(Vancouver) The Federal Court clears a class action lawsuit against Ottawa on behalf of off-reserve Indigenous children who had been removed from their families and “placed” in non-Indigenous foster care.
Posted at 2:13 p.m.
In a decision posted online Monday, Federal Court Judge Michael Phelan ruled that the class action would cover the period from 1er January 1992 to December 31, 2019.
The Vancouver law firm representing the plaintiffs calls this period the “new millennium roundup” — when there was another “roundup” in Canada in the 1960s.
The judge also defined the class of this class action, which will include status and non-status Indians, young Inuit and Métis and their families who did not live on reserves.
The group seeks various damages, as well as restitution or recovery of specific costs on behalf of the affected children and families. The group alleges that the federal government’s actions violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and demonstrated systemic negligence, although the allegations have not been proven in court.
Vancouver lawyer Angela Bespflug, speaking on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the Federal Court’s clearance “signals a significant change in the law” as the federal government must now explain why it treated children outside reserves differently from those who live on reserves.
“It is fundamentally unfair that Canada agreed to compensate children on reserves while leaving children off reserve on the sidelines,” said Ms.e Bespflug in a statement released by law firm Murphy Battista.
The federal government reached a tentative agreement last year to pay $40 billion to on-reserve children and their families affected by discriminatory funding practices related to the child welfare system.
However, Murphy Battista maintains that according to current data, the vast majority of Aboriginal children taken from their families and placed in government custody are Aboriginal children off reserve, and not from reserves.
Dr. Cindy Blackstock, director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, says that compared to the heyday of federal residential schools, three times as many children are now in the care of the state.
“Canada apologized for residential schools, but continued the same policies under a different name,” says Ms.me Blackstock in the same release.
“We call on Canada to stop opposing off-reserve Indigenous children in court, to take the lead and lead by example, and finally make the changes needed to fix this deeply flawed system,” she said.