Status: 14.12.2021 5:18 p.m.
The Canadian government plans to raise up to 28 billion euros for social reform and compensation payments. This is intended to compensate indigenous peoples for decades of state failure.
Canada would like to compensate children of indigenous families for decades of insufficient financial support. The government in Ottawa will budget up to 40 billion Canadian dollars (about 28 billion euros) for this, said the minister responsible for indigenous people Marc Miller of the Canadian Press.
A historical judgment
About half of this amount should flow into long-term reforms of the corresponding social system and the other into compensation payments, according to Miller. The government intends to use the sum to settle a legal dispute.
In an historic judgment, Canada’s Human Rights Court found that indigenous children suffered from insufficient government funding for child and family services in their communities, resulting in family separation. “This is a 30 year cost of failure – and the cost is high,” Miller said.
Children buried in mass graves
Canada’s government is already under great pressure after hundreds of bodies of indigenous children have been found in anonymous mass graves near former boarding schools, mostly run by the Catholic Church.
Indigenous children were often separated from their families in order to force them to adapt to the white majority society in these schools. There was also abuse and sexual violence in the homes. The last of these schools did not close until the 1990s.
UN human rights experts had asked the government of Canada and the Vatican in the summer to provide a comprehensive explanation. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had asked the Pope to come to Canada and apologize. He himself asked for forgiveness and let the flags on public buildings fly at half mast for months.
Canada wants to compensate indigenous children with billions
Antje Passenheim, ARD New York, December 14th, 2021 5:23 pm
With information from Antje Passenheim, ARD-Studio New York