Court supervised: Residential school students say they’ve been hurt by law firm
Ontario Chief Justice Warren Winkler and eight other provincial court judges in different regions of the country supervise the settlement agreement. Justice Winkler has retained class action lawyer Randy Bennett to assist him. Since this is a court-approved and court-monitored process, the court has the authority to oversee and intervene as necessary.
APTN National News
Ontario Chief Justice Warren Winkler and eight other provincial court judges in different regions of the country supervise the settlement agreement. Justice Winkler has retained class action lawyer Randy Bennett to assist him. Since this is a court-approved and court-monitored process, the court has the authority to oversee and intervene as necessary.
Crawford Class Actions, a company that specializes in administering large class action compensation processes, was retained to act as the court monitor. Michael Mooney is the lead man on the IAP file for Crawford Class Actions.
A seven-member National Administration Committee (NAC) supervises the implementation of the overall settlement agreement.
Supervising the work of the IAP Secretariat is a nine-member National Oversight Committee (OC).
Both those committees are made up of representatives of all the parties that signed the settlement agreement: the churches that operated the schools, a national consortium of lawyers who represent the former students, the federal government and the Assembly of First Nations.
The IAP Secretariat employs a chief adjudicator and five deputy chief adjudicators. They supervise 110 adjudicators as well as more than 150 support personnel. Sources say the adjudicators are paid $5,000 a day when they are conducting hearings.
And there are more than 200 lawyers representing IAP clients. The lawyers also have representation on the NAC and OC.
Estimates are that the number of former students who will qualify for IAP hearings will exceed 29,000, more than double the number the government originally projected.
That’s 29,000 children who were subjected to having their culture, their language, their connection to their families and to their peoples’ traditions, beaten out of them. Or they were victimized by the various sexual predators who worked at the schools — or both.
