OVERVIEW

Indigenous Youth in Quebec

Sotos Class Actions is prosecuting this case before the Superior Court of Québec in collaboration with Kugler Kandestin LLP and Coupal Chauvelot s.a. in Montreal.

This case seeks compensation for systematic discrimination against Inuit children and families in Nunavik, northern Québec, by the governments of Canada and Québec since the creation of The James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement in 1975.

In breach of their duties, both governments have failed in providing basic child welfare and other essential health and social services.

The discrimination alleged in this proposed Class Action has taken two forms.

First, through systemic underfunding, neglect, and avoidance of their constitutional and legal duties to the Inuit, the two governments have failed generations of Inuit children and youth who came into contact with the child welfare system. These Inuit children and families were deprived of the most basic child welfare prevention and protection services. As a result, they suffered avoidable family breakups, horrendous abuse and neglect.

Second, the two governments deprived Inuit children who required essential health, social and other services of services that were substantively equal to those available to non-Indigenous children in Québec and Canada. Every time an Inuit child needed an essential service, the child faced gaps or the two governments’ apathy and avoidance of responsibility.

The case seeks to represent:

all Inuit children in Nunavik who have been in the child welfare system between 1975 and the present;
all Inuit children in Nunavik who needed an essential service between 1975 and the present but faced a denial, delay or gap in services;
the parents, or caregiving grandparents, of the above Inuit children.

The Superior Court of Québec will decide at a later date if the case will proceed as a class action.

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