CANADA
CBC News
A judge in St. John’s has ruled that the federal government has abused the process in the Newfoundland Indian Residential School Trial.
Judge Robert Stack, of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, awarded costs to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the more than 1,000 people in the class action who claim they were abused at residential schools in the province.
The class action involves former students from aboriginal communities who attended residential schools in Labrador and northern Newfoundland, including in periods before Newfoundland entered into Confederation with Canada in 1949.
The federal government has maintained that the schools at the centre of the class action were not created under the Indian Act and therefore were not true residential schools.
Stack on Wednesday found that the federal government’s attempt to re-litigate a decision made two years ago in the long-running court battle constituted a “collateral attack” on the prior decision — a ruling that pleased one of the lawyers representing former residents.
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