"Matter of weeks" for some till first payment

It will be close to one year before most of the compensation money that will be paid to survivors of residential schools will be distributed, but those over 65 years of age will receive payment much earlier.

"There will be an early payment to the elderly, meaning in this case 65 and over, in a matter of weeks," said Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), in early December.

AFN communications director Don Kelly explained further that the Roman Catholic Church has agreed to allow access to its archives as part of the Nov. 23 reconciliation and compensation agreement for residential school survivors. Between church, government and AFN archives it is seen as a fairly easy task to identify which former students are 65 years old or older as of May 30 of this [2005]. If you attended a school covered in the agreement, you qualify for an $8,000 advance payment.

If you believe you qualify and are concerned that your current address is not known to the government or to the AFN you are invited to call Shannon Swan at the AFN offices in Ottawa. Her numbers are 1-613-241-6789 ext. 332 or toll free at1-866-869-6789.

Kelly said the first cheques should be on their way sometime in January.

As for younger survivors, it will take a bit longer.

"Now with the settlement agreement there are time deadlines that can be enforced by the court.
The settlement agreement calls for all serious abuse claims to be completed within nine months of being started and there must be a minimum of 2,500 claims settled per year. This speeds up the settlement process significantly," Fontaine said. "We're assuming that the courts will approve the settlement agreement for all the survivors. So the lump sum payments will start to be paid out November 2006."

As with all bureaucratic processes, things take time.

"The reason it will take this amount of time is because it will take a few months to draft a full settlement agreement and the related documents. These have to be filed in all the courts across the country," the national chief explained. "And the target date for final Cabinet approval of the full settlement agreement is March 31, 2006. And the date the agreement will then be filed in all regions of the country is on May 1, 2006. The law requires that once the agreement is filed there must be a six-month mandatory waiting period for people to decide whether they are in or out, meaning simply whether they accept the agreement. Payment will then be after the end of this process and only after all the settlement conditions are met."

And Fontaine said discussions are now underway to address another aspect of residential school compensation and reconciliation that was not in the agreement for legal reasons.

"There's no court in the country that can direct a minister of the Crown or a prime minister to apologize. We knew that. And because this is a legal agreement, it'll be court supervised. The apology is outside that," he told Windspeaker.

"So we are now negotiating the tone and substance of the apology. There will be a full apology from Canada and it'll be in a significant public ceremony. Our thought is the Parliament."

Asked if he meant that the goal is to have the prime minister make the apology in the House of Commons, Fontaine said, "Yes."

Former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci was the government's agent on this matter. He was expected to report to the Justice minister in the spring. But Fontaine said he made one report to Cabinet in October and things started heating up after that.

"The negotiations just gathered momentum and it became clear that it was possible to come up with an agreement that was satisfactory to all the diverse parties at the table and was clearly a fair and just proposition for the survivors. So we ended up working long into the night to do the deal and we were able to bring this in before the call was made," he said.

The issue of governments reducing pension or social assistance payments when survivors receive this compensation is still not completely dealt with, the national chief admitted, but the AFN is working on it.

"We intervened in Manitoba when we found out that social services people were forcing people on social assistance to pay back some of their settlement money. The government here in Manitoba was quick to act. They passed legislation saying there will be no claw-backs of any of the settlement money," Phil Fontaine said. "It's written into the agreement that the governments will make best efforts to ensure that there is no claw-backs for social benefits. And this is not taxable money. People will not be required to include this in their income tax forms."

Agreements to eliminate claw-backs are being pursued one province at a time.

"We've already started negotiations and discussions," Fontaine said. "The important thing here is that Canada is committed to use its best efforts to obtain agreements with provincial and territorial governments and-this is important-any federal government department, to ensure that the receipt of any payment under the agreement would not effect the amount, nature or duration-I'm reading right from the agreement-of any social benefits or social assistance benefits available or payable to eligible lump sum recipients or eligible claimants under [dispute resolution.]"