A child's dress hung on a cross blows in the wind near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, to honour the 215 children who were discovered buried near the facility, in Kamloops, B.C., on June 4, 2021.Catholic Church officials improperly redirected funds meant for residential-school survivors toward administrative costs and legal fees, government documents alleged during a 2014 court fight between federal lawyers and the church.
Canada’s residential schools operated for more than a century, with about 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children separated from their parents; many were forbidden from speaking their language and practising their culture. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called it a policy of cultural genocide.
The federal government, which funded most residential schools, itself paid $3.23-billion in compensation to survivors and other costs as part of the settlement. Meanwhile, CCEPIRSS had paid out millions in fees, government lawyers said, including $2.7-million in consulting and legal fees to the law firms of two lawyers who sat on the organization’s board.
The government also took issue with the $25-million of in-kind services claimed by CCEPIRSS, saying the organization’s auditor had seemingly not audited records for those claims and had “no basis on which to value the services.”Grouard-McLennan Archbishop Gérard Pettipas in Alberta, former chairman of CCEPIRSS, did not respond to The Globe’s request for an interview.
While Mr. DeGagné sat across from various churches and government officials as part of the settlement process, the Catholic Church stood apart. “These people are as obstructionist as any you’ll ever work with,” he said.“If you had the United Church at the table, you often had a minister, and that minister’s file was the residential-school settlement,” he said. “When you met with the Catholic Church, you saw their lawyers.
What a disgrace! No accountability, business as usual for them!
Makes the arson seem forgivable.
I renounce my catholique religion it is a disgrace , they have no morels
CatholicNewsSvc improperly delights in attacking the Catholic Church. Your next story should be about improperly having to rebuild burned churches instead of directing those funds to Residential School survivors.
Of course they did. Every little bit to bring about the end of organised religion helps though.
No, really!
TAX THE CHURCH
The Catholic Church is a criminal organization masquerading behind god. Give them business status and make them pay taxes. Investigate them and jail the corrupt and the pedophiles. No more hiding and cowering behind the cross.
Can the Catholics do anything right w children?
Pictures in my head of what in-kind services might have been offered by CatholicChurch make me shudder. Haunted by historical events and current lack of accountability and reparation. CCCB_CECC CCC_CCE CatholicRegistr
Shocking….
Where is the apology?
Tax them and defund religious schools
I think they also redirected funds for food for the children while in their care. No child should be hungry.
Been Canada for twenty years, never wanted to join any churches here even if wooed by church representatives every week.