SIXTIES SCOOP CLAIMS SETTLED IN ‘SMART’ WAY.

Separate $75M set aside to pay lawyers

An $800-million settlement with ’60s Scoop survivors announced Friday shows the federal government is getting “smarter” in negotiating such agreements, according to a lawyer involved in one of the class-action lawsuits.

The settlement, which will see survivors receive between $25,000 and $50,000 each, seems designed to avoid the unchecked cost of the residential school settlement agreement, as well as unethical practices on the part of lawyers representing survivors.

“The federal government is getting smarter, in some ways, as they move forward,” said Steven Cooper, lead counsel for a ’60s Scoop classaction suit in Alberta, one of 18 across the country. “I really think that this settlement represents the paradigm for settlements in the future.”

On Friday, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett announced the federal government has reached an agreement in principle with victims of the ’60s Scoop — Indigenous people who were removed from their homes by child-welfare officials and raised by non-Indigenous families. The agreement includes a maximum of $750 million for victims, and an additional $50 million to establish a healing foundation to help Indigenous people learn about their traditional languages and culture.

Chief Marcia Brown Martel, the lead plaintiff in the Ontario class-action suit, said the agreement leaves her hopeful. “I have great hope that because we’ve reached this plateau that this will never, ever happen in Canada again,” she told reporters.

But unlike the historic settlement reached with the survivors of residential schools in 2005, this agreement is capped. Survivors will not receive more than $50,000 each, and may receive as little as $25,000, depending on how many claimants come forward.

In contrast, the residential school settlement in 2005 had no cap, and the $2.8 billion originally estimated in payments to former students has swollen to $4.7 billion and counting, due to a largerthan-expected number of claimants.

“I think the federal government recognizes that there isn’t a bottomless pit of tax dollars to spend on these things,” Cooper said.

It’s still unclear how the money will be doled out. The government has estimated there are about 16,000 people who will be eligible to receive payments, though more could come forward. Cooper said it’s difficult to know with certainty how many survivors are out there, as many grew up outside Canada.

“We don’t know how many people even are aware of their background,” he said.

In another departure from the residential school settlement of 2005, the ’60s Scoop agreement will set aside $75 million for claimants’ lawyers, who will not be permitted to charge their clients any part of their award.

Following the residential school settlement, some lawyers charged survivors so much relative to the amount of time they spent on their claims that they were eventually ordered to pay back fees, including one who had to pay back more than $2 million.

On Friday, Bennett said the agreement is an important first step, and an apology to ’60s Scoop survivors will follow.

“I don’t know what people were thinking,” she told reporters. “That secure, personal cultural identity is the key to health outcomes, education outcomes, economic outcomes. And that was locked away because somebody thought that some non-Indigenous family somewhere else in the world was going to do a better job.”

Not every survivor is pleased with the outcome.

Peter Van Name, a member of the Mikisew Cree First Nation in Alberta who was raised in New Jersey, said the amount of the payments is a “slap in the face.”

Van Name reconnected with his mother when he was 22, and said he went through years of hurt and despair.

“Me and her, we don’t talk about it, because it’s painful. It’s still out there.”