According to Wikipedia, an amendment in 1884 to the Indian Act of 1876 made attendance at a residential school compulsory for First Nations children. By 1931 there were 80 residential schools with the last school not closing until 1996. During this period about 150,000 passed through this system. There were over 4000 deaths! On my further internet search it appears that most of these deaths were likely from tuberculosis in contrast to the dreaded smallpox which wiped out most of the Cree a century earlier.
My comments re this commission relates to the specifics regarding the involvement of the medical profession- especial the family physicians -the gatekeepers of our publicly financed and operated health care system. Some of these " truths " indicated that in some schools most of the children had tuberculosis and most of them dying from this infectious disease.
When I was a medical student and practicing physician in the province of Manitoba we spoke of the role played by the Jack Hildes Northern Unit. Here are 2 links
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/eppp-archive/100/201/300/cdn_medical_association/cmaj/vol-155/issue-11/1609.htm
https://umanitoba.ca/faculties/medicine/units/community_health_sciences/about_us/message.html
Although these 2 links detail the names of doctors serving in this unit, there is very little information on their management of the tuberculosis outbreaks, where as mentioned in some schools the majority of students were infected and died from this infectious disease. It would also appear that the doctors don't seem to have resolved the current growing epidemics of diabetes and obesity among our First Nations.
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