Sask. man worried Métis and non-status Indian Sixties Scoop survivors will have little say in class action

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

One of the plaintiffs in a statement of claim filed against the federal government on behalf of Métis and non-status Indian Sixties Scoop survivors in Canada says he is "very sad" that he felt forced to drop his legal challenge.

The Sixties Scoop refers to the Canadian practice — from the early 1950s until the early 1990s — of taking children from Indigenous families and placing them for adoption with non-Indigenous parents. Many of the affected children lost their Indigenous identity and suffered mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Robert Doucette, a Saskatchewan man and a Métis Sixties Scoop survivor, was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in January 2018, along with with his sisters Geraldine Shier Laliberte and Eileen Rheindel Laliberte.

It was the first of five statements of claim filed against Ottawa on the matter that year.

In 2019, after a "carriage contest," Justice Michael L. Phelan decided that plaintiff Brian Day and Toronto-based law firms Koskie Minsky LLP and Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP could proceed as representatives of Métis and non-status Indians in Canada in a proposed national class action.

That meant overlapping claims, brought forward by a consortium of three sets of plaintiffs represented by five law firms, were stayed. Doucette's lawsuit was one of them.

The consortium had asked for Day's claim — the last lawsuit to be launched on the issue — to be stayed. 

It was the first ever contested carriage order issued by the Federal Court of Canada.

Justice Phelan's decision was upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal in 2020 after it was challenged by the consortium.

In his ruling, Phelan referenced "bad blood" between some of the law firms involved in the competing claims, arising from their experience with each other in earlier Sixties Scoop litigation involving status Indians and Inuit survivors.

The Federal Court approved an $875-million settlement in that separate class action in 2018. It included $750 million for the estimated 20,000 status Indian and Inuit survivors and $50 million for a foundation.

Phelan said the usual practice is for all plaintiffs' counsel to work out some form of joint venture on the lead class action they consider best to advance.

This past June, the prevailing claim for Métis and non-status Indian survivors was certified as a national class action and survivors were given until Nov. 3 to opt out of it.