Front Burner - Skepticism over Catholic compensation for residential schools

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

As Canadian Catholic bishops say they will give $30 million to support survivors of residential schools, CBC’s Jason Warick explains why some are skeptical about the pledge.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. We wanted as a group to speak collectively, to speak wholeheartedly and convey to the Indigenous peoples, to you the Indigenous peoples of this country, are profound remorse. And as it says in

the statement, we apologize unequivocally. We're really sorry. Late last month, Canada's Catholic bishops made a public apology. It was to Indigenous people in Canada for the suffering endured in the residential school system. This apology was followed by a pledge to give 30 million dollars to help survivors of that system, a system the Catholic Church helped the federal government run for decades. But for some survivors, the pledge has been met with skepticism. So I'm not too happy or keen on what the church is doing. They seem to be delaying or trying to ignore what Indigenous people that attended the residential schools should be receiving some kind of recognition. Because the Catholic Church has made commitments to provide compensation to them before and come up short. It's a story that CBC Saskatoon reporter Jason Warrick has been digging into for months, and the revelations, they really keep coming here.

Jason joins me today to discuss what's led up to this $30 million promise and why some feel it rings hollow. Hi, Jason. Thank you so much for being here today. You're very welcome. So to understand this story and why some people are feeling skeptical about the $30 million pledge, I want to go a ways back here in time to the landmark 2005 Indian Residential Schools Agreement. And so how did this 2005 settlement come to be? So how did this 2005 settlement come to be? Well, let's be crystal clear about why everyone was at this table talking about a settlement in 2005.

This resulted from the efforts to compensate an estimated 150,000 survivors and their families, their descendants who attended these schools across Canada for more than a century. This was a system rife with emotional and physical and sexual abuse, malnutrition, medical experimentation, nutritional experimentation, cultural shaming, all kinds of systemic violations and individual violations of every basic human right. So here's one elder who's helped me to really understand this dark chapter. My name is A.J. Felix. I'm from Sturgeon Lake, Treaty 6 territory. So I spent 13 years in residential school, and it was not a good experience. I left my home. I left my happiness, I left my grandparents, my mom and dad, and finding out later on that it was not an educational move, but it was a move of attempting to assimilate me into another culture. The notion was I would go back, I would go back being a very different person. I would go back not experiencing my home fire, not experiencing my spirituality, my language, that I would be a white man. To go to that 2005 agreement, tens of billions of dollars of liability

is what the churches and the government was facing. So that's why everyone had been coming to the table. And, you know, a pessimist would say that it was so that the church and the government could cut their losses facing these tens of billions of dollars in liability. But an optimist, you know, would say it was

to spare survivors the trauma of testifying. And so they reached this massive deal in a Toronto conference centre where there were dozens and dozens of lawyers representing all the different Christian churches, all the different federal government entities, all of the different survivors groups, many others, First Nations, Inuit, Métis, they all had a deal except for the one holdout, and that was the Catholic Church. And the Catholic Church would not sign. And so the federal government made a side deal where the Catholic Church committed to a total of $79 million of promises. I just wonder if you could put this side deal into perspective for me in

terms of the size and the monetary amount, the $79 million, because I know in the U.S., for example, Catholic dioceses have had to pay out some really big settlements over child sex abuse, right? You're right. Just take one example. In Minnesota, they were found guilty in 450 claims of abuse. So 450 people, mostly children that were abused, received a total of $210 million in the settlement. 150,000 victims in Canada, 150,000 people, the Catholic Church, their end of the commitment, $79 million. So you magnify it when you look that this wasn't just a straight claim of abuse. There were all of those other things that I mentioned that happened in the schools that survivors say just magnifies the damage, the intergenerational damage that's happened. And again, 150,000 people and their families, $79 million. Okay, so now let's get into some of the details of what was outlined in this side deal,

and then also what what happened right so i know that while the other christian churches pay off the sums they've agreed to as part of their settlement pretty promptly the catholic church does not and we're gonna we're gonna get into why the catholic church was eventually allowed to walk away from the settlement without fully paying in a bit but first first, I want to give people a sense of where the church did get with the settlement. So I understand the $79 million was made up of three different parts. So one being a $29 million cash payment to programs benefiting survivors. And what happened with this portion of the agreement?

