Matthew Coon Come, a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations and a former grand chief of the Grand Council of the Crees, is among those who say the day-school agreement needs to be changed.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Some Indigenous groups say an agreement that proposes to compensate former students of Indian day schools is seriously flawed and will not provide the emotional or legal help required by those who were abused at the institutions as they file their claims.
But lawyers for the firm that negotiated the deal, and which will act on behalf of the more than 100,000 potential claimants, say they will be available to all of the class members to provide any assistance that is required.
The federal government announced last December that it had reached a deal with the Indigenous students of the roughly 700 schools that began operating in the 1920s and were the sites of abuses similar to those that took place at residential schools.
The government said in March, when the text of the agreement was made public, that anyone who attended one of the schools would be eligible to receive $10,000, and those who were physically or sexually abused could receive an additional $50,000 to $200,000, depending on the severity of their claim.
Unlike the agreement struck more than a decade ago with the survivors of residential schools, there is no money to pay the fees of lawyers hired by individual claimants. The government will instead pay $55-million in fees to Gowling WLG of Ottawa for all of the legal work and will make an additional $7-million available, as required, to assist class members.
The Federal Court will decide at a hearing that will take place between May 13 and 15 in Winnipeg whether the agreement will be approved. Those who oppose it have until May 3 to announce that they intend to file objections.
But, this week, the court denied the requests for intervenor status made by Indigenous organizations and lawyers who have been cut out of the deal. They include the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents First Nations in Saskatchewan, and the Grand Council of the Crees.
Matthew Coon Come, a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations and a former grand chief of the Grand Council of the Crees, is among those who say the day-school agreement needs to be changed.
“There is no provision for mental health supports in the proposed settlement. So this is based on the false idea that filing a claim is not traumatizing,” he said on Thursday in a telephone interview. “Our communities will be left to cope with the aftermath.”
Mr. Coon Come said it will also be impossible for some of the former day-school students to complete the online forms because they do not have access to computers. And there is, as yet, no French version of the agreement, he said.
Michael Seed and David Schulze, lawyers who represented residential school students, both say the agreement is significantly inferior to the one that compensated those victims.
They point out that, unless someone who was abused at a day school opts out of the class action within 60 days after the court approves the settlement, they will forever give up their ability to individually sue the government for the harms they suffered.
They note that there is no process for appealing decisions that will be made by a claims administrator on the basis of the information provided on the claim form – although there is an “exceptions committee” that can be asked to conduct a review.
They argue that it is unfair to set a deadline of one year, after the agreement’s implementation, for the former students to file claims. Residential-school students had five years.
And, most importantly, they say, there will be limited legal and emotional support for former students as they file claims.
The Gowling lawyers “say the form is so simple someone can fill it out by themselves,” Mr. Schulze said. “Well they say that because they have never represented sexual abuse victims.”
But lawyers for Gowling say some of the concerns being voiced are unwarranted and others will be dealt with before the court hearing in May.
Robert Winogron said there is a provision to ask for a six-month extension if a claimant can’t meet the one-year deadline, but people in the many Indigenous communities his firm has visited have asked for the case to be completed expediently because victims are old and dying.
And Jeremy Bouchard said: “We are committed to providing as much support to class members as they need throughout this entire process.”