Compensation probe heads to Supreme Court

Recommendations will be made to B. C. Supreme Court today after a three- month investigation into the Calgary law firm Blott & Company, which allegedly mishandled the residential school abuse compensation awards of some of its 4,100 aboriginal clients.

“I can assure you this has been a very thorough investigation and treated very seriously. It has not been a whitewash,” AFN lawyer Kathleen Mahoney told delegates at the Assembly of First Nations Aboriginal Justice Forum Thursday at the Westin Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver.

She said more than 730 people have been interviewed and over 14,600 documents examined to determine whether Blott & Company broke a settlement agreement rule by not paying out the full compensation package awarded to successful claimants and instead entered into third- party agreements with them.

Those agreements allegedly involved charging clients a high finder’s fee for referring them to lending companies, which then charged exorbitant interest rates on loans provided in anticipation of them receiving a federal residential school abuse settlement.

She expects the B. C. Supreme Court judge, after receiving the recommendations today, will set a hearing date to hear from all parties and then decide whether Blott & Company breached the settlement process rules and determine “whether those interest rates and finder fees were legitimate.”

Previously the chief adjudicator in the settlement agreement process, Daniel Ish, said the court- ordered investigation should serve as a “wakeup call” to about 200 lawyers representing Individual Assessment Process clients across Canada.