CANADA
Timmins Press
By Alan S. Hale, The Daily Press
Friday, November 20, 2015
Former students of one of Canada’s most infamous Indian Residential Schools may get a do-over for their application to receive compensation from the federal government’s settlement agreement.
On Friday, the lawyer representing survivors of St. Anne’s Residential School near Fort Albany filed a Request for Direction in federal court, arguing that her clients should get another chance to make their case to receive compensation because the government’s lawyers had been withholding the evidence.
“It would be very, very appropriate if the government took responsibility for the things that were kept hidden. Now is the time for the country is to hear what happened in these schools,” said the Deputy Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk Council, Rebecca Friday.
When the federal government settled a class-action lawsuit by residential school survivors out-of-court in 2006, a process was set up where former students had to prove to the satisfaction of adjudicators that they suffered abuse while at the schools. To help them do this, they are supposed to have access to access to government and court documents to present as evidence.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.