In 1920 more compulsion was introduced. The Indian Act was amended to make attendance compulsory between the ages of seven and fifteen, to authorize anyone appointed a truant officer to enter 'any place where he has reason to believe there are Indian children between the ages of seven and fifteen years,' and to prescribe penalties for Indian parents who refused to comply with notice to make their children available for school. The 1920 amending act also transferred from orders in council to statute powers so as to apply student annuities and interest to the operation of the school. The power to remove children arbitrarily provoked protests front the chiefs of the Oka (Kanesatake) and St Regis (Akwesasne) bands. In 1930 the period during which attendance was normally compulsory was extended to the age of sixteen, and the department was empowered where it saw fit to order an Indian child to stay in school longer, the maximum being age eighteen. In 1933 officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were explicitly made truant officers. The first stirrings of the Canadian welfare state in 1945 provided government and missionaries with another lever to push parents into placing their children in residential schools. The Family Allowance Act contained clauses that required school attendance of school-age children if their parents were to receive the new 'baby bonus'.

      As with so many aspects of Canadian Indian policy, in the area of compulsory attendance at Indian schools it was much easier to legislate than to enforce.