After seven years of delays, mostly as a result of appeals by Ottawa, the two sides will have a chance to present their arguments at a summary judgment hearing in the Ontario Superior Court on Aug. 23. Television ads will soon air on both the CBC and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network to advise other indigenous people who were part of the Sixties Scoop that they must opt out by April 22 if they don’t want to be part of the case.
The claim seeks combined damages of $100,000 for each person that is part of the class action. Similar suits have been launched in other provinces where the plaintiffs are waiting for the outcome of the Ontario case.
“Canada, under the previous [Conservative] government, wouldn’t sit down to talk with us. They were instructed ‘no dialogue, no mediation, nothing,’” Jeffrey Wilson, the lawyer for Ms. Brown Martel and the other class-action claimants, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network 