VANCOUVER, British Columbia — All 30 dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada have now ratified an agreement to contribute $17 million to compensate native Indians for abuse they received in the residential school system.
In votes held across the country in the past two months, every Anglican diocese accepted a formula that will see the Anglican Church pay 30 percent of compensation to the schools’ sex-assault victims, with the federal government paying 70 percent. The Anglican Church of Canada — which ran 26 of the country’s 80 boarding schools, most of which were in Western Canada — is the first denomination in the country to go so far to heal the wounds caused by the defunct schools, which the federal government started in the 1850s to integrate natives into white culture.
A tentative date of March 11 has been set for the formal signing by Archbishop Michael Peers, the Anglican primate, and federal Public Works Minister Ralph Goodale, who is in charge of resolving residential school issues. More than 8,000 native Indian lawsuits have been launched against the federal government, which financed the schools, and the Anglican, Catholic, United and Presbyterian churches that operated them on behalf of the government until the 1970s.
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