Canada will finally pay more than 23 billion Canadian dollars (15.6 billion euros) in compensation to indigenous children and their families, victims of discrimination by the child protection system.
Announced as
“the largest compensation agreement in Canadian history”
in January 2022, it had been rejected by a court.
After revision, the agreement will therefore include more people and its amount has been revised upwards by 3 billion, the Canadian government and indigenous groups announced on Wednesday April 5.
“This final settlement marks a long-awaited turning point for thousands of families
,” said Cindy Woodhouse, regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Manitoba (central part of the country), in a press release.
The revised agreement, which would end a legal battle that has been going on for more than 15 years, has been approved by the Assembly of First Nations.
It still needs to be validated by the courts.
A Canadian court had rejected the initial agreement, considering in particular that the agreement excluded certain children.
It is finally the families of more than 300,000 children who will be compensated.
The settlement will apply to those who fell victim to the system between April 1, 1991 and March 31, 2022.
“Historic sums”
These are
“historic sums, even from a global perspective, but we are also talking about historic wrongs up to the 1990s
,” said Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller.
Although they represent less than 8% of children under the age of 14 in Canada, Indigenous children made up more than half of those placed in the child welfare system, according to a 2016 census. Canada experience higher levels of poverty and lower life expectancies than other Canadians, and are more often victims of violent crime, substance abuse and incarceration.
