CANADA
The Globe and Mail
GLORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017
It may be impossible to identify all of the former students who were abused at Canada’s Indian residential schools but abandoned their compensation claims when they were subjected to a questionable legal manoeuvre by federal lawyers, says the secretariat charged with determining which cases fall into that category.
The Department of Indigenous Affairs recently completed a year-long investigation into the claims that were rejected or reduced as a result of the “administrative split” – a technicality used to disqualify a school from being included in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. The department has since produced a list, as yet unpublished, of about 200 survivors whose applications for redress had been affected.
But claimants’ lawyers say many more former students withdrew their claims in the initial stages after being convinced by adjudicators and federal representatives that the administrative split left them no chance of success.
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