Sure. And a lot of this did slip under the radar because it is complex and it was part of a whole bunch of other things. So we know now as a result of the documents that I've been able to obtain from the courts, from the federal government, from elsewhere, that that commitment was not met. They were several million dollars short. They also had claimed $8 million for previous settlements. So that decreases the amount by $8 million more. They also spent several million dollars that was not approved in the agreement on lawyers and administrators and a private fundraising company and a number of other things. So that $29 million promise was not met. Right, right. I understand none of the other churches involved,

the United Presbyterian or Anglican, deducted any of these fees from their payments to survivors. So the second part of this three-part agreement was about the Catholic Church giving its, quote, best efforts at fundraising another $25 million, right? And so what came of those best efforts? dollars, right? And so what came of those best efforts? So again, we see that the $29 million cash in the first element was not met. The second element was to fundraise $25 million. And when it didn't happen, the federal government and some survivors said, well, you should pay this full $25 million. It's not that much compared to, again, hundreds of millions per diocese in the United States for far fewer people. Well, anyway, this $25 million, the Catholic Church pointed to an obscure clause called the best efforts clause. And that meant that the Catholic Church was only

obligated to give its best efforts at raising this $25 million. So when they came up with a total of $3.7 million and the federal government said, please pay the remainder of the $25 million, and survivors said, please pay the remainder of the $25 million, the church said, we did our best, and our best was $3.7 million for the entire country over a 10-year period. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing.

In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. To be clear, the church was clearly capable of fundraising for other projects in this time, though, right? Yes, they were. In the one example in Saskatoon, in Treaty 6, my territory where I am here, $28.5 million was raised for one building alone, the Holy Family Cathedral. It opened in 2012, right in the midst of the federal government trying to ask the church to pay the rest of this fundraising money. Well, that was the result of a multi-year fundraising campaign. money. Well, that was the result of a multi-year fundraising campaign. Behind me is one of the cathedrals here in Saskatoon, $28 million cathedral. It's got solar-powered stained glass windows. It's

got a carved granite altar. It's seating for 2,000 people. So talking to survivors, this is such a painful, painful symbol of the church's failure to do what's right and to honor their promise. So it's not lack of money. I think it's refusing to take responsibility for what happened to our students throughout the residential school system. Right, right. Okay, and now finally, let's do the third component. The church committed to providing $28 million worth of in-kind compensation, which I understand just on its face raised alarm bells for some, right? that I spoke with, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the former Saskatchewan Provincial Court Judge, who's now leading a residential school history and dialogue center at UBC. She says, how can that be? How can the church be allowed to provide in-kind services? That's like the perpetrator providing services for the victim. That's wrong. That should not be allowed from the start.

From the get-go, this was not something that survivors sat in the room and agreed to, right? Survivors were outside of this. From the get-go, this was questionable. And I understand that unlike the two cash components, they actually say that they have fulfilled this promise, that they did provide $28 million worth of in-kind services, right? But I know that you recently obtained documents that showed what some of these services actually were. And tell me about that. So you look at the actual list of in-kind services, and there are a few services that survivors say are legitimate, like scholarship funds for the descendants of survivors or funding nature camps or things like that. But the vast majority of the money is religious services. And I'll give you an example.

