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How Catholics Avoided Paying Millions in Reparations for Residential Schools

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How Catholics Avoided Paying Millions in Reparations for Residential Schools

On Friday, after Pope Francis ended a collection of conferences with Indigenous folks from Canada with an apology for the position the Roman Catholic Church performed in a infamous residential faculty system, my colleague Elisabetta Povoledo acquired the prospect to speak with some members of the Indigenous delegations.

Elisabetta, who relies in Rome however grew up in Winnipeg, spent a lot of the week following the delegates. She informed me on Friday that the temper at their lodge and through a information convention following the ultimate papal viewers was “very upbeat.”

“The pope’s phrases right now had been historic, to make sure,” mentioned Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis Nationwide Council. “They had been mandatory, and I respect them deeply.” She went on, “And I now look ahead to the pope’s go to to Canada, the place he can provide these honest phrases of apology on to our survivors and their households whose acceptance and therapeutic in the end issues probably the most.”

Reparations had been due underneath a landmark settlement in 2006 of a class-action lawsuit introduced by former college students. A lot of the 4.7 billion Canadian {dollars} that had been paid as reparations to Indigenous peoples got here from the federal authorities. Protestant church buildings paid about 9.2 million Canadian {dollars}.

However the Catholic Church, which operated about 70 p.c of the greater than 130 colleges, solely paid 1.2 million of the 25 million Canadian {dollars} it agreed to boost in money contributions as reparations.

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In 2013, the federal authorities challenged the thousands and thousands of {dollars} in authorized and administrative charges the Catholic Church supposed to rely as a part of its settlement funds at Courtroom of Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan.

Disagreements over a proposed settlement of that case set off a authorized chain response. In the middle of it, a lawyer for the church informed the court docket that the Catholic fund-raising drive got here up with solely 3.9 million Canadian {dollars} for the settlement — about 1.3 million of which was paid to a personal fund-raising firm. What occurred to the rest is unclear.

The federal government contended that, in alternate for a cost from the church of 1.2 million Canadian {dollars}, it agreed to settle the dispute over the church’s declare for charges. The church’s attorneys, nevertheless, mentioned that the comparatively small cost was to alleviate the church of all settlement obligations, together with the 25 million Canadian {dollars}.

Final October, the CBC and The Globe and Mail reported, primarily based on newly launched paperwork, that the choose sided with the church. The choice allowed the church to stroll away from its reparations funds.

Then the federal authorities began an enchantment of the court docket’s resolution, solely to drop it.

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Among the many many individuals shocked final fall by the revelations was Marc Miller, the minister chargeable for Indigenous relations, who, like all members of the Liberal authorities, believes that the church ought to have been held to its dedication of 25 million Canadian {dollars}.

“As everybody, I’m dumbfounded by it,” Mr. Miller informed The Canadian Press in November, making specific word of his confusion over the federal government’s resolution to finish the enchantment. “I wish to resolve it,” he mentioned.

On Friday, I requested Mr. Miller what, if something, his workplace had found. It seems that the Conservative authorities of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in its ultimate months in workplace, struck a cope with the church that restricted the church’s cost to 1.2 million Canadian {dollars}.

In September 2015, weeks earlier than a federal election, Mr. Harper’s Indigenous affairs minister, Bernard Valcourt, ordered officers to drop the enchantment and launch the church from its monetary obligations in alternate for the cost of 1.2 million Canadian {dollars}.

Authorities officers put Mr. Valcourt’s order into place in October 2015, after the Conservatives’ electoral defeat and 5 days earlier than Justin Trudeau and his cupboard had been sworn into workplace.

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“This was a choice of the earlier Conservative authorities,” Justine Leblanc, a spokeswoman for Mr. Miller, wrote in an e-mail. “We can not speculate as to their inner decision-making course of.”

In September the Canadian Convention of Catholic Bishops introduced it will make a second fund-raising try with a goal of amassing 30 million Canadian {dollars} over 5 years. As an alternative of partaking in a nationwide effort, it’ll depend on every of the church’s 73 dioceses to boost cash domestically. In late January, the convention arrange a charity to gather and handle the cash.

On Friday, I requested the convention if any native fund-raising efforts had began and the way a lot cash, if any, had been raised. The group didn’t reply to my inquiry.


  • Within the newest growth of the seemingly endless collection of investigations and costs associated to sexual impropriety inside Canada’s army, Jonathan Vance, the previous prime army commander, pleaded responsible to obstruction of justice this week. Mr. Vance was given a discharge saving him from a legal report within the case, which stemmed from a army police investigation into allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct throughout his time as chief of the protection employees.

  • Garth Drabinsky, the Canadian impresario who was convicted of fraud and forgery and sentenced to 5 years in jail, is again on Broadway.

  • Valérie Lemercier spoke with Elisabeth Vincentelli in regards to the making of “Aline,” her fictionalized telling of Celine Dion’s life.

  • A brand new Netflix documentary, “Belief No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King,” explores the story of Gerald W. Cotten, the founding father of the Canadian cryptocurrency alternate Quadriga CX, who died in 2018 and left many customers shut out from accessing their funds.

