Lawyer: NTI lawsuit based on a “falsehood”

Inuit already included in massive class action

JIM BELL

Nunavut Tunngavik’s recent lawsuit on behalf of Inuit residential school survivors won’t do any harm — but won’t likely to do any good either, says a lawyer who’s fought on behalf of Inuit residential school survivors since 1998.

Steven Cooper, whose Alberta firm represents about 350 Inuit, says NTI’s lawsuit is based on a “falsehood” anyway.

This “falsehood,” Cooper told Nunatsiaq News, is the allegation that Inuit have been left out of a negotiation process led by Frank Iacobucci, a former Supreme Court of Canada judge.

The federal government appointed Iacobucci last May to reach a final compensation agreement for all former residential school students.

Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. reacted to this on Aug. 31, firing off a lawsuit in the Nunavut Court of Justice that alleges Inuit are not included in Iacobucci’s negotiation process.

And on Sept. 7, the Inuvialuit Regional Corp., on behalf of the Inuvialuit of the Northwest Territories, filed their own lawsuit with the NWT Supreme Court in Yellowknife, alleging the same thing.

The Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami announced the IRC lawsuit with a press release headlined “Hundreds of Inuit Left Out of Residential Schools Compensation Plan to File Suit.”

But Cooper says this, plus a lot of other information put out by the Inuit organizations, is based on a false premise.

“This response was based on a falsehood, and that is that the Inuit were not represented,” Cooper said.

That’s because Inuit residential school survivors are already included in a massive class action lawsuit filed in 2003, Cooper says.

Called the “Baxter national class action,” the case seeks $12 billion in compensation for “all aboriginal persons” who attended residential schools in Canada between 1920 and 1996. Twenty-one law firms, representing more than 6,000 aborginal people, including Inuit, back the Baxter suit. Cooper’s firm, Ahlstrom Wright Oliver & Cooper, is a member of that consortium.

So as a lawyer who’s represented hundreds of Inuit clients for at least seven years, Cooper attends monthly meetings with Iacobucci in a negotiating committee made up of lawyers representing aboriginal people.

“Frank Iacobucci always knew I would be representing Inuit,” Cooper said.

The Baxter case has been moving rapidly through the Ontario Superior Court. It lists church organizations that, on behalf of the federal government, ran schools attended by Inuit, such as the Anglican Church of Canada, the Missionary Society of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Grey Nuns, and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

It therefore covers Inuit who were forced into church-run residences such as Turquetil Hall in Chesterfield Inlet, the Stringer Hall and Grolier Hall residences in Inuvik, school residences in Coppermine and Fort Simpson, and other residences in Canada that housed Inuit students

Cooper says that it’s the Baxter case, combined with years of lobbying work by the Assembly of First Nations, that likely pressured the federal government into seeking a package settlement that will compensate all residential school survivors, including Inuit.

And unlike Canada’s Inuit organizations, who ignored the issue until now, the AFN worked diligently on the residential school file for years.

“The AFN has to take a lot of credit for getting us to the negotiating table,” Cooper said.

And Cooper said it’s unlikely that the NTI-IRC lawsuits will provide anything for beneficiaries that they aren’t already getting through the Iacobucci process.

Survivors of the Catholic-run residential school at Chesterfield Inlet, such as Peter Irniq, Jack Anawak, John Illupalik, and Nick Arnatsiaq have already written to Nunatsiaq News to complain that NTI never consulted them, and that they’re uncertain about the status of their longstanding legal claims against the government.

“What I’m seeing right now is pure confusion… My clients are confused and I can hardly keep up with the calls,” Cooper said, saying his phone has been ringing off the hook with questions from Inuit clients baffled by the recent lawsuits launched by NTI and the IRC.

The Makivik Corp. and the Labrador Inuit Association have not filed any lawsuits similar to those filed by NTI and the IRC.

But Cooper says that in the long run, the NTI-IRC cases won’t likely make much of a difference for Inuit, and at most, they’ll simply present an “irritant” for Iacobucci.

“Does it have a legal impact? Probably not.”

He pointed out though, that lawyers for NTI and the IRC may have trouble getting their case recognized as a class action. That’s because, unlike Ontario, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories do not have class action legislation.

Cooper, who grew up in the North and says that he was one of only a few Qallunaat in Coral Harbour who could speak Inuktitut, also disputes a statement made in one of NTI’s recent press release: “NTI is better able to represent the interests of Inuit in negotiations with Canada than southern-based class action lawyers.”

He points out that NTI is also represented by a “southern-based” group of legalists: Nelligan O’Brien Payne LLP of Ottawa. And Cooper says that he has already won settlements in hundreds of thousands of dollars on behalf of Inuit clients.

“I’m proud of the fact that we have not taken advantage of people.”