St. Anne's Residential School Survivors May Get New Compensation Hearings after Evidence Withheld

By Alan S. Hale
Timmins Press
November 20, 2015

http://www.timminspress.com/2015/11/20/st-annes-residential-school-survivors-may-get-new-compensation-hearings-after-evidence-withheld

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.

In 2012, it came to light that lawyers for the federal government had withheld documents from a five-year investigation conducted by the Ontario Provincial Police in the 1990s into sexual and physical abuse by the priests and other staff at St. Anne's. The survivors' lawyer, Fay Brunning, has spent the past three years taking the federal government to court over the issue.

"The Justice Department had all these documents in their possession in Toronto, and they never did what they were supposed to do: bring them forward for the St. Anne's survivors. We finally got access to them in 2014, but they weren't in any way organized. It was just a massive document dump," explained Brunning.

After going back to court again, a judged ruled in their favour this past June. Now that they have the withheld evidence in a usable state, Brunning says that any St. Anne's survivor who already had their hearing should have an opportunity to try again with the new evidence.

"As of last week, we finally have compliance with their disclosure requirements. But there have already been hundreds of St. Anne's Cases heard since the process started in 2006, " said the lawyer. "People's rights have been violated. And I want to make sure the violation of their rights doesn't get swept under the carpet."

Efforts to get survivors rehearings was whole-hearted endorsed by the chiefs of the Mushkegowuk Council at their annual general assembly held in the Missanabie First Nation last month. But they went further than just requesting that Brunning proceeds with her legal motion.

The Chiefs also appointed former Fort Albany Chief Edmund Metatawabin to be their representative and work with Brunning on the issue.

It was also resolved that Muskegowuk will ask the courts directly to suspend the federal government and Catholic Church's release from legal responsibility under the settlement agreement until a set of conditions is met.

The list of conditions is extensive, but boils down to Metatawabin's organization, the Peetabeck Keway Keykaywin Association, getting funding to allow them to assist survivors full-time; that lawyers should be made available to help survivors through the process of getting a rehearing if they choose to do so, and to contact former students – or their estates -- who signed a statement for the police during the 1990s investigation to advise them to make a compensation claim.

Most strikingly, the Mushkegowuk Council wants the courts to prohibit the involvement of lawyers from the Department of Justice and the Catholic Church's current counsel from all future involvement all future compensation claims, and that the Attorney General appoint independent lawyers to take their places.

If those conditions can't be met, Mushkegowuk wants the court to allow a class-action lawsuit against the Justice Department lawyers and the Catholic Church for "negligence and interference with the justice system."

Before becoming the Deputy Grand Chief, Friday was a mental health worker in her community, as well as a residential school survivor who has had her own struggles with coming to terms with her own experiences. While fixing interference with the compensation process is important, individual compensation is not what will ultimately help survivors.

"I have experience working with these people. There's a lack of funding, there's a lack of resources, and there's a lack support for these individuals," she declared. "I want the help that these people need, which means funding. There's a traditional healing program at the hospital that is going through Health Canada; that's a good program, and it needs to be continued.

"If you want people to get healthy, you need to sustain the funding to help them do so. Is that happening? I don't think so."