Government of Canada Will Compensate Victims of Inadequate Child and Family Welfare Services
Steve
On January 4, the government of Canada announced it will
compensate victims of historically inadequate Indigenous child and
family welfare services to the tune of $20 billion.
Senior national politics reporter Karl Nerenberg notes
that at the news conference announcing the historic commitment the
lawyers representing the government of Canada were
uncharacteristically unconcerned with winning.
The large sum of money will be broken down amongst the over
115,000 Indigenous children who were removed from their homes, and
well over 100,000 who received substandard care compared to all
other Canadian children.
A second $20 billion will be put towards reforming and
re-inventing the child and family services system for First
Nations over five years.
"In the federal bureaucracy, the legal teams treat the government
as their client, just as though the government of Canada were a
private, profit-making business. It is in the nature of the
lawyers’ role," writes Nerenberg. Finally, on this decision, the
lawyers put aside their commitment to winning at all costs and
publicly indicated this was about the children.
The fight for compensation for these children was largely led and
sustained by Cindy Blackstock of the First Nations Caring Society.