Rejection letters alarm school survivors

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As many as 500 residential school survivors across Canada have recently received letters from the federal government telling them that their application for the $8,000 early payment has been rejected because the government cannot find records that prove they attended a residential school.

Since the early payment is only available to survivors who were 65 years old or older as of last spring, there's been a lot of alarmed phone calls to Sharon Thira's office in Vancouver. Thira is the executive director of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society (IRSSS), a not-for-profit agency that provides information, referral, crisis counselling, training, workshops and networking for survivors, communities and regions throughout British Columbia.

Thira sent a letter to Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice on May 30, asking for clarification. Prentice has recently taken over responsibility for Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, which Prime Minister Stephen Harper originally put under the management of Heritage Canada Minister Bev Oda.

While subsequent inquiries by Windspeaker have shown that many of the worriesome scenarios described in Thira's letter were mistakes that have been corrected, a number of issues remain to be sorted out.

In her letter to the minister, she pointed out that "records no longer exist in cases where: schools burned down; incomplete records were kept in the first place; records were routinely purged; or records have been lost or misplaced."

"At no time were these records under the care of the former students. Records have always been housed in church or government archives," she added. "Until recently, Canada had assured IRSSS that, in cases where records could not be found for a former student, an affidavit from fellow classmates would be accepted as confirmation of attendance."

But bureaucrats recently informed Thira that affidavits were no longer being accepted. She asked the minister why that change in policy was made. Windspeaker asked the same question during a phone interview with the minister on Sept. 27.

"I'm not sure I'd call it a policy change," he said. "In going through the approvals process with my cabinet colleagues, it was decided that the previous government was not performing adequate due diligence in verifying claims and the verification process was strengthened."

Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Phil Fontaine, reached by phone on Sept. 22, said the Liberal government felt that testing five per cent of the claims at random would be sufficient to guard against false claims. Prentice said that wasn't good enough for his government and now all claims are being verified.

Fontaine also said that his staff was analyzing all the cases where rejection letters have been issued and he has secured an agreement with the government that no more rejection letters will be sent.

Luc Dumont, director general of Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, confirmed that.

He said the rejection letters were part of the growing pains associated with starting up the early payment process. He acknowledged that in some cases the sending of a rejection letter was simply a mistake.

Thira detailed a number of those scenarios. Among the people in B.C. who received rejection letters were people who had possession of records that prove the provincial government had sent them to a residential school. One claimant had already secured a judgement for physical abuse at a school in court and yet was told that there were no records confirming his attendance in a residential school.

In a couple of cases, different searches of records for one student produced different and contradictory results.

Dumont said mistakes were made and they're being corrected.

"We were overwhelmed by the volume of the applications. We didn't expect so many people would apply so early," he said.

He said the early payment to those over the age of 65 is a good-faith gesture by the government of Caada, "an ex gratia payment" and the government is being as careful as possible to ensure that only qualified applicants receive the $8,000 cheque.

"But let's put this in perspective," he said. "Of the 11,713 applications received as of Sept. 25, only about 500 of them have been rejected for lack of records."

In cases where records can't be found at this point, the case will "be put on hold rather than rejected."

And new sources of information are coming in as records are found in church and historical society archives around the country and many of the files on hold may be able to proceed.

"And keep in mind the churches are not obliged to allow us access to their archives until the agreement comes into force," he said.

As for those cases where records never are found, Dumont said a strategy would be devised to deal with that.

"Affidavits may be possible in the future. We're not ruling it out," he said.

Thira pointed out that in 1922, the government passed a law requiring Native children to attend residential school. She believes that asking people who went to school in the 1940s and 1950s to provide proof of school attendance is not only unreasonable, but also unnecessary.

"We have for example one 96-year-old Elder who has no age peers. He went to residential school, you can tell that just by talking to him. He's able to tell you what his number is; he's able to tell you what the hallways looked like; he's able to tell you what bed he slept in in the dorm. So you know he went to residential school but he's got a letter back saying 'We don't have records for you.' And he feels like he's not believed," Sharon Thira said. "How do you explain that? You've got to remember too that many people haven't talked about residential school before. Then, when they put in this application form, they feel, 'Wow, I'm finally being recognized.' And then they get the rejection letter. They read that as someone telling them that they're lying. That's not what the letter says, ofcourse, but that's sort of how it's interpreted and we think that's a shame."

There will be a 150-day opt-in, opt out period once the various courts have approved the AFN-federal government residential school compensation plan, which is expected to happen a few weeks after court hearings wrap up in mid-October. Those whose records have been lost need to know whether their claims to the $10,000 plus $3,000 per year compensation payment will be affected, Thira said.

She has been warning survivors that if they agree to submit claims and then wait for an appeals process contained in the agreement, they will be giving up their right to sue the government outside the agreement process.