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2001-106

News Brief

Anglican bishops in Canada confront government over lawsuits

     (ENS) The bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada have warned the prime 
minister that, unless he gets involved, the church will soon be bankrupt because 
of a rash of lawsuits brought by victims of abuse at church-run residential 
schools for indigenous youth.

     In a May 4 statement from the House of Bishops, read from pulpits throughout 
the church, the bishops said that they are "greatly disturbed by the inability of 
the federal government to come to agreement with the churches which were involved 
in the operation of Indian Residential Schools."

     The church has told the government that its assets will be exhausted before 
the end of the year. "We as leaders of the church remain committed to the pursuit 
of justice for those whose lives have been damaged by abuse at the schools," the 
statement said. "We remain committed to the ministry of healing among the 
indigenous peoples of Canada; however, if the continuing aggression of the 
Department of Justice forces our General Synod into bankruptcy, this and many 
other ministries will be disrupted."

     In a letter to Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the bishops said that "those 
who were abused still wait for justice and the litigation is rapidly draining the 
resources of several of our dioceses and of our national body…. We are perilously 
close to bankruptcy."

     A letter from Archbishop Michael Peers, primate of the church, to Chretien 
was equally blunt, pointing out that the church was living with "a sense of 
expectation, born of our discussions with the Deputy Prime Minister, and on the 
other hand a steadily mounting sense of frustration, born of the lack of any 
tangible progress toward a just resolution of the residential schools legacy."

     Peers said that 99 percent of the church's funds have been spent on 
litigation, only one percent on settlements. He said that the bishops were 
convinced that "justice is not now being served--and we cannot see how continuing 
this pattern will ever serve the purposes of justice."

     More than 7,000 people have brought legal action against the federal 
government and churches, which operated the schools. So far the government has 
ignored suggestions from indigenous, legal and church groups seeking a way to 
settle the claims outside the courts.