Anglican Church faces spectre of bankruptcy
Residential school lawsuits threaten church’s future
DEBRA
FIEGUTH
CW Senior Writer
If a mass of lawsuits against the Anglican Church of Canada is carried through, the church could be bankrupt within the next year.
Facing 1,600 claims totalling $2 billion stemming from abuses in church- and government-run Indian residential schools, the denomination does not have enough money to pay legal fees let alone compensation packages.
“The reason it’s a crisis for us so quickly is that general synod [the legal entity which runs the church] doesn’t have many assets,” says Michael Peers, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. “We own a building and we have some money.” He estimates assets total about $10 million.
Litigation alone last year cost the church $1.5 million, and the amount is expected to increase this year. “We can’t continue at this rate,” says Peers.
About a quarter of the church’s annual budget of $10 million goes to support nine dioceses primarily located in the North. For example, the Diocese of Keewatin, in northwestern Ontario, receives 40 percent of its funding from the national body. “So if the general synod were to disappear, what would that mean?” asks David Ashdown, executive archdeacon of Keewatin.
“It means chaos for a while. We won’t be able to focus our attention where we’ll really need to focus it.” Keewatin is the only diocese headed by an aboriginal, Bishop Gordon Beardy, who has given much of his time and energy to reconciliation between natives and the church. “He is able to make a major difference in race relationships in the country,” says Ashdown. “It’s the continued presence of general synod that enables him to do that.”
Precedent
The lawsuits–most of which were launched by the federal government on behalf of residential school survivors–have been mounting over the past few years. And a decision in Lytton, B.C. last fall, which put 60 percent of the responsibility on the church and 40 percent on the government, has set a precedent for future cases. The church has appealed that decision.
The full text of this article appears in the print edition.