  • Caden Ricci, a 10-year-old boy in Montreal who has been identified with autism, is utilizing a QTRobot as a good friend and instructor, Alina Tugend writes.

  • In actual property, Shivani Vora writes that, amongst patrons from all over the world, Canada “has grow to be fashionable and nicely regarded for its golf in addition to golf properties.”


A local of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Occasions for the previous 16 years. Observe him on Twitter at @ianrausten.


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Squid Game’s Park Sung-hoon Exits Forthcoming K-Drama Amid NSFW Controversy

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Squid Game’s Park Sung-hoon Exits Forthcoming K-Drama Amid NSFW Controversy


Park Sung-hoon Controversy: Squid Game Actor Leaves The Tyrant’s Chef



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Russia says it will continue oil and gas projects despite US sanctions

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Russia says it will continue oil and gas projects despite US sanctions

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday denounced new U.S. sanctions against Moscow’s energy sector as an attempt to harm Russia’s economy at the risk of destabilizing global markets and said the country would press on with large oil and gas projects.

A ministry statement also said that Russia would respond to Washington’s “hostile” actions, announced on Friday, while drawing up its foreign policy strategy.

RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER BLASTS UKRAINE PEACE DEAL REPORTEDLY FLOATED BY TRUMP’S TEAM: ‘NOT HAPPY’

The statement said the measures amounted to “an attempt to inflict at least some damage to the Russian economy, even at the cost of the risk of destabilizing world markets as the end approaches of President Joe Biden’s inglorious tenure in power.”

Steam rises from chimneys of the Gazprom Neft’s oil refinery in Omsk, Russia.  (Reuters/Alexey Malgavko)

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“Despite the convulsions in the White House and the machinations of the Russophobic lobby in the West, trying to drag the world energy sector into the ‘hybrid war’ unleashed by the United States against Russia, our country has been and remains a key and reliable player in the global fuel market.”

The measures constituted the broadest U.S. package of sanctions so far targeting Russia’s oil and gas revenues, part of measures to give Kyiv and the incoming administration of Donald Trump leverage to reach a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, which explore for, produce and sell oil as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil, many of which are in the so-called shadow fleet of ageing tankers operated by non-Western companies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the measures would “deliver a significant blow” to Moscow. “The less revenue Russia earns from oil … the sooner peace will be restored,” he said.

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Sudan army says its forces enter Wad Madani in push to retake city from RSF

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Sudan army says its forces enter Wad Madani in push to retake city from RSF

The military says it is working to ‘clean up the remaining rebel pockets’ inside the capital of Gezira state.

The Sudanese military and allied armed groups have entered Wad Madani and were pushing out the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary from the strategic city in Gezira state, according to the army.

In a statement on Saturday, the armed forces “congratulated” the Sudanese people on “our forces entering the city of Wad Madani this morning” after more than a year of RSF control.

“They are now working to clean up the remaining rebel pockets inside the city,” the statement said.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

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The office of army-allied government spokesperson and Information and Culture Minister Khalid al-Aiser said the army had “liberated” the city.

The army posted a video appearing to show soldiers inside the city that has been held by the RSF since December 2023.

Sudan’s army and the RSF have been at war since April 2023, causing what the UN calls the world’s worst displacement crisis and declarations of famine in parts of the northeast African country.

Wad Madani is strategic because it is a crossroads of key supply highways linking several states, and is the nearest major town to the capital Khartoum.

Army ‘in most parts of Wad Madani’

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said the army forces had been advancing towards the city over recent days.

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“They have been taking over villages in the south and southeast of [Gezira] state until this morning, when they took over Hantoub Bridge – a decisive bridge that leads into the city,” she said.

“The army is now in most parts of Wad Madani,” she added.

“The army and allied fighters have spread out around us across the city’s streets,” one witness told the AFP news agency from his home in central Wad Madani, requesting anonymity for his safety.

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of committing war crimes including targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.

Sudanese citizens in Port Sudan celebrate following an announcement by the army that it entered the city of Wad Madani [Ibrahim Mohammed Ishak/Reuters]

The paramilitary forces have been accused of summary killings, rampant looting, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.

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The United States on Tuesday said the RSF had “committed genocide” and imposed sanctions on its leader, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemedti.

The local resistance committee, one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups across the country coordinating frontline aid, hailed the Wad Madani advance as an end to “the tyranny” of the RSF.

Witnesses in army-controlled cities across Sudan reported dozens of people taking to the streets to celebrate the news.

Twelve million displaced

The recapture of Gezira state as a whole could mark a turning point in the war that began over disputes on the integration of the two forces, which has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and uprooted more than 12 million people, more than three million of whom have fled across borders.

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In the early months of the war, more than half a million people had sought shelter in Gezira, before a lightning RSF offensive displaced upwards of 300,000 in December 2023, according to the UN.

Most have been repeatedly displaced since, as the feared paramilitaries moved further and further south.

The RSF still holds the rest of the central agricultural state of Gezira, as well as nearly all of Sudan’s western Darfur region and swaths of the country’s south.

The army controls the north and east, as well as parts of the capital Khartoum.

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