So $700,000 for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mackenzie Fort Smith to do community work and presence in the Northwest Territories by religious sisters and fathers. So supplying priests and nuns to work in these communities. And that was a very common entry. So $360,000 in another example, they translated Jewish and Christian scriptures into Innu. So again, translating the Bible to help evangelize according to survivors. Another example, $263,000, $264,000 by the Missionary Oblates of Grandin for Bible studies programs in Alberta or university classes. And the topics explore God's faith and women in scripture. And so many people, including Mary Ellen Turpel, the survivors I talked to, other

academics say, this is not compensation for survivors. This is evangelization. This is the exact opposite of what you agreed to. It's challenging and certainly doesn't seem to align clearly, in my opinion, with what the commitment was in the residential school settlement agreement, what they were supposed to be providing, what was an in-kind service. So those are the three components. And I mentioned earlier that the Catholic Church was essentially absolved of their full responsibilities under the settlement. They went to court to ask for this. And in the summer of 2015, a Saskatchewan judge ruled in their favor.

The federal government initially objects. This is under the Harper government and appeals the court's decision, saying the judge made, quote, palpable and overriding errors in his assessment of the facts. But then that appeal is dropped and under pretty unusual circumstances, right? So tell me about what happened here. Well, that's a very interesting element of it. And we don't know all the answers. But I'm hoping and others are hoping to get to the bottom of this in the coming weeks and months or whenever that might be. And so what happened, as you said, the judge ruled that the Catholic Church could just pay a little under $2 million and be absolved of this with this

controversial buyout. Federal government said, whoa, this needs to be appealed. But then in the meantime, the federal election was held. And during this election period, and just after, we have this caretaker period that takes effect. As many people know, the caretaker period between cabinets, between parliaments, is a period where typically you're supposed to, the government workers are supposed to express extreme restraint. You don't make any decisions that are controversial unless absolutely necessary. And it doesn't appear that there was any necessity to make any new decisions until the new government came in on this file. But somehow they finalized the details and the papers were actually submitted then dropping the appeal. The papers were actually submitted then, dropping the appeal.

And we're trying to figure out why. Because the actual papers, even though all this talk was going on behind the scenes, the actual papers were filed under then-Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, just days after she came in. She wasn't even, and her government wasn't even, as we know it, given a chance to get up to speed on this or to make any of the decisions. Definitely she should have had a choice to be in on that decision and I think that's something again where the government is kind of overstepping its authority and leaving out people like that in the decision making. We as Indigenous people need to be involved in those type of decisions.

All too often the government neglects people in power like that that have that choice to make those decisions, but they leave those people out. So there are a lot of questions about whether they should have gotten a chance to have input on it, whether the file should have waited until the new Trudeau cabinet was in place to make these decisions. And also survivors say, why was there no Indigenous voice? This was a perfect chance for an Indigenous voice to have some influence on what the right thing to do was. So lots of questions around that.

Right. I imagine that the people you've spoken to, residential school survivors, are pretty frustrated with how all of this went down, right? Extremely. And so one of them is Rick Daniels, who lives almost in the shadow of that new cathedral in Saskatoon. Another is George Cameron, and he's another survivor of St. Michael's. He's a member of the Beardies and Okamesis Cree Nation. He said it was wrong to make these decisions behind the scenes during the caretaker period. It was wrong to leave Wilson-Raybould out of the process when she was the incoming minister and her cabinet. But it was also wrong to leave out these First Nations people and survivors. And he really talked

about how that voice needs to be integrated and how they've been ignored right from the creation of the schools, right to the settlement agreement of 2005, and right up until this was dropped. It's unfortunate, I guess, to the degree by where the consultation has never occurred with First Nations. I think the First Nations should have had and played the lead role in

deciding to proceed or not to proceed against the church. It doesn't say much about our government in terms of the consultation process that they should have within their departments, especially the Justice Department. But where our Justice Minister at the time not being involved in any kind of discussion or in any form to either pursue or not pursue the the case against the the church on behalf of its aboriginal peoples uh i guess it to a certain degree really kind of pisses you off and yes i am unfortunately and so here we are today the fall of of 2021, some 16 years after that initial settlement agreement. And recently, Canada's Catholic bishops have announced they'll give $30 million to support

survivors of the residential school system. And I mentioned in the intro that there's some skepticism about this pledge. And so can you tell me a bit more about that? And so can you tell me a bit more about that? Well, this came on the heels of all of these revelations of the three promises that were broken. A lot of survivors hadn't realized these things until we were writing about them or other people were talking about them. And so that gave rise to protests, that gave rise to boycott calls, people to boycott mass, that gave rise to a national petition with thousands of names demanding that the Catholic Church's favorable taxation status be revoked.

