Lending a helping hand

Law students help communities decode the residential school settlement agreement

TESSA VANDERHART, STAFF

The Government of Canada will begin paying out a more-than $2-billion settlement to 8,000 residential school survivors this week, but many of the recipients may not know it.

As a result, a group of U of M law students — members of the Pro Bono Students of Canada-Manitoba chapter — have spent the last month traveling to aboriginal reserves and northern towns to inform the potential payees of their legal rights.

Between 1874 and 1969, millions of aboriginal people attended residential schools, which are now often associated with racism and physical and sexual abuse.

The government of Canada estimates that there are currently 800,000 people alive today who attended these schools.

Those who attended approved schools and were still alive as of May 30, 2005 will be eligible for Common Experience Program (CEP) compensation, which provides $10,000 for the first year spent in a residential school, and $3,000 for each subsequent year. A large number of schools are being appealed — almost as many as are approved for compensation. Those claims will be decided in September.

Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, a division of Indian and Northern Affairs, estimates the average payment to be $28,000.

Student organizer Meredith Mitchell said that U of M law students got involved last summer, when fellow student Liz McCandless first visited several reserves to see how law students could help. “There were concerns that people had been opting out without understanding what it was about,” Mitchell said.

A dozen volunteers spent two weeks researching the settlement, then flew to towns across Northern Manitoba — Peguis First Nation, Cross Lake, Rousseau River, and Norway House — before the opt-out deadline of Aug. 20, and plans to spend the rest of the summer visiting others: Lynn Lake, Brokenhead First Nation, and Siloam Mission in Winnipeg.

After the opt-out deadline, Mitchell said, the students will help recipients answer many of the same questions. Claims can be filed by non-responders over the next four years, and even those who responded in favour have had significant questions about finances and wills.

Nearly $2 billion will flow into aboriginal communities within the next three to six months.

“As we go out to communities, there has been a large mention of putting money into a community where there hasn’t been money,” Mitchell said. She noted that many remote communities have no banks — like Lynn Lake, where the closest financial institution is a three-hour drive away in Thompson.

“The communities are saying that in anticipation of all this incoming money, there have been a lot of businesses — both trustworthy and not trustworthy — coming into reserves, and some types of loan-shark businesses where they offer people money up front and charge them money later.”

Mitchell added that a few banks have approached the group to help with financial planning in individual communities.

In addition, the third part of the program, the Community Healing Process, will provide a total of $125 million to communities that apply for the funding within the next four years. Mitchell said that helping communities apply for this grant will be the Pro Bono Society’s focus next summer.

The final component of the settlement is the Individual Assessment Portion, which further compensates those who were physically or sexually abused in residential schools and for the loss of wages that may have followed from this abuse. To participate in the IAP, individuals must hire a lawyer and attend a hearing, but all claims are to be decided within six months of a claim being filed (which can be done over the next four years). The maximum payment is $275,000, and $96 million has been set aside to pay for this.

The settlement was negotiated in 2005 by the then-Liberal government.

At that time, the federal government also offered 10,334 elders an Advance Payment (AP) of $8,000 each for a total of $82.7 million; 10 per cent of these payments were denied, but claims were recycled into the CEP.

If more than 5,000 of the 8,000 eligible people have opted out of the settlement, it will be void. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada could not be reached as of press time to confirm that the settlement was going forward, but Mitchell said that number of opt-outs seemed unlikely.

“All in all, going to the communities, and hearing from the communities — it seemed like the bulk of people just wanted to get this over with, and agreed to the settlement,” she said.