CANADA
Lethbridge Herald
Katie May
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
kmay@lethbridgeherald.com
A Calgary law firm accused of misconduct is now forbidden from representing any residential school survivors, according to a B.C. Supreme Court ruling handed down Tuesday.
Supreme Court Judge Brenda J. Brown issued her decision after a $3-million, court-ordered investigation began last fall into allegations the firm, Blott & Company, exploited more than 4,000 residential school survivor claimants, many of them from southern Alberta, who sought compensation under the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) for physical and sexual abuse endured at residential schools across Canada.
The investigation found the law firm had ties to money-lending companies and benefited financially by leading claimants to apply for high-interest loans, sometimes falsifying their signatures on the applications. The investigation also uncovered that Blott gave a form-filing company called Honour Walk full access to claimants’ confidential files and paid the company $200,000 a month – a total of $6 million – for working on the IAP cases even though Honour Walk is not a law firm and its employees are not trained in law.
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