Inuit, Nunavummiut claimants still lag in IAP applications

As the Independent Assessment Process winds down, a federal secretariat is on the lookout for former residential school students with unresolved claims, including more than 200 Inuit applicants.

The IAP provides compensation to former students for serious abuse they suffered at residential schools, as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement — the largest class-action settlement in Canada’s history.

Since it was established in 2007, the IAP has paid out $2.8 billion to more than 32,000 former students.

And across Inuit Nunangat, there have been 934 IAP claims resolved as of June 2015.

But those numbers suggest that fewer Inuit former residential school students who suffered physical and sexual abuse as children may have benefited from the federal compensation program than have other former residential school students.

That’s a concern that was raised, at least in Nunavut, a few years into the residential school settlement process.

Of completed claims, Inuit make up just .02 per cent of all IAP claims among former students, although Inuit make up 4.2 per cent of all Indigenous Canadians.

But it’s hard to say for sure, because it’s unclear how many eligible Inuit residential school survivors there were in the first place.

When the residential school settlement was launched, it was estimated that at least 3,000 Nunavummiut had attended residential schools.

Present day Nunavut was home to 13 residential schools, while four operated in Nunavik and three in the Northwest Territories.

In Nunavut alone, 395 former students have completed the IAP as of June 2015, while another 119 applications are considered “in progress.”

The federal agency that administers the program hopes to complete all claimants’ hearings by the spring of 2016, said Dan Shapiro, with the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat, in May.

But there are still claimants who the secretariat hasn’t heard from for extended periods of time.

“We need to reach these individuals in order to resolve their claims,” Shapiro said.

The IAP is a claimant-centred process, in which former students must show harm occurred at a listed school or hostel they attended.

It operates separately from the Common Experience Payment, another compensation program that was available to anyone who attended residential school.

The secretariat that oversees IAP does not have statistics on how much has been paid out in IAP compensation to Inuit nor to Nunavummiut, although the average pay-out across Canada has been about $86,000 per successful claimant.

Claimants who have unresolved IAP claims and who have not heard anything about the progress of their claim over the last several months are urged to contact their lawyer, or call the IAP information line at 1-877-635-2648 to ensure that their claims continue to move forward.

This chart shows the status of IAP files, by province or territory. Across the Inuit Nunangat, there have been 934 IAP claims resolved as of June 2015. (COURTESY IRSAS)