The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal estimated that this $ 40 billion Canadian agreement excluded some children. The sum was to be used to compensate people impregnated as well as to reform the child protection system.
Le Monde
A Canada Tribunal rejected a historic agreement on Tuesday, October 25, according to which Ottawa was to pay $ 40 billion Canadian dollars to both compensate indigenous children and their families victims of discrimination by the child protection system, and reform the latter.
The agreement, equivalent to nearly 29.5 billion euros, was announced last year to end years of dispute relating to the sums allocated by the federal state to the protection services of ‘Childhood for indigenous populations – First Nations – compared to those offered to non -Autochton children. It was the most important compensation agreement in Canada’s history.
His rejection by the Canadian Human Rights Court “is disappointing for many First Nations members,” the Minister of Aboriginal services, Patty Hajdu said in Ottawa.
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, according to officials citing a summary of the decision, said the agreement excluded certain children and was not in accordance with one of its 2019 decisions. Government to pay compensation of $ 40,000 Canadian dollars to each thousands of children from First Nations far from their parents and placed in the child protection system after 2006.
disappointment among the leaders of First nations
Half of the amount of the agreement was to be used to compensate for indigenous children whose guard had been withdrawn from their parents and who had been placed in the child protection system, while the other half had to allow to reform this system for the next five years.
For certain First Nations leaders, the court’s decision will only delay these reforms and compensation of nearly 300,000 children and their families. Although they represent less than 8 % of children under the age of 14 in Canada, indigenous children were more than half of those placed in the child protection system, according to a 2016 census.
The announcement of the agreement had occurred in full introspection of the country on the wrongs caused to the Inuit, Métis or Members of the First Nations (Dene, Mohawks, Ojibway, Cris et algonquins …).
Since May 2021, more than a thousand anonymous tombs have been found on the sites of former Catholic boarding schools for Aboriginal people, highlighting a dark chapter in the history of Canada and its forced assimilation policy considered since 2015 as a “cultural genocide”. During a visit to Canada in July, Pope Francis had asked “sorry for the evil committed” against the Aboriginal people in the country.