Ottawa announces $2.8 billion to settle remaining part of B.C. day scholar lawsuit

The federal government has come to a $2.8-billion agreement to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by two British Columbia first nations related to the collective harms caused by residential schools.

At a Saturday morning news conference in Vancouver, Crown-Indigenous Affairs Minister Marc Miller said the government signed the deal with plaintiffs representing 325 nations that opted into the Gottfriedson Band suit.

“While settlements that are being announced like these today do not erase or make up for the past … what it can do is help address the collective harm caused by Canada’s past — a deeply colonial one — in the loss of language, the loss of culture and the loss of heritage,” said Miller.

The lawsuit originally involved three classes of complainants, but in 2021 all parties agreed to concentrate initial settlement efforts on survivors and their descendants to ensure they’d receive compensation during their lifetimes.