B.C. residential school ruling ‘hard to square’
Decision will see ‘valid claims denied,’ lawyer representing St. Anne’s survivors says
OTTAWA— A lawyer representing former residential school students says a judicial ruling this week will make it harder for people with “valid claims” to get fair compensation for the hardships they suffered.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Brenda Brown ruled on Wednesday that former students’ compensation claims that have already been closed can’t be reopened if new evidence of abuse comes to light.
“A new hearing may be ordered only where a palpable and overriding error is found,” Brown wrote.
It is the latest twist in a heated, years-long legal battle that pits former residential school students and the Assembly of First Nations against the federal government, and centres on the special Independent Assessment Process (IAP) created in 2006 to settle students’ compensation claims.
The ruling has particular resonance for people who attended the infamous St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont., where students have said they were forced to eat their own vomit and children as young as 6 were shocked with an electrified chair.
David Schulze, a Montreal lawyer representing former students in the case, said many St. Anne’s students settled or had their claims rejected while the federal government withheld thousands of police and court documents relating to abuse at the school. An Ontario court ordered their release in 2014.
Some students — including Stella Chapman, a former St. Anne’s student who spoke to reporters in Ottawa this week — have since tried to reopen compensation claims that were closed at the IAP before these documents were released.
Schulze said Wednesday’s ruling will either block “valid claims” from being accepted, or encourage former students to bypass the special process and file lawsuits in court.
“It’s a result that’s hard to square, not just with justice, but with a lot of other decisions that have been rendered in this process,” Schulz told the Star Thursday.
“Why is it so important to the government of Canada to see valid claims denied?”
The Assembly of First Nations is also “strongly” considering an appeal of Wednesday’s ruling, communications director Don Kelly said this week.
In an emailed statement Friday, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said the government is committed to ensuring “fair and lasting resolution” of claims filed at the IAP. She said Ottawa has followed all court orders “to the letter” and has released all required documents “without exception.”
“Most of the remaining claims are the most complicated and difficult cases — and we are committed to resolving them while still preserving the integrity of the Indian Residen- tial Schools Settlement Agreement,” she said, stating that 98 per cent of claims have already been settled.
“Unfortunately, some public voices continue to distort the truth about what the government is doing.”
New Democrat MP Charlie Angus, who held a press conference this week where former St. Anne’s students gave emotional statements about their experience at the school, called Wednesday’s ruling a “travesty.”
“This was set up as a process to bring healing and compensation to child victims of horrific sexual assault and abuse, and it was anything but a good process for the survivors of St. Anne’s,” Angus said.
“There is no reconciliation in Canada unless there’s justice for St. Anne’s survivors.”
Thousands of Indigenous children from northern Ontario were taken from their homes and forced to attend St. Anne’s from 1902 to ’76.
In 1992, leaders from several com- munities held a conference for former students that prompted a fiveyear Ontario Provincial Police investigation into alleged abuse at the school. Six former St. Anne’s employees were convicted of crimes after the investigation.
In 2000, more than 150 former students joined civil suits against Ottawa and the Catholic Church, which ran St. Anne’s for almost 70 years. Many of them agreed to settlements in 2005, before the larger agreement was reached between Canada and the Assembly of First Nations that created the IAP and Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and included a formal apology from the prime minister.
As the IAP started adjudicating claims for compensation from former students, the Justice Department sat on thousands of documents from the police investigation and civil suits relating to St. Anne’s. In 2014, the Ontario Superior Court ordered the government to release thou- sands of those documents, prompting some former students to try and reopen their IAP cases with newly available evidence.
Lawyers from the government, IAP and those representing former students have since argued in court over “requests for direction” on how to handle specific claims, including those of Angela Shisheesh and Chapman, two of the former students who were in Ottawa this week.
“If the government has evidence that prove our cases, they don’t care,” said Chapman, whose original claim was dismissed in 2012. “The government workers are against us.”
Earlier this month, in a ruling that stated the government is abiding by orders on which documents to release, Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Perell said the relationship between the justice department and St. Anne’s survivors has become “a festering sore of suspicion, animosity, distrust and resentment.”