Lawyer Visits Timber Bay Boarding School Survivors

Lawyer Visits Timber Bay Boarding School Survivors

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 15:23

The lawyer leading the fight to get the Timber Bay Children’s Home recognized by the federal government in a residential school compensation agreement is confident it can be done.

Michael Swinwood, a lawyer with Elders Without Borders, is in La Ronge today meeting with survivors and explaining the process that his group will go through in order to try to get the school recognized.

Swinwood says he believes the government has rejected the school due to the wording in the settlement document.

It stipulates that in order for former students of a school to qualify for payments, the government had to be either jointly or solely responsible for the care and administration of the institution.

He says the government’s position seems to be that even though it paid money to the school for each treaty Indian that attended, it wasn’t “jointly” or “solely” responsible for the institution’s administration.

He says from his group’s perspective, the government is “nitpicking”.

Swinwood hopes that he will have a better timeline for court action against the government by the end of May.