Residential school payments unable to compensate for “genocidal practices”: former student

Children from the western Arctic gather outside a residential school in this undated file photo. (FLEMMING/NWT ARCHIVES: N-1979-050-0101)

JASON WARICK
Postmedia News

Payments to former students of aboriginal residential schools have reached nearly $2.8 billion, but that amount doesn’t even come close to compensating the tens of thousands of students harmed, says a survivor.

“These were genocidal practices,” said Eugene Arcand, who attended schools in Duck Lake and Lebret in Saskatchewan. “If your kids were taken from you for 10 or 11 years, is $43,000 enough (compensation)? Is that fair for what it cost me? My family? Of course it’s not fair.”

The total compensation could climb much higher before next September’s deadline for abuse claims, known as the independent assessment process (IAP), Arcand and others predict.

Nearly $1.2 billion in IAP funds have already been paid out to students who suffered physical or sexual abuse. Many have not yet filed, either because they were intimidated by the process or wanted to make sure they were emotionally prepared for the lengthy, often graphic process.

One deadline has already passed. A total of $1.6 billion has been paid out of the common experience payment (CEP) fund.

Anyone who could prove he or she attended a school received $10,000 for the first year in school, plus $3,000 for each subsequent year of school.

Arcand said CEP claims around the country have been rejected or only partially recognized because the school records have been lost. Arcand said survivors were told early on that they would be given the “benefit of the doubt” if records had been lost, but that hasn’t been the case.

“We didn’t keep those records. That’s what happens when the perpetrators are adjudicating the agreement,” Arcand said.

When an abuse claim is filed and is evaluated to warrant a hearing, the claimant tells his or her story to one of more than 100 independent “adjudicators” across Canada. There is no cross-examination and at no time does the claimant have to face the alleged abuser.

If the claim is deemed to have merit, the claimant will eventually receive payment.

The average payment for the 77,406 students who proved they attended residential schools was $20,594. More than 22,000 were rejected.

The average payment for the nearly 10,000 students who have proven sexual or serious physical abuse is $120,347. Roughly 3,000 have been rejected.