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While a Manitoba court last year approved a $90 million settlement to First Nations residents affected by the 2011 flooding, lawyers representing the affected homeowners are looking to delay the payouts due to alleged deficiency in the residents’ claims.
An estimated 7,000 people from four First Nations in Manitoba – Lake St. Martin, Dauphin River, Little Saskatchewan and Pinaymootang – could be eligible for up to tens of thousands of dollars in compensation.
The payments were supposed to begin last month; however, a good number of the residents lacked documentation or other requirements to claim on the fund.
According to Sabrina Lombardi – a lawyer with McKenzie Lake Lawyers – of the 5,000 claims received for the fund, 70% were deficient.
“Because such a high percentage of these claims were deficient, we thought it would be a travesty of justice if they just applied the settlement [money] as it was and only 20% of eligible people got paid,” Lombardi, whose law firm is one of several representing the class action plaintiffs, told CBC News.
Lombardi explained that in order to make a claim, individuals had to provide proof of membership to one of the affected First Nations. They also needed to produce proof that they resided in Manitoba at the time of the flood.
“They had to contact someone to get a historical document from back in the spring of 2011 showing their address,” she added.
Claimants only had until July 17, 2018 to complete their applications, but more than half were found to have deficient claims.
Lombardi could not determine why so many of the claims fell short of the eligibility criteria, especially when four workshops on the fund were held in the province. She also noted that some of the residents even hired legal advisers to help them.
“It was a pretty simple process, in fact some individuals hired lawyers, and other people like lawyers, to help them file claims and it seems even those claims didn’t come in with the right documentation, so I’m not sure what happened,” she remarked.
Lawyers representing the affected First Nations homeowners will return to court January 22 to ask a Court of Queen’s Bench judge to allow more time for claimants to provide proper documentation.
“So hopefully a bigger percentage of eligible claimants out there will be able to share in the settlement money,” Lombardi said.
