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Report shows residential school victims received about $3B in compensation
- 2021/03/12
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The cost of compensating victims of Canada's now-infamous residential school system was over $3 billion, according to a final report released Thursday by Parliament's Independent Assessment Process Oversight Committee. The committee, which has been overseeing the compensation process since 2007, says just under 28,000 people received payments. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts to redress the damage inflicted on generations of Indigenous children forced to attend the residential schools established by the federal government and run by Christian Churches. Their aim was to assimilate the children into the dominant Canadian culture. The first known residential schools were established in the 1820s. A 1945 investigation in parental complaints at the Gordon's Reserve school in Saskatchewan reported that one dinner that children were fed consisted of a single slice of bologna, potatoes, bread and milk. An estimate 150,000 aboriginal, Inuit and Métis children were removed from their communities and forced to attend residential schools. (General Synod Archives/Anglican Church of Canada) The last one closed in 1997. In all, roughly 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children attended the schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to an incomplete historical record, though estimates range from 3,200 to upwards of 6,000. Most of the children died from malnourishment or disease. Some children who attended the schools in the 1940s and 1950s were even subjected to science experiments in which they were deprived essential nutrients and dental care. After six years of investigating how the schools were run and why they came to be, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, issued a final report in 2015 that branded the program "cultural genocide," and issued "calls to action" in pursuit of proper reconciliation and compensation. Joyce Hunter, whose brother Charlie Hunter died at St. Anne's Residential School in 1974, passes Clement Chartier, president of the Métis National Council, as she carries a ceremonial cloth with the names of 2,800 children who died in residential schools and were identified in the National Student Memorial Register, is carried to the stage during the Honouring National Day for Truth and Reconciliation ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec on Sept. 30, 2019. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang) "Children as young as three were forcibly removed from their families and communities and taken to the schools," the report released Thursday states. "For most, the residential school system was profoundly negative and had a lasting impact on the children, on their families, and on their culture." The court-approved compensation scheme arose out of a comprehensive class-action settlement in 2007 involving survivors, the federal government and churches that ran the schools. Claimants were entitled to up to $275,000 each based on the nature and level of abuse suffered. In all, the report says, 38,276 claims were received and adjudicators awarded $2.14 billion in compensation to 23,431 claimants. Another, 4,415 claimants received compensation directly from the federal government. Thursday's report shows the government paid out $3.23 billion in compensation and other costs, and the process itself cost another $411 million. You can read the full report HERE. With files from The Canadian Press (Colin Perkel), CBC News (John Paul Tasker, Susana Mas), RCI (Levon Sevunts)