Canada to pay nearly € 30 billion in reparations to Indigenous children

The Canadian government will disburse the equivalent of 27.8 billion euros within the framework of agreements concluded with the indigenous communities of the country. The money is intended to compensate tens of thousands of children withdrawn from their reserves and to reform the child protection system.

An agreement in principle was announced on Tuesday, January 4 for the compensation of indigenous families who were victims of ill-treatment and discrimination. Two aid of 20 billion Canadian dollars each will be granted to repair projects. “This historic agreement […] took a long time to come ”, told the aboriginal site First Nations Drum the regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations in the province of Manitoba, Cindy Woodhouse. “We will ensure the full and complete participation of our authorities and of the people who have suffered this system over the past three decades.”, declared, for his part, the chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, Ghislain Picard, in the pages of Duty.

As part of the first agreement, reports the Montreal daily, “Ottawa will ultimately donate at least $ 40,000 [27 800 euros] to each person from the First Nations who has been placed, as a child, in a foster family far from his community since the 1990s ”. The second agreement “aims to fund and repair, in the long term, First Nations children’s services ”.

“It is the most important agreement in Canadian history ”, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller said at a press conference on Tuesday, January 4.