Welcome to Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! This week, lawyer Kyla Lee discusses the fraud action against Merchant Law Group regarding the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
Acumen Law Corporation lawyer Kyla Lee gives her take on a made-in-Canada court case each week, and discusses why these cases should have been heard by Canada’s highest court: the Supreme Court of Canada.
Merchant Law Group was a law firm dealing with a large number of claims under the Indian Residential School Survivors Society payment scheme. Unfortunately, it appears from several allegations that a scheme was what was being run by MLG. Ultimately, after an accounting of their billing records, it was determined that MLG may have engaged in over billing, fraudulent billing and taking money that was due to the survivors for their own purposes.
MLG was sued by the government and they applied to court to strike the claim in it’s entirety, which application was dismissed. They appealed, and the appeal was unsuccessful, and the Supreme Court of Canada denied leave to hear the issue.
This was an opportunity for the SCC to step in and say “enough is enough” and to say why this claim had to proceed. The SCC had the opportunity to say that we need to stop exploiting Indigenous people now, by virtue of exploiting the way that they were exploited and abused throughout history in this country. In a way, the SCC perpetuated an abuse by not speaking out against it and by shying away from saying something about the issue.
Watch the video for more.
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