Residential school deal almost final

A final deal to compensate thousands of people who attended native residential schools has passed another hurdle and the federal cabinet could approve it within days.

All parties in the negotiations have approved the agreement, Jim Prentice, minister of Indian affairs and northern development, announced Tuesday in the House of Commons.

The statement caused members of cabinet to stand up and applaud.

• INDEPTH: Aboriginal Canadians

Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice announced all parties have approved compensation for victims of residential schools.

Although negotiators had indicated that the Conservatives would not give elders early payments, that now appears to have changed.

"The government will now immediately consider the settlement agreement, and the interim payments and the timing of those payments," said Prentice.

There are about 78,000 residential school survivors in Canada and about 8,000 are seniors.

'Painful part of our history'

All those over age 65 and living in poverty will be able to apply immediately for $8,000 in compensation even before the agreement is finalized in the courts.

Rosemarie Kuptana, who went to residential school for 10 years in Inuvik, says she has met a number of them in the Northwest Territories.

"It's time that the First Peoples in this country dealt with a very painful part of our history," she said.

Liberal Indian Affairs critic Anita Neville has seen a copy of the agreement that was approved by the parties involved in the negotiations.

She says it hasn't changed much under the Conservatives. It still includes a promise to spend $1.9 billion to compensate survivors.

"I am pleased to see that the government has finally agreed to endorse the agreement in principle signed in November 2005 by the previous Liberal government, the Assembly of First Nations and church leaders," said Neville in a news release.

Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, says approval by all parties is significant, since it took many years of complicated negotiations to get to this point.