Canada Human Rights Court rejects agreement to compensate Aboriginal children

The Canadian Human Rights Court has rejected a landmark $40 billion Canadian agreement to reform the discriminatory child care system, and to compensate Aboriginal families who have suffered because of this discrimination.

The agreement was announced last year to settle a lawsuit accusing the government of not allocating enough funding to Indigenous people compared to other Canadian children, and the settlement is the largest compensation agreement in Canadian history. 

Indigenous Services Minister Patti Haido told reporters in Ottawa that the court's refusal to settle was "disappointing to many First Peoples".

Part of the money was to go to compensate Aboriginal children who had been taken from their families and placed in state care, and another was to reform the Child and Family Care Program. 

Indigenous officials considered that this ruling would impede those reforms and delay the payment of compensation to more than 300,000 children.

But Haidoo pledged to continue working with them, saying, "My commitment to these partners is that we will stay with them for the long term to reach an agreement."

The Human Rights Court, according to officials who saw a summary of its ruling, found that the settlement did not include all children and did not meet the conditions set by the court to provide compensation for each child or caregiver in the amount of 40,000 Canadian dollars. 

The government had lost the appeal against the court's decision last year before seeking to negotiate a settlement to end this 14-year legal dispute. 

Although Aboriginal children make up less than 8 percent of children under 14 in Canada, they make up more than half of the children in Canadian nurseries, according to the 2016 census. 

The court's decision follows the discovery of hundreds of unnamed graves in former Aboriginal boarding schools set up by the Canadian government to strip First Nations children of their culture and language. 

Pope Francis, during a visit to Canada in July, apologized for abuses in schools run by the Church.

Source: AFP