Alberta - "What's the point?" the woman asked. "What's the point of having a truth and reconciliation commission if the perpetrators of the abuses are not there to face the people they've victimized?"

It wasn't the first time I'd heard skepticism about the commission, that is expected this spring to begin work on building a comprehensive public record of the abuses that took place at native residential schools.

The commission is one part of a settlement agreement between native people, the federal government and the churches that ran the schools for the feds. It will spend five years poring over church documents and gathering testimony from ex-students about what went on at the schools, that operated from the late 1800s to the 1970s.

Alberta had 19 residential schools, where native children were taken from their parents and sent to in an effort to eradicate native language, culture and spirituality. The plan, according to the twisted, racist bastards who developed the program, was to elevate native children from their "condition of savagery" and assimilate them into mainstream society.

Instead, thousands of innocent kids were subjected to emotional, physical and even sexual abuse by the people entrusted to raise them better than their parents could. The end result has been generations of dysfunction and anguish, ruined families and devastated communities, from which Canada's First Nations are still struggling to recover.

The truth and reconciliation commission is supposed to help bridge the chasm of misunderstanding and suspicion that lies between mainstream Canada and native people. However, it's already in danger of being dismissed as a political paper tiger.

Critics say that, while the commission has the authority to demand any relevant documents from government and the four churches that ran the schools, it has no authority to subpoena anyone to testify, which means that the individual perpetrators of the abuse can simply refuse to participate.

Many former residential school students say one critical component for justice to be served is for them to have the opportunity to face the individuals who violated them. Now they fear it'll never happen.

Other critics, notably the Vancouver-based Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared, simply don't trust anything that the federal government or the churches had a hand in organizing.

The group announced last week it's put together its own inquiry to look into the charge that thousands of children were buried in unmarked graves around dozens of the schools, including four in northern Alberta.

The inquiry will be run by several hereditary chiefs from across the country and organizers are trying to get the United Nations involved. They've announced that they'll begin work this week.

Meanwhile, the $60-million truth and reconciliation commission can't even nail down an exact start date for its work, other than to say it'll begin in early 2008.

Nor can anyone say exactly how it will go about gathering testimony from around the country -- will it travel to remote communities or invite people to major centres? That remains to be seen.

In fact, the feds' Indian Residential Schools Resolution website - which has all the commission's information, hasn't posted a single statement or media release about its progress in 2008.

The wall of silence around the commission is only fuelling suspicions that it is a political smokescreen.