Cost of Indigenous legal claims hits $20 billion and growing
OTTAWA — The federal government’s forthcoming annual public accounts will release a trove of numbers that will show how much more Ottawa expects to pay to settle billions of dollars in legal claims made by Indigenous Peoples and their communities.
The contingent liabilities section in last year’s public accounts estimated Ottawa would eventually have to pay out total of nearly $20 billion to cover 70 outstanding comprehensive Indigenous land claims, 528 smaller specific claims and thousands of other cases of litigation, including those related to the legacy of residential schools.
The total is expected to grow again when the newest documents come out — as it has over the past several years. The gradual climb of the government’s contingent liabilities is raising questions about how the payments could eventually affect the federal bottom line as each claim is settled.
A source with knowledge of the government’s deliberations says Ottawa has grappled internally with how best to account for the climbing contingent liabilities and how they could ultimately impact the books.
In recent years, the federal public accounts have gradually raised the contingent liability estimates for each of these types of claims. Combined, the public accounts pegged them at a combined $18.4 billion in 2016, $16.6 billion in 2015 and less than $14.5 billion in 2014.
The annual financial documents, which are typically released to the public in October, define contingent liability as “a potential debt which may become an actual financial obligation if certain events occur or fail to occur.”
But even with the steady, yearto-year increases in the public accounts, some observers believe the government has still underestimated just how much Ottawa could eventually be on the hook for.
Lawyers who have spent years representing Indigenous communities in their land claims warn that Ottawa’s numbers are far too conservative — and could ultimately be at least four or five times larger.
“It does seem to me that this is probably a very unrealistic assessment of what their contingent liability might look like,” said Ron Maurice, managing partner and co-founder of Maurice Law Barristers & Solicitors in Redwood Meadows, Alta.