Warning: This story contains details of abuse that may be distressing to some readers. If you need support, the Hope for Wellness Help Line provides emotional support and crisis intervention to Indigenous people in Canada by phone at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat at hopeforwellness.ca.
The federal government says it has reached a potential settlement with the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit related to mistreatment at “Indian hospitals.”
Crown-Indigenous relations minister Gary Anandasangaree announced the proposed settlement agreement during a press conference in Ottawa on Thursday, saying it includes individual compensation as well as funding to support healing and commemoration.
“I am aware of how important it is that we face up to the past actions carried out by the federal government against Indigenous peoples of Canada,” he said.
“This settlement will not erase the pain, it will not bring back what was taken but it does represent something that was long denied: responsibility.”
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Anandasangaree said between 1936 and 1981, the federal government ran 33 “Indian hospitals” across Canada.
The minister said while those facilities were originally established as tuberculosis treatment centres, they “quickly became a tool of segregation” where many Indigenous patients endured mistreatment, neglect and abuse.
He said many Indigenous children were taken to the hospitals against their will and kept there for months and sometimes years.
Ann Cecile Hardy, a Métis woman and the court-appointed representative plaintiff for the lawsuit, said she was born in Fort Smith and was just 10 years old when she was admitted to the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Alberta.
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“I was admitted because I had TB and was supposed to be there to heal, but instead I experienced fear, isolation and trauma that has stayed with me for decades,” she said.
Hardy recounted experiencing and witnessing sexual abuse from staff as well as racist, sexual and offensive comments while at the hospital between January and May 1969.
“I left the hospital physically, emotionally and psychologically battered. The abuse that I suffered and witnessed changed the entire course of my life,” she said.
Hardy said she started the class action because she wanted Canada to acknowledge what it had done.
The settlement proposes individual compensation to survivors who suffered verbal, psychological, physical or sexual abuse at federally run “Indian hospitals.” According to the CBC, survivors could receive between $10,000 to $200,000 in compensation.
The proposed settlement also includes up to $150 million to support healing, wellness, protection of language, education and commemoration activities, and $235.5 million to support research, education and preservation of the history of the hospitals.
Proponents said the settlement was designed to be trauma-informed and culturally sensitive. Further details will be released in the coming months.
Indigenous Services Canada said it will provide $150 million to extend existing federal health and wellness supports to class members.
The lawsuit was filed in 2018 and certified as a class action in 2020. For the past five years, the federal government and lawyers for the plaintiffs have been working to settle the case outside court.
The proposed settlement agreement announced on Thursday requires approval from the Supreme Court of Canada before it is finalized. A court hearing on the matter has been scheduled for June 10 and 11.
