The church is planning to hiring a “political organizer” to seek out people in the dioceses who are personally acquainted with members of Parliament, especially cabinet ministers, to present the church’s case on the issue of Native residential schools lawsuits.
“We need to make the MPs aware of the issues,” said Archbishop David Crawley of Kootenay. Archbishop Crawley, who chairs a steering committee on the residential schools issue, made his remarks at a meeting of the House of Bishops in May.
Archbishop Crawley asked his colleagues to identify people in their dioceses with good political connections. “The purpose is to move this issue out of the bureaucratic level into the political level. We’re anxious this not become a significant partisan issue. Getting people to embarrass the government at question time could just harden the government’s position,” he said.
