A Canadian court on Tuesday rejected a landmark agreement that required Ottawa to pay 40 billion Canadian dollars both to compensate indigenous children and their families who were discriminated against by the child welfare system and to reform it.
The settlement, worth almost 29.5 billion euros, was announced last year to end years of litigation over the amounts allocated by the Federal State to child protection services for Aboriginal populations compared to those offered to children. not aboriginal. It was the largest compensation agreement in Canadian history.
Its rejection by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal “is disappointing to many First Nations people,” Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu told reporters in Ottawa.
Thousands of children affected
Half of the settlement amount would be used to compensate indigenous children whose custody had been taken from their parents and who had been placed in the child welfare system, while the other half would be used to reform this system for the next five years. .
For some First Nations leaders, the court’s decision will only delay these reforms and compensation for nearly 300,000 children and their families.
Despite making up 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.
“culture genocide”
The Canadian Court of Human Rights ruled that the agreement excluded some children and failed to comply with a 2019 ruling that called for the government to pay C$40,000 in compensation to each of thousands of children. welfare system after 2006.
Since May 2021, more than a thousand unmarked graves have been found on the sites of former Catholic residential schools for natives, bringing to light a dark chapter in Canada’s history and its policy of forced assimilation seen since 2015 as a ” cultural genocide”. .
During a visit to Canada in July, Pope Francis asked for “forgiveness for the evil committed” against the country’s natives.
Source: BFM TV
