wfn.org | Anglicans in Canada asked to lobby government

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2000-146

Anglicans in Canada asked to lobby government for relief on 
lawsuits

by James Solheim

     (ENS) In the wake of spiraling court cases alleging abuse of 
youth in residential schools, Canada's Justice Department is 
"literally driving our church towards bankruptcy," charged the 
Anglican Church's General Secretary, Jim Boyles, in a blunt 
letter sent to all church members.

     "Today the problems arising out of the residential schools 
endanger the national and international ministry of our church, 
not primarily because of the people who suffered abuse and are 
seeking fair compensation, but because of legal actions launched 
by Canada's Department of Justice and because, so far, our 
government has chosen to respond to this national crisis only 
through the courts and similar legal processes," Boyles 
explained. "Unless serious change occurs quickly, General Synod 
faces the possibility of bankruptcy in the very near future."

     The Anglican Church of Canada helped the government 
administer the schools "because our church forebears believed, 
some 100 years ago, that this was a good and honorable cause, 
helping to provide education for indigenous persons," Boyles 
wrote. "But by 1969, when our involvement with the schools ended, 
we had come to realize there were very serious failings in the 
whole residential schools approach."

     As a result, the church established "a new relationship with 
indigenous peoples, based on partnership and respect."

     The church assisted in operating 26 of more than 80 schools 
and is now involved with about 1,600 lawsuits, in many cases only 
because the Justice Department has added the church as a third 
party.

     The financial ruin of the church won't "provide just 
compensation and healing for victims." Rather, "the government 
lawsuits are bleeding us dry--and costing enormous amounts of our 

tax dollars--to the benefit of no one," Boyles argued. "We 
believe these actions by the Justice Department are ill-advised, 
unfair and just plain wrong."

     Boyles urged church members to contact their political 
representatives and urge a change in government policies. "If we 
act together now," he said, "there is still time to make a 
difference."

Time running out for dioceses

     Unfortunately, several dioceses most directly involved in 
the lawsuits are facing imminent bankruptcy. "The Diocese of 
Cariboo in British Columbia has exhausted its resources and is in 
a desperate state," Boyles said. "The ministry of the Diocese of 
Qu'Appelle [in Saskatchewan] is also threatened for the same 
reason."

     Archbishop Michael Peers, in a September 24 sermon in 
Toronto, said that the church was "revisiting the social policy 
of our past in relation to aboriginal people because in it was 
the soil of so much of today's pain and suffering. But it can 
also become the soil, the earth, of a new relationship. Exposing 
and admitting wounds," he said, "makes healing possible." Peers 
apologized to "those whose lives had been wounded in the schools" 
at a gathering of aboriginal Anglicans in 1993.

     Peers said that the relationship with aboriginal peoples 
"could be the dominant issue of the next decade." He added, "We 
need to be alert to anything within our own souls and within the 
soul of the nation that indicates weariness with the doing of 
justice, or reveals a potential for prejudice and racism."

     Addressing the letter-writing campaign, Peers said, "Our 
quarrel is not with just claims of aboriginal persons; it is with 
a government that continues to stall in its responsibility to 
deal with fundamental matters of justice."

     Peers quoted Ethel Ahenakew, a Cree leader from 
Saskatchewan, who told him and the wider church that "you are the 
instrument God has chosen to orchestrate the church to start 
over, after admitting the wrongs your ancestors have committed. 
We can now start building bridges so that white and aboriginal 
people can come together and become strong as a church--a church 
where you have laid a strong foundation with your apology."

--James Solheim is director of the Episcopal Church's Office of 
News and Information.