Ottawa reviewing student-on-student abuse cases at St. Anne's residential school

Ottawa is finally moving almost a year later on a court's call for a review of 11 cases of student-on-student abuse at one of Canada's most notorious residential schools, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller says.

The federal government is looking at compensation claims from 11 survivors of the former St. Anne's Indian Residential School, which was run by the Roman Catholic Church from 1906 until 1976 in Fort Albany First Nation along Ontario's James Bay Coast.

"There is, for a very limited group of survivors, a potential of re-examination," Miller told CBC News.

Miller said the government would soon ask the court to appoint another independent official to review the 11 cases and recommend how they should be handled.

Evelyn Korkmaz, who attended St. Anne's from 1969 to 1972, said Miller should tell claimants whether their claims are among the 11 being reviewed.

"He's just putting like a piece of cookie out there for us to grab and say, 'OK, we're going to be satisfied with that,'" Korkmaz said.

"But there's more to this. Somebody needs to hold the government accountable for not complying with court orders. What good are court orders if you disregard them?"

The 11 cases initially were identified by an independent, court-appointed official, who examined 427 St. Anne's cases last year that were heard before the federal government turned over thousands of pages of police and court records to the residential school compensation process in 2014-2015.

For roughly the first seven years of the residential school compensation process, the federal government withheld records from an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) investigation in the 1990s into historical abuse at St. Anne's.

The court-appointed official released a report in December 2021 concluding that the outcome of the 11 compensation cases, which dealt with student-on-student abuse, could have been affected by the information in those withheld records.

The issue flared up in question period on Monday when NDP MP Charlie Angus — whose riding of Timmins–James Bay includes the former St. Anne's institution — demanded that Miller "look" at him as he pressed for the government to enter into mediation with survivors. 

Miller responded by saying he's asked his department to re-examine the 11 cases.

The Supreme Court of Canada rejected an appeal from St. Anne's survivors last Thursday in the years-long legal battle over Ottawa withholding thousands of OPP documents containing critical evidence from compensation claim hearings.

WATCH | NDP MP demands Ottawa enter into mediation with St. Anne's survivors