1: Battle over native schools continues. (Canada).

At the end of October 2001, Herb Gray, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced that talks concerning the lawsuits filed by nearly 9,000 native people who say they were abused at residential schools run by the churches have failed, and therefore the government will go ahead with the payment of 70% of any settlements reached out of court. Last September, two Justice Department officials and two civil servants working for Mr. Gray tabled a draft proposal whereby Ottawa would pay two-thirds of any settlements if the churches would pay one-third.

The government also said that the churches would have to put up "commercial security" to guarantee their share of the deal. The proposal did not contain the word mortgage, but Bud Smith, an Anglican negotiator and former Attorney General, said this is what they meant. Ottawa has asked Canada's largest churches to hand over mortgages to their properties as financial security in any agreement. Smith said they wanted the mortgages of every church in Canada. "If we agree to that," Smith said, "the government could foreclose on our church buildings the way any commercial lender would...."

Smith said there was "stunned silence" when federal officials made their request for mortgages, followed by laughter and some head-shaking. As a senior United Church official said, "The government action on Monday made me feel that the government is negotiating in public. That's been disturbing."

The churches say that they cannot afford to pay a third of liabilities estimated to reach $1.8 billion. Mr. Smith said that the government refuses to accept this. Last year, justice officials asked rural Anglican churches in B. C. to disclose lists of jewelry and paintings apparently stored in church basements. "They still believe that the churches are hiding assets and have a lot of money," Mr. Smith said. How little they know about church finances!

The Catholic, Anglican, United Church, and Presbyterian churches which ran the residential schools where the alleged abuses occurred refuse to accept a settlement along the lines that Ottawa proposes. First, none of the claims have been proved in court. Secondly, the uprooting of the children and the prohibition to speak their language was government policy, not the doing of the churches. Thirdly, the mixing of corporal punishment, customary at the time, with the few charges of physical and sexual abuse into a general category of "abuse" is unacceptable (Nat. Post, Nov. 1,2001).