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Canada reaches agreement to compensate indigenous children taken from families

05 January 2022 05:20 (UTC +04:00)

Canada announced on Tuesday two agreements totalling C$40 billion ($31.5 billion) to compensate First Nations children who were taken from their families and put into the child welfare system and to reform the system that removed them and deprived them of services they needed, APA reports quoting Reuters.

The agreements include C$20 billion for potentially hundreds of thousands of First Nations children who were removed from their families, who did not get services or who experienced delays in receiving services. Another C$20 billion is to reform the system over the next five years.

The agreements come almost 15 years after the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society brought forward a human rights complaint.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal repeatedly found child and family services discriminated against First Nations children, in part by under-funding services on reserves so children were removed from their homes and taken off-reserve to get those services.