And so some are saying, you know, it's a good start, but it didn't come without a little bit of duress. And I guess the overarching cause that survivors point to is the discovery of a lot of the thousands of unmarked graves across the country in Kamloops, in Cowessess, and Muskegapitong. And so all of those things preceded this new promise, this apology, the $30 million upon further examination. This is over a five-year period, and it's also a goal. It is a goal to raise $30 million. So survivors say, well, we've had a lot of promises made before, like those three totaling $79 million, and they say those were broken. So why should we believe this now? Why should we wait another five years for $30 million across the entire country

for 150,000 people and their families? Really, they're quite mixed on it. And I also just want to note here that that apology, that written apology, did not include, of course, an apology from the Pope. And just to loop back to the 2005 agreement for a moment, like, is it just accepted that the people that you're talking to, is it just as accepted that that is how it all went down and now this new promise of 30 million will have to suffice here? of 30 million will have to suffice here? No, in a word, no. You talk to somebody like Mary Ellen Turpel LaFond, again from UBC, or Tom McMahon, who was the lead counsel for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Tom McMahon spent years, he says, trying unsuccessfully to get the Catholic Church to turn over documents and meet its commitments.

They say that these transgressions or lies or broken promises or all these words that they use and survivors have used, they're so egregious that regardless of the legal rulings, they say they're so egregious that all of this new information nullifies the 2005 agreement and that survivors should be allowed to go back and do what they were doing before and sue the Catholic Church again. Because if someone doesn't honor a contract, the other side is not obligated by it anymore either. So we'll see, is this $30 million promise, first of all, will it be met? Is it sufficient? There's a lot of talk going on. There's a lot of calls for an independent review. Turpel, Lafonne, and others would like a review of the Catholic churches and the federal government's actions and the courts in this whole process. And I guess we'll see where it leads. But there is a lot of anger,

and there's an unwillingness to settle for what the church or the government tells them. Jason, for the people you've spoken to over the last several months, what does this whole saga, really, it's actually incredibly disappointing and sad. What does it say about this country and the state of truth and reconciliation? What does it say about this country and the state of truth and reconciliation? Well, I mean, where to start? I mean, as A.J. Felix, as many others have explained to me, and as I've learned, it's not just the residential schools or the people that ran them. government and church policy supported by the Canadian public that began with the decimation of the bison and buffalo herds on the prairies, for example, of the treaties that were broken. This is a continuation of the past system that confined people to reserves and didn't even allow them to sell their farm produce. This is a continuation which continues today, many of them

say, with unequal funding for First Nations kids when it comes to education or social services. So looking at it in isolation is helpful to get the specifics of the 2005 settlement agreement, for example. But in the biggest, broadest sense, when you talk to somebody like AJ Felix, he says it's about truth and reconciliation. And if we don't know the truth, there can be no reconciliation. So this has to start with truth. And if this summer showed us anything, it's that they don't know the truth yet. So the first step is truth.

And then the second step is action. And then you can have reconciliation, is what he says. Our plan is to regain what we lost. And because of the misery that we had, the hardships that we had, the violence that we experienced, and the sadness and the deaths that we went through, somebody has to be accountable. Okay. Jason, thank you for this. You're welcome.

All right. So before we go today, four weeks, Quebec has insisted it would impose a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers and suspend those who don't comply without pay. This policy was supposed to go into effect on Friday, but now the province's health minister has extended the deadline over fears of staffing shortages. Ninety-three percent of Quebec health care workers are fully vaccinated now, but that

still leaves almost 22,000 facing suspension. The new deadline is now November 15th. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.