Minister Carolyn Bennett listens to Abraham Gardiner at the survivor’s gathering on Sept. 8. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski
There’s a lot of confusion for former Ile-a-la-Crosse Boarding School students, stemming from a class action lawsuit a Calgary lawyer is proposing on their behalf.
These students were denied standing in the Indian Residential School Settlement process because the school was run by the Roman Catholic Church, not the federal government.
Tony Maurice from Jans Bay is named as the plaintiff in the statement of claim, but more than a hundred others have also signed on, said lawyer William Klym. The statement of claim is dated Sept. 2, 2016.
An associate of Klym’s went to the Ile-a-la-Crosse region to explain the legal documents and get signatures from people prior to a survivor’s meeting with Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett.
Marilyn Cote, who now lives in Fort McMurray, said the Calgary law firm paid for her to stay in a hotel when she attended that gathering on Sept. 8.
At that meeting, the 60-year-old Cote spent her time at the mic speaking directly to Bennett.
“To this day I’d like to know if we are going to be compensated. We’d like to have an answer and we don’t have no more time doing this meeting and sub meetings and everything here,” Cote said.
“I would like to get this done as soon as you can do it because I think you have that power.”
Cote now says she signed with Klym’s proposed action so the federal government will compensate former students. However, she said she is giving Bennett six months to provide an offer to the boarding school survivors.
Marie Ratt said she signed on at the advisement of someone she trusts. Ratt wasn’t able to make it to the Bennett meeting, and said she is now second-guessing her decision to sign on.
Her reason for joining was a belief that the Canadian government needs to answer for the past.
“It was a residential school because that’s where they put us, like they took us out of our homes and placed us in there and that’s where we stayed. We couldn’t even visit. I just want them to admit what they did,” she said.
Other survivors, like survivor committee leader Jim Durocher, want to leave lawyers out of their dealings and wait for Bennett and her government to sit at the table and negotiate.
Bennett has said she prefers to keep dealings out of the courtroom, or to “negotiate not litigate.”
Right now, Klym said he is going through the certification process to represent all survivors from that school rather than just those who signed on. It would cover students who attended from 1921 until the Ile-a-la-Crosse Boarding School’s closure.
Many survivors have contacted MBC News saying they had been previously unaware of Klym’s proposed statement of claim.