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Thursday, February 3, 2000 Abuse costs top $56 m
Former director says Liberals care more about dollars than Shelburne victims
By CATHY NICOLL -- The Daily News
The cost of compensating victims of abuse at provincial reformatories reached $56.1
million as of Dec. 31, 1999, the legislature's public accounts committee heard
yesterday.
Of that, $30.7 million has been paid to people who claimed they were physically,
sexually and emotionally abused while children at the Shelburne School for Boys
,
Truro School for Girls and the Nova Scotia Residential Centre.
The government had originally budgeted $33 million for compensation. Another $9.6
million was spent on psychological counselling, while lawyers were paid $3.6 million.
Lawyer Anne Derrick, of Beaton, Derrick & Ring, earned the most, ringing up a bill of
$924,897.
The compensation program office cost $4.1 million; the internal investigation unit cost
$4.7 million; $800,000 was spent on file review lawyers; and $600,000 on litigation
costs. Other costs totalled $2.1 million.
Program director Michael Dempster said his office is "in clean up mode'' now, having
dealt with nearly all 1,253 claims for compensation since 1996. So far, 63 files have
been referred to the RCMP on suspicion of fraud, and a charge has been laid in
another case.
"The last ones were processed in the last week or two,'' he said, adding that just two
employees remain to deal with the final details.
Paula Simon, former program director, said she quit on Oct. 31, 1996 when the then
Savage government decided to change the parameters of the program unilaterally,
because the number of claims had hit about 500.
"It became clear that because of the new claims, the program was going to be over
budget, and that this was not going to be tolerated by the Department of Finance,''
said Simon, wife of NDP Leader Robert Chisholm.
"The need to stay within budget far outweighed the need to honour (the agreement).
It was stated at these meetings that the survivors did not have a lot of public sympathy, and therefore the government could get away with breaking the
agreement. These officials had concluded that it was politically and legally possible
