The federal government will pay First Nations $23.3 billion in compensation for children and their families who have suffered for decades from a lack of child care in Reserves.
First Nations leaders on Tuesday approved details of the new deal, which includes an additional $3.3 billion from Ottawa.
“The compensation announced today is a historic amount, surpassed only by the historic magnitude of the damage suffered by First Nations children,” Secretary of State for Crown Indigenous Relations Marc Miller said in a statement.
The hearings began in 2021, two years after a 2019 ruling by Canada’s Human Rights Court ordered the payment of $40,000 per child wrongfully separated from their families by social services.
After agreeing to a $20 billion deal in 2021, Canada and First Nations were brought back to the negotiating table by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, which feared victims of the system would be left out.
The parameters of the new agreement provide for the compensation of 13,000 more children, mostly those placed in facilities not funded by Indigenous Services Canada.
This new, revised $23 billion agreement must also pass the court’s test before awarding compensation.
An estimated 300,000 Aboriginal children and family members were victims of a child care system on Aboriginal reservations that largely removed children from their family homes.