Canada’s government agreed to a historic settlement of €15,8 billion for Indigenous children and families who were discriminated against by the welfare system in the past two decades.
The compensation is the largest in the country’s history, totalling 23,3 billion in Canadian dollars, and will be distributed to over 300,000 Indigenous youth and families, The Globe and Mail reports.
“This compensation recognises the serious harms First Nations, children, youth, and families suffered including unnecessary family separations and the denial of life-saving and life wellness services,” stated Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the Caring Society, an association fighting for Indigenous children’s rights and party to the legal case.
“We must ensure this is the last generation of First Nations children who are hurt by the Government of Canada,” Blackstock urged.
16 years of legal battle
The agreement comes after a 16-year-long legal battle for recognition of the harm Canada’s child protection system has done to First Nations communities. For decades, Canada grossly underfunded government services for Indigenous children on reserves. As a result, Indigenous children were disproportionately placed in foster care, being twice as likely to be taken away from their families.
53.8% of children in foster care are Indigenous, despite them being only 7.7% of the child population in Canada, according to the 2021 Census.
The €15,8 billion agreement has been sent to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) for approval. Last year, the Tribunal rejected a €13,6 billion government proposal for being too low.
The Assembly of First Nations, a national advocacy body that was also party to the court case, unanimously approved the revised settlement but demanded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly apologise to the victims and survivors of the system.
Decades of racist policy in Canada forced tens of thousands of Indigenous children into foster care.
About 20,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families during the 1960s over some 30 years. Now, the country is set to pay $17.4 billion to compensate victims. pic.twitter.com/TmJlvMKgbl — AJ+ (@ajplus) April 5, 2023
The compensation package will be distributed to those who were victims of the children's welfare system between April 1991 and March 2022, including caregivers and people who have passed away.
In addition to the victim compensation, the agreement foresees the allocation of €13,6 billion towards the long-term reorganisation of the child welfare system to prevent further harm.
“Many of the other issues that our communities are facing right now are linked to our experiences of genocide and discrimination, including through the child-welfare system,” Ashley Bach, an Indigenous survivor of the foster care system and lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, told The Globe and Mail.
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“We have a right to grow up with our people, with our lands and languages, in our communities, with our families and our nations and to be proud of ourselves for who we are as First Nations people.”
The complaint behind the case was first filed in February 2007, and the Canadian government made eight attempts to get it dismissed, unsuccessfully. The CHRT found the state guilty of racial discrimination in the case in 2016 and ordered it to pay compensation three years later.
