Manitoba agrees to pay $530M in settlement over children’s allowance – Daily Guardian

March 26, 2024

WINNIPEG — The Manitoba government has agreed to pay $530 million to settle three class-action lawsuits over child welfare benefit payments in an agreement that plaintiffs say should send a message to other provinces.

The proposed settlement, which still requires court approval, would compensate an estimated 30,000 children, some of whom have since become adults, for money the province clawed back from federal payments between 2005 and 2019.

Similar lawsuits have been filed in Saskatchewan and Alberta

“(For) the province to assume, with no agreement and no authority and no provision in place, that they could somehow just take this money from the kids was in our opinion theft and wrong,” Elsie Flette, one of the lead plaintiffs in the case, said Monday.

Flette was chief executive officer of a regional child welfare authority when, in 2005, the former NDP government in Manitoba started clawing back a federal benefit called the Children’s Special Allowance. The money goes to agencies that care for children and mirrors the monthly Canada Child Benefit cheques given to parents raising children across the country.