Canada's deputy prime minister, Herb Gray, has met leaders of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) in an attempt to resolve thousands of court cases alleging abuse at indigenous residential schools that were run by churches on behalf of the government.
The meeting on May 17 came soon after the Anglican bishops wrote to Prime Minister Jean Chretien urging him to intervene in stalled negotiations over compensation for former students who claim they were abused by school staff.
The federal cabinet chose Deputy Prime Minister Gray to negotiate with the four denominations named in litigation and was commissioned to bring the schools crisis to a satisfactory conclusion.
More than 7,000 people have brought lawsuits against the federal government and four churches—the ACC, the Presbyterian Church of Canada, the United Church of Canada and a number of Roman Catholic orders. Alleging that they suffered physical or sexual abuse while attending residential schools, claimants are seeking damages estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. The residential school system operated from 1820 to 1969.
Archdeacon Jim Boyles, general secretary of the Anglican general synod, the ACC's national governing body, who attended the meeting with Gray, said, "Our immediate concern was that the discussions between the church and the government were too slow and that the general synod and several dioceses were facing financial crises.
"The national body of the church is at risk financially, and we have been telling the government for the past year that we will run out of liquid assets by the end of this year unless there is some way to find an agreement with the government so that we can get on with healing and reconciliation work."
Archdeacon Boyles said: "The largest number of claimants are those naming the various Roman Catholic organizations who had approximately 60 schools; the general synod had about 24; the United Church about 12; the Presbyterians, two.
"The court cases are distributed roughly in proportion to the number of schools each church had. For schools run by the Anglicans, there are about 1,000 claimants, apart from class action suits. Of those, about 600 are cases in which the government has been named directly and about 400 where the government has involved the church through third-party action."
The deputy prime minister said the government recognized that the churches "play a valuable, far-reaching role in Canadian civil society." The government had "no desire to see the churches driven into bankruptcy" as a result of the residential schools litigation.
Archdeacon Boyles said Anglican leaders planned to bring representatives of the other denominations together with Gray in the coming weeks.
Asked what alternatives to litigation were being pursued, he said, "The government has proposed 12 pilot projects in ADR, or Alternative Dispute Resolution. Those have been very slow in getting off the ground and are not—from the point of view of the churches—working well, are not satisfactory."
ADR is an indigenous conflict resolution process that validates people's personal stories and assesses their claims.
"We have expressed our concern many times that a resolution needs to be found within a broad framework of social policy," Archdeacon Boyles said.
He said the Anglican Church was committed to "ongoing and increasing healing and reconciliation work which is part of our mission. We want to reach a resolution with the government so that that work can continue and grow."
Speaking to the media after the meeting, Terence Finlay, Anglican Archbishop of Toronto, said, "We felt our meeting with Minister Gray was a positive step, demonstrating goodwill on both sides." However, the archbishop added, the church was awaiting details of the government's proposed approach.
The delegation was led by the Anglican Primate, Archbishop Michael Peers, and included, in addition to Archdeacon Boyles and Archbishop Finlay, Donald Phillips, Bishop of Rupert's Land (Winnipeg, Manitoba), and Esther Wesley, coordinator of the Anglican Church Indigenous Healing Fund.
For continuing coverage of this issue, see the Anglican Journal, the ACC's monthly newspaper (its October 1999 issue provides especially good background information on the abuse allegations and their implications for the church.)
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