Day school survivor asks Supreme Court to intervene in settlement agreement with Ottawa

A Cree survivor of thefederal Indian day school system is asking Canada's top court to intervene in a multibillion-dollar settlement agreement amid allegations survivors have been shortchanged and retraumatized by the compensation process, CBC News has learned.

Jessie Waldron, 65, fought and lost to the federal government before the Federal Court in 2021 and the Federal Court of Appeal in January 2024 for the right to amend her compensation claim with additional evidence of abuse.

Now she wants the Supreme Court of Canada to step in because she says the government, the claims administrator and the law firm that struck the 2019 settlement agreement on behalf of survivors have failed to represent their best interests.

Lawyers for Waldron, who attended the Waterhen Lake Indian Day School in northern Saskatchewan in the 1960s and 1970s, filed a leave to appeal with the top court on Friday.

The case pits Waldron against the federal government, Deloitte — the auditing and consulting firm appointed to administer the settlement — and Gowling WLG, the law firm that represents them within the agreement.

Waldron told CBC News she was overwhelmed by the claims application and only filed for the minimum $10,000 compensation, even though her lawyers say she was potentially eligible for up to $150,000 based on suffering she endured at day school.

«I felt traumatized again, victimized again,» Waldron said. «Humiliated.»

Waldron said she could never get through the legal hotline set up to help survivors with the process. At one point, she drove 10 hours from her home in Grand Prairie, Alta., to Waterhen Lake, Sask., for a scheduled community visit with lawyers from Gowling. But when she arrived, she found out the meeting had been cancelled.