B.C. challenging class-action lawsuit involving potentially tens of thousands of youth in foster care

WARNING: This story involves the sexual assault of a minor.

The representative plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit brought against the B.C. government survived an incredibly hard childhood.

She was shuttled in and out of foster care, and experienced traumas throughout her youth, including being the victim of sexual abuse by another youth in foster care.

“My earliest memories are of rape and molestation as early as four and five,” she recounted to CTV News. “I experienced physical, sexual and emotional abuse by several family members at various ages.”

CTV News agreed to conceal her identity to protect her privacy, but she’s speaking out in frustration at the provincial government.

The lawsuit in which she’s the representative plaintiff alleges that the province failed to protect the interests of thousands of vulnerable children in its care over 50 years, dating back to the 1970s.

Rajinder Sahota is a Victoria lawyer acting on behalf of the plaintiffs. Sahota describes the allegations as “a failure to advocate for children to ensure they received benefits, like counselling, amongst others, and compensation for being the victims of crime.”

Victims-of-crime legislation entitles people who've been hurt by a crime to apply for benefits. This lawsuit alleges that in many cases the government, which had assumed responsibility for those kids in its care, never alerted them to their legal rights, such as access to therapy, as well as modest compensation for pain and suffering.

“They failed to apply for benefits and compensation for children who had been victims of crime,” says Sahota.

The representative plaintiff is 35 years old now and only found out about the benefits a few years ago.

She says the abuse she suffered has impacted all facets of her life — from school to work to her relationships —and says if she’d had access to benefits earlier her life would have been much different.

“I made suicide attempts as a child and still struggle with suicidal ideation to this day,” she says. “I wonder what my life could have been if I’d had timely access to these benefits.”

Similar lawsuits have been certified in Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan. The lawsuit in Alberta was settled in 2015.

But five years into the legal battle, B.C. is still fighting. The government is now appealing the court’s September 2021 decision to certify the class action.

“It feels like a betrayal, a completely unnecessary betrayal,” says the plaintiff.

On Wednesday, Minister of Children and Family Development Mitzi Dean declined to comment because the case is before the courts, but defended her government’s record generally.

“Our government is showing that we are investing in children and youth, especially vulnerable children and youth,” said Dean.

Approximately 60 per cent of kids in foster care are Indigenous. Most of the potential plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Indigenous.

“We’re talking about the most vulnerable segment of our population,” says Sahota from his law firm’s Vic West office. “Children in care, overwhelmingly Indigenous.”

The current provincial government has emphasized reconciliation and Indigenous rights. As recently as its throne speech Tuesday, it pledged to “heal the wounds of the past.”

“It’s incumbent on any government, let alone this government, to stop litigating this issue and to start dealing with solutions,” said Sahota.