself

You can submit other documents. These documents are not mandatory, but can support your claim if you have them. These documents may include:

  • Any document that you have from when you were a student at the residential school. These can sometimes support attendance, for example, yearbooks, pictures, report cards, diplomas, letters or newspaper clippings, or provincial/territorial education records.
  • Any written statement or testimony that you may have given about your experiences at residential school or harms suffered because of the abuse. For example:
    • information related to drug or alcohol treatment
    • statements you made to the police
    • previous written statements given to a priest, other religious person or employee of the school
    • previous statements given to medical or counseling professionals
    • personal diary recording information that supports the claim
    • video statements that were not made solely for pursuing an IAP claim