“Labrador
residential-schools survivors to press for federal compensation”
So read the headline published on-line in the GLOBE
AND MAIL, dated Nov. 18, 2014.
As you know, Prime Minister
Harper made national news in June of 2008 on live TV when he had apologized to
Canada’s Aboriginal people regarding the establishment of and subsequent
physical, sexual, and mental abuses experienced in all the former residential
schools across the country. I should know, I was one of those students.
The compensation for those
abuses inflicted on Survivors continue; enter the latest… the Labrador Inuit.
Much like the medical and
dental care offered to Aboriginal people, Harper’s apology was and is apparently
limited. The article reads, in part:
“Lawyers for the federal
government deny it was responsible for five schools that opened before the
province joined Confederation in 1949.”
I have some news and what
could be presented as evidence for those hard-nosed lawyers.
As some may know, I was the
appointed Inuit Board Member on the now-defunct Aboriginal Healing Foundation
(AHF) from 1999 to 2004. The AHF’s mandate was to distribute up to $400 million
dollars to “eligible recipients” who wanted to address the healing needs of the
legacy of physical and sexual abuses in the residential schools. Records will
show Harper’s lawyers that two of the “eligible recipients” were from Labrador:
the Nunatsiavut Government and the Labrador Legal Services.
Case closed? I might say. After all, the AHF was routinely audited
by Harper’s lawyers to ensure the AHF adhered to the Funding Agreement. Due
diligence on their part would have challenged us, Board Members, to not approve
the above noted projects. Still, the Labrador Inuit residential schools were regarded
as “eligible recipients.” Case closed?
The two thumbs up given by Inuit
Survivor, Sarah Aggek (pictured) speaks a thousand words.
For the government though,
it will likely symbolize thousands more dollars…I’m sorry, Harper.
